Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 22

Update: Winter’s Not So Bad, Really

Quick note: If you’ve read Silver Circle #3: Shattered Skies, but you haven’t left a review, please take a minute to do that. I would really appreciate it!

Now, update:

So it’s really cold just now (probably for you, too, if you’re in the US). Two degrees F when I got up this morning, and it’ll likely go down a bit now because as I type this, it’s dawn and the skies are clear. I just let the dogs out, and because of a slight accident with clippers at Christmas, I put a sweater on Morgan. Glad I had it handy. As a rule, Cavaliers don’t need sweaters unless they are old and therefore have begun to feel the cold too much. I had this sweater because I’ve had old dogs before, of course. I sort of have an old dog now; Ish will turn eleven in a week.

He’s doing great, so honestly, I don’t really think of him as old. I do have an echo scheduled for March, just to take a look at his heart. He has a mild, non-progressing murmur — non-progressing as far as the sound of it — but I want a cardiologist to take a real look at his heart and see what it actually looks like. One can generally extend the lifespan of a Cavalier with MVD by years by putting them on vetmedin/pimobendan at the right time, which means not too early as well as not too late. Some never have significant heart issues — about one in twenty is my rough estimate, for well-bred Cavaliers. Pippa didn’t, her father didn’t, I can name a handful of other Cavaliers who made it to serious old age without ever having a significant murmur.

I will just point out that knowing what health conditions you should keep track of is a plus, not a minus. People are like, “Cavaliers have heart trouble,” and I nod, Yes, generally, which is why you should keep an eye on their hearts.

It’s useful to know what to watch for because that means you can get a puppy with a nice pedigree filled with decent hearts and then keep an eye on the heart of an aging dog. Knowing they can have back trouble means you understand you should use steps or ramps, and by the way, I’ve had Ish on glucosamine supplements for years, not because he has back trouble, but because about six years ago he had a minor episode of back pain and I thought, well, can’t hurt to put him on a supplement. No further back trouble, knock on wood. Cavaliers don’t have cancer or die of cancer at the typical rate for dogs in general, and of course they are far (FAR) less likely to have serious cancer than a Golden or Boxer, as surely everyone knows. Or should know, if they want a Golden or a Boxer, among others.

Well, that was a digression. Back to the weather — this time, the power has stayed on (so far), and also I now have a powerful propane heater, which is sitting downstairs and would be a monster to lug upstairs, but if I need it, it is there. Propane inside does make me nervous. If I have to turn it on, I may also crack a window, and I don’t intend to run it at night. But I would rather have it then not have it. The new generator will probably be installed in February sometime and that will be better because the propane tank will be outside.

Meanwhile, no ice, no snow, clear skies, not much wind, hopefully the next few days will all be just like this, nothing exciting will happen, the power will stay on, and then it is supposed to warm up again, relatively speaking.

MEANWHILE

I’m up to chapter 10 in Tano’s book, we are not yet in the starlit lands, but we will be soon. That will really feel like progress!

I worked out the math and decided that if I write 3000 words per day, I ought to be about finished with this book by the end of February. I’m assuming it will go to about 600 pages / 180,000 words because, I mean, that seems likely. If it goes way up above that, I will end it somewhere reasonable and then the next part will appear in the next book, which would be fine. Therefore, one way or another, THIS book won’t go way up above that. So, end of February, that is the plan, such as it is.

However, I also paused yesterday and wrote the third chapter of “Sekaran,” because I felt like it. I did also write 3000 words in Tano’s book, but I will probably permit myself to work on other things even if that pushes completion of Tano’s book back a bit, because there’s no hard deadline, so why not.

Also, I don’t want to just give up reading entirely, because, I mean, that would not be good, so I’ve started a mystery called In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming. Being in the middle of winter makes me want to read winter stories, apparently.

It’s a cold, snowy December in the upstate New York town of Millers Kill, and newly ordained Clare Fergusson is on thin ice as the first female priest of its small Episcopal church. … The last thing she needs is trouble, but that is exactly what she finds. When a newborn baby is abandoned on the church stairs and a young mother is brutally murdered, Clare has to pick her way through the secrets and silence that shadow that town like the ever-present Adirondack mountains. As the days dwindle down and the attraction between the avowed priest and the married police chief grows, Clare will need all her faith, tenacity, and courage to stand fast against a killer’s icy heart.

I will be peeved if Clare and Russ tear their lives apart because of this quote attraction unquote, particularly as I’m always peeved at the idea that every. single. relationship. has to be sexual or it doesn’t count. If the author doesn’t handle this the way I think she should, this will be the last book of hers I ever touch. I don’t particularly want spoilers, by the way, and haven’t looked at reviews. I liked the first chapter and was drawn into the story enough to want to go on with it; that’s enough to know for now.

What are you reading right now? Hopefully something good! Anybody else drawn toward winter books in the winter? I can see going for tropical settings instead.

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Recent Watching: Crossfire Trail (the movie)

So, before Christmas, we were looking through my DVDs to find something to watch, and there was Crossfire Trail, still wrapped in plastic after however many years since I bought or was given this movie. I like the occasional Western, so there you go.

This is a very simple story, and it turned out to be interesting to me in the same way that Wild Night by Patrick Lee was interesting, so I thought sure, I’d spend a few minutes analyzing it the same way. I should emphasize that I’m talking about the movie here, not the book.

Here’s the basic plot: Tom Selleck is shipboard buddies with a guy who dies. He promises this guy, Charlie, that he will go to Wyoming and look after Charlie’s young widow and new ranch. So he goes to Wyoming with two friends, an Irishman and a kid, and naturally finds the young, beautiful widow, Ann, being courted by a smooth-talking rich bad guy who wants the ranch and is keen on marrying the widow to get it.

Tom (not his name in the movie, but sorry, I can’t help but think of him as Tom), defends Ann, there is the expected brief romance, and Tom and his buddies defeat the bad guy’s hired thugs, freeing the local town from their control, and we have the expected happy ending, with a wedding soon to follow.

Okay, so what works and (way more important in this case) what doesn’t work? And what should the director have done differently that would have vastly improved the story?

A) The backstory is stupid.

Why was Charlie on that ship? Because he was shanghaied. So far, so good. Why were Tom and the others on that ship? We don’t know. Were they also shanghaied? We don’t know.

What do we know? Well, we know that the captain has recently beaten Charlie so badly that Charlie is dying, and thus his dying request that Tom look after his widow and ranch. This is where the story opens. Immediately after this opening, Tom beats the crap out of the captain of the ship and he and his buddies leave for Wyoming.

Why, you may wonder, did Tom not beat the crap out of the captain before, not after, the captain beat Charlie to death? Where was the rest of the crew and why didn’t they get involved? If Tom could easily beat up the captain and free himself and his buddies from the ship, why did it take him a full year to do so? These are all excellent questions! We have no idea whatsoever, because whoever produced the movie didn’t spend five minutes addressing these questions.

Now, look. You can justify practically anything. Astoundingly stupid plot points or worldbuilding elements can be justified. But you have to actually justify whatever plot points or worldbuilding elements, or the reader (or audience) is going to be left slack-jawed at the stunningly unbelievable plot.

Everything ridiculous in this backstory could have been justified in one brief scene, a single conversation, or a handful of scattered comments. The ship wasn’t at sea, it was at dock and most of the crew was on leave or taking care of some nefarious business, thus providing an opportunity for Tom to act. There, that solves a lot of problems. Then indicate – that is, show or tell, whichever – that Tom had lulled the captain into underestimating him through some clever ruse. Or indicate that Tom was normally chained up, but the Irishman got him loose tonight while the kid distracted whoever was supposed to be keeping an eye out for troublemakers. Whatever, just add some kind of halfway plausible justification for the backstory.

It literally doesn’t matter what you do to justify the backstory, just do anything halfway plausible, anything, and then you can move on. What you can’t do is pretend some absolutely ridiculous backstory makes sense without any justification whatsoever.

B) If Chekov sets a gun on the stage, you should fire it.

I guess it isn’t totally necessary to make use of important worldbuilding elements or plot setup, but it’s inelegant to set something on stage, point to it emphatically, and then fail to use it for something. In this case, Chekov’s gun is Red Cloud, an important Sioux chief.

We hear about Red Cloud a couple of times. Charlie knew Red Cloud and the two of them respected each other or were friends, we don’t know exactly. Shortly after arriving at the ranch, Tom rescues Red Cloud’s daughter from a handful of townie thugs who attempted to abduct her for the obvious reasons thugs would want to kidnap a girl. Red Cloud arrives shortly after the rescue has been accomplished and accepts his daughter’s word that Tom is a good guy, especially because Tom mentions Charlie.

That’s it. That’s the last time Red Cloud or any Sioux are even mentioned. They don’t show up to rescue Tom in the nick of time, as I fully expected would happen. They don’t show up at all. That’s it for them.

This is a horrible wasted opportunity. It’s just painful to contemplate how great Red Cloud and his men could have been, if only the author and/or producer had remembered they were available to save the day. When I poked around, I did find a reference to the plot of the book that said the rescue of Red Cloud’s daughter “paid dividends later,” which suggests that Louis L’Amour did not forget Red Cloud’s existence, so this may be a failure just in the movie.

C) The girl should not be stunningly incurious, even if the author is determined to make her incompetent, which is also a mistake, but whatever.

Look, what should have happened is this: Tom should have said, “Well, Ann, since you don’t trust me, here, take this little extra holdout pistol of mine and just tuck it out of sight and keep it handy, and that way you won’t have to worry that maybe I’m a cad. Here, let me just show you how to shoot this cute little gun, which is just right for a charming lady such as yourself.”

And then Ann might have demonstrated that she already had a gun or that she already knew how to shoot because Charlie taught her, for example. Or she could have accepted Tom’s loaner, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that later, when the smooth-talking rich bad guy is manhandling her and forcing her to marry him, she could shoot him.

And yes, that would make the plot more complicated because Ann would have taken out the bad guy herself, but this is a challenge any author should be capable of meeting. In this case, the smooth-talking rich bad guy has already hired an assassin, so there you go, Ann shoots the smooth-talking rich bad guy and Tom still has to handle the assassin, so there’s no problem.

However! Suppose the author is just bound and determined to make Ann a helpless female. In that case, even if she just flutters her hands helplessly when the bad guy is manhandling her, she should still not be made to act like a complete idiot.

How a conversation should go:

“Well, Ann, since you ask, I’m fixing up your deceased husband’s ranch because I promised him I’d look after the ranch and after you.”

“That’s a surprise, Tom, because he never mentioned you. Maybe you could explain how this happened?”

How a conversation should not go:

“Well, Ann, since you ask, I’m fixing up your deceased husband’s ranch because I promised him I’d look after the ranch and after you.”

Ann rides away in a huff without asking a single question.

The latter conversation leaves the audience wondering what the hell is wrong with Ann. It also means the author loses the chance to begin building the romance, which is silly, as the romance is highly truncated as it is and the author needs to take every possible chance to build it.

In this story, Ann looks (a) totally unbelievable because she never once says, “But who are you and how did you know Charlie? And (b) totally gullible because she is always trotting off to the smooth-talking rich bad guy and saying, “He says Charlie asked him to look after the ranch, but how could that be true?” And (c) totally ineffectual and helpless because she lets herself be married at gunpoint and then lets herself be stuck in a room because the door was locked. Heavens! A locked door! All is lost! What an ineffectual idiot Ann is.

And ALL of this could have been MASSIVELY improved SO EASILY. Have Ann engage in normal conversation with Tom! Have her suspect that the smooth-talking rich bad guy might not be a great confidant! Have her carry a little gun and either use it competently or attempt to use it competently! When she’s locked in a room, have her get out! All the lost opportunities to build Ann into a decent character, did I mention how painful it is to contemplate this? Yes, she shoots a bad guy herself at the end, but this is too little, too late, and also too contrived. If you want a girl this ineffectual to shoot a bad guy, you really need to set it up properly beforehand. That’s why Tom should have given Ann a cute little feminine pistol earlier. Sure, the audience would expect her to get a chance to use that gun, but then the best idea is to have her use it in a way that is unexpected. Coming up with something a little bit unexpected but plausible and fun is the writer’s actual job. Ann doesn’t need a contrived opportunity to save the day at the very last second because that should have been Red Cloud.

D) If the townspeople are brave, their bravery should be rewarded.

When the smooth-talking rich bad guy is marrying Ann at gunpoint, an ordinary townsman steps up and says no, this is not okay. Then he gets shot. Well, sometimes that happens to good people when they step up, but it would have been better to have this one man’s example inspire the town. To be fair, his example might have inspired one other person, maybe two, but it would have been much better if the decent people of the town had risen up against the smooth-talking rich bad guy at this moment and prevented the gunpoint marriage and then effectively taken out some of the many thugs and henchmen themselves.

This would have changed the plot dramatically, granted, but so what? I’ve already suggested dramatic changes, so what’s one more?

E) Justify the evil.

The smooth-talking rich bad guy has all the justification he needs – there’s oil on the ranch – but the assassin doesn’t.

When he gets to town, the assassin stalks and kills … the kid. Not Tom. The kid. Why? Did the assassin make a mistake? But the kid is like twenty years younger and looks totally different, so a competent assassin ought to have known which of them was Tom.

Did the assassin want to drive Tom into a rage and thus deliberately killed a friend rather than Tom himself? Why? Wouldn’t it have been a zillion times more straightforward to shoot Tom from a distance? Because this was a sniping thing, not a straightforward Western-type duel, pistols at twenty paces or anything like that. So why take out someone other than Tom?

Honestly, the assassin’s actions were a real puzzle.

Overall:

This is not a great movie, and all its failures are blatantly obvious failures of storytelling. This makes it interesting to consider.

Is there anything good about this movie?

Very nice scenery. A handful of decent lines of dialogue. Other than that, not really.

I really don’t know what my favorite Western movie is, but maybe I should give that some thought, pick one, and explain why that movie succeeds where this one really doesn’t.

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The post Recent Watching: Crossfire Trail (the movie) appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.

Poetry Thursday: The Bells

You know, I’m sure I’ve mentioned The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe multiple times, in one context or another, but have I ever actually showcased this poem? Maybe not. It is, after all, famous. You’re probably all familiar with it. But I love this poem, which I think now, looking back on it, was a revelation to me about rhythm in poetry. Plus such great words! Euphony voluminously wells, In a mad expostulation, palpitating air, What a world of solemn thought their monody compels, many fantastic words n this poem besides titanabulation, which is the one everyone mentions.

I literally did memorize this poem when I was in high school, though I certainly wouldn’t be able to recite more than a few odd lines now. Feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone. Don’t ask me why the iron bells stick in my memory!

Poe was another poet born in January, it turns out, back in 1809. I’m familiar with Poe’s locked room murder mysteries, which I don’t like particularly; and with his short stories, which I appreciate but also don’t like particularly. But I do love this poem.

***

The Bells

Hear the sledges with the bells—
                 Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
           In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
           With a crystalline delight;
         Keeping time, time, time,
         In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II.

        Hear the mellow wedding bells,
                 Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
        Through the balmy air of night
        How they ring out their delight!
           From the molten-golden notes,
               And all in tune,
           What a liquid ditty floats
    To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
               On the moon!
         Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
               How it swells!
               How it dwells
           On the Future! how it tells
           Of the rapture that impels
         To the swinging and the ringing
           Of the bells, bells, bells,
         Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III.

         Hear the loud alarum bells—
                 Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
       In the startled ear of night
       How they scream out their affright!
         Too much horrified to speak,
         They can only shriek, shriek,
                  Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
            Leaping higher, higher, higher,
            With a desperate desire,
         And a resolute endeavor
         Now—now to sit or never,
       By the side of the pale-faced moon.
            Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
            What a tale their terror tells
                  Of Despair!
       How they clang, and clash, and roar!
       What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
       Yet the ear it fully knows,
            By the twanging,
            And the clanging,
         How the danger ebbs and flows;
       Yet the ear distinctly tells,
            In the jangling,
            And the wrangling.
       How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—
             Of the bells—
     Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
            Bells, bells, bells—
 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV.

          Hear the tolling of the bells—
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
  At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                 Is a groan.
        And the people—ah, the people—
       They that dwell up in the steeple,
                 All alone,
        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
          In that muffled monotone,
         Feel a glory in so rolling
          On the human heart a stone—
     They are neither man nor woman—
     They are neither brute nor human—
              They are Ghouls:
        And their king it is who tolls;
        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                    Rolls
             A pæan from the bells!
          And his merry bosom swells
             With the pæan of the bells!
          And he dances, and he yells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
             To the pæan of the bells—
               Of the bells:
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the throbbing of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the sobbing of the bells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
          In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the tolling of the bells,
      Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
              Bells, bells, bells—
  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

***

But let’s not stop there. Let’s look for a poem that may be less familiar … hmm. How about this one?

***

Spirits Of The Dead

Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tombstone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven
With light like hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
Now are visions ne’er to vanish;
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more, like dewdrop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!

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We Only Have One Story

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is. — Steinbeck, East of Eden

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us …. Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill? — Steinbeck, still East of Eden

I’ve never read East of Eden, by the way. Here’s a review. Here’s another. Oh, look, the ebook is $0.99 at Amazon. FINE, TWIST MY ARM.

***

Here it is: there’s only one story. There, I said it and I can’t very well take it back. There is only one story. Ever. One. It’s always been going on and it’s everywhere around us and every story you’ve ever read or heard or watched is part of it. –– Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Honestly, I’m not at all sure I want to read literature like a professor. The description at Amazon is:

While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye—and the literary codes—of a college professor. What does it mean when a protagonist is traveling along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he’s drenched in a sudden rain shower? Thomas C. Foster provides answers to these questions as he explores every aspect of fiction, from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form. Offering a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—he shows us how to make our reading experience more intellectually satisfying and fun.

The world, and curricula, have changed. This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect those changes, and features new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, as well as fresh teaching points Foster has developed over the past decade. Foster updates the books he discusses to include more diverse, inclusive, and modern works, such as Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere; Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X; Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird; Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street; Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; Madeline Miller’s Circe; Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls; and Tahereh Mafi’s A Very Large Expanse of Sea.

I’ve heard of several of those, though I’ve only read Station Eleven and Neverwhere. Interesting choices — possibly good choices — but I always want to say, You know what, sometimes the road is just dusty because it’s the author remembers she’s already established that this is a dry climate. Sometimes it’s raining because the author remembered offhandedly that the weather isn’t always bright and sunny, so today it’s raining Sometimes one character hands another a cup of ale because movement tags are more graceful than always using ‘he said’.

A lot of details do establish mood and tone, I wouldn’t argue otherwise, but it’s just silly to think everything has a deeper meaning or that there are generally hidden truths in someone handing somebody else a cup of water, and that’s why I’m rather suspicious of this whole concept of reading like a lit professor.

***

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”

This is attributed to someone named Jim Thompson, but with no indication I can find regarding who Jim Thompson is or where or when he said or wrote this. I mean, “That I can find in 30 seconds of googling around.” I’m sure it’s possible to track down this person and this quote, but I’m not gonig to bother, I’m just going to point to this post, where I saw the quote.

The quote above by Jim Thompson kicks off a detailed survey of modern storytelling in books and movies. David Bordwell, Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, seemingly has seen a thousand movies and still found time to read a couple thousand books. Perplexing Plots takes a roughly chronological approach at the beginning to describe the field of interest Bordwell wants to concentrate on: plot.

Perplexing Plots is this book. From the description:

In Perplexing Plots, David Bordwell reveals how crime fiction, plays, and films made unconventional narrative mainstream. He shows that since the nineteenth century, detective stories and suspense thrillers have allowed ambitious storytellers to experiment with narrative. Tales of crime and mystery became a training ground where audiences learned to appreciate artifice. These genres demand a sophisticated awareness of storytelling conventions: they play games with narrative form and toy with audience expectations. Bordwell examines how writers and directors have pushed, pulled, and collaborated with their audiences to change popular storytelling. 

This sounds like a fun book.

***

“There are only two plots in all of literature: 1) A person goes on a journey. 2) A stranger comes to town.”

Here’s a post that discusses the possible origin of the above quote. There are many interesting variations, which have been attributed to John Gardner, among others.

The QI website has a separate article about the following related saying: There are only four stories: The siege of the city, the return home, the quest, and the sacrifice of a god.

The … sacrifice of a god? Is one of only four possible stories? Actually, I don’t get “siege of a city” here either. Or, for that matter, “the return home.” From the linked article:

In 1972 Jorge Luis Borges published a collection titled “El Oro de los Tigres” (“The Gold of the Tigers”). Most of the pieces were poems, but one piece was an essay titled “Los Cuatro Ciclos” (“The Four Cycles”) which described four fundamental stories that have been told and retold throughout the history of humankind. …

Click through to read the whole thing, but the post isn’t about the four plots; it’s about the quote. I think it might be fun to create a Venn diagram with the “only two stories” and “only four stories” circles and try assigning actual books to the diagram and see what happens. Maybe I’ll try that and just see how it goes.

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Recent Reading: What You’re Looking for is in the Library

So, after various people here recommended What You’re Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama as a nice, peaceful novel, I added it to my TBR pile. And, once the power was back on so I could read ebooks without worrying about power — I’ve ordered a solar charger now, by the way — anyway, this seemed like a good choice. And it was. It was also a thoroughly interesting … story. Series of stories.

If you look closely, you’ll see “A Novel” in small print below the title. See that? That generally (almost always) is used to signal This is a Literary Novel. Well, in this case, I would call that false advertising. This isn’t literary, and it’s not a novel. It’s not a novel in two different ways:

A) It’s short. The total length is about a long novella — about 200 pages or so.

B) It’s not a single story. It’s a series of … not short stories … it’s a series of five long vignettes.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. 

There are five vignettes, not four. One got left out of the description above: an artistic geek finds the confidence to move forward. Something like that.

These vignettes feature the most utterly ordinary people you can imagine. I don’t think that’s coincidence. I think the author means: Everyone is living their own story. No one is ordinary.

In each case, the protagonist of the vignette is not happy. They are each stuck in their lives and don’t see how to move forward. Each person visits the library, the librarian recommends a book that for some reason turns out to help them get their lives in order, and they do get their lives in order and move on, much more happily. There’s no fantasy element, except possibly the librarian, who does not seem like a totally normal person. The setting is as ordinary as the protagonists, though of course this is set in Tokyo, so that somewhat removes the setting from the ordinary world for American readers. Not very much, though.

Regardless, this book is is interesting in all kinds of ways — it raises questions about what we mean by a novel, what we mean by a story, what we mean by totally normal, ordinary person.

Also, this story — series of linked vignettes — also raises questions about simplicity of theme, simplicity of message, simplicity of language, and how keeping all that simple does or does not create depth. This is because the language of the vignettes is simple, plain language, and the lessons learned be each protagonist are simple, plain lessons. I don’t mean overly simplistic. I do mean simple.

Not only is the language simple, but in most cases, the books recommended by the librarian are children’s books. I don’t think that’s coincidence. I think it’s part of what the author is doing to create depth from simplicity. This isn’t the case in every vignette; one of the books is about evolutionary theory, which of course I rather liked, But it’s common.

This is why I say this work is not literary. “Literary” is hard to categorize, but “literary fiction” basically means ordinary protagonist; ordinary setting; slice of life; ornate, poetic, or metaphorical language; a sense of ennui, negativity, nihilism, or other negative tone and theme. That last isn’t universal, just (very) typical. This story features the ordinary protagonists, ordinary settings, and slice of life, but the language is, as I say, very simple, the tone positive, and the themes uplifting. Therefore, to me, this book doesn’t seem especially literary and also definitely doesn’t seem like a novel.

However, whatever this book is, I turned out to be in the mood for something like it. If you try it, I hope you’ll find it interesting, and that it will lift your mood.

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Winter

It’s shocking how much is lost in photos. I suppose a really great camera would make a lot of difference. Pretend all the trees are made of glass and glittering like crazy. Look at the woods when there’s much less open space:

I love the nondimensional look of the woods here. White white white, with trees. Almost no sense of depth.

Look at the odd angles of the icicles. On Facebook, several people suggested that wind could cause this. I find that highly implausible, to the point where I just can’t see why anybody would suggest it. Look at the icicles. They are fundamentally all the same shape and length. Only the angle is different. Some are practically at right angles to the rest. The wind is not blowing at right angles for one branch compared to the others, so that’s not the answer.

Much better idea, proposed by my younger brother: All the icicles were pointed the same way until the branch got heavy enough to bend in a new direction, taking all the icicles with it. To me, that seems far (far!) more plausible.

This is a deciduous holly, by the way. There are multiple species. I don’t remember which this is, but it does produce a fantastic show with berries. You need to be careful. Only the female plants produce berries, and I have a plant that was supposed to be female, but isn’t. I would be ticked off at the nursery, but I don’t remember where I got that one, so that makes it tough to be irritated at the right nursery. My point is: be sure you order one male per three females or so, and keep the invoice so if you wind up with three males and one female, you can demand replacement female hollies.

Much removal of snowballs, especially for Joy, who romped madly around in the snow. The quickest way to get a whole lot of snow out of the dog’s feathering is to put her in the sink and melt the ice off with a spray of warm water. That is not possible if the power is off, I will add.

Alas, this beautiful river birch, perhaps 25 or 30 years old, had three big limbs break. I don’t know, maybe we’ll just have to have it removed. It’s going to be thoroughly lopsided if we cut the broken branches and leave the rest; all the broken limbs are toward one side of the tree.

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Update: Progress!

Okay, so the power went off again Saturday — we had six inches of snow on Friday, don’t know why the power didn’t fail until dawn Saturday, but whatever, some tree gave up, I suppose. Several, as there were scattered outages around and about. However, there weren’t as many power outages in the county and the weather wasn’t (nearly) as bad for the people fixing the lines, so the power came back on in seven hours.

Complete loss of the morning, though. I mean, as writing time. Overall, I suppose I’d be thirty or forty pages farther along if the power had stayed on the whole time, but in the grand scheme of things, I guess it doesn’t matter.

We’ve ordered a brand! new! state-of-the-art generator that should be much better than our old generators, even if they were working, which they aren’t. It’s a propane generator, so we’ll need a tank of propane to go with it. The whole thing will be installed in about a month, but not earlier, because for some reason it turns out the company is booked up with people wanting generators. In the meantime, we’ve also ordered a propane heater, which should suffice to avoid everyone freezing to death if the power goes off again. It couldn’t be delivered last week because the roads were so terrible, but I expect by next week sometime, we’ll have that. I’m not crazy about a propane heater in the house, actually, but I’m a lot less keen on watching the temperature gradually fall way below freezing.

Winter pictures in a later post because wow, very beautiful and also some weird ice phenomena.

Meanwhile!

Yes, I’ve been working on Tano’s next book. No, I haven’t finished “Midwinter.” Which I should stop putting in quotes and start italicizing, since it’s going to be about 180 pp minimum and that’s about novel length. Anyway, I know what I’m doing with it, I just set it aside for the present. I have lots of newsletter material, that’s for sure. I think I’ll finish it whenever, edit it, proof it, get or make a cover for it, and perhaps release it just before Christmas 2025. I realize that’s a long time away, but that means I don’t have to worry about it just at the moment, and it is very much a Christmas story, so it would seem strange to release it in the middle of summer.

The point is, though, that I’ve been moving ahead with Tano’s story. This story begins shortly after Tasmakat ends, because for various reasons that is the ideal time to begin the story. You’ll see why when you read it. Then we move through the winter country to the high north. I realize we have journeyed through the winter country many times. We don’t need to see it again, certainly not in detail. At the same time, you can’t build the characters without building the characters, so just saying, “forty days later, we came to the foot of the northern mountains” doesn’t work. That would be fine if we knew all the characters already, but we don’t, so I can’t do that. In fact, I’m doing less with some characters than I really want to and may find myself going back and forth through this section to add subplots.

That’s where I am now, in the middle of that journey. I have at least three important scenes before we get to the starlit lands. Not sure how much longer this part is going to take. I will probably wind up cutting and trimming and tweaking to get this part to be shorter while keeping everything important. That, sigh, is just part of the process for these longer books. Which this one will be longer, because I’m at 70,000 words and, as I say, not yet in the starlit lands.

Anyway, then we get to the starlit lands. Almost at once, an important, dramatic event happens — two events — during which Tano gets to think fast in an emergency, which as you know is where he really shines. That won’t be the first time he shows that ability either, not by a long shot, but I know just how that scene works.

Then we move through the starlit lands, north toward the sunless sea, and this part is vague because we’re not there yet and I have only a vague notion what we see and do for a lot of that part. I will just add that this is exactly like moving into the country of sand; I didn’t know what we were going to see there either, though I did know broadly what was going to happen. Same thing here. I don’t know what we’re going to see or exactly what anybody is going to do, but I do know broadly what is going to happen.

We meet the Saa’arii. Things happen (this is vague). Things happen with the Tarashana (less vague). A dramatic thing happens. Some sort of actual resolution happens connected to that dramatic thing. We’re set up for the next book. Ideally, this current book is totally self-contained, though strongly leading toward the next book. I don’t want any kind of cliffhanger. That’s my goal. But the overall arc is more clear to me than the separate resolution. Lots to figure out along the way and when I get there. I do think the more difficult plot element may not need to happen until the next book, which would be nice.

So … right now, here we are, traveling through the winter country. Empahsis on character, not a lot of time saying “Look, snow. Lots of snow.” I want to move briskly here, not so briskly as to lose any sense of place, but briskly.

The coming week should be much easier in one way, as we’re not expecting more ice (as far as I know). But, the semester starts today, so argh, a lot less time to write in the mornings unless I start setting my alarm for four in the morning again, which I suppose I will do. Shockingly, I have been getting up at five thirty some mornings! Ridiculously late, I know, but that won’t do now that classes have started.

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Recent Reading: Conrad’s Fate by DWJ

I’ve had Conrad’s Fate sitting on my coffee table for literally years, possibly since I first thought, hey, you know what, I should reread some of the DWJ novels I’ve only read once and don’t remember well. This is one of those. I do think of the Chrestomanci books as the most classic DWJ books, but I kind of mean the original ones. On the other hand, always happy to see Chrestomanci, so sure, onward.

In Conrad’s Fate, Conrad is the protagonist and he’s kind of annoying to read about for a while, which is one reason why I didn’t reread this one earlier. Also, I got distracted by my own writing and quit reading anything, basically, but still, Diana Wynne Jones, hard to go that wrong. So when the power was off and this book was still sitting on my coffee table, I finally picked it up and read it. Not for the first time, but it might as well have been, because I didn’t remember anything about it.

So, wow, you know, if you think about it, there sure are a lot of horrible families in DWJ’s novels, aren’t there? Truly horrible. Conrad’s family, when the book opens, consists of a mother who is so neglectful she might as well be a faded ghost, an uncle who is deceitful, manipulative, and frankly evil in the worst kind of petty, selfish, stupid way, and an older sister who escaped this home and left Conrad behind. Which is not entirely her fault, but kind of? I mean, she is a young adult, not a kid. Granted, she probably didn’t know quite how much trouble Uncle Alfred would set Conrad up for. Which is a lot. Because —

All right, hang on. So, there’s this mansion where this very rich aristocratic family lives, and for various reasons Uncle Alfred wants someone there killed, so he sets Conrad up to murder this person by telling Conrad he is under a curse, basically, and has to kill this person or he, Conrad, will die. And Conrad, who is an idiot — okay, fine, he’s young, and this guy is his uncle, after all — anyway, Conrad believes this and takes a job as a sort of apprentice footman in order to kill this person. Except on the way to apply for job, he meets Christopher Chant, who is about the same age, but far, far more experienced and knowledgeable, of course, and there for reasons of his own. And thus, the story.

Which is a lot of fun, with tons of details about service in giant mansions. The story gets layered with all sorts of ridiculous plot twists, almost all of which work, and this amazingly cool ruined mansion that appears in dozens of different iterations. If you’re not keen on heights, the description of climbing down from the top of the rickety wooden tower will chill your blood. I like heights, but I wouldn’t have wanted to try that. Conrad gets distracted from the curse (which doesn’t exist, remember) by being just run off his feet plus embroiled in Christopher’s adventures, and then Millie turns up, and eventually he accepts that he isn’t under a curse and Uncle Alfred was lying about everything, and a lot of actors are hired to pretend to be in service, and it’s all quite a romp.

I liked this story a lot. Mostly. But it’s not an altogether successful novel, imo, because I don’t think the ending works. This is a structural problem. We have a leisurely set-up, where the reader is thinking, For God’s sake, Con, Uncle Alfred is lying to you about everything! This is fine, though somewhat painful because you’d sure like Conrad to figure out that his uncle is lying to him earlier. DWJ did this in a different book, too. Let me see, which one am I thinking of? Oh, it’s Drowned Ammet, where Mitt’s mother lies to him about everything and tries to get Mitt to do awful things and it takes practically forever for Mitt to realize this. Again with the horrible family, and horrible in this specific way, deceitful and manipulative and willing to throw the children into terrible danger because they just don’t care a whit about the kids. I only ever read that one once too, and this is why.

However, that’s not what I mean by a structural problem. “Horrible deceitful manipulative family” is a trope, not an element of structure. I hate that trope, but it is of course satisfying to see the kid break away from the lies and manipulation, so that’s something I think you can count on with DWJ. But, Conrad’s Fate has a fairly leisurely set-up and then a madcap romp and then Gabriel de Witt appears as the current Chrestomanci, with a lot of authorities from Conrad’s world, and puts everything right very briskly. After which there is a short, like two-page, epilogue in which the reader is told that everybody lives happily ever after, but NONE of the falling action scenes are shown. And I hate that. I really hate it!

True, I like falling action. (A lot, apparently, since I keep writing such extended falling action myself). But I do really detest having the author point and say, “Look over there! Hey presto! Now you can look back at the main story and behold! Everything has been solved while you glanced away. Now, six years later, everybody is doing great.” This is almost exactly what happens here. I’m barely exaggerating.

So, for me, this element really drops a story way down. I just detest this kind of ending. Non-ending.

And you know who else did this and I didn’t like it then either? GGK in Under Heaven, which is otherwise a spectacularly beautiful novel.

I absolutely love this novel. Truly. But the ending made me ask, “But how about writing the actual ending? What happened? Did the deadline rear up ahead of you and you just had to stop?” Another fifty to hundred pages would have been about right.

I can’t think of many other traditionally published titles where the author stops short of the ending and then winds up the story with a brisk explanation of where everyone winds up, without showing any of them getting there. This is something I’ve seen a couple times in self-published novels. Where, by the way, deadlines aren’t a thing, generally, so I guess the author just got bored? I honestly don’t understand this.

Traditional or self-published, my personal advice is, write the ending, the whole ending, and don’t stop until you’ve gotten to the end. I love epilogues, but they should not be a substitute for the ending and they should not just say, “Six years later, everyone was much happier.”

SO! Final comment: perfectly fine for a DWJ completist, lots to enjoy here, but Conrad’s Fate is not one of her best.

What is her best? Well, it’s hard to beat Dogsbody.

Here are the ten DWJ stories I personally like best.

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Poetry Thursday: Carl Sandburg

Here’s one I remember from a literature class. I don’t know whether it was assigned or whether I just read it, but it’s short and memorable:

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

***

I think I remember someone commenting that she’d named her cat (a gray cat, as you’d expect) Little Cat Feet. I thought that was marvelous. I don’t remember any other poems of Sandburg’s. Here’s another:

Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

***

I love that! I’m glad I happened to google “classic poets born in January,” and then it turns out Carl Sandburg was born January 6th in 1878, and at once I thought how perfect, let me find Little Cat Feet. Then I looked for a few other poems, and here this one was. You know, if I ever name a character the Gray Mocker, you’ll know where that came from. Here’s another:

***

The Windy City

Winds of the Windy City, come out of the prairie, 
    all the way from Medicine Hat. 
Come-out of the inland sea-blue water, come where they 
    nickname a city for you. 

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, 
    come off the whisper of the silk hangers, 
    the lap of the flat spear leaves. 

Blue-water wind in summer, come off the blue miles 
    of lake, carry your inland sea-blue fingers, 
    carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes. 

White spring winds, come off the bag-wool clouds, 
    come off the running melted snow, come white 
    as the arms of snow-born children. 

Gray fighting winter winds, come along on the tearing 
    blizzard tails, the snouts of the hungry 
    hunting storms, come fighting gray in winter. 

Winds of the Windy City, 
Winds of corn and sea blue, 
Spring wind white and fighting winter gray, 
Come home here—they nickname a city for you. 

The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders. 
The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles. 
The winkers of the morning stars count out cities
And forget the numbers. 

***

For those non-Americans who may read this post, the Windy City is Chicago. Sandburg lived in Chicago for a while, around 1915, and the poem “Chicago” is one that I think is in every American Lit book:

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have
seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women
and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my
city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be
alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall
bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted
against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his
ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked,
sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

I think, when I started doing poetry posts, that I said I don’t much care for free verse. Having done a fair number of poetry posts by this point, I can now say that this turns out not to be true. I love some free verse.

I definitely said, in a Quora answer recently, that self-published modern “free verse” poetry generally strikes me as lazy pseudopoetry; if you’re just writing boring sentences and throwing in random line breaks, that’s not poetry. I said, if somebody seriously wants to write free verse, then they should start by writing a few hundred sonnets and thus develop a feel for language, rhythm, word choice, all of that. Then they can write free verse if that’s where their heart lies.

Beats me if Carl Sandburg ever wrote a sonnet, but he sure wrote great free verse. Next time, I may say, Or go read poems by Sandburg and other poets who wrote excellent free verse poetry and think about language, rhythm, and word choice.

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Recent Reading: The Night Gift by Patricia McKillip

So, The Night Gift, published in 1976 — absolutely amazing how long ago that was — is one of McKillip’s very early works, before she really decided what she wanted to write, evidently. I mean, she’d written The House on Parchment Street, The Throme of the Erril of Sherril, and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Then this one. They are each quite different from the others. House is a charming MG ghost story. The ghost is not nearly as important as the family relationships. The Night Gift is like that, minus the ghost story.

In fact, The Night Gift reminds me fairly strongly of The Egypt Game by Zelpha Keatley Snyder. In that story, kids break into an unused yard and create props and rituals related to Egypt. Two girls begin the game and then other kids gradually join in. The kids are unaware of the deep isolation of the man whose yard they’ve turned into Egypt. Then there is some excitement, which serves to pull this man back into the community.

In The Night Gift, kids break into an abandoned house in order to create, in one room, a beautiful place. They are specifically doing this for a brother who tried to commit suicide, as a gift for when he returns from an institution. Three girls, including the sister, begin this project and then other kids are gradually pulled in.

I think this story must have been challenging to write. I mean, how would you handle the ending if you were writing this story? Isn’t that something of a poser?

A straight-up happy ending — “Oh, you’ve made this beautiful place for me, now I feel better!” — would be impossible. That kind of ending would utterly trivialize clinical depression. It would be telling a false story about how people are, what depression is, about everything.

Yet a straight-up tragic ending — “I can’t perceive beauty, I can’t perceive that you care about me, I’m unmoved, I’m going to commit suicide anyway” — would be a heck of a downer. Worse, if the brother actually goes all the way to suicide at the end, then the theme of the story immediately becomes this theme: Your efforts to make the world a better place are ineffectual. Your struggle to help someone is pointless.” This would be a horrible theme. It would also be telling a false story, because sure, lots of efforts to make something better don’t work, or don’t work as well as you’d hoped, or nothing can make some terrible thing better. But the effort to think about someone who is suffering and work to make that person’s life better is basically always worthwhile, so any theme that says don’t bother, it’s hopeless is both terrible and false.

McKillip threaded this needle with an ambiguous ending, and I think the way she did it works.

This is a story about kids, about families, and about growing up. It’s not a coming-of-age story. The children don’t come of age. They’re moving toward adulthood, but they’re not there yet. That’s one reason it’s a MG story. Therefore, this story is a good example about how a story can be about growing up, but not a coming-of-age story.

It’s well written, as you’d expect. It’s a thoroughly positive story despite the ambiguous ending. That’s because everyone is trying to do good things and mostly succeeding. A brother is nice to his sister and her friends. A younger sister is nice to an older sister who is struggling. Friends are nice to each other. A girl realizes the guy she has a crush on is focused on her friend, not on her, and doesn’t blame anybody for this and copes and it’s not fun for her, but it’s the exact opposite of angsty self-indulgence. Parents try to do the right things for their kids, and mostly succeed.

There’s no trace of the poetic tone McKillip captured in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld — which is a wonderful story — or in The Throme, which I think is much less successful. It’s dreamlike, but there’s not a lot to it, or that’s how I remember it. (I haven’t read it for a good long time.) The Night Gift is targeted for quite young readers, ten or twelve years old, rather than hovering at the upper end of YA, which is where I’d say more of her novels fall.

But I liked it quite a bit, and it was a good choice for a day when the power was out and I wanted something quick and easy to read

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