Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 221

Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 128

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This is what a writer's notebook page ought to look like!  First, two doodles, one labeled The man with no mouth, annotated (How to literalize this image?)  Which is a tough question when you're a fantasist.

Racial Masquerade 

O dear God, I thought when I received the invitation.  But in the actual fact, it...

There were all the usual inversions:  Black is white, white is black, black as stereotype and white as somebody you wanted to slap.  But then it got subtler and more interesting.

I'm pretty sure somebody will do this at some point, when it finally begins to look like we're putting racism behind us.  And I'm absolutely certain it will be a bad idea.  When I was in college and Fifties nostalgia was brand-new, I went to a sock hop.  It seemed like it would be fun and harmless.  Only a couple of students went as hoods.  They faked a rumble and it took about thirty seconds to turn serious.  We had to drag the combatants apart.  "I'm going to kill him!  I'm going to kill him!" one kept shouting, red with rage.

We are whatever we pretend to be.

There's a profound story to be written about a racially-themed costume party.  But I didn't feel the holy fire you'd have to have to do it up right.  So I dropped the idea like the opportunity to accidentally say something really stupid that it was.

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APPEARANCES -- Sunday Update

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July 15-17        Readercon                        Burlington, MA
July 22             Philadelphia Fantastic (reading)                        Moonstone Arts, Philadelphia
July 23-24     Confluence                         Pittsburgh, PA
August 19-21   Renovation (Worldcon)                         Reno, NV
Sept. 10           The Spiral Bookcase (signing)                         Manayunk                         Philadelphia
Sept. 21            KGB Bar (reading)                         NYC  

And in 2012 . . .
Aug. 31- Sept. 2   Chicon 7                             Chicago
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Paris, a Poem . . . in print again!

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Look what came in the mail the other day!  Hope Mirrlees's other great work (the one that's not Lud-in-the-Mist ) --  Paris, a Poem .  This small press limited edition folio hardcover is only the fourth publication ever of what Julia Briggs called "modernism's lost masterpiece," the second independent edition (the first was the chapbook published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf), the third unbowdlerized publication (it was reprinted in The Virginia Woolf Quarterly in the early 1970s with all the blasphemous bits edited out or rewritten by the author, who had converted to Catholicism), and the only independent hardcover.

This letterpress edition is also, as you might guess, on the pricey side.  A copy of it will set you back $375, plus shipping.  It's clearly aimed at the collectors market.  And, yes, it is beautiful, a pleasure to hold and a joy to read.

If you're interested, you can find it on AbeBooks.com  Contrary to what its entry says, the book is a folio not a quarto and there are still forty available copies out of an edition of fifty.  (Apparently, there are a few bugs in the listing program.)

What is the poem about?  Well, I've just written a review of it which attempted to answer that very question as succinctly as possible, and it came to ten typewritten pages.  But in essence, Paris, a Poem is:

1.  A daylong journey (the day being specifically May 1, 1919) through Paris which ambitiously attempts to encapsulate the city, its culture, its past, and its then present-day moment in a 600-line poem.

2.  A recapitulation of the Eleusinian Mysteries employing a myth of Mirrlees's own invention, a year-struggle between two virgins, Mary and the moon, representing the conflict between paganism and the Catholic Church.

3.  A love poem of clandestine lesbian passion.  This last is mostly encoded, and you have to dig deep, but it's there.

After its original publication, Paris, a Poem fell into obscurity for almost ninety years before being championed by the late Julia Briggs.  The appearance of this edition is one in a series of events marking the ongoing restoration of Hope Mirrlees to her proper place in the Republic of Letters.


And I want to thank . . .

Yesterday I posted a request for suggestions of places to visit in China and Andrew, David Stone, and Bruce all came through with thoughtful (and, even better, useful) posts.  My thanks to all three.  You guys are great.

Now to ponder their ideas and the train schedules.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 127

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Doodles and the slogan One Land, One Winter.

I the one face the name GRR[something] Treff to acknowledge the sort-of swipe from George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books.

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Looking for Advice on China

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I'm planning to go to China in the spring, to research the next Darger & Surplus novel.

(As an aside . . .  You have no idea how cool writing that made me feel.  That is exactly the sort of thing that, when I was young, I hoped I'd be doing some day.)

So now I'm looking for advice.  Where should I go?  Beijing and Xi'an, of course.  But where else?  Whenever I hit the guidebooks, I end up being overcome by how large China is and how much of it sounds very, very interesting.  So I could really use your input.

Ideas?  Suggestions?  If it helps, the book will begin in Chengdu and most likely end in Beijing.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 126

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An exercise, written quickly:

To love is to trust
To trust is to err
To err is to sin
To sin is to be natural
To be natural is to be simple
To be simple is to live without complication
To live without complication is to be free
To be free is to fly
To fly is to have no ground beneath one's feet
To have no ground beneath one's feet is to be distracted
To be distracted is to be confused
To be confused is the beginning of wisdom
The beginning of wisdom is to admit one is wrong
To admit one is wrong is unnatural
To be unnatural is to worship Satan
To worship Satan is to be damned
To be damned is the common lot
The common lot is to live, love, lose, and die
To do all these things is perfectly ordinary
To live an ordinary life is extraordinary, if only to yourself
To be true to yourself, you must ask questions
If you're asking questions, the Socratic method is best
Do you see what we mean?


This sort of thing is so easy!  Making words say something true is so very hard.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 125

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The Windmill.  "I can't go on.  I must go on.  I'll go on."

A cartoon, not well-drawn but arrogantly erudite.  I like it.  Too bad it was ruined by the bleed-through from the previous page.

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LYREC!

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My pal Gregory Frost has just turned his first novel, Lyrec , into an e-book.  Greg is, of course, the brilliant fantasist who wrote Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet , the first two of what many of us hope fervently will be a long series set in one of the most imaginative worlds in the history of fantasy.

As for Lyrec itself, well . . . here's the blurb:

Lovelorn Lyrec and wise-cracking Borregad have been companions through world after world, adventure after adventure. They seek Lyrec's lost lady, and vengeance for the obliteration of their homeworld. But the evil Miradomon is always one step ahead, leaving a dark trail of destruction behind him. In this incarnation, Lyrec is young, strong, handsome, skilled in the arts of war and song. Poor Borregad is stuck in the body of a cat. And Miradomon? 

You can download a free sample of the book at Book View Cafe,  Or just buy a copy for $4.95.  It's a terrific deal on a terrific book.

Click here now.


And . . .

I had more things to say but they'll have to wait until tomorrow.  Busy today.  Very very busy.

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Scribbledehobbledehoyden: The Magpie's Eye: Page 124

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A slogan slogan.

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Marty Greenberg, Rest in Peace

.Another piece of our history is gone.  Marty Greenberg, who, as his friend Mike Resnick pointed out, sold over 2,000 anthologies and packaged something like 700 novels without making a single enemy along the way.

I never met Marty but he was a pervasive presence in science fiction.  The field is going to look a lot different without him.


And because that's a grim note to begin the week on . . .

Here's a video for a product that may make you feel better.

Or, then again, maybe not.   Enjoy!




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