Sarah Monette's Blog, page 57
October 4, 2010
Day 65: waking up
Still fighting with the RLS and the narcotics. PT exercises are both boring and uncomfortable, in the best therapeutic tradition. I can walk farther, and have in fact been dragging
![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380438177i/889613.gif)
mirrorthaw
on repetitive circuits of our neighborhood in the effort to tire myself out.
On the other hand, the creative part of my brain seems to be waking up again. Yesterday I wrote 550 words on something new, and my dreams last night led to this snippet this morning:
"Who was that?"
"I don't know," the Swan said, shrugging an impatient, perfect shoulder. "Some ugly little boy."
"That's right," Min Chang said softly. "You don't know."
"What?" She was so exactly like a swan, he thought, not for the first time: beautiful, vicious, and stupid.
He caught her arm and steered her into an alcove where they could have this discussion with some pretense of privacy. "Listen, Swan. Rudeness is a weapon. You don't go wasting it on people you don't know."
She was even lovely when she was scowling. It was remarkable. "But--"
"People watch you go around being rude to every random stranger, it doesn't mean anything. Just that you're a bitch. So then when you're rude to someone who deserves it, that doesn't mean anything either." There were other things he would have liked to have said on the subject--about the petty meanness of being rude to someone who had screwed up his courage and taken a risk, about how that "ugly little boy" probably felt right now--but he'd learned with the Swan not to clutter things up with ideas she wouldn't understand.
He watched her puzzle through what he had said, watched her face change when she got it. "Oh."
"Right. Now let's talk about the other reason you should never be rude to someone you don't know. Because, as it happens, I do know who he was, and, Swan, you just made a very big mistake."
I don't know who the ugly little boy is, or who Min Chang and the Swan are, for that matter. But it's a relief and a pleasure to have my brain offering me tidbits again, even if I don't have much followthrough yet.
mirrorthaw
on repetitive circuits of our neighborhood in the effort to tire myself out.On the other hand, the creative part of my brain seems to be waking up again. Yesterday I wrote 550 words on something new, and my dreams last night led to this snippet this morning:
"Who was that?"
"I don't know," the Swan said, shrugging an impatient, perfect shoulder. "Some ugly little boy."
"That's right," Min Chang said softly. "You don't know."
"What?" She was so exactly like a swan, he thought, not for the first time: beautiful, vicious, and stupid.
He caught her arm and steered her into an alcove where they could have this discussion with some pretense of privacy. "Listen, Swan. Rudeness is a weapon. You don't go wasting it on people you don't know."
She was even lovely when she was scowling. It was remarkable. "But--"
"People watch you go around being rude to every random stranger, it doesn't mean anything. Just that you're a bitch. So then when you're rude to someone who deserves it, that doesn't mean anything either." There were other things he would have liked to have said on the subject--about the petty meanness of being rude to someone who had screwed up his courage and taken a risk, about how that "ugly little boy" probably felt right now--but he'd learned with the Swan not to clutter things up with ideas she wouldn't understand.
He watched her puzzle through what he had said, watched her face change when she got it. "Oh."
"Right. Now let's talk about the other reason you should never be rude to someone you don't know. Because, as it happens, I do know who he was, and, Swan, you just made a very big mistake."
I don't know who the ugly little boy is, or who Min Chang and the Swan are, for that matter. But it's a relief and a pleasure to have my brain offering me tidbits again, even if I don't have much followthrough yet.
September 30, 2010
Day 61, plus thoughts about Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails
The Requip has gone from making the RLS worse to helping. Sort of. I still have to take oxycodone to sleep, and I'm not getting any more fond of it the longer I take it.
Started physical therapy Monday. The therapist was very encouraging and helpful: my ankle's mobility is already improved, although there's still a long way to go. And I've met an old friend: one of the exercises he has me doing is the towel crunches
thecoughlin
had recommended for my tendinitis--which, the therapist tells me is likely to make a comeback when I start walking normally again. Something to look forward to, you betcha.
On the plus side, as I discovered out of idle curiosity, I can now do the tree pose to the left--it's not a fantastic tree, but it's pretty solid, compared to what I could manage before. So there are benefits to being unable to put any weight on your right foot for six weeks. Really.
I'm reading and re-reading and re-reading Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails, and I'm not quite sure why. It's a very peculiar book; I don't know of any other book quite like it.
On the one side, it's part of the sequence with Ten Days' Wonder where Dannay and Lee (EQ the author) are taking a baseball bat to the god-complex of EQ the character, which I find fascinating on the meta/genre theory level.
And then something weird happens. Dannay and Lee (and those names are themselves pseudonyms) get fed up with Ellery as they have written him. And they change him. It's a little like what happens after Strong Poison in Dorothy Sayers' books, where she realizes she has to make Peter a real human being and in the process she goes (imho) from writing excellent mystery novels to writing brilliant novels with mysteries in them. This is not to denigrate mystery novels, but to distinguish between what Sayers does and what Dannay & Lee do--because they never make the transition from writing mystery novels to writing novels with mysteries in them. They're writing mystery novels first to last. There's never a sense, as there is especially in Gaudy Night, of something larger than the neat careful clockwork of the mystery. But they really get their teeth into that clockwork. They take it apart, they turn it on its head, and they remake their sleuth.
I can't do the full rundown, because some of the books that chart this process are currently where I can't get at them, but Dannay and Lee essentially drag Ellery Queen down to earth. J.J. McC. disappears, and we never hear anything more either of the villa in Italy or Ellery's alleged wife. Ellery becomes a working writer (and some of my favorite bits especially in Ten Days' Wonder and Cat of Many Tails are the bits where Ellery's writing career and his detective career intersect); he's assumed to be turning out novels regularly, making his living the way his creators do (and they use details about the working life of a writer to good effect). The unironic narrative admiration of Ellery in early novels becomes very ironic--affectionate, but ironic. Djuna mercifully disappears, and the apartment descends from Mount Olympus to become plausible: Cat of Many Tails mentions an ongoing dispute with the landlord about the "lunar topography" of Ellery's study's ceiling, which is entirely unimaginable in the context of the apartment as we first meet it. And, most importantly and subversively, Ellery becomes fallible.
The elaborate nature of crimes and solutions in Ellery Queen novels meant from the beginning that Ellery could entertain incorrect hypotheses. They even have him led up the garden path by the murderer in one of the early books, The Greek Coffin Mystery (complete with remarkably defensive footnotes about Ellery's habit in earlier books of never revealing his solution until he's 100% sure he's right), but that's always part of the process. When the police make an arrest on Ellery's recommendation, that's the end of it. Until Ten Days' Wonder, in which Ellery is so completely bamboozled by Diedrich van Horn that it's a full YEAR after the arrest and suicide of the innocent Howard van Horn that Ellery figures out his mistake--in one of the best pieces of extended exposition I think I've ever read. "You've destroyed me," Ellery tells Diedrich van Horn, and he intends never to meddle in another investigation again.
We know he's doomed, of course, because he's a wildly popular series detective, but Dannay and Lee have figured out something else, and it's that things have consequences. They can't carry through very far--Ellery Queen, like other Golden Age detectives, makes his bread and butter off the every-episode-is-an-entry-point series model, but Cat of Many Tails, among many other things, is a direct sequel to Ten Days' Wonder, in which Ellery is dragged against his will into an investigation, and in which he's once again fallible and wrong, and even has a sort of very low-key nervous breakdown (which is astonishing evidence of humanity in a detective of the type he originally was). And comes out the other side ready to go back to work, having come to terms with the fact that he is not God, nor even a god.
It's also a novel about New York City--and in that sense may be a partial exception to my claim that Dannay & Lee did not write novels with mysteries in them. Because the novel is very interested in New York and in New York's reaction to the serial killer called The Cat. This novel is very conscious of its setting and very aware of that setting as a character, as it signals from the opening lines:
There's a sort of triangular relationship in this novel between detective, murderer, and setting, and it's handled with the affectionate irony characteristic of later Queen. I'd still say it's a mystery novel rather than a novel with a mystery in it, but it's a very large mystery novel (spiritually, if that's the word i want), a generous one. Dannay & Lee have gotten through their pretentious phase; they're confident enough that they don't need to call attention to their craftsmanship. Which means that this is a profoundly readable novel.
Hence, I suppose, the fact that I am rereading it obsessively, despite the fact that I do not like serial killer stories.
It's dated, of course, particularly in the very Freudian nature of its psychology, but I don't even mind that. There's something about it that hits the sweet spot in my brain, something about the story-telling and the use of Ellery Queen as a character and a detective, and particularly as a character who is well established as a detective, and . . . I don't know. I suppose if I could figure it out, I wouldn't be on my sixth or seventh chain rereading.
The book also has my current favorite example of implied stage directions in dialogue. Ellery and his father (Inspector Richard Queen, NYPD) have just found out something vital, their first real clue:
That cigaret won't draw, Ellery, because you haven't lit it. I love this sentence. I love the throwaway nature of it, sandwiched in the middle of a discussion of ways and means. I love all the work it does, everything it tells you--everything the narrative is not telling you--about Ellery's state of mind, and everything it incidentally tells you about the two characters involved. (The relationship between Ellery and his father is something else, previously in the series rather implausible and irritating, that this book deals with very well.) It's beautifully done and it's barely even noticeable. For me, the whole book, even the clunky bits, is like that. It has a sense of grace.
This is a funny place to find grace, but I'll take it.
Started physical therapy Monday. The therapist was very encouraging and helpful: my ankle's mobility is already improved, although there's still a long way to go. And I've met an old friend: one of the exercises he has me doing is the towel crunches
thecoughlin
had recommended for my tendinitis--which, the therapist tells me is likely to make a comeback when I start walking normally again. Something to look forward to, you betcha.On the plus side, as I discovered out of idle curiosity, I can now do the tree pose to the left--it's not a fantastic tree, but it's pretty solid, compared to what I could manage before. So there are benefits to being unable to put any weight on your right foot for six weeks. Really.
I'm reading and re-reading and re-reading Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails, and I'm not quite sure why. It's a very peculiar book; I don't know of any other book quite like it.
On the one side, it's part of the sequence with Ten Days' Wonder where Dannay and Lee (EQ the author) are taking a baseball bat to the god-complex of EQ the character, which I find fascinating on the meta/genre theory level.
And then something weird happens. Dannay and Lee (and those names are themselves pseudonyms) get fed up with Ellery as they have written him. And they change him. It's a little like what happens after Strong Poison in Dorothy Sayers' books, where she realizes she has to make Peter a real human being and in the process she goes (imho) from writing excellent mystery novels to writing brilliant novels with mysteries in them. This is not to denigrate mystery novels, but to distinguish between what Sayers does and what Dannay & Lee do--because they never make the transition from writing mystery novels to writing novels with mysteries in them. They're writing mystery novels first to last. There's never a sense, as there is especially in Gaudy Night, of something larger than the neat careful clockwork of the mystery. But they really get their teeth into that clockwork. They take it apart, they turn it on its head, and they remake their sleuth.
I can't do the full rundown, because some of the books that chart this process are currently where I can't get at them, but Dannay and Lee essentially drag Ellery Queen down to earth. J.J. McC. disappears, and we never hear anything more either of the villa in Italy or Ellery's alleged wife. Ellery becomes a working writer (and some of my favorite bits especially in Ten Days' Wonder and Cat of Many Tails are the bits where Ellery's writing career and his detective career intersect); he's assumed to be turning out novels regularly, making his living the way his creators do (and they use details about the working life of a writer to good effect). The unironic narrative admiration of Ellery in early novels becomes very ironic--affectionate, but ironic. Djuna mercifully disappears, and the apartment descends from Mount Olympus to become plausible: Cat of Many Tails mentions an ongoing dispute with the landlord about the "lunar topography" of Ellery's study's ceiling, which is entirely unimaginable in the context of the apartment as we first meet it. And, most importantly and subversively, Ellery becomes fallible.
The elaborate nature of crimes and solutions in Ellery Queen novels meant from the beginning that Ellery could entertain incorrect hypotheses. They even have him led up the garden path by the murderer in one of the early books, The Greek Coffin Mystery (complete with remarkably defensive footnotes about Ellery's habit in earlier books of never revealing his solution until he's 100% sure he's right), but that's always part of the process. When the police make an arrest on Ellery's recommendation, that's the end of it. Until Ten Days' Wonder, in which Ellery is so completely bamboozled by Diedrich van Horn that it's a full YEAR after the arrest and suicide of the innocent Howard van Horn that Ellery figures out his mistake--in one of the best pieces of extended exposition I think I've ever read. "You've destroyed me," Ellery tells Diedrich van Horn, and he intends never to meddle in another investigation again.
We know he's doomed, of course, because he's a wildly popular series detective, but Dannay and Lee have figured out something else, and it's that things have consequences. They can't carry through very far--Ellery Queen, like other Golden Age detectives, makes his bread and butter off the every-episode-is-an-entry-point series model, but Cat of Many Tails, among many other things, is a direct sequel to Ten Days' Wonder, in which Ellery is dragged against his will into an investigation, and in which he's once again fallible and wrong, and even has a sort of very low-key nervous breakdown (which is astonishing evidence of humanity in a detective of the type he originally was). And comes out the other side ready to go back to work, having come to terms with the fact that he is not God, nor even a god.
It's also a novel about New York City--and in that sense may be a partial exception to my claim that Dannay & Lee did not write novels with mysteries in them. Because the novel is very interested in New York and in New York's reaction to the serial killer called The Cat. This novel is very conscious of its setting and very aware of that setting as a character, as it signals from the opening lines:
The strangling of Archibald Dudley Abernethy was the first scene in a nine-act tragedy whose locale was the City of New York.
Which misbehaved.
There's a sort of triangular relationship in this novel between detective, murderer, and setting, and it's handled with the affectionate irony characteristic of later Queen. I'd still say it's a mystery novel rather than a novel with a mystery in it, but it's a very large mystery novel (spiritually, if that's the word i want), a generous one. Dannay & Lee have gotten through their pretentious phase; they're confident enough that they don't need to call attention to their craftsmanship. Which means that this is a profoundly readable novel.
Hence, I suppose, the fact that I am rereading it obsessively, despite the fact that I do not like serial killer stories.
It's dated, of course, particularly in the very Freudian nature of its psychology, but I don't even mind that. There's something about it that hits the sweet spot in my brain, something about the story-telling and the use of Ellery Queen as a character and a detective, and particularly as a character who is well established as a detective, and . . . I don't know. I suppose if I could figure it out, I wouldn't be on my sixth or seventh chain rereading.
The book also has my current favorite example of implied stage directions in dialogue. Ellery and his father (Inspector Richard Queen, NYPD) have just found out something vital, their first real clue:
"We've got to have the run of that apartment for a few hours." Ellery took out a cigaret.
"Without a warrant?"
"And tip him off?"
The Inspector frowned.
"Getting rid of the maid ought to present no problem. Pick her day off. No, this is Friday and the chances are she won't be off till the middle of next week. I can't wait that long. Does she sleep in?"
"I don't know."
"I want to get in there over the weekend, if possible. Do they go to church?"
"How should I know? That cigaret won't draw, Ellery, because you haven't lit it. Hand me the phone."
That cigaret won't draw, Ellery, because you haven't lit it. I love this sentence. I love the throwaway nature of it, sandwiched in the middle of a discussion of ways and means. I love all the work it does, everything it tells you--everything the narrative is not telling you--about Ellery's state of mind, and everything it incidentally tells you about the two characters involved. (The relationship between Ellery and his father is something else, previously in the series rather implausible and irritating, that this book deals with very well.) It's beautifully done and it's barely even noticeable. For me, the whole book, even the clunky bits, is like that. It has a sense of grace.
This is a funny place to find grace, but I'll take it.
September 24, 2010
Day 55: nothing is ever easy for Cerebus
Again last night, taking the Requip seemed to make my RLS go off like a car alarm. I called the doctor's office this morning; the consensus is that I need to bear with it a little longer, so this weekend may be somewhat unpleasant on the meat-puppet front.
Also today, the plumber came. He will be giving us estimates on replacing the bathtub faucet and (FINALLY*) ripping out the superfluous sink in the dressing room. He also very kindly took a look at the furnace's leaky check-valve (since it's...
Also today, the plumber came. He will be giving us estimates on replacing the bathtub faucet and (FINALLY*) ripping out the superfluous sink in the dressing room. He also very kindly took a look at the furnace's leaky check-valve (since it's...
September 23, 2010
Day 54
Took the first full dose of Requip last night (it's one of those drugs you have to ease into), and the RLS struck back. A good time was distinctly not had by all. We will hope for better things tonight--for one, I will not repeat the optimistic experiment of skipping the oxycodone.
Then there was insomnia. There's still insomnia, for that matter, although I did get some sleep between 2 and 7, and now there's nausea to go with it. I do not like anything about this combination, anymore than I li...
Then there was insomnia. There's still insomnia, for that matter, although I did get some sleep between 2 and 7, and now there's nausea to go with it. I do not like anything about this combination, anymore than I li...
September 20, 2010
Day 51: everybody needs to sleep at night / everybody needs a crutch
The Mondayness of this Monday is redeemed for me by OK Go's new video for "White Knuckles." Catchy as hell, and, of course, I adore the dogs.
I have an appointment with the physical therapist at the local clinic next Monday--the earliest they could get me in. (I called UW Hospital's PT department to see if by chance they had an earlier opening, which got kind of a hollow laugh from the receptionist. Their earliest is October 12.) In the meantime, I'm practicing my hobbling. Twice up and down t...
I have an appointment with the physical therapist at the local clinic next Monday--the earliest they could get me in. (I called UW Hospital's PT department to see if by chance they had an earlier opening, which got kind of a hollow laugh from the receptionist. Their earliest is October 12.) In the meantime, I'm practicing my hobbling. Twice up and down t...
September 18, 2010
Day 49: another of those not terribly useful personal epiphanies
I woke up this morning from a confused dream about visiting
heresluck
and understood something about my fiction block and its relationship to the serial narratives currently en vogue in the medium of television.
I'm going to use Buffy as my type example; I don't think it's uniquely or especially awful in this regard (The X-Files became infinitely worse in its later seasons), but it happens to be the easiest demonstration piece to show what I mean because of the way I watched it.
ObDisclaimer: T...
heresluck
and understood something about my fiction block and its relationship to the serial narratives currently en vogue in the medium of television.I'm going to use Buffy as my type example; I don't think it's uniquely or especially awful in this regard (The X-Files became infinitely worse in its later seasons), but it happens to be the easiest demonstration piece to show what I mean because of the way I watched it.
ObDisclaimer: T...
September 16, 2010
Day 47: The 5 Things of Eeyore
I feel like crap today. Just had to say no to the Red Cross about a blood drive Friday because, honestly, I am in no shape to sustain another insult to my system. I hate that.
My friend
jaylake
is undergoing liver surgery today as part of his horrible ongoing battle with cancer. On the one hand, this puts my measly discomfort in perspective; on the other hand, I hate that Jay has to go through this and has to suffer like this; and on the third hand, perspective does not fucking help. Not at th...
My friend
jaylake
is undergoing liver surgery today as part of his horrible ongoing battle with cancer. On the one hand, this puts my measly discomfort in perspective; on the other hand, I hate that Jay has to go through this and has to suffer like this; and on the third hand, perspective does not fucking help. Not at th...
September 15, 2010
Day 46: Breaking Waves & Walking Boots
2 things happened today:
1. Book View Cafe has launched Breaking Waves: An Anthology for Gulf Coast Relief as an e-book for $4.99. 100% of the proceeds go to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Relief Fund, and you can check out the table of contents (including my story, "After the Dragon") here. I understand they are also working on a POD version.
2. I graduated to a walking boot, the most important aspect of which (to me at this moment) is I CAN TAKE IT OFF.
1. Book View Cafe has launched Breaking Waves: An Anthology for Gulf Coast Relief as an e-book for $4.99. 100% of the proceeds go to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Relief Fund, and you can check out the table of contents (including my story, "After the Dragon") here. I understand they are also working on a POD version.
2. I graduated to a walking boot, the most important aspect of which (to me at this moment) is I CAN TAKE IT OFF.
September 11, 2010
Day 42: N is for Neville, who died of ennui
Still fatigued and unable to concentrate (possibly this is due to the oxycodone/clonazepam combo keeping my RLS at bay; possibly it's just part of healing; or, you know, both). Also bored out of my skull. The only thing that has saved me is discovering Hulu has
I Spy
. Robert Culp and Bill Cosby are keeping me company all the way from 1965, and I thank them for it.
Wednesday, I go back to the orthopedist to find out what's what. Fingers crossed that the news will be good.
Wednesday, I go back to the orthopedist to find out what's what. Fingers crossed that the news will be good.
September 7, 2010
bifemmefatale posts here occasionally, and I have met her...
bifemmefatale
posts here occasionally, and I have met her in person.Her daughter is missing.
Repost, spread the word, etc. etc.
