Sarah Monette's Blog, page 39
March 26, 2011
In memoriam: Diana Wynne Jones
I can't even begin to explain how much Diana Wynne Jones' books meant to me as a child.
My science-fiction-reading librarian aunt gave me The Magicians of Caprona and Power of Three the Christmas I was ten, and then continued, patiently and benevolently, to find me Jones' other books, including a copy of Charmed Life that must have been (in the 80s in America) like hunting down the Grail. Or the Snark. I don't know how many times I read Witch Week, which may be the only school story I found as a child and adolescent in which the main characters were the loners and oddballs, instead of the popular kids. I love Jones forever for Theresa Mullett and Simon Silverson--for representing the popular kids the way I experienced them, instead of the way they were presented in Enid Blyton (and would later be presented in the Harry Potter books).
And it wasn't just Witch Week. All of her books centered on kids who were unpopular, weird, lonely. I didn't like Power of Three as much as The Magicians of Caprona when I was ten, but I later came to love it dearly because it was so deeply about kids who were outsiders.
And Jones never collapsed into pathos; the counter-example is Menolly in Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall books (which I also loved as a kid); everyone picks on Menolly except for the handful of characters who we know are special because they protect her. But Jones' outsiders are like Charles Morgan, who is just as selfish and self-protectively hostile as a kid in his situation would naturally be, and her "ordinary" kids, protagonists like Vivian Smith in A Tale of Time City or Caspar in The Ogre Downstairs or Jamie in The Homeward Bounders, all have to learn what it's like to be outsiders, Vivian by being thrown into a completely foreign culture, with only oddball outsiders Jonathan and Sam as her guides; Caspar by switching bodies with his loathed stepbrother Malcolm; and poor Jamie by becoming a permanent outcast. And in books like Power of Three and Charmed Life, we also see that the "ordinary" kids are human beings, too: Gair's popular siblings, Ceri and Ayna, are fiercely, lovingly partisan to Gair, and Janet turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to Cat. (Witch Week is probably the most Manichean of Jones' books in this regard, and even there, Estelle changes sides to become Nan's friend, and of course, at the end, popular and unpopular kids alike turn out to be witches.)
The other thing I came to appreciate more and more about Jones' work as an adolescent is that her books are frequently, quietly, about very adult subjects. Power of Three, after all, starts off with the murder of one child by another, and Charmed Life is, very quietly, mostly subtextually, about abuse. Gwendolyn is abusing Cat, even if Cat himself never quite recognizes it. And Fire and Hemlock, which may be, for me, the most impressive of Jones' books, is all about stupid things adults do in sexual relationships, and the way those things affect children. Not to mention The Time of the Ghost, the most autobiographical of Jones' novels, which is openly about a horrendously dysfunctional family and the terrible things the daughters of that family do in attempting to survive.
Jones taught me a lot about unreliable viewpoint characters. Cat in Charmed Life is the strongest example. There's something wrong with Cat, as Janet worriedly notes, but we never see it head on because Cat himself can't see it. Sirius/Leo in Dogsbody is another example, although I can't reread Dogsbody because it makes me cry. But I remember the way Jones shows the reader things that the viewpoint character can't understand, and it's brilliant.
But mostly, I just loved her books, whole-heartedly, as a child, and I love them now. I love Chrestomanci and his dressing gowns, I love Howl and Sophie, I love Vivian saving the world almost despite herself. I love Howard in Archer's Goon and his relationships with his siblings, epitomized and concentrated in his little sister Awful (and Awful is awful, and I love her for it). I love Polly in Fire and Hemlock learning that being a hero is about not letting humiliation stop you. Jones taught me so much--about being a writer, sure, but more importantly, about being a human being, about being kind and compassionate and about doing the right thing, even when you don't want to.
Thank you, Diana Wynne Jones. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
My science-fiction-reading librarian aunt gave me The Magicians of Caprona and Power of Three the Christmas I was ten, and then continued, patiently and benevolently, to find me Jones' other books, including a copy of Charmed Life that must have been (in the 80s in America) like hunting down the Grail. Or the Snark. I don't know how many times I read Witch Week, which may be the only school story I found as a child and adolescent in which the main characters were the loners and oddballs, instead of the popular kids. I love Jones forever for Theresa Mullett and Simon Silverson--for representing the popular kids the way I experienced them, instead of the way they were presented in Enid Blyton (and would later be presented in the Harry Potter books).
And it wasn't just Witch Week. All of her books centered on kids who were unpopular, weird, lonely. I didn't like Power of Three as much as The Magicians of Caprona when I was ten, but I later came to love it dearly because it was so deeply about kids who were outsiders.
And Jones never collapsed into pathos; the counter-example is Menolly in Anne McCaffrey's Harper Hall books (which I also loved as a kid); everyone picks on Menolly except for the handful of characters who we know are special because they protect her. But Jones' outsiders are like Charles Morgan, who is just as selfish and self-protectively hostile as a kid in his situation would naturally be, and her "ordinary" kids, protagonists like Vivian Smith in A Tale of Time City or Caspar in The Ogre Downstairs or Jamie in The Homeward Bounders, all have to learn what it's like to be outsiders, Vivian by being thrown into a completely foreign culture, with only oddball outsiders Jonathan and Sam as her guides; Caspar by switching bodies with his loathed stepbrother Malcolm; and poor Jamie by becoming a permanent outcast. And in books like Power of Three and Charmed Life, we also see that the "ordinary" kids are human beings, too: Gair's popular siblings, Ceri and Ayna, are fiercely, lovingly partisan to Gair, and Janet turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to Cat. (Witch Week is probably the most Manichean of Jones' books in this regard, and even there, Estelle changes sides to become Nan's friend, and of course, at the end, popular and unpopular kids alike turn out to be witches.)
The other thing I came to appreciate more and more about Jones' work as an adolescent is that her books are frequently, quietly, about very adult subjects. Power of Three, after all, starts off with the murder of one child by another, and Charmed Life is, very quietly, mostly subtextually, about abuse. Gwendolyn is abusing Cat, even if Cat himself never quite recognizes it. And Fire and Hemlock, which may be, for me, the most impressive of Jones' books, is all about stupid things adults do in sexual relationships, and the way those things affect children. Not to mention The Time of the Ghost, the most autobiographical of Jones' novels, which is openly about a horrendously dysfunctional family and the terrible things the daughters of that family do in attempting to survive.
Jones taught me a lot about unreliable viewpoint characters. Cat in Charmed Life is the strongest example. There's something wrong with Cat, as Janet worriedly notes, but we never see it head on because Cat himself can't see it. Sirius/Leo in Dogsbody is another example, although I can't reread Dogsbody because it makes me cry. But I remember the way Jones shows the reader things that the viewpoint character can't understand, and it's brilliant.
But mostly, I just loved her books, whole-heartedly, as a child, and I love them now. I love Chrestomanci and his dressing gowns, I love Howl and Sophie, I love Vivian saving the world almost despite herself. I love Howard in Archer's Goon and his relationships with his siblings, epitomized and concentrated in his little sister Awful (and Awful is awful, and I love her for it). I love Polly in Fire and Hemlock learning that being a hero is about not letting humiliation stop you. Jones taught me so much--about being a writer, sure, but more importantly, about being a human being, about being kind and compassionate and about doing the right thing, even when you don't want to.
Thank you, Diana Wynne Jones. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
March 25, 2011
checked my P.O. Box yesterday...
Thank you,
![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380449247i/1833871.gif)
oceankitty1
! He is a charming fox and I am glad to make his acquaintance.
Also, thank you, Jason from Virginia, for your letter! I'm sorry I don't seem to have gotten any of your previous attempts.
Other than that, yesterday--to be blunt and vulgar--sucked donkey balls. Sleep is still a no man's land, if not quite enemy territory; doctor's appointment did not produce miracles; Barnes and Noble has fewer books than ever, which just makes me unutterably depressed; still no luck on the job front; still can't write.
Still not king.
So I am all the more grateful for
oceankitty1
's present and Jason from Virginia's letter. They are a bright spot in the general gloom. Thank you both!
oceankitty1
! He is a charming fox and I am glad to make his acquaintance.Also, thank you, Jason from Virginia, for your letter! I'm sorry I don't seem to have gotten any of your previous attempts.
Other than that, yesterday--to be blunt and vulgar--sucked donkey balls. Sleep is still a no man's land, if not quite enemy territory; doctor's appointment did not produce miracles; Barnes and Noble has fewer books than ever, which just makes me unutterably depressed; still no luck on the job front; still can't write.
Still not king.
So I am all the more grateful for
oceankitty1
's present and Jason from Virginia's letter. They are a bright spot in the general gloom. Thank you both!
March 23, 2011
a dispatch from the good part of my life
Someone should have been out at the barn with a camera today. June the Barn Cat jumped on my shoulder while I was grooming Milo, resulting in a three-species karmic chi love thing: June purring like a maniac while Milo whuffled her ear and then mine.
March 20, 2011
5 things, Sunday thunderstorm edition
1. My story "Fiddleback Ferns" is part of Drabblecast 201: Trifecta XV, along with stories by Jens Rushing and Karen Heuler.
2. Thank you,
heresluck
, for introducing me properly to Mumford and Sons. Sigh No More is about to go in the stereo for the third time in three days.
3. The Ambien only sort of works. >:\ I'll be trying something else starting tomorrow.
4. Guy riding a Harley Friday afternoon in small-town southeastern Wisconsin? Probably not actually
jaylake
. But I sure was excited for the split-second I thought maybe it was.
5. A question! I have to give Guest of Honor speeches this year, which is a new experience for me. So tell me, O internets, if you go to a Guest of Honor speech, what do you expect to get? What do you hope for? What would make you tell all your friends they should have come, too?
2. Thank you,
heresluck
, for introducing me properly to Mumford and Sons. Sigh No More is about to go in the stereo for the third time in three days.3. The Ambien only sort of works. >:\ I'll be trying something else starting tomorrow.
4. Guy riding a Harley Friday afternoon in small-town southeastern Wisconsin? Probably not actually
jaylake
. But I sure was excited for the split-second I thought maybe it was.5. A question! I have to give Guest of Honor speeches this year, which is a new experience for me. So tell me, O internets, if you go to a Guest of Honor speech, what do you expect to get? What do you hope for? What would make you tell all your friends they should have come, too?
March 15, 2011
5 things about today
1. Today is the launch day for
Whedonistas
.
2. Today is practically spring-like! All the doors were open at the barn and I was riding in a T-shirt. We pay, of course, in mud, but it's worth it.
3. Today is the day I'm starting a prescription of sleeping pills. You see, the thing about Pramipexole, the RLS medication I'm on, is that at a dose high enough to deal with the RLS, it makes it hard to get to sleep and impossible to stay asleep. Waking up every two to four hours is not actually much better than just staying awake. So we try the Ambien.
4. Today is also the launch day for
jimhines
'
Goblin Tales
.
5. Today is the Ides of March.
2. Today is practically spring-like! All the doors were open at the barn and I was riding in a T-shirt. We pay, of course, in mud, but it's worth it.
3. Today is the day I'm starting a prescription of sleeping pills. You see, the thing about Pramipexole, the RLS medication I'm on, is that at a dose high enough to deal with the RLS, it makes it hard to get to sleep and impossible to stay asleep. Waking up every two to four hours is not actually much better than just staying awake. So we try the Ambien.
4. Today is also the launch day for
jimhines
'
Goblin Tales
.5. Today is the Ides of March.
March 14, 2011
UBC: The Devil's Disciples
Read, Anthony. The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004.
Massive (nine hundred plus pages), extremely readable history of the second-tier Nazis: Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Bormann. After finishing this, I never want to hear anybody going on about how men are more rational than women and aren't controlled by their emotions and all the rest of that chauvinist bullshit, because these guys? In-fighting and backbiting and temper tantrums and hysterics--it's exactly like high school, only somehow, these guys are running Germany and organizing the Holocaust and, oh yeah, there's that little matter of World War II.
Read has an unfortunate tendency to accept the "homosexual"="morally bad person" equation I've complained about before (Ernst Röhm and Walther Funk were morally bad people, true, but is that really about their sexual preferences?), but he's very good at deconstructing the self-presentations, both public and private, of Göring and Goebbels, who are the only two Nazis smart enough to make it difficult.
Massive (nine hundred plus pages), extremely readable history of the second-tier Nazis: Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Bormann. After finishing this, I never want to hear anybody going on about how men are more rational than women and aren't controlled by their emotions and all the rest of that chauvinist bullshit, because these guys? In-fighting and backbiting and temper tantrums and hysterics--it's exactly like high school, only somehow, these guys are running Germany and organizing the Holocaust and, oh yeah, there's that little matter of World War II.
Read has an unfortunate tendency to accept the "homosexual"="morally bad person" equation I've complained about before (Ernst Röhm and Walther Funk were morally bad people, true, but is that really about their sexual preferences?), but he's very good at deconstructing the self-presentations, both public and private, of Göring and Goebbels, who are the only two Nazis smart enough to make it difficult.
UBC: "Life Unworthy of Life"
Glass, James M. "Life Unworthy of Life": Racial Phobia and Mass Murder in Hitler's Germany. N.p.: New Republic-Basic Books, 1997.
Interesting ideas, badly expressed and badly organized. Also, he misrepresents Arendt (because she's such a useful straw man if you pretend that she meant the "banality of evil" to apply more broadly than to Eichmann himself) and Freud (the uncanny (unheimlich) is not what Glass persists in claiming it is), and although he doesn't misrepresent Kristeva (to the best of my memory), he only sort of throws around the idea of abjection without really digging into how he thinks it applies to Nazi Germany. Also, in a book that's all about purification and taboos and scapegoats, failure to mention Mary Douglas and Purity and Danger is, well, it makes me a little dubious. But mostly, this book is long on polysyllable buzzwords and woefully short on organization. (Also, if you're going to claim Germans had a phobia about touching Jews, it would help if you provided some evidence to back up that claim.) Which is a pity, because the idea that the Holocaust is about the rationalized expression (gussied up with the pseudo-science of eugenics) of a contamination phobia is one that I'd like to see dealt with by someone with the chops to do it right.
Interesting ideas, badly expressed and badly organized. Also, he misrepresents Arendt (because she's such a useful straw man if you pretend that she meant the "banality of evil" to apply more broadly than to Eichmann himself) and Freud (the uncanny (unheimlich) is not what Glass persists in claiming it is), and although he doesn't misrepresent Kristeva (to the best of my memory), he only sort of throws around the idea of abjection without really digging into how he thinks it applies to Nazi Germany. Also, in a book that's all about purification and taboos and scapegoats, failure to mention Mary Douglas and Purity and Danger is, well, it makes me a little dubious. But mostly, this book is long on polysyllable buzzwords and woefully short on organization. (Also, if you're going to claim Germans had a phobia about touching Jews, it would help if you provided some evidence to back up that claim.) Which is a pity, because the idea that the Holocaust is about the rationalized expression (gussied up with the pseudo-science of eugenics) of a contamination phobia is one that I'd like to see dealt with by someone with the chops to do it right.
Sale!
"To Die for Moonlight" (the Booth and werewolves novelette that begins "I cut off her head before I buried her") to Arkham House for the 2012 anthology An Arkham Garland: An Anthology of Macabre Stories.
(Arkham House! OMG!)
MEGAN ARKENBERG! This means you are finally going to get your bonus from last year's fundraiser. Please contact me ASAP if your land address has changed. Otherwise, watch the skies! ... Er, I mean, your mailbox.
(Arkham House! OMG!)
MEGAN ARKENBERG! This means you are finally going to get your bonus from last year's fundraiser. Please contact me ASAP if your land address has changed. Otherwise, watch the skies! ... Er, I mean, your mailbox.
Conventions I will attend in 2011
I am a Guest of Honor at Odyssey Con 11, April 8-10, Madison, Wisconsin.
I am also a Guest of Honor at LepreCon 37, May 6-8, Tempe, Arizona.
And I am attending WisCon 35, May 26-30, Madison, Wisconsin.
Unless my financial situation changes, that's it for this year. I hate missing PenguiCon and Fourth Street and World Fantasy, but the simple ugly truth is, I can't afford to go.
I am also a Guest of Honor at LepreCon 37, May 6-8, Tempe, Arizona.
And I am attending WisCon 35, May 26-30, Madison, Wisconsin.
Unless my financial situation changes, that's it for this year. I hate missing PenguiCon and Fourth Street and World Fantasy, but the simple ugly truth is, I can't afford to go.
March 13, 2011
5 things
1. Fifty degrees Fahrenheit is apparently my cut-off for "it's nice enough for a walk."
2. 58,000 people protesting at the Capitol yesterday, which, mind you, is day 27 of the protest. Not that Governor Walker cares.
3. This photo just . . . it's useless to say my thoughts are with the people of Japan, but they are. I thought 2011 was bad enough when it was just my shit that was fucked up.
4. My health problems are still problematic. And that's really all I want to say about it.
5. A $3,200 donation has been made to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Companion Animal Fund in memory of Ben. Again, a thousand thank yous to everyone who donated.
2. 58,000 people protesting at the Capitol yesterday, which, mind you, is day 27 of the protest. Not that Governor Walker cares.
3. This photo just . . . it's useless to say my thoughts are with the people of Japan, but they are. I thought 2011 was bad enough when it was just my shit that was fucked up.
4. My health problems are still problematic. And that's really all I want to say about it.
5. A $3,200 donation has been made to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital's Companion Animal Fund in memory of Ben. Again, a thousand thank yous to everyone who donated.
