The Mere Wife

I adored Maria Dahvana Headley's Beowulf and was curious to read her earlier novel, The Mere Wife, which draws on the story of Beowulf. In several reviews I see that The Mere Wife has been described as a "modern retelling" of Beowulf from womens' perspectives; to me, the entire book was vague and ethereal in its storytelling, so I could not be sure that it was "modern", as opposed to simply a different setting with more glass windows and trains than are strictly described in Beowulf.

The setting begins with a vagueness about the specifics of Dana Mills --- what year is it? what middle-eastern country is she a soldier in? is this meant to be modern reality or just to draw on elements of modernity? --- and the book never provides answers or clues or these questions. How did she come to be pregnant? If she is realistically hungry and afraid of starving and being attacked by other humans, then how did she manage to give birth alone (to Grendel) in an abandoned train tunnel, with no apparent difficulties? Probably I read this book in the wrong frame of mind, as I kept trying to puzzle out these logistics even though the prose flowed poetically and only suggested the shape of descriptions, durations, feelings, logical connections.

Some of the vagueness comes from details and story explorations beyond Beowulf. Parts of the book focus on Willa, the wife of Roger Herot, son of the founder of (planned and gated community) Herot Hall. In the Willa chapters, the vagueness and dissociation of the prose seemed to be a reflection of her isolation and emotional coldness, and the ways in which her expected role limited her freedom of movement, dress, what to eat, how to act, what to say. This was effective and skillful writing but I found myself looking for a moral, or a scrap of redemption, or even a suggestion of feminism and empowerment. This left me feeling as cold as Willa, and it seemed like the story had been written --- or perhaps constrained by the original Beowulf --- to close all avenues of imagining a different or better life for the women of the community.

And on occasion, the women got first-person-plural chapters to spin their own mythology directly to the reader. Chapter 21 is only 3 pages long  (pp 153-155). It begins "Hark! We slap the bell on the front desk of the police station." This is deliciously close to the structure of some more traditional translations of Beowulf and I appreciated that. This perspective is delivered in first-person-plural, from the perspective of the nameless and amorphous group of neighborhood women. "There's a long tradition that says women gossip, when in fact women are the memory of the world. We keep the family trees and the baby books. We manage the milk teeth. We keep the census of diseases, the records of divorces, battles, and medals. We witness the wills. We wash the weddings out of the bedsheets." (page 153-154) This is delightfully close to Alice Frasier's repeated joke (paraphrased from memory): "History is a record of what men do while women are busy maintaining civilization by keeping everyone fed, clean, healthy, and alive." Frasier's original is more pithy.

Chapter 21 ends, "We will not surrender. We will not back down. Soon, soon, the mountain will be covered with men in uniforms, hounds, cars moving fast, people telling and yelling. Soon, soon, we will have what is ours." (pp 155) Sinister, creepy, skin-tingling, excellent. The follow-up chapter 29 uses the same creepy first-person-plural telling and reframing of the entire story, and ends (pp 206), "We're the ones who make the world, the warriors who stand watch, the women on whose wrong side you would not want to walk. What do you get the women who have everything? You get them more."

Contrast this with Dana's perspective, late in the book (pp 212-213), "Who's the monster now? ... No one even looks at me. You don't really own anything. Nothing is yours forever, not your body, not your youth, not even your mind." Her perspective is grim and dismal throughout, even when contemplating how to care for her son. "Here's the truth of the world, here it is. You're never everything anyone else wants. In the end, it's going to be you, all alone on a mountain, or you, all alone, in a hospital room. Love isn't enough, and you do it anyway. Love isn't enough, and it's still this thing that everyone wants. I see what he wants. I know him better than I know myself. I know his whole history, and I don't know my own."

The coldness of the chorus of women is a sinister weight that oppresses both Dana and Willa and drives the story on to the bloody conclusion of Beowulf (pp 268):

We question Willa. She tells us that Dana Mills is back and Ben Woolf is deranged, and we believe her. Murderer not dead? Check. Monster not slain? Check. Hero not heroic? Check. 

We take over. 

Everyone thinks all we've been doing, for thirty years, is planting award-winning begonias. It's always the mothers who are hated. The fathers are too far away, home at 5:30, off the train, perfume on their jackets. The mothers are the clay pigeons children want to shoot out of the sky. Imagine being a target for fifty years, from your moments of first nubility to moments of humility, when your skin feels like paper and you stop sleeping forever, unacknowledged as being the armed guard of civilization.

Creepy and overwhelming.

Overall this was a weird one. Familiarity with Beowulf made me keep looking for clues and connections, differences and editorial decisions. This was at odds with the tone of the book, which was more of an ungrounded meditation on women's feelings of pressure and social isolation. If I were looking for a book that focused on a character secondary to the main plotline, I would prefer to reread Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, which is vague but gives clues about a substantive plotline (and has more sarcasm and female characters who are allowed personal agency).

This post's theme word is proscription (n), "a prohibition or the act of prohibiting." Eating more calories was not proscribed, and yet every housewife avoided it and policed her peers to enforce the unstated limits.

Charmed Life

Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life is a children's fantasy book (apparently it is chronologically the third in a series of six! although it was the first published and is the recommended entry point).

This book is a joyful play on common children's fantasy ideas. The protagonists are a sister and brother, orphaned in the first few pages, and we follow them on their next steps. Gwendolen is a gifted witch, whose future is foretold to bring her great power, and she drags her magic-less little brother Eric along with her as she takes determined steps towards her destiny. She is stymied by the usual barriers: orphans have no adults advocating for them, magic is hard to learn, and the adult world runs on opaque and mysterious rules that children must obey (or discover by transgressing and being punished).

I came to the story with the usual Grown-Up Fantasy Genre Questions: how does magic work? how does one learn? what are the rules? ... and I was delighted that all of these questions were absolutely diversions from the way the story wanted to go! Gwendolen is a bit stubborn and direct --- as are many girl protagonists --- but when facing punishment from adults, things went completely off the rails and my expectations were entirely subverted.

A quick read, suitable for many ages, and cheery. Recommended to me, and I pass along this recommendation to others.

This post's theme words and contexts come from the novel:

• limbeck (n), "an apparatus used in distillation." One table was crowded with torts and limbecks, some bubbling, some empty. (page 88)
• cresset (n), "an iron vessel or basket used for holding an illuminant and mounted as a torch or suspended as a lantern." The cresset was out. The torts and limbecks and other vessels were all clean. (p 219)

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

Keigo Higashino's The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is an odd novel, and one that came recommended by a friend and without any other context (I think I was told "it's very famous and popular in Japan" and "I think you'll like it"). I would not have found it on my own, but it is a perfect little self-contained dumpling of a novel.

The novel centers on the titular general store, whose proprietor accepts letters asking for advice; some replies are posted in the front window, and some are left for private pickup and review in the back of the store. The letters start as lighthearted pranks from local schoolkids but in the course of the novel we see a wide variety of people, in moments of vulnerability, turn to a stranger for advice. And the advice is mixed! Sometimes good, sometimes bad, always trying to meet them where they are.

What struck me reading this book was the subtle ways that it became clear that the cultural expectations were not what I expected. Whether because of the author's background, the setting, or the writing style, people kept being set up for climactic scenes or decisions and then... juddering to a different point. Sometimes I thought one path was clearly signaled and the characters (and narration!) didn't even seem to think it was possible; other times, something momentous happened out of nowhere. Conversations careened in ways I didn't understand; characters made silent assumptions about each other that I didn't have access to. It was a curious experience.

Overall the book was good, quite varied in its stories and never predictable. Is this modern fiction? Fantasy? Magical realism? I didn't know what to expect, the plot didn't follow any threads for too long so no one person was actually the focus, and incidental characters were shifted into and out of the spotlight all the time. It was tied up in a tidy way, but not a happy ending.

I liked it.

This post's theme word is alterity (n), "otherness; the quality or state of being other or different." The stories were interwoven with each other in a style that highlighted their similarities explicitly and left the overall alterity for the reader to find.

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is a novel in the form of a series of journal entries; the character who is writing is, by turns, unreliable, forgetful, and unclear. But because the novel would truly suffer from continuous vague recollections, he also has perfect memory for dialog and for visual descriptions of scenery and surroundings. Does this seem contradictory? Yes, but lucky for us, it doesn't matter because nothing in this book particularly matters.

The novel takes place inside a giant House --- a truly enormous House --- a possibly endless House, consisting of a series of marble-lined, colonnaded halls, vestibules, staircases, and passages. While the narrator uses the word "House", readers and other incidental characters come to understand the series of rooms as a labyrinth: not connected in any predictable way, challenging to navigate, and full of distracting detail. There is no obvious entry or exit point, though the action is centered around a vestibule (also the origin point whence the narrator indexes all other rooms). The narrator is vague on details that seem significant (how does he remember navigation directions perfectly when others get so easily lost?) and incredibly specific on details that no one else cares about (how many daily-use goods will he fashion from "fish leather", where is the best room to go bird-watching from, what is the Platonic Ideal Good Action for him to take in any situation). He confusingly both denies the existence of a world outside the building AND knows lots of words that refer to things that exist in our world, but not in the House.

This sounds mysterious, and it is. Clarke is a good writer and this book has many excellent moments --- e.g. the wink to the reader on p. 60,

I realised that the search for the Knowledge had encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if we ever discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.

This was unfortunately prescient, as the cleverness of presenting the core labyrinth/mysteri as "a text to be interpreted" was excellent, but indeed once the puzzle's answer was revealed, it was not very satisfying to consider the continuation of any part of the story or setting.

The cover blurbs portray the book as a sparkling gem of prose, an all-absorbing world full of beauty that will irresistibly entice the reader, and a fascinating puzzle. I found the book to be well-written, but describing things as irresistibly beautiful and actually invoking the impression that they are beautiful are two different things. The book does a lot of telling (repeatedly, "The Beauty of the House is immeasurable") and not a lot of showing; mostly we come to understand, gradually, that the narrator's seeming-unreliability all has completely predictable causes, and actually that everything he reports is true. All mysteries are solved, every single clue that I noted was tied up neatly in the most obvious conclusion, there were zero twists and few reveals, no characters had any subterfuge or depth. Everyone was exactly as they seemed on the surface.

And finally, my observation of several books I've read recently: I get the impression that the book's conclusion was written under duress, with the publisher demanding "just finish the book and turn it in!", and not given any time to develop into something interesting or satisfying. The book definitely ends, and that is what can be said about it: in the last page there is a feeble grasp at Greater Meaning which falls completely flat and ends the book on a gaspingly sour note.

My recommendation: if you want an atmospheric book about a mysterious, endless house, read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. If you want a book told by an unreliable narrator, then I strongly recommend Tamsyn Muir's recent release Harrow the Ninth (and its preceding book, Gideon the Ninth). If you want a book that explores, in a fun novelistic way, the boundaries of human knowledge and the notion that modern scientific rationality has cut us off from access to certain domains of knowledge and maybe even certain actions and physically real spaces, then I recommend Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (which also includes an improvised modern Viking saga!). And if you want an excellent book written by Susanna Clarke, read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

This post's theme word is heterography (n), "a spelling different from the one currently in use." The vaguely timeless ambience would have been more interesting with heterography.

James Joyce

"In attempting to be completely faithful to real life, in all its true confusion and complexity, Joyce ended up writing a book that is fascinatingly, instructively unreadable." - Professor Eric Bulson, for The School of Life on Joyce's Finnegans Wake

This is serious. I have tried several times and I just keep putting Joyce's books back into the queue. Listening to this framing of Joyce's work makes me think I should bump up its priority and try to read it again.

This post's theme word is frustraneous (adj), "useless, unprofitable." The exercise of reading was frustrating but not frustraneous.

Infinite Jest (again, and always)

Tom Bissell's article on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest says things I've never been able to express. I have loved Infinite Jest and written about it before (1, 2), and the past few years I find myself rereading it once a year. Bissell's article prompted me to begin rereading again, in that infinite cycle that Infinite Jest describes and invokes.

• "We return to Wallace sentences now like medieval monks to Scripture, tremblingly aware of their finite preciousness"
  Yes, absolutely. I have a copy of The Pale King that I am waiting to read, saving it for a chance to enjoy, for the last time, new DFW sentences. I want to savor every one.
• "he wrote so often, and so well, in a microscopically close third person. "
  I've never considered the scope of the third person writing style, but "microscopically" is such a fantastic way to describe the way DFW manages to capture every single detail, in obsessively constructed sentences, to describe the sensation of involuntary mental obsession.
• "... how completely the book had rewired me. Here is one of the great Wallace innovations: the revelatory power of freakishly thorough noticing, of corralling and controlling detail. ... The Wallaceian is not a description of something external; it describes something that happens ecstatically within, a state of apprehension (in both senses) and understanding. He didn’t name a condition, in other words. He created one."
  I hear you, Mr. Bissell. I hear you.

Rereading Infinite Jest is calming: every character runs on its prescribed arc, enacts its prescribed compulsions, suffers its prescribed mental agony, and the whole book swirls together in its intricate and jumbled details. This time through I recognize that almost every film of Incandenza's filmography --- which seems at first reading like a nonsensical list of overly-artsy non-sequiturs --- is actually a reference to an event in his life, and altogether the filmography describes his descent into madness and spiraling circular obsessions.

It's great. Go read it, then also go read everything written by and about DFW about DFW. I shamelessly prescribe more reading than is feasible, I know: but read it anyway. Just try. It's perfect for spring.










This post's theme word is birdlime, "to ensnare" or "something that ensnares." That birdlime book describes a fatally birdlime film.

The Iron King

The streets of Paris were quiet today, and fairly empty. I think people stayed in, or stayed out of the city. It was one of those surreal afternoons where the usual standard of behavior --- don't talk to people on the subway, don't make loud disruptive noises in public --- was being eerily pervasively applied, so that combined with the reduced crowding, everything seemed vaguely dreamlike. As if all of life was experienced at the remove of a cotton ball in the ears, strangely muted. Plus there were no buskers out, and plenty of police in the city center, visibly standing at subway funnel-points.

A fitting day altogether for me to finish Maurice Druon's The Iron King, which culminates with the death of Philip IV (the Fair). GRRM's introduction calls this story "the original game of thrones," but it was not nearly full of enough end-of-chapter Dan-Brown-style plot twists. People mostly acted as their previous descriptions caused one to expect them to act. This could be partly the authorial style --- it is strongly historical-retrospective, as scenes are often described as "very important for what was to come" or "shaping the future history of France". Not many cliffhangers, and of course much less gruesome violence and sex than HBO would require. (This book series has been adapted twice to TV, but I have not yet seen either.)

It is a curious sensation to read a fictionalized account of Real History when I am completely unfamiliar with the actual story. I can read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (fantastic, thrilling, mentally delicious fictionalized account of Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII's reign) and have a good idea of how the overall story goes, of how it fits into the general course of history, of what mentions of oppressed local ethnic groups are important, foreshadowing, nods to modern issues. This is Absolutely Not The Case for the history of the monarchy of France. My full knowledge of these monarchs comes from a single rainy afternoon in the Cathedral at St. Denis, when I viewed all their tombs, crowded together in a concentration of magnificence, a true timeless monument to the art of marble carvers. And also I guess from broad stereotypes about Marie Antoinette?

So this historical novel can still have surprises for me. I had not previously realized that when we discuss peasants being associated with manor lands, what we mean is slaves --- people who are trapped where they are born, required to labor there for the benefit of someone else. Nevermind if they were allowed to hold money or learn to read, they were effectively slaves. So by the intermediate value theorem, there must have been a point at time when the serfs were freed. By decree, since there wasn't a liberating revolution, or maybe by degrees of decree, gradually. This is a neat realization: the historical point when serfs became people, capable of some (limited) self-determination, and (limited) freedom of movement!

It's also great to see the monarch's move toward (1) bureaucracy, for smoother-functioning kingdom administration through the changes of monarchs, and (2) consolidating Earthly power separate from the sway of religious institutions, two developments which I used to think of as primarily English and as happening about 200 years later. Of course France was there first, and subtler --- no revolution here, no disputed succession. (Not yet, at least --- there are 6 more books in the series.)

I of course enjoyed the fact that I am familiar with the city descended from the Paris described in the book. I have been inside several of the buildings that were, once, the palaces where these intrigues took place. I have stood where they burned heretics, though I did not know it. Also, basically all the buildings in a 10-minute-walk radius of Notre Dame were once palaces. I imagine a network of ziplines that allow commuting between palaces without ever touching the plebian ground.


This post's theme words are several:

• appanage, "a source of revenue, such as land, given by a sovereign for the maintenance of a member of the ruling family", and
• hydromel, "a mixture of water and honey," and
• expiate, "to make amends for; to atone," and
• cynosure, "an object of attention" or "something that serves to guide," and
• hieratic, "of or associated with sacred persons or offices."

The king offered an appanage to expiate his offense against the hierarchs, a sort of cynosure to draw their attention to his kindness and sweeten their dispositions like hydromel.

A bit of a stretch, I know, but I'm tired. Can you do better? I'll replace it, with authorial attribution; leave better suggestions in the comments below.

Ancillary Justice (again)

An excellent book. Still. On this reread (previously), parts of it --- where, despite the genderless society and advancement-by-merit, everything is nepotism and in-group and out-group prejudices anyway --- were so true to life, so precisely fictionally parallel to injustices in reality, that they infuriated me. I had to put the book down, my blood boiling, and wait to calm down, to remind myself that the point of the book is to upset this ruling-class hierarchy. And that I already know how things turn out (in this novel at least), and that some of the most hateful characters are duly punished by the authorial hand of justice.

It doesn't feel very just, though. Which I suppose is one aspect of the pointedly polysemous title.

I am in complete awe of Ann Leckie for producing such a perfect jewel of a book, fully-formed, springing from her mind like Athena from Zeus'. Of course much work and development surely went into it, but still: Ancillary Justice is a novel of consummate perfection. It works on so many levels, it is a space opera and a manifesto on gender and privilege and interpersonal relationships and the meaning of trust and life goals. No one is too small to matter, and no one is too big to have flaws.

Read it already! I'm rereading it to work my way up to the third piece of the trilogy, which has floated to the top of my queue. So, you know, expect to hear about Ancillary Sword soon.


This post's theme word is posset "a drink of hot milk curdled with ale." Brought to you by China Miéville's Kraken, p. 127. The specialty of frozen planet Nilt's beverage selection is essentially posset --- warm, fermented milk, repeatedly described in the most unpalatable terms.

Tombs of Atuan

The wonders of Earthsea continue with Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan. The second book in the loose series features another protagonist, another coming-of-age of sorts. This time the protagonist is a teenage girl, Tenar, the reincarnated focus of a religion that (to pick up on outside clues) is confined to a small part of Earthsea, and diminishing.  Tenar is in many ways the opposite of young Ged: she is accustomed to solitude, and not asking too many questions or receiving too many answers. She does not receive training or much guidance. She has no great dreams of adventure or power, content to be more inward-looking; but she fully explores her domain (a remote religious installation in the desert) and masters it. Like Ged, she must give up childish ideas to become adult, and like Ged, her choices have far-reaching consequences which she must learn to accept and weave into her own character in order to be a whole, complete person.

Just like the previous one, this book was a short, quick, satisfying read. As you, dear reader, may perhaps have realized, I am usually reading several books at once, and this means that my brain draws strange connections between them. This book was wonderful in contrast with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (blog post forthcoming), which robbed its sole featured female character of any agency. Here, women are abundant, and interact with each other as people. The book passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, surpassing that minimum requirement and going on to make female characters important, to make their choices matter, to make important plot points and even the continuation of the book, or the universe. Also, to make this not a big deal.

Our previous protagonist, Ged, does make an appearance. He shows up partway through the book, and serves as a nice connection to the rest of Earthsea outside the parched abbey's walls and closed mindset. This is nice, but Ged doesn't take center stage, and although we readers know the outcome of the book from quite early (it is listed in Ged's long list of mythic accomplishments, at the end of the previous book), it is nice to see the detail that surrounds the one-sentence Summary of Legend. And this does not detract from Tenar's centrality or importance. Ged himself bows to her decisions, puts his life in her hands, and listens carefully when she decides, and often changes her mind, about what she wants to do.


This post's theme word is darkle, "to make or become dark." The darkling cave quenched all light, crushed all hope, and was decorated with many pretty pictures (which unfortunately no one would ever see again).

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea is a dollop of fantasy delight, a neat little story with tendrils sneaking out into a broader magical world, but all packaged up as a coming-of-age, coming-into-powers tale. I did not accurately remember its length --- in my mind it has the fleshed-out detail of a full novel, but it clocks in at only ~150 pages in my true-numbered ecopy. It took only two days of commuting-reading to finish, and my Magical Reading Tricorder of the Future informs me I spent less than 4 hours inhaling the book.

It's nice. It's calming. The narrator's voice sounds like a camp counselor over a fire, a voice that will comfort and lull you into sleep. The story is built around simple archetypes, foundational storytelling pillars laid firmly against bedrock. It feels dependable, and indeed, it can be relied-on to feature the nice elements of a Le Guin story. True friendships, good food, daily tasks described with love and care. A certain simple poetry in phrasings and structure. (In a moment of despair, one character muses that "at least his [own] death would put an end to the evil he had loosed by living." pg. 105) No sense of embellishment, or the science-like tricky details typical in the magical workings of, e.g., Brandon Sanderson.

A few details, roughly sketched, give a sense of the mystery and power of magic. I liked in particular that, akin to the logic of computer programming, scope must be specified and clear:

A mage can control only what is near him, what he can name exactly and wholly. (pg. 41)

I liked that, although great puissance and achievements are foretold for the protagonist Ged, he is not an overpowered, unreasonably-lucky, unkillable master. He makes mistakes, a lot of them, and he doesn't instantly recover or learn his lesson. He earns scars, not always wisely or bravely, and they are ugly, not magical or handsome. His growing power and wisdom are accompanied by a proportionate loss of ego and desire to use the power.

A lovely book. Recommended.


This post's theme word is gascon, "a braggart" or "boastful." Ged gradually matures from a gascon to a proper adult, humble at the prospect of everything he knows he does not know.

They said it couldn't be done...

Today an attempt to add more [e]books to my magical futuristic pocket-library, and I received the shocking message that the device is full. No more space! Egads! I thought it couldn't be done; it turns out it can be done.

FYI, I have read just over 50% of the books, according to my digital library software. Each time I add  n fresh and unread books to my magical device, my library informs me that I have read n/2 books since the last influx.

On the one hand, I am losing ground! On the other hand, the two numbers are only a factor of 2 apart. So I am holding steady, at a ratio that theoretically-minded people like myself usually regard as "basically equal" (precluding a catastrophic reading event: my stranding on a desert island with unlimited USB recharging capabilities OR my unexpected and sudden inheritance of a digital copy of the Library of Congress).


This post's theme word is vade mecum, "a book for ready reference, such as a manual or guidebook." My magical ereader is the vade mecum to fulfill my childhood fantasies.

Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation is a novel (part one of a trilogy) which tries very hard to evoke a creepy atmosphere. It didn't work on me, but your mileage may vary.

The extremely untrustworthy first-person narrator serves as the primary tool for executing and implementing the extreme creepiness of the atmosphere. But the narrator is so extremely untrustworthy that she barely gets to explain what is going on in the novel --- she keeps interrupting her own narrative with exclamations about her untrustworthiness, with flashbacks about her undependable memory, with second-guesses of her own first-hand experiences. If this was excised, the novel would be a lot shorter and less interesting (like watching Memento in the right order).

Ok, so the untrustworthy narrator (one of my favorite tools, when executed subtly and well) didn't make it creepy. What about the setting, the monsters, the story?

Nope.

They just didn't catch me enough to be creepy. The narrator and the emotional timbre of the entire novel were a little too distant to have any emotional hook. It just seemed... remote. Why should any reader care about the story, when even the narrator gets disassociatively bored at the climactic parts and switches to describing something else? (And as a perpendicular complaint: there was simply not enough hard science in this novel, for a narrative that supposedly came from a scientist's mind.)

Yes, I realize this is all part of a more carefully structured trilogy. Many reviewers say that book 1 makes a lot more sense, re: narrative jumps and avoiding descriptions, after reading book 3. But my time is finite and this just didn't entice me enough to pick up the following novels in the series.


This post's theme word is lysergic, "trippy, psychedelic" --- but often used to describe natural panoramas of beauty and majesty, in my reading experience. The swampy and forested expanses rolled out before her in lethargic, lysergic beauty.

Infinite Jest

Phew and egads! I finished rereading Infinite Jest. Relief is accompanied by psychic emptiness, a hollow longing to experience the entire thing again.

... the novel is about many things: fathers and sons; mothers and sons; addiction; communication; entertainment; politics; greatness, mediocrity and failure. It’s a coming of age story alongside a recovery story that is also possibly a love story, all wrapped in a cloak-and-dagger-ish mystery about international realignment and terrorism. Choose your favorite combination and go with it. The book is about a lot of things. -- Mike at Fiction Advocate

The hardest part, psychologically, emotionally, was reading the extremely violent scenes. The Antitoi brothers' deaths, Gately's shooting, the Mt. Dilaudid scene: these are described in straightforward words, treated with the same flat descriptive affect as the extended discussions of drug withdrawal, depression, and early-morning tennis practice. And this consistent authorial treatment is painful to read, because it creates the associative comparison that, for example, being depressed is just as psychically painful as suffering bullets, stabbings, blood loss, head trauma, etc. Reading the violence was unpleasant, not because the violence itself was distasteful or grim or extreme (although those things are true), but because it made so many other things, which had seemed vaguely painful at a clinical remove, become retrospectively intensely painful and excruciating.

Ow.

I understand that this was the a purpose of the book. The reading experience now is colored by DFW's suicide; descriptions of suicidal and anxious, trapped-in-your-own-head scenes are particularly pointed and affecting. When I read:

What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. ... everything unendurable was in the head, ... (p. 1055)

or

If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one. (p. 859)

... then my heart aches, and I am sympathetic and sorrowful that such pain can exist, and can have hurt someone who could so beautifully express the isolating pain in a way which is anti-isolating, which is relatable and unifies the human experience. Yet the words themselves, and expressing them by such clear and enlightening means, can worsen the problem:

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express can really invoke. This can be tricky. (p. 226)

The novel balances on this edge, not by a sustained series of tiny nudges, but by massive swoops to either side: extreme fear, personality-obliterating anxiety, emotions invoked and clinically discussed and manipulated, each in turn. Rote cliches repeated until they gain meaning, lose it, and eventually become both antaclastically significant and a series of meaningless phonemes.

One overarching goal, or conclusion, or hypothesis of the novel has stood out to me in a few places, on different rereads. It is the conclusive-sounding, earnest, non-ironic idea that we need to give ourselves away.

American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret. (p. 74)

This is echoed later, with links that grab many of the other threads of the novel.

It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately---the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. (p. 1102)

Certainly the drug-addiction plots, the tennis-academy plots, the terrorist-plotting plots, the militant grammarians, the film studies, the weird undercover assignments, the personal vendettas --- they all fall under this neat summary: the characters care deeply, dedicate their lives to giving their lives away. Although many of them phrase it as an escape rather than a gift; they all seem to be trying to flee some personal fear by this selfless giving-away of themselves.

It seems that Infinite Jest is fractally interesting. Every closer examination reveals another lurking meaning. I have the sense that each individual sentence could be deconstructed in this way, fruitfully although perhaps meaninglessly: the book holds together so well, it seems unlikely that its individually analyzed components would be as effective at achieving its goals. And in any case, I've written a dissertation already, and have no interest in sinking my time into this recondite time-sponge, especially since it will likely reduce my own enjoyment of the novel. In the end, I let the book describe my feelings about it:

This should not be rendered in exposition like this... (p. 113)

... so, what about rendering it in Legos?


This post's theme word is cathexis, "the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object (especially to an unhealthy degree)." Infinite Jest uses the word "cathexis" effectively, as well as embodying in several different ways the never-ending loop of self-reflexive cathexis-spurred paralysis.

Bring Up the Bodies

Hilary Mantel's sequel to the incredible Wolf Hall is called Bring up the Bodies, and it continues the terse and sparse storytelling around Henry VIII's dissolving marriages (the second one, this time). The novel continues to be told in a non-chronological, extremely limited third person, and almost every detail of characterization and tone must be interpolated by the reader, or understood from the reactions of other characters in each scene.

I loved this book.

I love Thomas Cromwell (Mantel's version) more than ever, but of course the portrayal is shamelessly Cromwell-positive: he is even-handed, polite, deferential to women, pro-education (for all!) and anti-magical thinking. He understands systems of finance and government, and understands systems of personal interaction with an incredible finesse, especially given how quiet and withdrawn he is; it is surprising to hear other characters shout at him about his overbearing nature, his ceaseless talking, since the world --- as understood from inside his head --- doesn't really contain him at all; he is a silent blank at the center of the book, and the incredible balancing act of spinning plates and juggling fire and turning lead to gold are taking place around a quiet eye of the storm, an absence which has more weighty presence than the king himself.

I recommend this book, though I enjoyed Wolf Hall more and you should (obviously) start there. I also recommend the audiobook versions, as I read this book (and Wolf Hall) several times each, then also listened to them. Simon Slater's narration of Wolf Hall is particularly effective; he does the accents, he does subtle intonations, he adds a sarcastic but mild depth to the book which really enhances it. (Although, having re-listened and re-read several times, I can say that there are 2 scenes where he mixes up which voice goes with which speaker; this is understandable, since the dialog happens without attribution, and everyone is "him" anyway.) Simon Vance's Bring Up the Bodies is also very good, although his version of Cromwell's inner monologue is a bit more spiteful in tone. Still, both are good.

This book highlights some interesting features of a monarchy; forgive me if, having grown up with no monarch, these are obvious. Firstly, it seems astonishing that we still have monarchs today, and that their personal connections and personalities and day-to-day comportment still influence national politics (e.g. "What kind of King will Charles III be?"), since the monarch is no longer directing the entire government out of their own brain. It also seems frankly incredible that any monarch ever ran a country without being supremely literate, but there I think I am only betraying my own hyper-literate upbringing in a world where the written word is widely used and understood. Huzzah for reading and writing, which enabled you to comprehend this sentence!

Thus endeth my sparse and idiosyncratic review of Bring Up the Bodies.


This post's theme word is calumniate (v tr), "to make false statements about someone maliciously." Is it possible to self-calumniate, like self-incriminating?

The Ink Readers of Doi Saket

"The Ink Readers of Doi Saket" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a delightful gem of a story. You can read it here or listen to it here. It is about wishing, and community, and coincidence; it begins and ends with a murder, but nevertheless maintains a playful air that makes the story uplifting and fun. The writing is clean and clear, straightforward and easy to read, with the tone of a fairytale and occasional winks of cleverness to the audience.

Read it, it's quick and fun, and pleasantly outside the Western fairytale setting.


This post's theme word is terrene, "relating to the earth; earthly, mundane." The granting of terrene wishes leads to enlightenment and elevation to a higher plane of existence.

Ancillary Justice

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is a magnificent dollop of science fiction. It is ɛ-close to the Platonic ideal of a space opera --- I have zero complaints, but I reserve the final ɛ of my opinion for the piece of entertainment (perhaps Infinite Jest V?) so engaging that it induces willing dehydration and starvation.

You should read it.

The novel achieves magnificent things on many axes, simultaneously (and impressively).

On the surface, it is an easy read, quick and engaging, emotional and intellectual in good proportion. The structure of the universe also lets the reader tweak the experience; the story is so rich with details that it is possible to be entirely absorbed in wondering about the emotional states of sentient spaceships (HT to Iain M. Banks, whose sentient spaceships are similarly clever, funny, inhuman but interested in and interesting to humanity, and surely influenced this book). The more technical daydreamers can wonder about the AI technology, the biological interfaces with ancillaries, the Stargate-style gates in space, the scientific abilities of the just-offstage aliens waiting in the wings.

The meat of the story has a fascinating POV character. Other narrators who I find similarly engaging are all unreliable; this one is reliable, and even fallible, but the narrative line between being one character and an amalgam of several bodies, with knowledge of other characters' biological states but not direct access to their thoughts, is fascinatingly navigated. Ann Leckie performs masterfully, and like all masters, the performance seems effortless. The imbricated timelines of different branches of the story are handled superbly, with coordinated unfurling of recounted history and current action building in synchrony up to the book's climax. All with a light, intelligent touch.

As a literary work, too, the novel has merit. It raises questions of identity, personal intention and actions, and fate. Religion is an available theme, if you're interested. So is the question of empire-building, and utilitarianism: is some barbarism permitted, in the interests of uniting everyone under a single overarching government of fairness and justice? (Reminiscent of the philosophical point made by the beautiful action movie Hero, or the histories of China and Rome.)

One of the nice takeaways (for me) from the novel was a similar tone and subtle message: do good work. This is a lot like Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish and Earthsea novels: no matter the character's personal scope of power or influence, it is possible to better the universe by exerting that small influence in a responsible manner. For the greater good. Just do what you can, with the power you have, whether you are an omnipotent, all-skills-endowed superprotagonist (my pet peeve), or an unempowered, unevenly-systematically oppressed, unimportant body on the slush-pile of history. A secret and heartwarming message that, with enough decent people performing good (not necessarily coordinated) works for justice and kindness (and dignity and propriety), these small pieces can aggregate to form an overall society with a generous spirit and positive outcome.

Anyway, read this book. It is a gratifying experience on every level.


This post's theme word is helot, "a serf or slave." There are citizens, non-citizens, aliens, and ancillaries; no one is a helot, although ancillaries' movements and thoughts are subordinated to a centralized AI brain.

Doomsday Book

Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is amazingly good. It features time-travelling Oxford historians of the future, rural English peasants of the past, and the epidemics and personal connections that intertwine their lives across hundreds of years. It is excellent. I had intended to ration out the nearly 600-page novel, but instead ended up reading it in one contiguous binge. It is not a tense page-turner, but such a quality novel, with intriguing characters and plot, and well-written, that I did not want it to end. And indeed, as the book in my right hand dwindled, I became increasingly worried about the yet-unresolved fates of the many characters.

The themes concluded on the melancholy, yet woven throughout was a persistent thread of the hopefulness of all academics and those who seek and disseminate knowledge. I can see echoes in Doomsday Book of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but the shared world and frantic action which were used to comedic result in that book, were used to other ends in this. Computers, paradoxes, math, history, survival skills, the art of consuming a gobstopper, and the curious evolution of the English language, are each given focus in turn. Intelligent characters keep their senses of humor while determinedly solving problems and achieving goals. 

So good. You should read it.


This post's theme word is calque, "a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation." Wikipedia informs us that determining a word is a calque is often more difficult than identifying mere loan words.

Shakespeare's birthplace

This picturesque half-timbered building, subject to such immaculate preservation and dense precision gardening, is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Its preservation, picturesqueness, and landscaping are all the result of this fact; for now is the heyday of our fanatical devotion to Shakespeare's work, and everything associated with him can earn valuable tourist income.

Well, almost everything. I did not pay to take this photo. I did not buy any of the many beautiful editions of his plays for sale in the adjacent Shakespeare store. They are all available free in searchable electronic version, which is how I prefer to consume my ancient texts. Parchment and clay tablets are so burdensome.


This post's theme word is parnassian, "of or relating to poetry." Shakespeare's parnassian fame is the bane of many schoolchildren.

Merry Christmas (Eve)!

I hope your holiday season is free of unspeakable horrors... but just in case it isn't, here's my favorite holiday poem, as written/narrated/produced by Norm Sherman of the fantastic Drabblecast.


This post's theme word is batrachian, "relating to frogs." Bloated, batrachian, and covered in red! A close second was lambent, "glowing."

Zero History

Another delight by William Gibson! Like Spook Country, Zero History satisfies my need for intricately-described stuff (in this case, interior décor and fashion clothing lines).

Yet again he reprises his apparent obsession with brand identities, in particular their absence. Secret brands, and then super-secret brands. Who advertise not even by word-of-mouth, but by scarcity and failure to advertise or even sell clothing. Sheer unavailability. This is related to a criticism of disposable mass-produced items and consumerist culture: almost all the main characters are (1) rich, but (2) own no physical possessions. They constantly list their full personal inventory, which is the same as their total worldly assets. An entire book is spent to track down the designer of a single jacket... but that jacket was designed to last forever, to be appropriate for all occasions, a unisex garment reminiscent of a fashionable dark thneed.

Plots are hatched, schemes are devised, and once more an international publicity company (run like a high-stakes terrorist cell) unfurls its curious tale across these pages.

He saw a magical-looking bookshop, stock piled like a mad professor's study in a film, and swerved, craving the escape into text. But these seemed not only comics, unable to provide his needed hit of words-in-a-row, but in French as well. (p 150)

My needed hit of words-in-a-row is fulfilled indeed.


This post's theme word is meretricious, "appealing in a cheap or showy manner: tawdry," or "based on pretense or insincerity." (From a Latin word meaning prostitute, although interestingly enough, the same root from which we get "merit" -- merere, to earn money.) Gibsonism is concerned with a focus on the antimeretricious aspects of popular culture, lightly sprinkled with -- and across -- cyberspace.