I think I know by now what evil really is

[sovay]

I am evidently not the target audience for Tim Powers' Hide Me Among the Graves (2012), which rushthatspeaks has been reading and describing to me; I think that if one of your central characters is vampire John Polidori, people should always be asking him if he got it from Lord Byron and he should be so tired of having to tell them ("Byron wasn't even a vampire, damn it!") no.

Comments

[kore]

I think I read Hide Me and liked it a lot better than Stress of her Regard, which should have been made for me but really wasn't. Or wait, it's not in my Librarything and the opening's not familiar? Maybe I didn't! ....well, maybe that's one good thing about having a shitty memory, so many things are always new.

[sovay]

Maybe I didn't! ....well, maybe that's one good thing about having a shitty memory, so many things are always new.

Well, if you turn out to like it—again or still—let me know! So far I don't actually want to read it, although I am enjoying the updates from rushthatspeaks.

What was wrong with The Stress of Her Regard?

[kore]

Nothing really I don't think -- I liked it a lot better than Anubis Gates, which Brian Aldiss tricked me into thinking it would be just my jam in Billion Year Spree. Then when I finally read it I was like BUT THIS IS SUPERNATURAL HORROR WITH DODGY EGYPTIAN PASTED-ON MYTH AND NOT ENOUGH LITERARY SHENANIGANS, probably being the only person to react that way, since everyone else I know loved it. Stress had more of the literary shenanigans I wanted, but was still not quite it. It's probably an unfair judgement because I'm very familiar with the period and onceuponatime wrote literary pastiche and "dead writers in the modern world" type fic about all the people, so.

I'm also not crazy about Powers's typical depiction of women, although I haven't read all or even most of what he's written, and his male narrators put me off. But again, that could be more me reading it and going "CHRISTINA WOULD NEVER," &c &c.

Actually the Graves book looks like something I'd get halfway through reading and then realize I had read before. :-/ I ditched goodreads and although I've been recording my reading since then, it hasn't been in detail, so it's hard to tell.

[sovay]

But again, that could be more me reading it and going "CHRISTINA WOULD NEVER," &c &c.

Yeah, but when you know enough about the literary/historical figures in question, that's a legitimate complaint! A recurring topic with rushthatspeaks is the dismaying fact that no one ever seems to write a fictional Swinburne as weird as the historical one. Personally I have incredibly high standards for fictional Alan Turing. I just don't tend to notice this sort of thing about a person until someone either writes them badly or the glossy shallow biopic comes out and I hit the roof.

[kore]

Yeah, I was talking about this with spiralsheep re Stoppard and Invention of Love -- which I really do like -- but seeing Housman say things to Jackson he wrote secretly was really weird. Byron worked better in Arcadia because he was always offstage, and part of the whole plot was trying to figure out what actually happened and how we construct legends about the past. But I love Housman and read a lot of his work, and biographies, and even have his collected classical papers (not that I can understand half of them, if that) and so that AEH is more like a weird OC construct. Which is what historical fiction is, anyway! and to be fair, a lot of what gets called history as well.

I'm just still stuck going CHRISTINA WOULD NEVER. Christina Rossetti of all people was a fairly powerful woman, especially for her timeframe.

[sovay]

but seeing Housman say things to Jackson he wrote secretly was really weird.

That's a dramatic device I am generally all right with: when I saw the broadcast of Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art in 2010, I recognized stray lines in Britten's dialogue and mostly found it interesting how they were repurposed (and then laughed at one of them because I recognized it from the original setting, which was fair, it was a laugh line, but I was the only person in the audience who did. See also: the stupid joke in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia). If it's done badly, though, I can see it landing like a sore thumb.

(I have read The Invention of Love, because I don't think you get to be a classicist without people handing you copies. It may still be my favorite Tom Stoppard. I admire Arcadia, but I might have to see a production to love it.)

I'm just still stuck going CHRISTINA WOULD NEVER. Christina Rossetti of all people was a fairly powerful woman, especially for her timeframe.

. . . What happens to her when written by Tim Powers?