In quae miracula verteris?

[sovay]

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 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?

Comments

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

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?

[sovay]

I've read the Brigadier Gerard stories!

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.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were lots of fun ("bloodcurdling and dramatic" here are features rather than bugs, I should have said). You've got me wanting to reread them. Also, if I'm remembering one episode rightly, there's Napoleon-worship. It's baffling to me how many people adored Bonaparte. (Well, a lot of the people who get really gooey about him lived too late to experience the Napoleonic Wars, which is a bit of explanation. Also, emperor-worship and sentimentalization, and envy: who wouldn't want to be that powerful and wealthy?)

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.