A Certain Slant of Light

Back to school...

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:50:18 GMT

I'm back at college, and guess - guess where I'm living!

The garret.

Better get cracking on my great American novel...I'll never have a chance this good again!

***

I've got a view of the river, too, if I stand on tiptoe to peer through the window; and if tiptoe is too much effort, I've got a view of spider-black branches covered with snow, and the sky.

I think I approve of this room.

New Year's Resolutions

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:40:33 GMT

Normally I don't do New Year's resolutions - not that I have anything against them; I just have nothing to resolve that I haven't already been working on.

But this year, I have two. Because artificially imposed deadlines are good for the soul!

1. Send out stories to magazines. One submission a month, perhaps? (Obviously more is allowed, that's just a minimum.)

2. Finish a novel. The last time I finished a novel was, um. Tenth grade. So much time wasted!

Does anyone else have New Year's resolutions?

Yuletide fics mark 2

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:05:11 GMT

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a great New Year's eve, and I'm hoping for an excellent year ahead.

Anyway! Now that it's the new year, I can show you my Yuletide stories! Only two this year, which makes me feel a little pathetic compared to last year when I wrote four, but circumstances change...

The Main Story: When It Alteration Finds, Obernewtyn, Elspeth/Dameon, PG.

I originally tried to write the fic from Dameon's point of view but evidently I can only write Obernewtyn fic from Elspeth's, because I spent a month bleeding over the Dameon fic before switching POV's and writing the story in a single night while I was supposed to be sleeping because I had an early flight the next day. It happens...

Possibly slightly melodramatic, but not, I think, more than the source; also peculiarly bittersweet. I had a good time writing it.

The Treat: Mr. Yunioshi's Photographs, Breakfast at Tiffany's, G.

What? You don't remember Mr. Yunioshi? He's Holly Golightly's horrible racist caricature of a building manager, played by Mickey Rooney in yellowface, who leans over the stair railing and howls "Miss Gorightry! Miss Gorightry!"

This is a "let's give Mr. Yunioshi some back story so I don't have to throw things at the TV whenever he steps onscreen" fic, and a number of commentators said it fulfilled that purpose ably so I am rather proud. It's a melancholy story, but not despairing; someone called it "monoganashii", which pleased me awfully too.

15. Ernestine and Amanda

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:30:47 GMT

Sandra Belton's Ernestine and Amanda has neither a plot nor particularly interesting characters nor, really, much of anything else to recommend it, except perhaps the salutary message that it's bad to mock fat people because fat people have feelings just like everyone else.

It's hard to imagine a child (for Ernestine and Amanda is a children's book) caring enough about the book to absorb that message, though. The story is told in alternating first person, which might have been interesting I hadn't kept getting confused who was speaking. The characters speak with much the same voice, except that Amanda harps about how fat Ernestine is, while Ernestine complains about how stuck up Amanda is.

One might imagine that by the end of the book Amanda would have seen the error in her ways, and Ernestine would forgive her for her former foolishness, which would have been cliched but would at least have given the book a direction - but no. Right up to the end each girl pounds the exact same note again and again, so the book is a repetitive journey to nowhere.

Also? It's apparently historical fiction. I didn't realize that until I looked the book up on the internet, though, so I can't say I think the time or place are well-described.

Christmas, crepes, and castles

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:48:32 GMT

Our white Christmas has shown up two days late. Sledding tomorrow! I can't wait! We're having hot chocolate - there's a new cafe in town - where the hot chocolate is supposed to be divine, and the crepes are nonpareil.

As this is the only place in town (indeed, possibly in all of Indiana) that sells crepes, that's not actually difficult, but they're supposed be good as well as without parallel. I can't wait.

***

I found this absolutely wonderful I Capture the Castle fic in the Yuletide archives: The Account Book, which captures Cassandra's voice beautifully - and she has a difficult voice to copy, especially given how well-read she is - while subtly aging it, as the fic takes place a few years after the book. During World War II, in fact, and the historical period is lovingly researched so the fic has the firm specificity of time and place characteristic of the very best historical fiction (and, alas, very uncommon).

Moreover, it has an elegantly handled love story, perfectly in-character cameos by a number of secondary characters from the book, and an original character who feels like he might have been canon. It's a long fic, but so engrossing that I was sorry to finish it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Yuletide!

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:47:17 GMT

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I haven't opened my RL presents (my brother hasn't woken up. Do you think it's time to invade his room with a fife and drum corps?) but, after all, I can't share those with you, whereas I can totally share my Yuletide fic, which is delicious. I got a story for the film Amelie!

(Surely you have all seen Amelie? It's a French film about an imaginative, quirky, lonely young woman, Amelie, and her madcap schemes, and her budding relationship with a young man who she has never met, and the movie is funny and a little sad and the cinematography is gorgeous, and Audrey Tatou, who plays Amelie, gives the character so much heart and so much strangeness. I love it!)

I have some reservations about the film's ending, though, which is one of the reasons why I like this fic so much: it shows how Amelie deals with having an actual relationship rather than an extended series of madcap schemes.

Also, it includes beautiful lines like She likes to think it wasn't, that Nino tells his secrets to someone, even if it isn't her. And that his world also has corners which other people can't peer around. And descriptions of food! FRENCH FOOD!!!

So, without further ado: Le mondain futur d'Amelie Poulain.

USA! USA!

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:12:51 GMT

I'm home! I got back around seven last night, slept for eleven hours, and today went to Starbucks and a bookstore with a friend. (Yes! I am back in the world where I have friends! It's wildly exciting!)

There's so much space here. There are parking lots and wider roads and houses with yards that are larger than postage stamps. The sky goes on forever before it finally hits the earth. It feels immense; it feels luxurious; it feels like my gaze is going for a run. All this time I've reined it in tight and close, but now it's gotten it's head and it's going to gallop right to the horizon.

And then it will come back, and we will walk through the snow and look at the houses sparkling with Christmas lights. It's good to be home.

Spirals in spirals

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:17:15 GMT

I think I need a hug. Could I have a hug?

My plans for this last evening in York went awry, so I ended up in the Starbucks in the Borders that's closing down, stirring cinnamon and nutmeg into my drink to make spiced hot chocolate, and then just walking around York: and it's snowing and everything is lit up for Christmas and so lovely, and it's so hard to go.

It's a neat bookend, a mirror image of what I did before coming here. If I were writing a book I would plan it just like this, a circle between the beginning and end. (Now all I need is to pinpoint the climax, and figure out the main characters' motivations.)

London tomorrow; flying home Saturday. The train leaves at two, and I wish it would hurry and come so the ending would finish and the beginning begin.

Book Review: The Tulip Touch

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:33:34 GMT

Third: I read a really awesome children's book at the library yesterday: Anne Fine's The Tulip Touch, which is a beautifully written, loosely plotted meditation about the nature of evil.

...especially a children's book, because children's books with messages are not renowned for their subtlety, and any halfway readable discussion of evil needs a lot of nuance.

(I'm about to spoiler the book profusely.)

The Tulip Touch has that nuance. The narrator is Tulip's best friend, Natalie, a basically decent girl from a decent family who willingly follows Tulip through a series of ever more vicious games. They play "Smelly Mackeral," which involves looking at a passerby and pretending he smells. They wrap up some dried dog poop and give it to a classmate as a "Christmas present." They put roadkill in people's rabbit hutches...and so forth, until finally Natalie feels they've gone to far, and abandons Tulip.

But not without cost. Her friendship with Tulip hasn't been completely given over to evil; they played lots of lovely games too, like "Watch the Sky"; they have a lovely time together every Christmas; and the book, and this is rare, especially in a children's book, really captures the perverse pleasures of being nasty and vicious and cruel. It hurts everyone else, but it binds Natalie and Tulip together; and, after all, it's not like other people have feelings really.

Or they do, rather - Natalie knows they do, because Tulip hurts her feelings on a regular basis - but it doesn't seem to matter as much as having Tulip for a best friend.

The really striking thing about the book is that, for all this villainy on Tulip's part, it keeps Tulip balanced uneasily between "mistreated and misunderstood child" and "total psychopath." She emotionally and physically (and probably sexually, although it's only implied) abused, but some of her behavior is so awful that even abuse can't explain it all. Or can it? We find out, for instance, that she drowns kittens. But, she says, if she didn't drown them, her father would - and he doesn't drown them as quickly and mercifully as she does.

Although she could be lying - Tulip, as Natalie tells us, lies as she breathes, and she's a good liar. She throws in that little touch (the "Tulip Touch") that makes even the most ridiculous lies believable.

But even if her father does drown kittens - and it's certainly in character - doesn't it indicate some degree of pathology that she can drown kittens so effectively? She shows all three signs of the sociopathic triad: animal cruelty, fire-setting, and bed-wetting. So maybe she is a psychopath. But then, look at her home life; she clearly learned cruelty there, and such stress would drive anyone to bed-wetting. But what about the fires...?

But Natalie enjoys the fires too. Although Natalie finally backs out after she and Tulip burn down a shed - she's realized just how destructive and dangerous their games have gotten - it's not without some regret. She notes that she dreamed of the fire (and not nightmares; horrible but beautiful dreams) for a long time afterward.

Natalie, although she's very much effaced by Tulip - even though Natalie is narrating, Tulip has a much stronger presence - is the character who really makes the book possible. Tulip invents their games, but Natalie follows cheerfully along for almost all of them. Natalie is the banality of evil: the average person who follows her leader straight down into Hell.

And even after Natalie abandons Tulip, she remains uneasily aware that she's just left Tulip down there to be miserable, and burn. But Tulip brought it on herself! - but Tulip couldn't help it; but she's so mean to everyone, how could you expect anyone to help her? - but still, Natalie should have done something...but what? She was no good at curbing Tulip's behavior. No one is any good at curbing Tulip's behavior. Maybe if they'd gotten her away from her parents sooner...? But she's been drowning kittens ever since that first time Natalie saw her. Maybe she's unsalvageable? But no one even tried.

This tangle is obviously unanswerable, and the book leaves Natalie entangled. It's one of the best fictional explorations of evil I've ever seen - and operating under the length and content restrictions of a children's novel, nonetheless - with beautifully drawn characters, who are both despicable and sympathetic, simple but graceful language, and an episodic plot that is nonetheless totally absorbing. It's a brilliant book and I would recommend it unreservedly to adults.

To kids? ...well, that would depend on the kid. It's marketed for sixth to eighth graders; sensitive kids might find Tulip and Natalie off-putting, and insensitive kids might think some of their milder games sound awfully fun. (Did I mention that this book does a really, really good job showing the seductive qualities of cruelty? Tulip is clearly a terrible friend, but it's nonetheless perfectly clear why Natalie continues to hang out with her for so long: being mean is so fun.)

But it would be worth putting in front of any voracious reader. It will make certainly make her think; it has me thinking still.

****

ETA: In other news....IT'S SNOWING!

Yes, of course I'm going to go get hot chocolate. Why do you even ask?

Uncertainty in Yorkminster

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:10:56 GMT

First: happy birthday, redskyis!

***

Second: I went and did Yorkminster properly today, because I'm running out of time. I wasn't too enthusiastic at first ("Oh no. Not another architectural marvel full of priceless archeological finds to look at!" Yeah, I wish I had my problems too) but it was great fun - even the climb to the top of the tower to look out over York, though my calves will kill me tomorrow.

I went to Evensong too, which was beautiful and dignified and did even more damage to my leg muscles, what with all the kneeling. I was worried beforehand, because I've heard that Anglican services are very ritualized and I had images of somehow doing something horribly wrong and being stared at by everyone and then politely escorted out by a grim-faced curate...

...but actually there was a program at each seat (along with a Book of Common Prayer and a Bible and something else), because half the people at the service were tourists, or maybe more, which gave the whole thing an air of unreality. It's like those "remote" tribes that get busloads of tourists every week, and put on "authentic traditional dances" to make sure they get their money's worth? In this case the metaphorical dance is both authentic and traditional, it's just that except for the tourists who keep coming to watch it's basically dead.

One of the things study abroad programs go on about is how they're "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have authentic experiences in another culture," which I keep chewing on in my mind - because what does it mean? What's an authentic experience, and how am I going to know that I've had one?

Going home

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:33:10 GMT

Did my last load of laundry, made my hotel reservation, turned in my paper, bought my ticket to London, bought my brother's Christmas chocolates, packed all the things I won't need between now and Friday -

My goodness. I'm actually going home this Saturday, aren't I?

And I have nothing to do between now and Friday. (Except Yuletide. Does anyone know when they're going to open uploading? I'd like to get my story in before attempt my transatlantic flight. Assuming I finish it before then.)

I suppose I will have to make some posts of Deep Thoughts About Studying Abroad. I will start by saying that Yorkshire pudding, although not even an Englishman could call it a pudding in good faith (it's not even sweet, man), is actually quite delicious with turkey and gravy.

Are there any classic English dishes that I absolutely must try before I leave?

Art & Amateurs

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:08:05 GMT

One of the really charming things about English towns is that all of them - even Pickering, which is too small to have its own postcards - have art galleries. (The kind where people sell art, not the art museum kind, although an awful lot of towns have those too.)

Now, admittedly, a lot of this art is kind of tacky; but that's part of the charm. I like the idea of artists selling their sketches of badgers in tweed strolling through an idealized English countryside, and taking their children out for a nice afternoon at an amusement park or the movies or whatever on the proceeds.

There is this idea, I think, that making art is hard; that art is something that only professionals can or should produce; and that amateur artists (visual, musical, literary, etc.) are wasting their time, because "that's never going to make any money."

And it is difficult to make professional quality art; but art doesn't have to be professional quality to be worthwhile. A lot of people can sing or paint or write well enough to make their audience smile, and even if they never make a penny I think making people happy is a good enough reason to do anything.

And I like the fact that these galleries give amateur artists a chance to make a little cash.

***

On a completely shallow note, I've found this great new online game: Winterbells, which involves bouncing a little bunny character from bell to bell, trying to get as a high a score as you can.

It's totally addictive. Also, the background is strangely aesthetically pleasing. Just in case anyone else out there is looking for a way to procrastinate on final papers, Yuletide fic, or any of the many other things one could procrastinate on at this festive season of the year.

Haworth, and Agnes Grey

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:13:43 GMT

Haworth today. I swear the bus driver was a cannibal; that's the only explanation for why he had the heat turned up to "barbecue."

Fortunately we made it to Haworth before any permanent damage set in, and I visited the Bronte parsonage which has been turned into a museum. It overlooks the Haworth graveyard, which I'm sure had no effect on the morbid cast to the Bronte sisters' imaginations at all.

It was a sad visit. They've kept the front parlor where the sisters wrote together just as it was, the black leather couch where Emily died still sitting against the wall. It's such a small room, smaller than my dorm room; they would light the grate and the room would grow dim with coal smoke, and they would sit at the table and write and walk around and around the table in circles when the writing wasn't going well. Their books all have this yearning for hugeness: expanses of moor, enormous skies, foreign travel, pervasive restlessness.

They would have loved to have lived my life for the last few months.

And their desire, too, for grand passion and epic romance; and Emily and Anne died alone, and Charlotte married her father's curate, who loved her dearly although her feelings are more ambiguous, who moved into the parsonage so that even in marriage she didn't leave home.

This may be the first trip I'm sorry I've made. Hopefully I'll feel better about it tomorrow.

I considered searching the graveyard for Charlotte and Emily's graves, but I decided against it; it was a cold, cloudy, creepy day, not good weather for searching graveyards.

***

Incidentally, I finished Agnes Grey just before going to Haworth.

...which isn't saying too much, because I'd settled in grimly for the haul. The narrator, Agnes, becomes somewhat more likable but remains something of a nebbish; it's easy to see why she adores Mr. Weston, but not so clear why he should love her back.

Partly this is a structural problem. The book starts off slowly, with a completely irrelevant section about the first governess job Agnes takes, so we don't even meet the love interest until halfway through the book - at which point Agnes sees him very rarely, so the focus is on her unrequited adoration rather than the two of them getting to know each other or falling in love.

Her unrequited adoration is beautifully depicted, but the skimpy relationship between them makes the ending seem entirely out of the blue.

I did think Agnes's relationship with her charge, Miss Rosalie Murray, was quite well done. On the one hand Miss Murray is an obnoxious person: she gets her kicks mainly by making men fall in love with her purely so she can grind their hearts beneath her elegantly shod feet, and she treats Agnes like a cross between a slave and a toy. Agnes understandably finds that irritating, and sometimes she quite hates Miss Murray.

But other times she doesn't; she's worked for the family for years, she knows why Miss Murray is the way she is, and she grieves when Miss Murray marries a vile man (who she knows to be vile) purely for the money - and ends up predictably miserable - because while Miss Murray's misery is a result of her own foolish actions, no one deserves to be miserable for the rest of their life because they were foolish when they were eighteen.

I thought the ebb and flow of Agnes's attitude towards Miss Murray was quite interesting: the mixture of affection, hatred, sympathy, disdain, pity, present sometimes all at once and sometimes alone, and always in flux. It's too bad the romance didn't get the same subtle handling.

As it's the last week and I'm feeling lazy, I'm going to finish up with Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Whaddaya mean Terry Pratchett isn't a British classic? Of course he's a British classic!

Virgin Martyrs

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:07:46 GMT

The virgin martyrs don't get too much love these days. Virginity is out of fashion, as are the general gender politics virgin martyr legends espouse. The average virgin martyr plot - Roman official courts pious girl, girl shoots Roman official down, Roman official tortures girl until she dies and goes straight to heaven - strikes the average reader as a little torture-pornish. Also, the virgin martyrs are all probably apocryphal, which puts rather a damper on things.

It's a pity, because I LOVE the virgin martyrs. They're just so...kickass. I mean, you wouldn't think it, because mainly what a virgin martyr does is get tortured to death, but she mocks her tormentors so delightfully while being tortured, and when her evil suitor finally realize that nothing he does will harm the virgin martyr ever he has her beheaded - and her soul flies to heaven, cackling with victory - and the suitor generally melts into a puddle of misery, utterly defeated FOREVER.

It's wish-fulfillment for the oppressed (or for anyone who feels like identifying with the oppressed). Some scholars want to read this as subversive - and it certainly helps their cause that the virgin martyrs don't much resemble the meek, mild, obedient, submissive Ideal Medieval Lady - but I don't think there's that much cause to do so; especially given that the Ideal Medieval Lady lives mostly in conduct books, and the queens and noblewomen of medieval England were often notably feisty and would have fit right in with the vituperative virgin martyrs.

I've mentioned my favorite, St. Juliana who whipped the devil with chains; but she is not alone. St. Margaret defeated a dragon with the power of the cross; St. Cecilia's head was chopped off three times before her executioners finally succeeded, and St. Justina repelled every devil her suitor sent to seduce her with the sheer awesome power of her faith.

Their suitors try their darndest to torture the virgin martyrs into submission, and the virgin martyrs just sit there and mock them. One of the martyrs actually tossed her severed tongue at her erstwhile suitor/torturer. He was struck dumb for a week, and the tongue cheerfully harangued him all the while.

Okay, I've come up with another reason why the virgin martyrs have fallen out of favor: they appeal entirely to the vengeful side of human nature, which is perfectly fine with turning the other cheek just as long as the party to whom the cheek is turned will have this occasion burned forever in his memory as one of the most humiliating defeats of his life. The virgin martyr legends are very much "the meek will inherit the earth - NEENER NEENER NEENER!"

...now I feel a little bad about liking them so much.

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:48:36 GMT

I went to Pickering yesterday, to renew my search for the church with medieval wall paintings of St. Katherine. I found the church all right - I had found it on Wednesday - but I could not find the wall paintings. I walked all around the church inspecting the walls, but nothing; I walked up and down the aisles through the rows of half-size Christmas trees, decorated by the Sunday school and the parochial schools and a charity for disabled children and a local travel agency, a tree for peace and a tree for fallen soldiers and a tree for parents whose children had died.

But I couldn't find the wall paintings.

There was a tiny bookshop in the corner - really it was a bookshelf, with a few dozen books and a stack of postcards beside it. Unguarded, too, just all these books and a collection box and the cheerful certainty that anyone who took a book would donate the correct amount of money.

They had a pristine used copy of C. S. Lewis's The Four Loves for just a pound, so of course I got that. And I did pay - more than they asked, because their trust pleased me. And I snagged a couple postcards, including one showing the wall paintings, which was terribly frustrating, because I looked around again and still didn't see them.

So finally I gave up, and made to leave the church. But then I looked up - and there on the clerestory were the medieval wall paintings.

One imagines soldiers - Henry VIII's, or Oliver Cromwell's - storming through the church, pikes at the ready, looking for those heretical Papist paintings, and never noticing them because they, too, forgot to look up.

Over the river and through the woods...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:02:00 GMT

Pitchers

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:33:52 GMT

I have, as you know, been endeavoring to avoid working on my paper about St. Katherine. I offer you two pictures as fruits of my endeavors to this end.

The first is from yesterday. I took the bus to Pickering, because there is supposed to be a church there with medieval wall paintings of St. Katherine (!!!), so the trip was like working on my paper except without the actual working part. I couldn't find the church, but I did find date and walnut cake and a surprise!castle (only in England do you find castles in towns so small they have no postcards), and on the way back we had a lovely sunset.

I'm thinking of going back tomorrow to take another stab at those wall paintings. Also, there's supposed to be a trail going through the woods below the castle which looks amazing. Also...I want another slice of that date and walnut cake.

The second is from today. I've been sketching (it's amazing how much of everything else I get done when I'm procrastinating on something) and here are the fruits of my labor:

The picture is based on a still from the third of these movies and may eventually be an illustration for a story, because goodness knows I like reusing things until they're too threadbare even to act as dust rags. But I think this has a lot of life to it; it's hard to beat a picture involving fans. (And yes. Yes, the movie with all the fans may have been inspired in part by Crown Duel. The auteur is not ashamed to admit her influences.)

Does anyone have any links to anything that would help me procrastinate? *makes puppy-dog eyes* Interesting stories, youtube videos, places in England that I really really really ought to visit?

Date and Walnut Cake

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:11:50 GMT

YOU GUYS, YOU GUYS, I had the most DELICIOUS cake today at lunch. I went to this cafe and they had a special for a large slice of cake and a pot of tea for three pounds twenty-five and I got a slice of date-walnut cake and it was the best cake ever. Nicely moist cake with good crumb, and the ICING. The ICING WAS FANTASTIC.

I think they made the icing with brown sugar. It had not occurred to me that you could make icing with brown sugar, but of course it's possible and if my supposition that they did is correct then it is amazing. Anyone have brown sugar on hand and feel like whipping up a batch of icing and maybe a cake to go with it to check it out? Anyone, anyone?

I've found that sweets in the UK are almost uniformly excellent. Sticky toffee pudding, clotted cream, biscuits... (by the way, those lexicons that say biscuit = cookie? Are lying. A biscuit is a hard cookie you dip in tea; other kinds of cookies are called "cookies." This may be a recent development, though.) It's a pity that man cannot live by sugar alone.

Publishing things

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:19:12 GMT

I've been reading with some interest the recent hullaballoo on the internet about the rates magazines pay for short stories, because I've decided - now that I've reached the venerable age of twenty-one - that it's time to stop mentally murmuring, "Oh, I'd like to be a writer when I grow up...", admit to myself that despite my best efforts I am grown up, and start submitting things.

I do think the authors linked have missed one possible use for markets that pay pin money: they can act as a psychological boost for writers who still sort of think no one would want to read their work without a bribe. Hey look! This time the reader gave me cookies instead of the other way around!

(I suspect this is one of the reasons that vanity presses do such big business. The idea that I might theoretically be paid for writing feels like so much fairy dust. I'm sure to the unwary, paying publishers seems like the way the money ought to flow.)

(Incidentally, I am planning to send my stories to the places with higher pay rates first time round, but when they get rejected I'll send them lower. Eventually someone will want them. Probably.)

***

Anyway, to this end I've been looking through magazines, and I found this story that I quite like: Brass Canaries. Steampunk canaries! It's quite short and it's got a bit of a punch at the ending; I hope you give it a spin.

ETA: asakiyume reminded me of this story from the same magazine: Suddenly Speaking. It's - well, it's hard to describe, because it's so bizarre, but utterly satisfying. It starts with the main character suddenly discovering that he has the ability to speak Japanese, and it goes all over the place from there.

Gray

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:55:15 GMT

I DO NOT WANT to write this paper. It's nothing to do with the topic - I love the virgin martyrs generally, and I love St. Katherine (although my favorite is St. Juliana, who whipped the devil with her own chains) - it's just the end of term, and close to Christmas, and I either want to go home or go to Paris or go anywhere (my medieval history professor made the mistake of showing us pictures of medieval wall paintings of St. Katherine in a church in Pickering, not to far away. Do want) - anything, except study.

I wish I had some chains to beat my restlessness. Where's St. Juliana when you need her?

Does anyone know how to fight off this sort of failure of will?

***

In other news, I've been reading Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey in preparation for going to Haworth this weekend.

So far, the heroine is mostly bemoaning the fact that she can't beat the children she's governessing as they deserve, the little brats. This is hilarious (in a horrible sort of way - it was a different time), but does not incline me to the sympathy that I think I am supposed to feel for her predicament. Children who don't hop to obedience instantaneously! Imagine that!

Hiawatha's Photographing

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:33:03 GMT

Has it been a while since I've posted a poem? Yes? Well then - listen, my children, and you shall hear...

Hiawatha's Photographing
by Lewis Carroll

From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.

This he perched upon a tripod—
Crouched beneath its dusky cover—
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence—
Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!”
Mystic, awful was the process.

And a link to the rest, because it is quite long."

Oh, Lewis Carroll. There's really nothing like him.

Book Review: Richard III

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:27:40 GMT

Richard III! What a villain! Shakespeare’s play may be a pack of propagandistic lies, but what brilliant lies they are. What style Richard has, what wit, what a complete and utter lack of conscience; you love every minute he’s on stage (or on the page) but you’re still cheering when he dies. Now that’s good writing.

My very favorite scene is the one where he woos Lady Anne. Of course it’s ridiculous that she would say yes to him – she’s standing next to the corpse of her father-in-law, being wooed by the man who killed him AND her original husband - but at the same time…how could she say no?

(Of course later on he uses the exact same trick on Queen Elizabeth [the widow of Edward IV] and, as she is a female character in Shakespeare and thus completely useless, she falls for it too; that's somewhat less enthralling. The scene where everyone he's killed comes back to haunt him is pretty awesome, though.)

In the interest of fairness I visited York’s Richard III museum, which is almost as biased in Richard’s favor as Shakespeare was against him. (He was a scion of the house of York.) It did prove a few parts of Shakespeare’s play decisively wrong – Richard almost certainly was not a hunchback, for instance.

However, the fate of the princes in the tower remains a mystery. It’s not even entirely clear when they died, although it appears to be sometime after Richard left London. So…did he leave then send someone to do his dirty work for him, so he could claim clean hands? Did Buckingham, who was in London, do them in? (Could that be why Richard executed him without even granting an interview?) Or did they survive until Henry VII became king, and he killed them?

Josephine Tey wrote a book, which I’m told is quite good, called The Daughter of Time which explores those very questions. I may read that next: a nice light book to finish the term.

Saudade

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:27:35 GMT

saudade, n., Portuguese: a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness. -A. F. G. Bell, as quoted in The Untranslatables, by C. J. Moore.

I read this word in a bookstore in Oxford and did the mental equivalent of pumping my fist in the air, because that's it. I've tried to explain this to people - about, say, I know one wouldn't want to live in the forties because the forties were a sexist racist homophobic oh-I-know-let's-nuke-Japan! mess; but all the same I'd really like to walk into a photograph of the forties and live there. Everyone looks so happy! - because they're smiling for the camera. The shutter clicked, and then Judy turned to Joe and snarled, "You're stepping on my foot." And Joe smiled his confident quarterback smile and ground her toes down just a bit more before he moved his foot.

And I know that; but I still believe in the photographs.

Incidentally, I found this word right after I went to the Steampunk exhibit - and Steampunk is an example of saudade if there ever was one.

For a steampunk seamstress heroine. Hey, that's actually a pretty cool idea.

I feel like that eye would make commentary on my musical choices. Of course it can't talk, but it could convey a surprising amount of emotion just by narrowing. "Really? You want to play N*Sync? Why don't you rethink that one, missy?"

York again

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:30:13 GMT

The highlight of the trip to Oxford: lunch at the Eagle and Child, the pub where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings hung out in the forties and fifties. In the room where they met. I sat in the corner by the fireplace and drank mulled cider and tried to write. As I was in a state of nervous exultation it did not work too well, but I got this:

"Griffin, Griffin, where are your wings?" said the cat.
"Well I can't very well wear wings after Labor Day," Griffin said.

One hopes there's more to that.

Otherwise I did a lot of walking. Aside from the Steampunk exhibit (!!!!!!!!) at the Museum of the History of Science I couldn't settle down enough to go to any exhibits of anything. But I did walk across the Christ Church Meadow, where Lewis Carroll used to walk with Alice Liddell; it was early in the morning, and the frost had not yet quite burned off.

It was a nice trip, and I enjoyed myself; but Oxford is a cold city. The colleges are almost all closed to the public, and it makes the place feel hard and mean.

I did run across one that was open, though: Hertford College, which was having a cake sale, with the college choir singing Christmas carols to attract attention. They sang beautifully, and I stood a long time in the courtyard to listen.

Oxford!

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:26:28 GMT

Going to Oxford tomorrow! If all goes well, I will be having a very late lunch at The Eagle and Child, which is where Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and the writers' group the Inklings met to drink and chat about writing.

I am taking my notebook along. Just in case.

I'm also taking along George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin to read on the train. MacDonald was one of both Tolkien and Lewis's favorite writers - in The Great Divorce, MacDonald basically acts as Lewis's Virgil - so I figure there must be something to him. WE SHALL SEE.

Be back Saturday!