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It's slightly forties and a little bit New Wave
So I had a birthday. It wound up mostly spent in a bookstore, but this was not necessarily a bad thing.1 My parents took me to dinner at Garlic 'n Lemons in Allston, which may serve the best kebabs I can remember; Howl (2010) is not the best film I've ever been shown for my birthday, but I quite liked it and recommend it even if you're uninterested in the Beat Generation. Someday I will see David Strathairn in a non-historical role. I am now in possession of some seriously neat art, including the massive box set of Flanders & Swann and a 1966 Soviet film of Shostakovich's Katerina Ismailova née Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District. Tomorrow Eric and I will do something celebratory, although it would be nice if I were capable of sleep first. I can't decide if I'll forfeit my irony privileges if we watch the Norwegian original of Insomnia (1997).
One of the side effects of growing up with books is the tendency to measure one's age by the progress of fictional characters. (By a similar token, I have made myself feel better about my height over the years by remembering that Peter Wimsey is five foot nine.) When I was eleven, I was old enough for a mission year in the Dales of Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark; I could have had a true lover at sixteen if I were Jane in Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover or Alexias in Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine; at twenty-three, I was Merlin's age when Arthur was conceived in Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. Now I'm twenty-nine, I think of Camille Desmoulins at the opening of Tanith Lee's The Gods Must Be Thirsty. On the other hand, he's a historical figure and I would prefer not to be guillotined a month after my thirty-fourth birthday, so maybe I need a different benchmark.
It was not a terrible day.
1. I found a trade paperback of Penelope Lively's Consequences (2007) to replace the library-sale hardcover I've had to abandon for mold. As of when I stopped to write this post, I am halfway through Rikki Ducornet's The Jade Cabinet (1993), the last of her quartet on language and the elements—the others being The Stain (1984) and The Fountains of Neptune (1989), which I have read, and Entering Fire (1986), which I have not yet—it reminds me a little of Angela Carter, because her voluptuous ragbag style traditionally does, but also of Peter Greenaway and The Piano, which should probably tell the relevant people on my friendlist whether they should pick it up or not. Lewis Carroll is a secondary character.
One of the side effects of growing up with books is the tendency to measure one's age by the progress of fictional characters. (By a similar token, I have made myself feel better about my height over the years by remembering that Peter Wimsey is five foot nine.) When I was eleven, I was old enough for a mission year in the Dales of Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark; I could have had a true lover at sixteen if I were Jane in Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover or Alexias in Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine; at twenty-three, I was Merlin's age when Arthur was conceived in Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. Now I'm twenty-nine, I think of Camille Desmoulins at the opening of Tanith Lee's The Gods Must Be Thirsty. On the other hand, he's a historical figure and I would prefer not to be guillotined a month after my thirty-fourth birthday, so maybe I need a different benchmark.
It was not a terrible day.
1. I found a trade paperback of Penelope Lively's Consequences (2007) to replace the library-sale hardcover I've had to abandon for mold. As of when I stopped to write this post, I am halfway through Rikki Ducornet's The Jade Cabinet (1993), the last of her quartet on language and the elements—the others being The Stain (1984) and The Fountains of Neptune (1989), which I have read, and Entering Fire (1986), which I have not yet—it reminds me a little of Angela Carter, because her voluptuous ragbag style traditionally does, but also of Peter Greenaway and The Piano, which should probably tell the relevant people on my friendlist whether they should pick it up or not. Lewis Carroll is a secondary character.
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I'm trying to figure out the Wimsey connection, and why that height might be comforting, aeeing as it's neither particularly tall nor particularly short. Are you also 5'9"?
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Thank you!
I'm trying to figure out the Wimsey connection, and why that height might be comforting, seeing as it's neither particularly tall nor particularly short. Are you also 5'9"?
I was supposed to be five-nine: I stopped at five-seven. So I am endeared of the line in Busman's Honeymoon—"'If I'd had more inches,' said Peter, regretfully (for his height was a sensitive point with him), 'I might have had more brains. Better late than never'"—because among other things, I always think of the character as tall.
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See, I can use that as another positive. And you're not even fictional.