polutrope

I’ve never liked shaped poems, even the ones that are supposed to be good. I have a singular soft spot for Guillaume Apollinaire’s Miroir because I first saw it as a very young child, before my aesthetic sense had formed. But aside from that, I don’t like the genre. Even early examples, like George Herbert’s Easter Wings, annoy me for some indistinguishable reason.

The present writing is spurred by a reading of Patchwork Girl, by Shelly Jackson. It’s a hypertext novel: a program you install on your computer and attempt to read. Perhaps because it worked poorly on my machine, the impact and lasting memory of the experience is annoyance. But technical difficulties aside, I think I might have liked it had it been presented in book form; although the prose, on first blush, struck me as undistinguished Late Twentieth Century Lyric, it has its moments. In this case, not only is the text not served by its format, it is ill served.

Not served: this is the crux of the problem. I’ve never read anything that had more impact because it’s shaped like a swan or scattered over the four corners of the world for the reader to find; because here the font size is bigger, or the font changes.

Speaking of font changes, there’s a tendency in a certain genre of books to change the font for letters. I find it awful. The problem stems from what I feel is the problem with all funny formatting: a lack of faith. In the case of changing fonts for letters, it’s a lack of faith in the reader’s (usually a young reader’s) ability to imagine spiky or spidery or copperplate handwriting. In the case of many interactive novels, it’s a lack of faith in the reader’s attention span. And in many cases, it seems to be a lack of faith in the text.

It’s this last that is the saddest. There are some genuinely lovely passages in Patchwork Girl. This, for example: “AMERICA: There, where the shadows thrown by the radiant future fall across the present and blot out the past, where everyone is going to be somebody, I felt the pleasant conviction that with money, friends, and luck, nobody had to be monstrous.” Perhaps not as deep as it thinks it is, but lovely. But because it’s buried in the midst of a malfunctioning computer program, I never got to it, except by skimming the provided full text.

Perhaps I’m just a curmudgeon, a stick in the mud of traditional narrative style. But until something – preferably more than one thing – comes along to convince me otherwise, so I’ll stay. It comes down to this: every good unconventional piece I've read would have been good if it had been conventional.

Sometimes Inspiration strikes me, and I write about a page to five pages of something, and then it never goes anywhere.
( this is one of those things )

I am a fairly uncritical reader. No, really, I am. And it is this that has lead me to a personal definition of "bad": it's anything that causes me to criticize, which in turn draws me out of the story.

What I mean when I say I'm uncritical is that my default stance is trust: trust in the author and her world, and, until proved otherwise, her prose. I'll go along with some major hand-waving around plot-points if everything else is fine; I prefer characters, prose, world, and general coherency of plot to plausibility. I also tend to approach things without cynicism. Again, no, really. It's why I can read older speculative fiction: one of the keys is to forget everything you've read and focus on what you're reading. Yes, this trope's been used again, maybe better, and maybe so many times that now it's camp, but when it was written it was new. I also have a certain ability to adjust my mind to the tone of the work. That is, even if the plot's totally ridiculous and the characters are kind of flimsy, I can (often) take their quest to find the world-saving/destroying artifact or whatever seriously as long as they take themselves seriously. Of course, if someone's writing about a quest to find said artifact in 2012, I probably won't read it, unless it's very recommended.

So, when something's bad, the plot's implausible enough to make even me think about it (no, really: I've often had the experience of reading something, loving it, and then reading reviews that point out all the plot holes, and all I can think is, well, maybe, but that wasn't the point.) or the character motivations make no sense (I actually am fairly sensitive to this, also flatness. So many people think that giving their characters two traits and repeating them all the time makes them well-defined.) or, and this is the biggest problem for me, the prose is bad. I'm possibly over-sensitive to bad prose, but it makes me laugh, or get annoyed,* and either way it makes it impossible for me to focus on the story.

(This post semi-inspired by a review of Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star," which, admittedly, was read to me long ago. The twist is, I think, better if you approach it without preconceptions, and if you let Clarke take you where he wants to take you. There is some work in immersion that's the writer's and some that's the reader's: if the reader always wants to be cleverer, more cynical, than the writer, the relationship won't work; if the writer's incapable of writing a world that the reader wants to be immersed in, it won't work either. Like any relationship between two people, lack of chemistry is possible - I never felt any with George R. R. Martin, despite the fact that he's a good writer. [and, tangentially to this tangent, too often people take lack of chemistry with an author to mean that said author isn't any good, and defenders of the author take it to mean that the person isn't any good. You can be a perfectly good reader and understand the intent of the author and still not like it, and it still doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.])

((I would like to note that I am certainly not advocating an entirely subjective scale of good and bad. Blood For A Borgia, a mystery novel I read last year, is objectively bad. It's poorly characterized, plotted, and written. I'm fairly sure that the most ardent defense that could be made of it is that it passes time in a way that isn't actively offensive. On the other side, I can't think of anything that's objectively good, but if you gave me some time I probably could.))

*Do you want to make me mad? use Lyric Sentence Fragments. Or Poignant Ellipses. Or both. Also the construction "A tall man in a long coat, he ventured out over the moor." And short, choppy sentences. So basically everything that's popular in modern fiction, especially genre fiction. But really, I could make a fairly long list (though I can't think of anything right now) of Books That Had Interesting Premises and Good Reviews But Terrible Prose, So I Put Them Down.**
**I also hate the first person, irrationally. It's unfair and limiting and annoying, considering its rise in popularity, but there you have it.

So I was on the paper books side of the ebooks vs. paper books debate. And, after getting a kindle*, I still am.

Yeah. No, reading on it's not terrible or anything - they actually managed to make it not like reading on a screen, which I can't do very well - though there are a couple of annoying things about the interface (I have a kindle touch). It's really annoying that you can't edit data unless you get calibre, but that's been solved (by getting calibre). The fact that you can't mass-select is awful. And yes, it's nice that I'm carrying 300 books around and it doesn't take up any space, and it's also nice that I can now read all the terrible historical fiction on Project Gutenberg (seriously though that's at least half of my kindle content. I am so excited for "A Captive of the Roman Eagles").

BUT. I have a 244-book wishlist on Amazon. Of those, maybe five are available for kindle, and of those only one is cheaper than getting it used. I guess availability wouldn't be a problem if you're one of those people who reads new releases, but I'm really not - half of that wishlist is obscure '90s and earlier sci-fi/fantasy that isn't going to be re-released on kindle, like, ever.

I will say that I've gotten a couple of things cheaper than they would be in hardcover - Daniel Abraham's Price of Spring, which is now $114 used, for example - but for the most part the books I want are just not available. And maybe that'll change. Until it does, I've got a lot of 19th century adventure stories to read**.

*Fun story about why I got a kindle: so, I'm taking a gothic literature class. One of the things we're looking at is modern versions of the gothic. One of the required books is Twilight. So of course I think, "I am not paying money for Twilight" and download it. But! I need to be able to bring it to class. And, I think, well, I guess the kindle would be good for trips - if I have nothing else to do and the book's sufficiently brainless, I can read 300 pages an hour. So Twilight made me get a kindle.
**However, I also prefer paper editions - I don't have much décor, but I like the way books look, especially NYRB classics, and a book is a satisfying object; I thought this before the whole ebook thing.

I have in fact read worse things that Mark Hodder’s The Strange Case of Spring-Heeled Jack. Admittedly, I’m having trouble thinking of them right now. At least, I suppose, it was terrible in an entertaining way.

It’s steampunk, I guess, of the bad sort – the kind where you do some research into the Victorian period and then dump everything and everyone you read about into a world with weird technology. Plot, characterization, and prose style are all secondary to things that look cool.

The general plot is that Richard Burton, right after his former friend shoots himself because of their debate on the sources of the Nile, is recruited to the King’s Service (King Albert, because of some time-travel hi-jinks). Spring-heeled Jack, the children’s bogeyman, has been attacking girls, and he must be caught! So it turns out that Spring-heeled Jack is a time-traveler from 2202, who originally went back in time to prevent his ancestor from attempting to assassinate Queen Victoria, and through his meddling, actually made the ancestor kill him. He then falls in with genetically modified evil Darwin and evil Florence Nightingale. Why? Because it sounded cool, I guess. There’s a large battle, and Burton and his sidekick Swinburne win!

The problems, aside from the prose, which will be addressed at length, are mainly that it’s horribly shallow. I didn’t care about anyone, though I supposed I did care about what happened at least a little. Also that he has Issues with women: the only women are Burton’s supposedly awful but really, from what we see of her, which isn’t much, kind of okay financée, a characterless nurse, some landladies, and a bunch of (characterless) teenage girls who are, quite literally, there to be assaulted. I mean really.

Why did I keep reading it? Well, mainly because I like to feel superior to things.

( And oh, do I feel superior )

Problems with my wishlist:
1. It's too long. 300 books.
2. I buy things more slowly than I find interesting things, so it gets longer.
3. I buy things that aren't on it.
4. Sometimes things stay on it for a really long time because
5. I'm more likely to remember why I want the things that I put on later.

Like, I really want to get all the Liavek books (all four of them!) because I got the first one on a whim and loved it, but Litany of the Long Sun, which also looks great, has been on there for...more than a year, I think.

I really need to win some sort of sweepstakes, really.

So I was looking for alternate history anthologies, despite the trouble I have with the genre (too dudely, too focused on Nazis, not enough Greece, damn it!). And, well, nothing really looks good and I've been complaining about it on Twitter. But anyway, I found this in a review of one of the anthologies, and it's too long to attack on there:

"Arms and the Woman is the first excellent story in this collection...Here he describes what might have happened if Helen had stepped outside Troy and realized this war was being fought over her, with thousands of men dying for her."

(OK so the guy goes on to say "We believe that Homer wrote history, but it is a history from a time when men understood that myth was equal with history." UGH NO WE DO NOT BELIVE THAT HOMER WROTE HISTORY, unless you enjoy being wrong. Which is to say, he's no classicist and knows it, so I'm probably about to be really unfair to him, but I've been unfair to a lot of people.)

I really like Helen. I haven't really known why, but I do. Maybe it's because I feel bad for her, maybe it's just a contrarian thing. (My Helen, by the way, is a composite of the Helen of the Iliad and Odyssey and Euripides' Helen; certainly the "bad" Helen of the Orestes and the Trojan Women is a valid characterization, but I just don't like it.) I've always liked versions of the myth in which Helen didn't go with Paris willingly*.

So anyway, back to the review. I'm pretty sure that even when Helen's characterized as bad (not actively malevolent, but just sort of a terrible person) she's not unaware that people are dying for her. You'd have to be real dumb not to notice, and Helen's anything but dumb**. In fact, part of her "bad" characterization in the Trojan Women is that she's overly clever and lawyerly. And she's certainly not unaware in the Iliad or in the Helen - she abuses herself and seems to be really and truly miserable.

Of course, I can't say what would happen in the story, not having read it, but if it's that Helen manages to stop the Trojan War, that's silly, unless she can manage to get Paris to give her back (she wouldn't be able to). It also depends on what approach the author takes - do you use actual psychology? the approach that it was all over trade anyway? do you stay true to the Homeric ideas that the gods influence the world? If you say it was about trade, Helen going back to Menelaus wouldn't help; if it's about the gods, I'm pretty sure Aphrodite wouldn't just let Helen go back; and even if you say that it's the logical thing to do to make a truce, it's sort of lacking in drama.

So that is to say, Helen can't really do anything about the Trojan War, it's not her fault, and everyone should just leave her alone.

(also there's a story about Joan which might be interesting but I think she's characterized as a warrior and god knows I love warrior women as much as the next person, but she didn't really use her sword. See note **)

(also this

"Here Constantine takes on the sign of the cross as his standard, but fails in his attack on Maxentius. Unfortunately, the author doesn't have a firm grasp on history, as he posits this would lead to the disappearance of Christianity. This shows no understanding of the strength of Christianity in the East, completely independent of the vagaries of the Empire, continuing under Islam and under the Persian Empire. In truth, the majority of Christians lived East of Antioch for the first 1000 years as Nestorians, with over a million spread throughout Asia- it was a predominantly Asian religion. And just as it grew by leaps and bounds under intense Roman persecution, it would not have needed Roman support to survive in the West. "

I am not entirely sure. Certainly the older religions were lacking in true believers, but the cult of Mithras was still going strong (and possibly my Orphics!). What Constantine did was make Christianity legal; one of his successors made the official religion of the empire, which would mean that everyone would convert or "convert" to be able to have a position at court. I don't think Constantine's losing the Battle of the Milvian Bridge would lead to the disappearance of Christianity, though it might have shaken the faith of some of the soldiers; I do think that it would have lead to co-existence, and maybe a more tolerant and less dominant Christianity.)

((I should write alternate history!))

(((Not really)))
__
*Because no one likes Paris.
**Other things that annoy me: Characterizing Helen as a bimbo just because she's beautiful. Read the source texts.

So I read lots of books, eh? and I do keep a log of all the books I read. Sometimes I write marginally entertaining things about them. I may or may not write more detailed things about things I read later, but for now here's what I read last month (with massive spoilers for most of them):

( Péter Esterházy, Celestial Harmonies )
( Tanya Huff, Sing the Four Quarters. )
( Sean Russell, Beneath the Vaulted Hills )
( Sean Russell, The Compass of the Soul )
( Anne McCaffrey, Dragonquest )
( David Eagleman, Sum )
( Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship )
( Michael Curtis Ford, Gods and Legions )
( Henry Treece, Electra )
( Gary Dexter, ed, Poisoned Pens )
( Philip Stevick,ed., Anti-Story )
( Sheila Finch, The Guild of Xenolinguists )
( Stansilaw Lem, A Perfect Vacuum )
( Sir Francis Bacon, Essays )

Robert Penn Warren's "Dream" epitomizes why I don't really like him, despite owning his complete poetry. I mean, I love all of Evening Hawk - well, most. "Like Plato" sort of comes out of nowhere, and doesn't seem to have any place in the poem, but the rest is gorgeous. "Dream" is, well, not as good. The text follows, as it's nowhere else online:

( Dream )

There is a lot of beautiful used of language. I love "and Time/ Is only a shade on the underside of the beech-leaf..." and "had blackmailed a blessing." But, and with me there's nearly always a but, I think it lacks cohesion. The Odysseus section doesn't work for me at all - like Plato in Evening Hawk, why is it there? I love classical references, perhaps too much, but only if they're seamless.

(On a tangent about the Odysseus section, it's interesting that he chose Odysseus and not, say, Hercules as the one to grapple [another tangent! Heracles would have been great because he famously wrestles Antaeus, who can't be killed as long as his feet are on the ground], because Odysseus is famous for being smart and not strong, though of course as a Homeric hero he's strong as well. If I had to interpret it favorably, I'd say that he's saying that you don't have to be famous for your strength to wrestle with your dreams.)

This is certainly not seamless. Odysseus enters, wrestles with Ajax, and promptly leaves. He's replaced by Jacob, who serves the poem slightly better, though unless you interpret the angel as a dream, it doesn't quite make sense.

I think the problem with this, aside from the awkward shoehorning in of Odysseus, is that there's too many ideas going on. Each stanza is doing (one might almost say "arguing") a different thing - the first stanza sets the stage, beautifully but kind of uselessly; the second is about loss of Time and therefore reality and introduces the idea of dream, though the first stanza is indeed dreamlike. The only point of the third stanza that I can see is to have the word "grapple" in it; otherwise it could be excised without loss, and indeed with some gain, to the poem. The fourth stanza is about the necessity of struggle, and the last is about Jacob and the angel, and not giving up or something.

While the poem does feel cohesive, in large part because of the continuity of language, if you really look at it, it loses something. This seems to be something that happens often in the Warren corpus. That, or there's one or two words choices that don't quite work for me. It's just that sometimes he attains such beauty of language that I stick with him.

PS. I also don't really understand the last two lines of That Stanza: blood filled/ That mouth from its tongue, like a grape cluster, crushed. After long examination, it's come to mean that the blood is coming from the tongue, which is crushed like a grape cluster, but I don't see any reason for the syntax to be that tortured - it's not particularly beautiful or interesting, just confusing.

So. We have come at last to the end of this meme; I started in June and it's now October, which speaks to my motivation (hint: I have none for anything).

Day 28 is Favorite female creator. My note for this one says "Well, if K. J. Parker is indeed female..." She (for the sake of argument) is careful not to disclose details; the argument for her being a woman is that the French site uses a feminine adjective. If she's a woman, she's an absolutely awesome one (and if she's a man, she's an awesome man too): she's a blacksmith and a fencer, and clearly knows how to build siege weapons. Of course, she writes well too. Although some people say that Shadow, Pattern, and Memory are too confusing, they form one of my favorite fantasy trilogies. They're about a man who's lost his memory, and are temporally fragmented - we're as confused as the narrator about his life and world.

(She's actually not a great worldbuilder - you kind of play "spot the real-world civilization these people are based on," but it doesn't bother me in her writing for some reason.) In any case, there's all sorts of meditations on causality, memory, the nature of divinity, morality, and all those abstract nouns. She also has an acerbic wit, or rather a nasty sense of humor. Aside from loving that trilogy, in The Belly of the Bow, which I love slightly less, there's the single moment in all my reading that made me stare at the page and then step away from the book for a while. It was awful, in a way that contributed to the plot & character development & it was great.

I'll also buy pretty much anything she writes, even if I'm not sold on the premise. There are very few authors who have this honor: Umberto Eco, Steven Brust, and Kage Baker are the only other ones I can think of. Which brings me to my other author: Kage Baker.

I picked up The Anvil of the World shortly after it came out in paperback, mainly on the strength of its name & a pretty cover. It was awesome. She manages to balance humor and dead seriousness; she has a character who basically becomes a god without it being obnoxious. So of course I consulted the internet: what else has she written? and it turned out to be a series about time-traveling cyborgs.

Now I hate time travel & I am slightly repulsed by sci-fi. But it was the only other thing she'd written, and Anvil of the World was so good, so I gave it a try. Out of order, of course, from the library, which is a terrible idea with this series. But I was totally won over by the first one I read, which was Sky Coyote. I loved her characters, her prose, and her ideas - and let me tell you, the combination of all three is rare indeed. So I attempted to read the whole series from the library, and what with holds and getting things from other branches and the order I should read them in being very unclear, I got a very muddled view of the series. But this summer saw the fruition of a plan I'd had for a while involving Amazon and the fact that older sci-fi/fantasy novels tend to be quite cheap. I re-read all ten Company books (well, not all - I haven't read The Empress of Mars because it was more expensive and I didn't care quite as much), and they were awesome.

Also a really bad series to have read out of order and with large gaps between books - it gets really complicated! she's one of the few people who managed to pull off "And all these unrelated incidents were part of a Plan" without it seeming added on later (although it probably was).

Her other two novels in the world of Anvil of the World are also quite good, although, though I hate to say it, The Bird of the River was actually kind of weak. Still better than most of the fantasy I've read, though.

So that's my 28 Days of Female Characters. I'm actually quite proud of myself for finishing, even though it took a while.