Sarah Monette's Blog, page 36

status report

I am back safely from Arizona.

LepreCon was excellent--thank you to everybody involved!--and Arizona was beautiful. I deeply appreciated that fifty-degree temperature differential.

Traveling was kind of dreadful, although mercifully everything was on time and nothing exciting happened. But American Airlines squashes its coach passengers into tiny seats and, having charged $25 to check a bag, does not feel it can spring for so much as a packet of peanuts. The positive side is that the plate and nine screws in my ankle did not set off the metal detectors either in Madison or Phoenix.

And traveling with RLS is like traveling with a demon toddler. It WON'T go to sleep, WON'T WON'T WON'T, and that means I can't sleep either. Making me a charming roommate, as matociquala and klages can attest.

But I got to see many people I am very fond of, and don't get to see very often, and I met new people whom I liked very much, and aside from my stupid health issues, had a wonderful time.

And I came home to discover that spring, which has been on back-order for two months, has finally arrived.

reading about Jack the Ripper

I have thus far read four books about Jack the Ripper, two by Paul Begg, one by M. J. Trow, and one by Donald Rumbelow. Rumbelow's (Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook) is the seminal work in the field (by which I mean efforts to understand the murders, the victims, the detectives, the suspects, the newspapers, the public, the politicians, etc., in their historical context, rather than, Hi! I have a crazy theory about the Ripper's real identity!), and it is very good, very readable and thoughtful--and unfortunately, at this point, very outdated. New material has come to light, theories and "facts" have been disproved: the case against M. J. Druitt makes no sense; Mary Jane Kelly was not pregnant; the kidney sent to poor George Lusk cannot be proved to have come from Catherine Eddowes and probably didn't; that whole Freemason thing? Dude, don't even.

So Rumbelow is an untrustworthy Virgil for the Inferno that is Whitechapel in 1888 (and, no, if you read the social history background chapters in Ripper books, that comparison ISN'T an exaggeration), and I'm looking for a better one.

M. J. Trow (The Many Faces of Jack the Ripper) isn't it. TMFoJTR is a kind of weird book. It's like it wants to grow up to be a coffee-table book. It's oversized, glossy paper, and full of photographs, but the photographs are either the same double-handful of photographs you get in every Ripper book (and bad reproductions, too) or photographs of Whitechapel as it is now, which are all kind of small and cramped. And then there's the one photo with the girl posed as a chestnut seller Jack the Ripper allegedly spoke to, where she's all young and smooth-skinned and lovely and as a reader I am all WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT OVER. So a coffee-table book where the budget got slashed mid-project? I don't know. Trow's style is breezy and sensationalist, and his research is sloppy (which is why he can't be Virgil), but on the other hand, he has a lovely, common sense attitude toward the various sources/theories about the Ripper's identity and assesses them realistically.

Which contrasts him nicely with Paul Begg (Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History (2003), and Jack the Ripper: The Facts (2004)), who can't bring himself to let go of Sir Melville Macnaghten and especially not of Sir Robert Anderson, despite the fact that neither one of them stacks up well when you stop and think it over. Begg's Definitive History has some very good chapters on the social history surrounding the murders--although his chapters on the murders themselves aren't as well-organized as Rumbelow's--and I give him credit for keeping the theories about the murderer out of the discussion of the murders. But I find his hobby horse frustrating.

I'm sure I'm going to have that experience again as I read other people's books, and probably in the end I will have to jury-rig a Virgil for myself.

another beautiful poem about grief

this one by papersky

In memoriam: Joanna Russ

Joanna Russ
February 22, 1937 - April 29, 2011

I'm going to link to Edna St. Vincent Millay again, because I really don't have better words than the ones she used. Also, because I think it says everything about why I am so sad and unresigned about Russ's death, the review I wrote of The Country You Have Never Seen for Strange Horizons.

5 things, SPRING AT LAST edition

1. "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" (Fantasy Magzine 50) made Rich Horton's Recommended Reading list in this month's Locus : "an involving story about a dead girl who has a job killing devils. [. . .] Good and original work."

2. When this part of the Upper Midwest decides to be beautiful, it can knock your socks off.

3. New acupuncturist continues to be made of win and awesome. I've spent most of the last three sessions watching the needles chase the block in my right leg around. It hasn't given in yet, but I think it's getting tired.

4. This coming weekend, matociquala and I are Guests of Honor at LepreCon 37, and they've got their programming schedule up.

5. Speaking of cons, my (eerily symmetrical) WisCon schedule looks like:
Sat., 1:00-2:15 Celebrating Diana Wynne Jones [moderator]
Sat., 4:00-5:15 Space Fairies from Beyond: reading with Pamela Dean, Cat Valente, David D. Levine, and Seanan McGuire
Sun., 1:00-2:15 Whedonistas
Sun., 4:00-5:15 We're All Mad Here
And, of course, the Sign Out on Monday.

UBC: The Lost Life of Eva Braun

Lambert, Angela. The Lost Life of Eva Braun. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. [library]


Before the actual review, a side note: the footnotes in this book are the most badly edited footnotes I have ever seen in my life. Aside from the fact that the footnotes are frequently repetitious, the numbers in the text are sometimes on the wrong page. Sometimes there seems to be a footnote missing. Sometimes there are two different places pointing to the same footnote. It's just bafflingly awful.

And while I'm bitching about format and production, there was a very poor choice made at some point: there are occasional interpolations from the author's life (e.g., her visit to Berchtesgaden and the almost entirely eradicated ruins of the Berghof), and someone chose to set those off from the main body of the text by indenting them in the same way they indented the block quotes. This meant that, as a reader, I could never be sure when I hit an indented passage, what the species of text was going to be. It was jarring and confusing, and it would have been so easy to fix.

Okay, enough of that.

This is a strange book, since I have to call it both a success and a failure. As a biography of Eva Braun, it is definitely a success. Lambert has done her research; she's dug out the primary sources, she's talked extensively with Eva Braun's only surviving relative. She's asked (most of) the hard questions and done her best to come up with answers. It is a very good biography, and it illuminates a lot of things about, not only Braun, but about Hitler and the society of the top-level Nazis (and their wives) and about German society, specifically the expectations and opportunities of German women, pre-World War II, during Weimar, and under the Nazis.

On the other hand, Lambert has a second project, and that I have to call a failure. Lambert's mother was German, a month younger than Eva Braun; Edith "Ditha" Schröder married an Englishman rather than becoming obsessed with Hitler, but Lambert's secondary thesis is that by comparing Eva and Ditha, we can understand them both better and empathize with them.

It is true that Lambert's memories of her mother do help to illuminate Eva Braun's largely inaccessible inner life: her resolute, willful ignorance of politics; her unthinking, culturally ingrained racism; the way in which her dependence on a mostly absent and inaccessible man (Lambert's English father seems, from Lambert's account, to have been about as much support to his wife as a pot-hole) made her life miserable and claustrophobic ... even Ditha's brutal sentimentality (when she translated her father's memoir from German to English, she bowdlerized it and inserted encomiums to her mother, and then destroyed the original). In fact, the most broadly useful insight I gained from Lambert's book is her idea that brutality and sentimentality are conjoined twins.

But the question of empathy is harder. I felt sorry for Edith Schröder Helps, but I did not like her. I did not forgive her (which seems to be Lambert's goal). And I found that that question--can we forgive Edith for being the person that she was?--actually hindered the project of understanding, because Lambert's personal need to forgive/defend her mother (and by extension her German female relatives) gets tangled up to the point that she seems to feel that she and her readers also have to forgive Eva Braun.

I can understand Eva Braun without forgiving her. I can believe that she had no idea what Hitler was doing after he came to power, and I certainly don't think she could have changed anything if she had known. I can even admire, in a way, her stubborn loyalty to Hitler. But--and this is something Lambert never discusses--even if she did not know what he was doing, she still chose, willfully, not to know that he was the sort of person who would do those things. And I can understand that; I can see where that choice emerged from her personality and her upbringing and the society around her. But she made the choice. She chose to pursue Hitler (Eva made all of the running in their relationship until her second suicide attempt convinced him he had to pay a little more attention to what he was doing to her); she chose to sacrifice her entire life to him, with increasing quantities of literalness as she went along. And either she made that choice knowing what he was and deciding to shut her eyes to it, or she deliberately shut her eyes before she made the choice. And she kept them shut every day from 1929 to 1945.

I can understand that. I can recognize that it was a terrible waste of whatever else Eva Braun might have been and I can regret that. I can be infuriated on her behalf that German society, patriarchal and authoritarian, gave her so few options and all of them either bad or impossible. I can pity her for the caged and miserable life she led, although a gilded cage is a hell of a lot better than a concentration camp. But I still don't forgive her, and I wish Lambert had used less of her energy in trying to convince me to.

over at Fantasy Magazine ...

Fantasy Magazine 's May issue (#50) includes my story, "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek." The story will be online on May 16 (don't worry, I'll post the link then) or you can buy the complete issue for $2.99. Or you can buy a subscription through Weightless Books.

Also, Fantasy Magazine has announced the results of its 2010 Readers' Poll. "After the Dragon" took first place. (!!!!!) Second was Nathaniel Williams' "Tenientes," and third Paul Berger's "Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of Her Glory."

I am delighted and amazed that "After the Dragon" is #1. Thank you to everyone who helped put it there. Also, thank you to Fantasy Magazine for the vegan truffles. They are indeed much tastier than a World Fantasy Award.

if anyone else is interested

here is an excellent answer to my Jack the Ripper reading question

meanwhile, back at the ranch

I should descend into the endless hell of revising The Goblin Emperor, and I may even do so this evening.

(Seriously. This book will not fix itself, especially not the big structural problems. And I know what to do; it's just the how that's beating me up.)

However, this afternoon, I have been making notes on projects that aren't ready to be written yet, because if I don't write things down, I will not remember them.
This AU-America novel is way more ambitious than I am. Which is a problem, since I actually don't like novels with as much scope as this one is trying to claim it needs (Salem! Mormon Utah! Airships! Lansford Hastings! Circuses! Helen Keller! Frankenstein! George Armstrong Custer! Mammoth Cave! Angels! Demons! Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!)
otoh, the great thing about writing about Puritans is that you can name characters things like Dread Not Dawson; I don't know anything else about Dread Not yet, except that her older sister is named Remember, but the name is full of promise.
Mélusine's equivalent of Jack the Ripper is Jean-the-Knife.
Now I just have to figure out which district he preys on. (And approximately three thousand six hundred and fifty-two other things as well. I am terrified that by the time I get Yes, No, Always, Never worked out to the point that I can write it, I will have forgotten most of what I know about Mélusine.)
In acknowledgment and celebration of the fact that I'm working at all, here's that first line meme again.

The Goblin Emperor
Maia woke with his cousin's cold fingers digging into his shoulder.

[untitled/short story]
On 26 Hunger 1273 AR, I was approached by the editor of the Verstannikker Aisenning, Ny Dybarro Klin.

[untitled/short story: giant mutant telepathic bear]
The wayhouse was gutted.

"Clouded Mary"
Clouded Mary descended from the train one careful step at a time. She gripped her valise tightly in her kidskin fingers, mindful of the one ripped seam where her steel armature poked through.

The Marriage of True Minds
Sanspiro Base is a company town all the way. Ginmet's proprietary newsfeed is all there is, unless you know how to hack the commset for Radio Free Sanspiro or W-FCK or one of the other half dozen or so pirate stations that aren't worth anybody's time to hunt down. And they get their news from Ginmet anyway, so it's only a matter of which sauce you want with today's helping of lies.

Cormorant Child
With a shriek of protesting metal, the hatch opened, and Mule fell out of the palace-ship into the long grass of the Edrin Valley. He was trying to run before he made it to his feet.

Thirdhop Scarp
The current owner of Thirdhop Scarp claims that the name is a contraction of "third hope," but this is etymologically dubious in the extreme; still improbable but far more likely is the local explanation: that if you fall off the escarpment, you reach the bottom in three hops.

"The Haunting of Peter Ludgate" (KMB)
The terrible irony in Katharine Blood's name became apparent in her death.

"The Moon Key" (KMB)
The vampire was waiting for me when I got home.

"All the King's Horses" (KMB)
[no first line yet]
[title from Peter Mulvey, "Stephen's Green": All the king's horses / That you once swore you'd seen / Are still waiting for you / Back in Stephen's Green"--it's a story about carousel horses, and right now that's all I know]

Yes, No, Always, Never
Tenebry Holt aspires to be a poet.

Dark Sister
Nephael cannot remember Heaven.

Blue Lace Agate (Ghoul Hunters)
[first line recalled for refurbishing]

"The Brides of Nyarlathotep" (GH)
The Renault case refused to break. Snapshots of the victims had gone up on the corkboard in the briefing room, one by one, and most of the agents in the Bureau of Paranormal Investigations' southeast hub could recite their names by heart: Lydia Renault, age 27; Mary Anne Sumner, age 24; Dale Kelton, age 25; Joella Barber, age 24. And they were waiting, sick and helpless, for number five.

"Under Babylon" (GH)
Mick Sharpton's howl of outrage--"oh fuck no!"--was clearly audible in the junior agents' office.

"Hiroshima After Hours" (GH)
[no first line yet]
[what did WWII look like in Mick & Jamie's world?]

"Crossing Styx" (GH)
"Think of it as a vacation," Jamie suggested. Mick's reply was physically impossible, but very creative.

"The Bone Jesus"
[no first line yet]

[untitled/short story]
"Ooh, that's a pretty one," Gretchen said, her voice a mocking buzz in DeNora's ear.

[untitled/short story]
When a full-bird Colonel of the Interstellar Military Corps, Medical Division, tells you that you're a miracle, you believe her.

[untitled/novel: Draco and Hennessey]
It was noon before the new wheeler said anything to me.

Schrödinger's Parable of the Cat
Denise Blumenthal died on a beautiful spring morning in the polity of Greater Manhattan.

"Pellucid"
The windship Pellucid heeled over, her sails filling as they caught the wind called the Mariah, one of the winds that blew so steadily across the desert that they had been mapped more than a century before: the Mariah, the Medusa, and the Mother of Angels, which had another name among windship crews.

[untitled/short story: archaeology and cannibalism]
May 18, 187- / My dearest Nancy, / We have finally reached Father's new posting at Fort W---, after a gruelling five day journey from Madison.

"Doc Holliday Makes a Deal"
I died on November 8, 1887. It was not a pleasant experience. Even less pleasant, however, was finding that death was not a permanent and irrevocable state of being in which a man could lie quiet and be eaten by worms as it pleased them. As it turned out, death was anything but.

[untitled/novel: walking back from Mordor]
The Emperor's head hit the floor with a wet thud. The body stayed upright a moment longer, and then simply collapsed; the blood jetting out of its neck soaked Moth through before he could think to move.

The White Devil
"So," said Viv. "How was MLA?"

"The Witch of Arvien"
The water closed over her head for the second time.

The Second Son
On the twenty-fourth of April, Medraut dreamed of Loheris again.

"The Skyscrapers of Bianch'Elen"
Long ago, in a world none of them can remember, the vampires were taught to dance.

[untitled/short story: paranormal noir]
The woman in my office had been dead for five days when I found her. The smell was unbearable, but the ghost was worse.

Black Hart Circle
There were four in the game. Deep play, deeper than the pockets of at least two of them. Lydia Nash might be as collected as a woman choosing a new hat, but Esme Collier and Kori Fletcher were out of their depth, and Fan Carpenter didn't look any too comfortable either.

[untitled/novel(?): Joan of Arc]
They'd taken the crime scene tape down from the basketball court.

"The Kitsune's Tragedy"
The English milord would not last out the day.

"Marjorie Kelly"
When I was thirteen years old, I murdered my best friend. Before you can understand anything else, you have to understand that.

The House at the End of the World
When Sebastian Marlin became a man, there was no one to celebrate with.

[untitled/short story]
The werewolf had hooked his iPod up to the stereo and put it on shuffle. He'd danced stiffly around the room to a Paul Cebar song and now stood at the window, whiskey glass forgotten in one hand, staring out across the rooftops at the sunset.

The Sidhetown Tigers
Jefferson Finch was a lousy pitcher, but he was the best we had.

"The Queen in Winter"
There were five queens in the creche. Beulah, Pauline, Camille, Thelma, and Katrina. Beulah was the favorite, and one night after the nurses had gone to bed, the others ganged up on her. There were only four queens after that.

"The Tale of Two Dead Mice"
Once upon a time, there were two dead mice, white and small and sleek. One had eyes as green as gangrene, and the other had eyes as red as spurting arterial blood. At night--when, being dead, they did not sleep--their eyes glowed like lanterns, and if they wished to hide, they had to shut them tightly.

The Werewolf Laura Stiles
Callum pushed back from his desk violently, as if physical distance could get him farther away from the collection of mistakes currently masquerading as the English 201 midterm.

Winter's Tale
I woke up in a nearly empty lecture hall.

[untitled/short story: lions]
"What are you doing, sister-wife?"

"(Un)fallen" (1)
[no first line yet, just the ornithopter photograph]

"(Un)fallen" (2)
The pain is intense, sharp, and localizes itself gradually, as Vij comes closer to consciousness, into a throbbing knot on the back of ser skull, just behind ser left ear. Se reaches to touch it, groans as that wakes a whole new set of pains through ser left shoulder and arm, and only then wonders why se is corporeal at all.

The Further Adventures of Teddy Truetext
[no first line yet]

[untitled/novel/YA(1)]
Diana leaned closer to the mirror.

[untitled/novel/YA(2)]
Never mind what I got sent to Pridmount for.

[untitled/novel/YA(3)]
After his third time in the Cage, Jude began to lose his childhood. He wasn't aware of it at first, so he never knew where it started, but one morning, he looked at the picture of his family where it stood on the tiny, wobbly table by his bed, and he couldn't remember who the other kid was.

[untitled/novel/YA(4)]
Ludovic Priest was under the dashboard of a '79 Comet when Skeeter sang out, "Bully lights!"

The Bride of Vranar
[no first line yet]

"Dragons of Earth and Sky"
[no first line yet]

"The Hostage Crisis on the Derelict Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, QUEEN OF LIVERPOOL"
The Mistral Freighter D35-692N-C, Queen of Liverpool, had been grounded for thirty years, since the successful implementation of Chen and Tiedemann's q-curve drive had made her and all her sisters obsolete.

[untitled/short story: Moria-Berlin]
[no first line yet]

[untitled/short story: "Cold Missouri Waters"/"Lawrence, Kansas"/wizards]
[no first line yet]

[untitled/short story: homeless vampires]
[no first line yet]

[untitled/novel: were-tigers]
[no first line yet]

[untitled/novel: the Great Forest has reclaimed Europe and there are werewolves in it; Varya]
[no first line yet]

[untitled/novel: female Dunedan; Owl]
[no first line yet]

5 things, cold wet rainy bleah edition

1. New acupuncturist = WIN

2. New Simon's Cat also = WIN

3. Lawrence Foster's Women, Family, and Utopia, which I got because of (a.) interest in American Utopian experiments and (b.) dilatory on-going research into nineteenth-century Mormonism, proves to have a chapter comparing the Salem witchcraft crisis with Shaker trance experiences. BONUS WIN

4. Jaguar cubs. 'Nuff said.

5. The radio ad for the Madison Gun Show this weekend tells me that kids 12 and under get in free. . . . o.O