sovay | Many things that I am needing to keep me singing

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Many things that I am needing to keep me singing

I have awesome friends. A few days ago,

deadcities_icon sent me his stunning cybersexpunk calendar del.ici.ous tension: a digital romance, and today in the mail I received a packet of decaf masala chai from

strange_selkie. Oddly enough, I feel better already. You guys rock.

I'm re-reading Tanith Lee's Sung in Shadow (1983), which I first discovered in late high school and which has slunk into my subconscious from time to time since then. I can't shake the feeling that, as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, it's drawn more from Zeffirelli's 1968 film than from the bare play itself—particularly in the contrasts and relationship of its Romeo and Mercutio, the dark and beautiful Romulan Montargo, who is more innocent than he likes to think, and the older, fair-haired, sardonically unstable Flavian "Mercurio" Estemba. If so, I suppose it's nice to know that I wasn't the only one who fell in love with John McEnery's Mercutio.

"Why not anticipate? What else have we of free will but anticipation?" Mercurio, arguing for the discussion's sake, questioning nothing, believing very little, mesmerizing the guardsman as a matter of course, smiled gravely at him. "A man, young or old, may go to bed healthy, wake at dawn with a pain like a knife in his side, and be laid in a box by sunset. Or a man may cut his thumb on an awl, a scratch no bigger than a cherry pit, and he may sicken of that, and take that road to a box. Or the earth may shake, as it did here, ten years past, stones fall on your noodle and brain you. Or a plague may breed in the very air. Who can outrun plague? Oh, all roads lead to boxes. It is a chancy business, life. And so, my friend, we kill each other on the streets, the pith of the thing being Surprise! Amazement! My Lady Death, we are before you."

"Death's a woman, then?"

"Love and death, women both. Trust neither."

The grinding, soaring street cry of the whores wafted up again from over the walls. Mercurio, taking it as a bizarre accompaniment, began to sing a courtly love melody of the Higher Town.

"Dance with me while time is yet slow,
Clocks run faster far than you know;
Wear your rose flesh like a glove
For roses wither. Fear it, love."

His voice cut through all like a gold wire, through time, place, dust, heat and faith. A girl on a balcony averted her eyes from him superstitiously, among the terra-cotta pots of flowers. Romulan looked at him, entranced. None of them had heard a verse sung better, or a love song more like a knell.

"A rose will bloom; it then will fade . . ."

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When Tanith Lee is good, she is impossible to beat, says I. I think she is such an amazing stylist, with such a vivid, decadent, sensual style.

I recently re-read Night's Master in this edition:

and spent many many days thinking about how much I dug this book.

Heh. I almost bought that edition this afternoon, even though I already own the DAW paperback, because it was there in the store and my copy's in another state.

My love for Tanith Lee really kicked off with Death's Master, in fact, which I picked up from a used book store one summer in early high school: I'd walk by every day on my way home from summer school, and stop in and read a few pages, and finally I gave in and bought the book. Instant addiction. I'd read Black Unicorn years before, but hadn't realized this was the same author; and there seemed an endless supply of Tanith Lee in this particular bookstore. I hit The Secret Books of Paradys a year or so later and I think that quartet actually rewired my brain. By this point, I own damn near all her novels and a substantial quantity of her short fiction. I always need more bookshelves.

I think she is such an amazing stylist, with such a vivid, decadent, sensual style.

I love her language. She descends straight from Angela Carter, I think. And I know there was a time in my life when my writing sounded far too much like hers.

I love old paperbacks. I have so many of them, I'm actually thinking of getting rid of some! Somehow I always end up with multiple versions... like I have nine or so different editions of LORD OF THE RINGS, fer instance. But yes, I love those old DAWs and their yellow spines. You should see my shelf of DAW Moorcocks...

erm.

Angela Carter, eh? I honestly had never made the comparison. She seems to have a very distinct Decadant (cap-D) leaning, and of course there's that generalized "Goth" reputation which is nonetheless accurate.

I have a huge amount of Lee's books. You ought to tell me which ones are good and which ones are trash, so I can be discerning when tackling the pile sometime in 2043...

Angela Carter, eh? I honestly had never made the comparison.

It might just be me: I have no academic evidence to support this. But I discovered Angela Carter after I had been reading Tanith Lee for some years, and she was the first person whose language reminded me of Lee's—it operates in a different register, but there's the same lush elaboration of imagery and a sort of linguistic synaesthesia. (Semi-relevantly, there seems to be a site here devoted to favorite images from Tanith Lee.) I'm not sure that Carter was writing early enough to have been a formative influence on Lee, but there's still a definite aesthetic likeness.

You ought to tell me which ones are good and which ones are trash, so I can be discerning when tackling the pile sometime in 2043...

Heh. Okay: which ones do you have?

Heh. Okay: which ones do you have?

Honestly? Probably all of them. My book collection is quite... um... extensive.

what are your favorites?

Keep in mind that all of my Tanith Lee is in Connecticut and I'm currently in Massachusetts, so I'm doing this off the top of my head . . .

Of her early sword-and-sorceries, I really like The Storm Lord (1976) and Anackire (1983). The first is the traditional sprawling mythic adventure in which the son of a king and a priestess, one from the race of the conquering Vis and the other from the subject Lowlanders, grows from obscurity to claim his kingdom and change the world. The second occasionally veers off into the mystical, but it also charts what happens in the aftermath of a myth: once the hero has walked away from mortal kingdoms and out of this world as we know it, what happens to everyone left behind to pick up the practical, political pieces? (I believe there was also a third novel, The White Serpent (1988), but I've never found or read that one.) I am also very fond of the science-fiction pair Don't Bite the Sun (1976) and Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977), which chronicle the attempts of their androgynous narrator to grow up in a future city-state where adolescence by law lasts for decades and no one is expected, until adulthood, to do anything serious with their lives. They're not quite dystopian and often very funny, and are written partially in a futuristic teen slang that wouldn't keep Anthony Burgess awake at nights, but it's onomatopoeically entertaining.

There's also The Silver Metal Lover (1981), which was reprinted my senior year of high school: on a future Earth where the accidental capture of an asteroid some generations ago has changed the planet's topography and shaken up society, a girl falls in love with a robot; and maybe, if it's not just a trick of his programming, he loves her back. It's beautifully written and detailed, its characters make the story work absolutely even when the plot slides over into the melodramatic—although the narrator is sixteen years old, so melodrama in her reporting can be forgiven—and so it was with great regret that I discovered I didn't like the sequel, Metallic Love (2005), at all. Fortunately, it's not the kind of bad sequel that destroys the original. I'm just hoping there won't be a third.

One of her recent novels I did like was Mortal Suns (2003), in which an old poet who was once a princess looks back on her life and the fall of a dynasty: the royal house of Akhemony, into which she was born, from which she was rejected as an infant, and which she may have helped destroy. The culture's a fascinating, half-familiar blend of Greek and Egyptian and characteristic Tanith Lee, and the trajectory of the love story is not what we are led to expect from all the traditional signposts. And her young adult novel Piratica (2004), about a girl in an alternate eighteenth-century London who runs away from her oppressive girls' school to follow in the footsteps of her famous mother, whom she remembers as a pirate queen, was really excellent.

Er . . . I love The Secret Books of Paradys, even though I found The Book of the Dead much weaker than the other three. The novella "Malice in Saffron" in The Book of the Damned (1988) is one of my all-time favorite pieces of Tanith Lee. I'm ambivalent about The Secret Books of Venus: I love the first two, particularly Faces Under Water (1998), but the third felt far too constructed and the fourth was just sort of there. I'm now formally too tired to do reviews—so I'll just recommend Sabella, or, The Blood Stone and Kill the Dead (1980), Elephantasm (1993), Volkhavaar (1977), and the collection The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales (1985). If you can find a novella entitled "Into Gold," that is also most worth reading: it involves both Greek and Arthurian myth, which is not a feat one sees often.

That help?

That help?

And how!

Now I know which one to read next.

Now I know which one to read next.

Cool. Which?

I should also mention her historical novel The Gods Are Thirsty (1996), which observes the French Revolution through the eyes of Camille Desmoulins. It's a brick-thick book and perhaps not a wholly successful one, given that in some ways she evokes Paris more effectively through the stained glass of Paradys, but I liked it nonetheless. Camille is one of her better and more believable narrators, in all his faults and flaws and talents: and since he's not a vampire or a ghost or a far-future goddess, just a headstrong journalist with a lovely wife and a stammer, this is actually impressive.

Lee is never trash. :-) Not even at her worst (as as in The Heroine of the World).

There are a few novels of hers that really didn't work for me: primarily Vivia (1995) and White As Snow (2000), and Heart-Beast (1992) in places. I don't actually find A Heroine of the World that bad, only unexciting; it's too much travelogue and too little character. But these are a very small handful against an incredible corpus of literature, and so I don't tend to worry too much. : )

Agreed with the unexciting part. With Lee it is so easy to expect the world (sorry 'bout the pun) that when you get a dull thing like A Heroine of the World, it stands out. I think the dullness of the character and the irony of the title juxtaposed with the content actually made me angry, that's why I tend to think of this one first as the least likable book of hers.

Heart-Beast was so-so, indeed, and Vivia -- you know I don't think I actually read it, though it's sitting on my shelf. White as Snow I liked, I believe, but did not find particularly memorable.

Look now, you started talking about Lee and I cannot stop posting! This is the secret magent to draw me out of lurk! Eeek! Sorry!

Vivia -- you know I don't think I actually read it, though it's sitting on my shelf.

Eh. It has a wonderful cover (which appears in the text), but the story left me cold: a girl who has become a species of vampire through a strange encounter within a mountain, the warrior-sorcerer who wants to use her for his own gain, and the artist with whom she falls accidentally in love; it starts and it goes on and then it just sort of stops. She's just written so much better.

Look now, you started talking about Lee and I cannot stop posting! This is the secret magent to draw me out of lurk! Eeek! Sorry!

No apologies necessary! It's good for you. : )

Ok, one last itsy bitsy comment and then I put a plug in it.... ;-)

Thanks for the summation. Vivia shall probably remain on my to-read-someday shelf for quite some time.

For me, the first of hers was The Birthgrave. Since then she has become my goddess.

I didn't read The Birthgrave until relatively late: I think I found it sometime mid-college (after I'd read Vazkor, Son of Vazkor, which a friend had gotten for me). It is, however, a phenomenal novel. If you describe the plot and the setting, it's a very characteristic science fantasy of the late 1970's, such as Andre Norton might have written—but the language is something else.

Indeed it was the language that stood out so much that I think it impressed me like a brand. Till this day, I feel some kind of impact in the back of my head, a tangible shiver when I think of that book. Of course then I found all her others... :-)

In addition to the language, it was also the beauty and the grace, the elegance of the characters. They really are beautiful, all of them. And proud, unlike anything...

Till this day, I feel some kind of impact in the back of my head, a tangible shiver when I think of that book.

That's what happened to me with The Secret Books of Paradys. I'd seen The Book of the Dead for years in the local library, but I'd never read more than the first few pages in fragments; I'd picked up the paperback reprint of The Book of the Damned in a bookstore, but hadn't read more than the first few pages of "Malice in Saffron." But sometime in my senior year of high school, I became curious: so I ordered them all through interlibrary loan and read the entire quartet in two days.

I remember sitting on the couch, fascinated, reading The Book of the Damned in a sort of absorbed trance. (To be fair, Robert Graves' I, Claudius had the same effect on me.) I still can't pinpoint quite what makes the books work for me as they do. It's not only the language, it's the whole atmosphere of the world and its smoky mercury-shadow of transgression, boundaries that shift and slide, twilight always falling and nothing stays the same when you look at it again. And the characters, who are human and recognizable among all the shadowy, fever-burning strangeness. Sexuality and liminality. If you want to stay within Decadent terms, it was Dorian Gray's "poisoned with a book." I was so happy.

How true! Reading Lee does something to put you in a trance, especially the first time you discover her, and the mind makes a comparison to other authors' books you might have read recently and how they all suddenly pale into drab insignificance by contrast!

I think it's the combination of very aprt characterization, haughty beautiful people, elegance, grand style, a true evocation of wonder in the ancient sense, and just everything working together so well to make a cabochon jewel that is so smooth on the outside and holds a mini-world in its smoky depths.

Must... stop... posting! :-)

Must... stop... posting! :-)

You could always write an essay for your own journal. Then I could come and comment. ; )

Hah! Don't give me ideas now.

Ok, next week.

Oh crap, now look what you've done. :-)

Lovely passage. I've read a fair slice of Tanith Lee's books: this is the first time I've heard of that title. Now I must try to find a copy somewhere. And when I get it, rewatch Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

I've read a fair slice of Tanith Lee's books: this is the first time I've heard of that title.

I think it was only ever printed once, but it's worth tracking down. What are your favorite Tanith Lees?

Favorites? How impossible to choose...

The Birthgrave
Cyrion
The Silver Metal Lover
Sabella, or the Bloodstone
Sung in Shadow
Anackhire

Ah, hell, all the rest of them...

Cyrion

I've never been able to find Cyrion! I've read a few of the short stories in other settings, Dreams of Dark and Light and Women As Demons, but I've never managed to locate the entire collection. Lucky. : P

Oh, you must! He is my dream lover. :-)

Here, try here (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2277216496/qid=1148671541/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-4297973-1967840?s=books&v=glance&n=283155).

I am not sure of this edition, it is not the original, but it appears to be the complete book!

Is this the edition you have?

Yes, that's it.

Actyally, wait, look, I think here's a whole bunch of the original edition Cyrions! (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879977655/qid=1148672756/sr=12-24/103-4297973-1967840?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) :-) This is the correct one!

Forget the first one I posted above, it looks a bit fishy, as though it's not an authorized edition...

Forget the first one I posted above, it looks a bit fishy, as though it's not an authorized edition...

I think it's just the recent translation into French. But I'd rather have a copy in English. : P

Aha! Ok, that explains it. *grin*

The good news is, you can get an English copy from the Amazon Marketplace for a penny.

I actually really enjoy her short fiction best. I'm beginning to suspect that I have ADD reading habits because I prefer short stories. I unfortunately can't remember the first story I read by her but I do remember that it was in one of the lovely Terri Windling/Ellen Datlow collections.

I read one of the books of the that was at a local library and loved it dearly. I've since forgotten the exact title. I liked the Venus books that I read. I was a teenager when I picked them up and it certainly began my fascination with alternate Venices. (My latest favorite being the YA novel The Water Mirror.) I'm looking through Tanith Lee's bibliography realizing that I haven't read an enth of her books yet. However, I do love Don't Bite the Sun and Sapphire Wine. I did love Silver Metal Lover and felt a little ambivalent about the sequel. When you wrote that the first has a great deal of melodrama, I had to laugh because it is quite true. I've often felt that way but loved the book anyway because it seemed believable for such a young and spoiled protagonist.

I've guiltily picked up the Claidi journals which I did love and White as Snow. I liked the concept but trudged through it a bit. I think I was hoping for another Tam Lin from the Fairy Tale Series.

Hmm I'm feeling the urge to go to the library today. I'll have to see what's available through ILL.

Yes, the more I reflect on how much I've adored Tanith Lee and her rich prose. I've mainly read her stories in the Windling collections. Every one has been quite good. I've also read her submission to Don't Bet on the Prince.

I suppose it's nice to know that I wasn't the only one who fell in love with John McEnery's Mercutio

John McEnery's Mercutio!!! I adored him.

I must check out more Tanith Lee - I've only read The Silver Metal Lover, which I loved.

John McEnery's Mercutio!!! I adored him.

Yeah . . . : )

The Silver Metal Lover is an incredible book. I hope you like the rest of her work!

If vampires are a particularly curiosity of yours, Tanith Lee does them excellently. The novella "Stained with Crimson" in The Book of the Damned is perhaps the best vampire story I have ever read. There's also the science fiction Sabella, or, The Blood Stone (1980), the as yet unfinished Blood Opera Sequence—Dark Dance (1992),* Personal Darkness (1993), Darkness, I (1994)—and a whole host of short stories in almost any collection she's published.

*I'm not crazy about the rest of the Blood Opera Sequence, but I really like Dark Dance because of its ambiguity: its reclusive and ritual-driven family might be vampires, or might not, and after a certain point it really doesn't matter to the protagonist or the reader: the effect will be the same.

Thanks for the info! It'll come in handy when I head for the used bookstores this weekend...

Ahh, I need to re-read Sung In Shadow, and re-watch the Zefirelli movie, both gems...

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Many things that I am needing to keep me singing

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