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A mouthful of bees couldn't stop me from whispering
1. Go read Erik Amundsen's "Pony," now up at Clarkesworld. It's amazing. The rest of the lineup's not to sneer at, either.
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greygirlbeast was right that I'd like Pillars and Tongues.
3. I really, really liked Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn (1984). It's a difficult novel to summarize or even describe, since it looks both superficially and structurally like a genre it isn't, the literary equivalent of the heritage picture. It opens in 1939 and follows its characters into the war; the viewpoint is a declarative, elliptical omniscient, and it takes a few chapters to reveal that these are the same events being recalled forty years later by the surviving characters, now reconvened for a funeral at the cliffside house in Cornwall where their lives all crossed, the salient difference being that the present-day retrospectives are full of judgments and analysis—frequently wrong—while the past simply happens: it's a kind of collective unreliable narrator, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before.
But it is not a heritage picture, and neither is it a straight reversal of one, because its characters are the assorted members of a mostly polyamorous, slightly incestuous, very English family and this is not scandalous or titillating, it is not the exigencies of wartime or the ways people break out under stress, it is just how people are. Polly, in love with the twins Paul and David, is desperately unhappy in the knowledge that she'll have to choose one to marry and give the other up, until she realizes she doesn't actually have to make that decision; she never marries either, has children by both, and they're all still happily together in 1984. Another of the original five cousins, Calypso, marries very successfully for money and then falls in love with her husband, which is on one level reassuring and on another so embarrassing that she spends the next four decades denying she's even capable of it; in neither case does it interfere with her sleeping her way through most of the main cast and a fair percentage of London, because her love for Hector once realized is unbreakable, but physical fidelity is a thing she doesn't do. Of the parental generation, Richard and Helena have a terrible marriage. They end up hosting a pair of Austrian Jewish refugees, the famous violinist Max and his wife Monika, and the resulting ménage à quatre is an improvement in everyone's lives.
Some of the characters pine hopelessly for others, some casually hook up. All are sympathetic to interesting degrees; most do at least one awful thing over the course of the novel, because people do. And all of it is very matter-of-fact, so that the reader is not directed to feel any particular way toward the characters except as they present themselves. (The results can be a sort of Rorschach. I had a very hard time liking Helena except for her delight in Max, who really is the love of her life; I found myself surprisingly attached to Richard, even though he's crashingly oblivious to taste or nuance and, less comedically, just this side of safe with his young nieces. I loved Sophy, the thin, watchful child whose father nobody knows—family legend abetted by physical appearance is betting on Chinese, because her mother was last seen in Hong Kong, but it is only fleetingly relevant to Sophy herself.) Wesley's is one of the deceptively plain styles; you are almost always being told everything, it's just a matter of finding the right sentences to look between. It's not sensationalistic. It's not passionless, either. Does anyone have an opinion on whether the series was a faithful adaptation or not? I haven't been able to tell from the reviews—its reputation for controversy makes me think the adapters played up the sex rather than simply presenting it, but it has such a great cast, I might try anyway.
4. The current issue of Words Without Borders is all about Iceland. I need more of Sjón's poetry, even if he did write the lyrics to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000).
5. The fact that I could renew my driver's license online fills me with mortal horror of the Massachusetts roads.
2.
greygirlbeast was right that I'd like Pillars and Tongues.3. I really, really liked Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn (1984). It's a difficult novel to summarize or even describe, since it looks both superficially and structurally like a genre it isn't, the literary equivalent of the heritage picture. It opens in 1939 and follows its characters into the war; the viewpoint is a declarative, elliptical omniscient, and it takes a few chapters to reveal that these are the same events being recalled forty years later by the surviving characters, now reconvened for a funeral at the cliffside house in Cornwall where their lives all crossed, the salient difference being that the present-day retrospectives are full of judgments and analysis—frequently wrong—while the past simply happens: it's a kind of collective unreliable narrator, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before.
But it is not a heritage picture, and neither is it a straight reversal of one, because its characters are the assorted members of a mostly polyamorous, slightly incestuous, very English family and this is not scandalous or titillating, it is not the exigencies of wartime or the ways people break out under stress, it is just how people are. Polly, in love with the twins Paul and David, is desperately unhappy in the knowledge that she'll have to choose one to marry and give the other up, until she realizes she doesn't actually have to make that decision; she never marries either, has children by both, and they're all still happily together in 1984. Another of the original five cousins, Calypso, marries very successfully for money and then falls in love with her husband, which is on one level reassuring and on another so embarrassing that she spends the next four decades denying she's even capable of it; in neither case does it interfere with her sleeping her way through most of the main cast and a fair percentage of London, because her love for Hector once realized is unbreakable, but physical fidelity is a thing she doesn't do. Of the parental generation, Richard and Helena have a terrible marriage. They end up hosting a pair of Austrian Jewish refugees, the famous violinist Max and his wife Monika, and the resulting ménage à quatre is an improvement in everyone's lives.
Some of the characters pine hopelessly for others, some casually hook up. All are sympathetic to interesting degrees; most do at least one awful thing over the course of the novel, because people do. And all of it is very matter-of-fact, so that the reader is not directed to feel any particular way toward the characters except as they present themselves. (The results can be a sort of Rorschach. I had a very hard time liking Helena except for her delight in Max, who really is the love of her life; I found myself surprisingly attached to Richard, even though he's crashingly oblivious to taste or nuance and, less comedically, just this side of safe with his young nieces. I loved Sophy, the thin, watchful child whose father nobody knows—family legend abetted by physical appearance is betting on Chinese, because her mother was last seen in Hong Kong, but it is only fleetingly relevant to Sophy herself.) Wesley's is one of the deceptively plain styles; you are almost always being told everything, it's just a matter of finding the right sentences to look between. It's not sensationalistic. It's not passionless, either. Does anyone have an opinion on whether the series was a faithful adaptation or not? I haven't been able to tell from the reviews—its reputation for controversy makes me think the adapters played up the sex rather than simply presenting it, but it has such a great cast, I might try anyway.
4. The current issue of Words Without Borders is all about Iceland. I need more of Sjón's poetry, even if he did write the lyrics to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (2000).
5. The fact that I could renew my driver's license online fills me with mortal horror of the Massachusetts roads.
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5. It took renewing your license on line to fill you with mortal horror of the Massachusetts roads? You are made of stern stuff indeed. But I knew that.
6. Nice subject line :D
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I can see why it was the author's breakout novel. She was born in 1912; her entire literary career was the last twenty years of her life.
It took renewing your license on line to fill you with mortal horror of the Massachusetts roads? You are made of stern stuff indeed.
I can't remember when I was last inside a DMV! I could have gone blind and/or lost the use of my limbs! They didn't even want me to come in for an eye test!
Nice subject line
I like the song . . .
about renewing the license
I'd thought that every-other renewal (ie. every ten years) needed to be in person ... but the website doesn't say this (https://secure.rmv.state.ma.us/PolicyBrowserPublic/PB/WordDocuments/Process%20Areas/licenseandmassachusettsidcardexpirationandrenewal.htm).
As far as I can tell, if you come in --- whether because you're required to renew in person, or you just CHOOSE to --- they are supposed to do a vision test (see last sentence of Elder Driving Provisions (http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/RMV/SafeDrivingLawSummary.aspx)). But if you have the option to renew remotely, and choose to exercise that, the RMV doesn't care about the vision test anymore. It's like not pulling you over for a seatbelt violation.
(Despite the above, the Policy Browser (https://secure.rmv.state.ma.us/Policybrowserpublic/PolicyBrowser.aspx) still lists "License Renewal" in Transactions That Require a Vision Test (https://secure.rmv.state.ma.us/PolicyBrowserPublic/PB/WordDocuments/Process%20Areas/transactionsthatrequireavisiontest.htm)... )
You could try this out -- go in and see if you can force them to test your vision/limb-use then!
Come to think of it, I had to go in to the Chinatown RMV to replace my license when I lost my wallet a couple of years back. They did give me a quickie eye-test (press the forehead to a black box, see lights).
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I was really impressed. I don't know what the rest of her books are like, but I would recommend this one.
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Let me know what you think if you read it!
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I'd recommend it. Terrific performances.
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All right, I'll watch it!
Because one Bjork is cute, but a million of them can get really annoying...
3. That book sounds fabulous and fascinating.
4. I am ashamed, but I loved that movie. Then again, I had the biggest crush on Bjork, which has faded (along with my ability to listen to most of her music); also, I am not forgiving Von Trier for Antichrist, so I think it wouldn't stand up to a repeat viewing.
5. Somewhere after the turn of the millennium, I think we surpassed your state in terms of the horror of our drivers (a weekly occurrence for me is getting frightened that I have somehow slowed down to the near minimum speed for 91, when, in fact, I am going 85)
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That book sounds fabulous and fascinating.
I recommend it!
Then again, I had the biggest crush on Bjork, which has faded (along with my ability to listen to most of her music); also, I am not forgiving Von Trier for Antichrist, so I think it wouldn't stand up to a repeat viewing.
I watched Dancer in the Dark because a college friend had a thing for Björk; what it mostly guaranteed was that I would never watch another film by Lars von Trier. What was the deal with Antichrist?
(a weekly occurrence for me is getting frightened that I have somehow slowed down to the near minimum speed for 91, when, in fact, I am going 85)
Maybe I'm glad I didn't know this when I lived in Connecticut.
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The freeways are thick with avatars, trolls and Trojans, and the occasional charabanc full of rich Nigerian widows.
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Nine
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You win this thread.
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I'd liked the one book of hers I'd found (AN IMAGINATIVE EXPERIENCE) and so picked up a few others (though not CAMOMILE LAWN) at a jumble sale, though I haven't gotten to them yet (and this sounds more interesting).
(One--JUMPING THE QUEUE--sounds like a more intimate version of Nick Hornby's A LONG WAY DOWN.)
Luckily, she does seem to turn up at the second hand shops here in Spain, so will keep an eye peeled for more.
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I'll try An Imaginative Experience next.
(One--JUMPING THE QUEUE--sounds like a more intimate version of Nick Hornby's A LONG WAY DOWN.)
I've never read anything by Nick Hornby. What's that one like?
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I thought I would bounce off all the music minutiae in JULIET, NAKED but wound up really liking it, and it's probably a good place to start with him.
(When I say JUMPING THE QUEUE sounds like a more intimate version of A LONG WAY DOWN: JTQ involves just two people who interrupt each other's suicide attempt, whereas ALWD involved a larger group of diverse social backgrounds who wind up forming a sort of group friendship as they try and help one another, as well as individual relationships within the group.)
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Also, you will enjoy others of her books. I think they all have that sense of slight detachment, of being scrupulously observant and not at all judgmental of others' lives.
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Okay; that's two votes from people I trust. I'll report back when I've got it. Thank you!
I think they all have that sense of slight detachment, of being scrupulously observant and not at all judgmental of others' lives.
Cool.
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I think that's fair.