Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing

[sovay]

This has been a day full of riches and surprises. I blame James Joyce. And the platypus.

Caitlín R. Kiernan has posted her reactions to Singing Innocence and Experience both at her livejournal and amazon.com, and I have no useful words:

This book is brilliant. It shines with the darkness and light of wonder and awe which I have spent the last fourteen years trying to put down on paper. Indeed, I have no trouble saying that these stories are one of the rare bits of fiction to wow me in the last decade. They hit me like Bradbury hits me, or Angela Carter, or Kathe Koja, Thomas Ligotti or Shirley Jackson. They revel in the power of myth, but in no unseemly way. They strain to contain the sheer force of their telling. In these pages, the reader will find a woman made of stars (or stars in the shape of a woman), a cynical unicorn and a reluctant virgin, an ophiomorphic plague, the place where lost ships go, a glimpse of Lot's nameless wife and an encounter with Adam's nameless and untouchable second wife, an accidental golem, a perfectly ordinary teenage boy perplexed at the coming loss of his nereid sister, drowned ghosts and terrible sacrifice, the singing head of Orpheus, and a hundred marvels more. If you still have a heart and have not forsaken wonder for the mythless drought which so many seem to mistake for adulthood, these stories will leave you breathless, as will Sonya Taaffe's astounding way with words. And all this from an author who is surely at least ten years my junior. I'd give my left hand for such language and the mind in back of it all. And I say none of these things lightly. If my writing or my opinion means anything at all to you, please, please buy this collection and devour it and be amazed . . . If it contained only "Constellations, Conjunctions" and "Kouros," it would be worth twice the price.

"Constellations, Conjunctions" is one of my oldest stories and still one of my favorites. It will be reprinted in the next issue of Sirenia Digest, with an illustration by Vince Locke.

This has one hundred percent and with sparklers on top made my day. I think the word is: drad. Cait, thank you.

As for the rest, a box of books from oldcharliebrown (and routed through The Mumpsimus) arrived earlier this afternoon: Simon Logan's incredible industrial and fetishcore collections Nothing Is Inflammable and Rohypnol Brides, Sarah Singleton's Heretic, and John Betancourt and Sean Wallace's Horror: The Best of the Year 2006. I'm looking forward to all of these, especially the collections. And for an early Father's Day, we're taking my father to the Wellesley Summer Theatre's production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband tonight. Look, he was Irish, it counts for Bloomsday, all right? All right.

Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside. Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion musn't forget. Fever near your mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? . . . Too late. She longed to go. That's why a woman. An easy stop the sea. Yes. All is lost.

All right.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Lovely. Just lovely, all of it.

Nine

[sovay]

I am very happy.

[coraline]

congrats! that's a fantastic review.

i love the concept of your icon, but the word order confuses me, and more importantly, that's the wrong peter whimsey. edward petherbridge is the one true peter whimsey! :)
*ahem* 'scuse me. not like i have strong feelings about this or anything.

(who is in your icon? i'm pretty sure that's not ian carmichael but i'm not familiar with other dramatizations...)

[sovay]

Thanks!

(who is in your icon? i'm pretty sure that's not ian carmichael but i'm not familiar with other dramatizations...)

It's Leslie Howard: who never played Peter Wimsey, but I was able to convince mswyrr* and matociquala that he should have. We were talking in terms of The Scarlet Pimpernel and the conversation spun from there.

I've never seen any of the Edward Petherbridge dramatizations. I take it I should have . . . ?

*Who created the icon for me, and assured me that it's standard quotation practice to offset central words from the rest of the text; i.e., I am not responsible! But I am very fond of it.

[coraline]

ok, looking at the pictures, i can see why you think he should have. i can live with that :)
(plus -- served in WWI and then had his military career cut short due to shell shock? he wouldn't have had to do much prep to get into the role :)

you should DEFINITELY see the petherbridge ones -- it's just the first three vane ones (poison/carcase/gaudy) but they're "practically perfect in every way" -- obviously, there are rearrangements/editings which are necessary when translating something from book to screen, but they still rang true to the hearts of the stories for me. and harriet walter as harriet vane is just as good as petherbridge.

i need to rewatch them -- i bought them when they came out on DVD :)

(the thing that threw me about the other icon was not the offsetting per se but the fact that it made it read mis-ordered to me:
SIN
the worst
passion can commit
is to be joyless

but it's mostly me nitpicking.)

[sovay]

(plus -- served in WWI and then had his military career cut short due to shell shock? he wouldn't have had to do much prep to get into the role :)

Seriously: he was tailor-made for the part! I remain upset that he died in World War II.

and harriet walter as harriet vane is just as good as petherbridge.

Awesome. I will look for the DVDs.

[larryhammer]

Sweet praise.

---L.

[sovay]

It makes me very happy.

[larryhammer]

BTW, I've been working my way through Postcards -- not the sort of collection to read in one sitting. Some nicely chewy poetry in there, to let coil around the brainstem and slowly unfold like nightblooming flowers as you fall asleep.

---L.

[sovay]

to let coil around the brainstem and slowly unfold like nightblooming flowers as you fall asleep.

Is it terminally narcissistic if I steal that image? It's lovely.

[larryhammer]

Not terminally -- indeed, I understand it can be cured these days.

---L.

[hans-the-bold.livejournal.com]

That review is well deserved, and very accurate. So hooray and huzzah for you!

[sovay]

and huzzah for you!

Twenty pounds for the King!

. . . I mean, thanks!

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

W0000T!

[sovay]

Thanks!

[lesser-celery.livejournal.com]

I'm greatly pleased. Your work deserves all praise and much reprinting. Drad indeed.

[sovay]

Drad indeed.

I ran out of all the usual adjectives. : )

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

This is awesome. What amazing praise!

[sovay]

I was pretty blown away . . .

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very understandable. :)

On the strength of that, I rushed out and paid for the collection from Amazon. I'm very curious to read it, but my partner-in-crime is a fanatic for Kiernan's writing, so there's a good chance she'll devour this as well. A double-win for our book collection, so to speak.

[sovay]

On the strength of that, I rushed out and paid for the collection from Amazon.

Hey. Thank you so much. I hope you love it!

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

No surprise. You're the best short story writer working right now, I think. Maybe I'm no judge? But that's my declaration for the ages. I want you to write a novel.

[sovay]

That's an immense compliment: so I'll try to live up to it. Thank you.

I want you to write a novel.

The novella's up to 13,000 words . . .

[hans-the-bold.livejournal.com]

The novella's up to 13,000 words . . .

Another huzzah for this! I am most definately looking forward to reading it!