Gerry Canavan

I was surprised and a bit put off by the extremely detailed approach taken by Canavan's book on Octavia Butler. I was looking for a biography of Butler that associated events in her life with episodes or characters in her books. I envisioned Canavan's approach to be an introduction to Butler. Instead, I found it to be a major scholarly thesis - an analysis of the major and minor themes in all of her works, taken chronologically, and cross-referenced with the development of other themes, characters and Butler's life events.

The scholarship is evident from the beginning. Canavan must have devoted years to reading and very minutely tracking the occurence and development of every theme found in Butler's works! While this is certainly a fine addition to literary scholarship on Butler, it is far too densely detailed for non-scholarly reading.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.… (meer)

Octavia E. Butler by Gerry Canavan is part of the University of Illinois Press' Modern Masters of Science Fiction series. To quote from their website, "Modern Masters of Science Fiction is devoted to books that survey the work of individual authors...." In other words this is not a biography in the strict sense of the word. In Butler's case her life plays a very important role in what she wrote and how she wrote it so there is a lot about her life here. But that is not the focus of the book or the series. Just wanted to let any potential future readers know what they are looking at.

Canavan accessed Butler's archives and it provided a rich source for understanding not only why she wrote the way she did but also the process she went through. Drafts, notes, and every other kind of written material showed a writer who wrestled with her personal issues in addition to her writing. These personal struggles gave her writing much of its savory flavor.

One thing I was glad that Canavan did not do was try to delve too deeply into Butler's psychological history and turn this into some kind of second rate psychoanalysis of either the writer or her work. He also hopes that future researchers avoid making too much of Butler's personal life and even devotes part of the introduction to the ethics in using an archive that Butler did not have a chance to "prune" and take out some of the more personal pieces that might speak only to her depression or self-loathing at a particular moment.

While being familiar with her work will certainly make this a more pleasurable read it should still be of interest to those less familiar who may be more interested in the process itself rather than specific discussions of a work or works. I have read most of her published works and found this to be a wonderful way for me to both revisit the works as well as imagine variations based on changes she made or influences that helped her make the decisions she made. The writing is academic still quite accessible. Canavan uses minimal jargon and keeps any theory to a bare minimum.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)