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In quae miracula verteris?
I spent most of today in recovery from finishing my afterword for Caitlín R. Kiernan's third collection of weird erotica, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart. I thought I had budgeted a reasonable deadline for even my current levels of exhaustion, but it ate my weekend and most of my week—if I hadn't been planning on Collaborators since August, I'd have gone nowhere Thursday night. It all sort of runs together. The hour last night at which the afterword was actually done was depressingly familiar to me from the paper-writing periods of my life. But it's been turned in, and it seems to meet with its subject's approval, and apparently it's even in English. Well, except for the bits in Latin. But I knew about those.
There is now a hat shop in Harvard Square. I approve of this development, even if I don't quite have the means to take advantage of it. I also approve of discovering that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and I just impulse-bought, independently, the same NYRB-reprinted non-Holmes Conan Doyle from used book stores in our respective cities. One of us will have to read it first.
I owe a lot of e-mails to people. I don't owe posts to anyone but myself, but I still feel I'm behind on writing them.
Livejournal is still kind of borked, isn't it?
There is now a hat shop in Harvard Square. I approve of this development, even if I don't quite have the means to take advantage of it. I also approve of discovering that
rushthatspeaks and I just impulse-bought, independently, the same NYRB-reprinted non-Holmes Conan Doyle from used book stores in our respective cities. One of us will have to read it first.I owe a lot of e-mails to people. I don't owe posts to anyone but myself, but I still feel I'm behind on writing them.
Livejournal is still kind of borked, isn't it?
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Hope you can sleep now.
Nine
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Thank you. It was an honor to be asked.
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It seems to be clearer today. Fingers crossed.
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I vote for more hat shops in the world.
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Dammit, wrong country again!
I vote for more hat shops in the world.
Amen.
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A five-chambered heart. I like that notion.
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It was a more than ordinarily adorable instance of great minds etc.
A five-chambered heart. I like that notion.
The first two collections were Frog Toes and Tentacles (2005) and Tales from the Woeful Platypus (2007). I like each of these titles for a different reason.
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I am tempted to investigate based on the title alone.
The same hat chain has a presence in downtown Manhattan now. Does this mean hats are a thing again?
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I encourage your temptation. If you like Caitlín's other fiction, chances are you will at least be interested by her erotica, since it approaches many of the same themes in differently intense registers. Her latest novels, The Red Tree (2009) and the forthcoming The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (2012), are very much Sirenia Digest at novel-length; they are also the best of her novels so far.
The same hat chain has a presence in downtown Manhattan now. Does this mean hats are a thing again?
It's starting to look that way. I'm really not complaining.
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[Looks left. Looks right.] I have never read any of her work. I know who she is, but somehow none of her compositions have come actoss my proverbial desk. Any recommendations?
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Depending on how much time you have? The Red Tree, if you're considering any of her erotica and because it is simply an excellent novel: it should have won the Jackson Award it was nominated for. It's about the shape-shifting of stories and their unfinished ends; it's about being haunted, but not necessarily by what you think. (There is also a rather nice online component, including evidence and a flier. The wallpaper is also a much better image of the story than the published cover, which attempts to make it look like the paranormal romance it resembles only in that some of the characters have sex.) Probably it is no longer possible to tell whether you will like her current work from Silk (1998), her first published novel, but it's valuable as both a comparative start point and a striking non-horror story that makes use of horror tropes. (The Stiff Kitten T-shirt I wear, which has been mistaken for an actual band shirt, actually belongs to the fictional Birmingham punk band one of the protagonist plays in.) Her first short story collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder (2000), is excellent; it is actually more like a mosaic novel of fragmentary, radiating storylines, some of which extend into her other fiction. (Make sure to find the third edition, from Subterranean Press; it includes two later stories which are correctly located here, although neither of them ties up any loose ends.) The collection To Charles Fort, With Love (2005) contains one of my favorite pieces of her short-form fiction: the three-story "Dandridge Cycle," which is non-stylistically Lovecraftian and deeply involved with sea-change. Her science fiction, exemplified by the short novel The Dry Salvages (2004) and the collection A is for Alien (2009), should be much better known than it is. And The Drowning Girl is amazing, but it isn't out yet.
Here: "The Key to the Castleblakeney Key." The epistolary form is frequently used in her work, although it is not her sole mode, and several of the story's concerns—especially the authenticity of impossible objects—are touchstones likewise. I can't guarantee that if you like this story you'll like all the rest, or vice versa if it does nothing for you, but at least give it a shot.
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I hope you've been well.
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I hope you are less zapped and overwhelmed in future. I'm glad you're still around!
I hope you've been well.
Thank you. I'm working on being here.
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Congrats on finishing the afterword. Please do not forget to forward me (roadpoet@rock.com) a mailing address to which to send a hard-copy of my novel.
(p.s. Last night I arrested a man I have busted for shoplifting on four previous occasions. When all was said and done, the bag he used to conceal the merchandise got left behind. When delivering the evidence to the police stations, I thoughtfully dropped it off. "Wouldn't want him to be without his favorite shop-lifting bag," I said.)
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Thank you! I hope you find it interesting.
Please do not forget to forward me (roadpoet@rock.com) a mailing address to which to send a hard-copy of my novel.
Done. Apologies for the delay; see this entire post.
"Wouldn't want him to be without his favorite shop-lifting bag," I said.
Aw.
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I should probably do the same—I blitzed through all the stories in high school and then really haven't gone back to any except The Hound of the Baskervilles.
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I've not read Brigadier Gerard! Been a Holmes fan for, hell, thirty years, and I liked the early Challenger stuff. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
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At this point, I have two: a broad-brimmed sort of straw hat I wear in warmer and sunnier weather and a round, fur-lined winter hat. The latter is beginning to wear out, however, which saddens me very much; I'm not sure what I'll replace it with, especially since my winter coat is a slightly overlarge, but very warm leather jacket. Additionally, although I like hats, I truly hate shopping.
In fifth and sixth grade, I used to braid my hair and stuff it up under a corduroy newsboy's cap that had originally belonged to my mother, but I do not think that style would suit me anymore, if it ever did. I was very fond of it, though.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
As soon as I've read the stories, totally!
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I'm glad that you approve the hat shop. The Conan Doyle reprint is interesting--I've not heard of that one before. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts.
Livejournal is still kind of borked, isn't it?
A touch, I think. It's okay for me right now, but when I looked at Head Trip this morning the comments (carried on LJ) weren't displaying.
I wish you restful sleep and the chance to catch up on all you'd wish to.
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I won't dissuade you.
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His autobiography is very entertaining reading, as well; he was a jock in the nicest possible way, and interested in absolutely everything. There is a chapter on Spiritualism, I'll admit, but it's relatively short and doesn't quite make me go OH CONAN DOYLE NO. Actually, I've been meaning to post about him in a different context. I must get to that soon.
Incidentally, I remember hearing that Neil Gaiman's grown-up daughter Holly was a hat designer. Here's a gallery of her work:
http://elliottfranks.photoshelter.com/gallery/G0000C9.QAcLXIcI
They look like surrealist fascinators and hair decs, rather than what I picture when I think "hat," but I like and covet them nonetheless.
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Did you like them?
His autobiography is very entertaining reading, as well; he was a jock in the nicest possible way, and interested in absolutely everything.
Somewhere in one of the reference books I used for "The Salt House" and then never found again was a set of excerpts from his diary as doctor aboard a whaleship. (Barred from participating in a seal hunt because the captain thinks it's too dangerous for a man with no experience at sea, he manages to lose his footing and fall overboard while finding a place to watch the hunt from, after which the captain gives up and tell Conan Doyle he might as well join the rest of the men, because he's evidently going to find some way to hurt himself no matter what. He promptly falls in twice more and the nickname "the great northern diver" sticks to him for the rest of the voyage.) That was pretty awesome.
Actually, I've been meaning to post about him in a different context. I must get to that soon.
I look forward.
Sorry, should have called Holly Gaiman a milliner, rather than a hat designer--how often do you get to use the word "milliner" these days?
Unless you're discussing Howl's Moving Castle, really not often enough.
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The characters in Conan Doyle's story get all hero-worshippy as well, and ACD is skilled enough that I couldn't tell if the emotion was coming from him or from the first-person narrator. (I like to think ACD was too conservative and skeptical to buy into Napoleon-worship, but then again: fairies at the bottom of the garden.)
*snort* "The great northern diver." That's beautiful.