Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 153
January 14, 2017
West of January, by Dave Duncan
First off: great title.
I’m going to excerpt a bit from a review that liked it more than I did because the premise is so high-concept:
I was captivated by this book. Set on a world which revolves so slowly that everyone has to move steadily West in order to escape Dusk and Night, which is a devastating ice world, and avoiding High Summer, so hot it kills everything in its path, West of January is highly original and superbly written. Not only is the world divided into Months and Days, each a particular climate steadily moving west, but the inhabitants are very segregated, each following the same patterns every cycle, never learning from the previous one (that often ends in disaster) because they do not pass their knowledge down.
Vernier is a lost colony on a planet whose rotation is almost the same speed as its revolution, so the habitable zones constantly but slowly move across the planet. So people can be born in the grasslands of Tuesday, north of September, and be three months old when they die of old age. I had a little trouble wrapping my head around this. However, Duncan obviously had it very clear in his head. There’s diagrams and everything. On that level, it’s pretty neat in an old-school, cool idea sf way.
The book starts out very strong, with the protagonist growing up in a weird, vividly depicted herdspeople society. Then he leaves home and it becomes a picaresque, with him visiting a whole bunch of societies which are wildly different from each other. I would have liked this, but there were a couple problems.
One was that the coolest part of the concept got a bit lost in the flurry of “and here’s the sea-people! And the jungle people! And the original settler people!” That’s fine, but there could have been any reason for that; I wanted more of the implications of the 200-year days.
The other was sex. So much sex. Knobil goes somewhere, and every woman in sight flings herself on him. I think Duncan was consciously imitating a classic picaresque form where this sort of thing happens, but it got so irritating. (The only reason I think this is conscious in any way rather than just “because a lot of guys write that” is that I’ve read other books by him and it’s the sort of thing he’d do. That being said, ditto, it’s probably also because a lot of guys write that.) Anyway, it got increasingly boring and ridiculous. A lot of the women were doing it because they wanted some genetic diversity rather than because he was hot, but still.
Finally, the whole book trailed out as it went along, ending in a fizzle. I was really grabbed by it when I started, but ended up putting it down for weeks at some point in the middle. Usually I read his books in one sitting (or two days, etc, depending on interruptions).
Dave Duncan writes sf and fantasy which is pulpy in tone but often driven by genuinely original concepts which are very carefully thought out and then explored in all their implications. For instance, the “A Man of his Word” series has one of the more unique magic systems I’ve encountered in fantasy – it’s word-based magic, but the specific type is one I’ve never seen before or since – and rather than just rest on those laurels, Duncan proceeds to spend a lot of the series taking the concept to unexpected places. His books have plain prose and somewhat basic characterization, which is probably why no one ever mentions him when they’re talking about writers of ideas, but he really is one. He does tend to pop up in discussions of underrated writers, so there is that.
Obviously, West of January is not one of his better books. It looks like an early work that was recently re-issued, so that might explain some things. I’m still pleased to have grabbed a bunch of his books for cheap and for Tool of Satan to have mailed me hard copies of others, and will report on them as I get to them. He’s a genuinely interesting writer and worth reading if you like his kind of thing, which at his best is quirky, surprisingly intelligent takes on pulp sf and fantasy tropes. I like that kind of thing. If you do too, I suggest The Cursed[image error], which has a very odd/cool take on curse-or-blessing (90% curse) powers in a medieval setting; there are some mild "dude wrote this" gender issues but on the other hand the protagonist is a pretty awesome middle-aged female innkeeper. For an epic fantasy series, Magic Casement (A Man of His Word Book 1)[image error] is also interesting/quirky, as is the "King's Swords" series (more small-scale, more fighting and politicking, less magic) and-- hey, this is 99 cents today!-- The Reluctant Swordsman (The Seventh Sword Book 1)[image error]. I have not read the latter but I've been recced it frequently. Interesting premise for sure.
West of January[image error]
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I’m going to excerpt a bit from a review that liked it more than I did because the premise is so high-concept:
I was captivated by this book. Set on a world which revolves so slowly that everyone has to move steadily West in order to escape Dusk and Night, which is a devastating ice world, and avoiding High Summer, so hot it kills everything in its path, West of January is highly original and superbly written. Not only is the world divided into Months and Days, each a particular climate steadily moving west, but the inhabitants are very segregated, each following the same patterns every cycle, never learning from the previous one (that often ends in disaster) because they do not pass their knowledge down.
Vernier is a lost colony on a planet whose rotation is almost the same speed as its revolution, so the habitable zones constantly but slowly move across the planet. So people can be born in the grasslands of Tuesday, north of September, and be three months old when they die of old age. I had a little trouble wrapping my head around this. However, Duncan obviously had it very clear in his head. There’s diagrams and everything. On that level, it’s pretty neat in an old-school, cool idea sf way.
The book starts out very strong, with the protagonist growing up in a weird, vividly depicted herdspeople society. Then he leaves home and it becomes a picaresque, with him visiting a whole bunch of societies which are wildly different from each other. I would have liked this, but there were a couple problems.
One was that the coolest part of the concept got a bit lost in the flurry of “and here’s the sea-people! And the jungle people! And the original settler people!” That’s fine, but there could have been any reason for that; I wanted more of the implications of the 200-year days.
The other was sex. So much sex. Knobil goes somewhere, and every woman in sight flings herself on him. I think Duncan was consciously imitating a classic picaresque form where this sort of thing happens, but it got so irritating. (The only reason I think this is conscious in any way rather than just “because a lot of guys write that” is that I’ve read other books by him and it’s the sort of thing he’d do. That being said, ditto, it’s probably also because a lot of guys write that.) Anyway, it got increasingly boring and ridiculous. A lot of the women were doing it because they wanted some genetic diversity rather than because he was hot, but still.
Finally, the whole book trailed out as it went along, ending in a fizzle. I was really grabbed by it when I started, but ended up putting it down for weeks at some point in the middle. Usually I read his books in one sitting (or two days, etc, depending on interruptions).
Dave Duncan writes sf and fantasy which is pulpy in tone but often driven by genuinely original concepts which are very carefully thought out and then explored in all their implications. For instance, the “A Man of his Word” series has one of the more unique magic systems I’ve encountered in fantasy – it’s word-based magic, but the specific type is one I’ve never seen before or since – and rather than just rest on those laurels, Duncan proceeds to spend a lot of the series taking the concept to unexpected places. His books have plain prose and somewhat basic characterization, which is probably why no one ever mentions him when they’re talking about writers of ideas, but he really is one. He does tend to pop up in discussions of underrated writers, so there is that.
Obviously, West of January is not one of his better books. It looks like an early work that was recently re-issued, so that might explain some things. I’m still pleased to have grabbed a bunch of his books for cheap and for Tool of Satan to have mailed me hard copies of others, and will report on them as I get to them. He’s a genuinely interesting writer and worth reading if you like his kind of thing, which at his best is quirky, surprisingly intelligent takes on pulp sf and fantasy tropes. I like that kind of thing. If you do too, I suggest The Cursed[image error], which has a very odd/cool take on curse-or-blessing (90% curse) powers in a medieval setting; there are some mild "dude wrote this" gender issues but on the other hand the protagonist is a pretty awesome middle-aged female innkeeper. For an epic fantasy series, Magic Casement (A Man of His Word Book 1)[image error] is also interesting/quirky, as is the "King's Swords" series (more small-scale, more fighting and politicking, less magic) and-- hey, this is 99 cents today!-- The Reluctant Swordsman (The Seventh Sword Book 1)[image error]. I have not read the latter but I've been recced it frequently. Interesting premise for sure.
West of January[image error]
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January 10, 2017
Carrie, by Stephen King
King’s famous/infamous first novel. Most of you probably know the gist of it whether you’ve read it (or seen the movie) or not— it’s just that iconic— and it doesn’t matter if I spoil it in outline because King also tells/teases you with what happened right from the get-go. But if you don’t, it goes like this:
Carrie, who is secretly telekinetic, is raised in near-isolation by her abusive, mentally ill mom, a batshit fundamentalist whose beliefs bear only the most tenuous relationship to any actual religion. Carrie is not taught of the existence of menstruation because all things bodily are the Devil’s handiwork, and panics when she gets her period in the girls’ locker room shower. Because teenagers can be fucking monsters, she’s pelted with tampons by the other girls, who smell blood in the water in more ways than one.
Sue Snell, a girl who feels guilty over failing to stop the bullying, joins forces with some other teenagers to try to give Carrie a nice prom. Unfortunately, the hateful bully contingent also has plans for Carrie, and also at the prom. Let’s just say that Carrie doesn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done at that age and under those circumstances if I could’ve killed people with my brain.
I first read this book when I was a bullied teenager, so I was an ideal audience in one sense. However, it was neither the first book I read by King nor the one that made me go on to read more. (Those were The Stand, followed by Firestarter.) I liked it but I didn’t love it, which is still my feeling about it now though probably not for the same reasons.
At the time, though I identified with Carrie’s situation, I didn’t identify with her as a person. She’s sad and plodding and downtrodden and not all that bright; none of what happens to her is her fault, but in addition to circumstances caused by others (like her terrible clothes) her personality gives off an aura of victimhood that makes the bullies decide to pick on her rather than on someone else. (King is very, very clear about that part: bullies gonna bully. If Carrie hadn’t been there, they would have just selected a different target.) To be clear, I don’t mean that she’s insufficiently awesome for me to identify with, just that her flaws aren’t my flaws.
(I confess: when our ages matched, I found an unsettling amount to identify with in Harold Emery Lauder. I mean. His goddamn name is only one syllable off mine, and it has almost the same metrical emphasis. That’s not exactly a coincidence. In both cases, it was selected by a teenage writer because it’s unique, the meter makes it memorable, and it just sounds like a writer’s name. King really had my number. But that’s not a coincidence, either: name aside, it was his number, too.)
What’s most remembered about Carrie are the set-piece scenes. The shower and the prom scene are iconic for a reason, but there’s quite a few in the book that have that same extraordinary vividness of emotion and image. They’re bizarre and singular in terms of events (so you recall them) and depicted with perfectly selected details, like the sort of nightmare you wake up from to lie sweating and telling yourself “It’s not real, it’s not real,” and dread having again for the rest of your life.
The other notable element is the blistering, raw, absolutely dead-on portrayal of what it feels like to be a bullied teenager. And also what it feels like to be any teenager in the sort of world I was a teenager in, which I hope to God is less common nowadays, when high school was their society, adults did not give a fuck, and it didn’t make much of a difference that the majority of the teenagers were perfectly decent people, if self-centered in a developmentally appropriate way, because God help you if the bullies close their eyes, spin around, and come to a stop with their finger pointed at you. Tag, you’re it. Your life will now be hell for the next four years.
Sue Snell is a good person. So is her boyfriend. It almost saves the day. But, as in Cujo, there are other forces at work, though here it’s human factors rather than chance or fate. Bullies gonna bully, and Carrie is emotionally fragile, primed to snap by her abusive mother, and in an act of agency with truly bad timing, she’s been practicing her power. The kerosene was already pooling on the floor, but some assholes just had to toss in a match.
Finally, Carrie is not spectacularly but still quite nicely structured, partly in a way that King was later to make one of his trademarks (multiple plotlines coming together into a dramatic unified climax) and partly in one that I don’t think he ever did on that scale again, which was to construct the book largely out of “found materials,” like newspaper articles, court transcripts, interviews, etc. The latter is interesting but distancing, fine but not noticeably better than what a lot of competent writers could do. The present-day sequences are way more impressive and have King’s specific voice.
A lot of what makes King a great writer was there right from the start: the well-crafted structure, the storytelling, the memorable scenes and images, the way with character and place, the trainwreck you see coming, the sympathy with his characters even as you know that a lot of them are not going to make it, and the moral force.
Even more interestingly to me as a writer, it shows how he overall had the sense to build on his strengths rather than his weaknesses in subsequent books. The found materials? Only ever used again in small, judicious doses. But the idea that he could do odd things with structure and that he should feel free to experiment and write each book in the way he thought suited it? That stuck. And most of all, the willingness to just go there with whatever outrageous, taboo, gross, or “you can’t write that” image that popped into his mind. Forty years later, those girls throwing tampons at Carrie still feels dangerous. If he’d never written it and someone submitted it now, there’s an excellent chance they’d get the exact same “what the everlasting fuck am I reading?” reaction.
King wasn’t the writer who taught me the value of just going there (Harlan Ellison did that) but it’s a good lesson to learn. Maybe the best. You don’t have to be gross or horrifying or shocking. You just have to be true to your self. We all have an inner voice and outer critics saying, “This is too revealing, too embarrassing, too weird, too risky; if I write it people will know the inside of my head looks like that.” But the insides of all of our heads are full of weird, embarrassing, scary stuff. It’s powerful stuff, too.
Maybe it’s tampons and a bucket of pig’s blood. Maybe it’s walking trees and a golden ring. Maybe it’s you and a gun and a man on your back. Whatever it is, it’s the real deal. Go there.
Carrie[image error]
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Carrie, who is secretly telekinetic, is raised in near-isolation by her abusive, mentally ill mom, a batshit fundamentalist whose beliefs bear only the most tenuous relationship to any actual religion. Carrie is not taught of the existence of menstruation because all things bodily are the Devil’s handiwork, and panics when she gets her period in the girls’ locker room shower. Because teenagers can be fucking monsters, she’s pelted with tampons by the other girls, who smell blood in the water in more ways than one.
Sue Snell, a girl who feels guilty over failing to stop the bullying, joins forces with some other teenagers to try to give Carrie a nice prom. Unfortunately, the hateful bully contingent also has plans for Carrie, and also at the prom. Let’s just say that Carrie doesn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done at that age and under those circumstances if I could’ve killed people with my brain.
I first read this book when I was a bullied teenager, so I was an ideal audience in one sense. However, it was neither the first book I read by King nor the one that made me go on to read more. (Those were The Stand, followed by Firestarter.) I liked it but I didn’t love it, which is still my feeling about it now though probably not for the same reasons.
At the time, though I identified with Carrie’s situation, I didn’t identify with her as a person. She’s sad and plodding and downtrodden and not all that bright; none of what happens to her is her fault, but in addition to circumstances caused by others (like her terrible clothes) her personality gives off an aura of victimhood that makes the bullies decide to pick on her rather than on someone else. (King is very, very clear about that part: bullies gonna bully. If Carrie hadn’t been there, they would have just selected a different target.) To be clear, I don’t mean that she’s insufficiently awesome for me to identify with, just that her flaws aren’t my flaws.
(I confess: when our ages matched, I found an unsettling amount to identify with in Harold Emery Lauder. I mean. His goddamn name is only one syllable off mine, and it has almost the same metrical emphasis. That’s not exactly a coincidence. In both cases, it was selected by a teenage writer because it’s unique, the meter makes it memorable, and it just sounds like a writer’s name. King really had my number. But that’s not a coincidence, either: name aside, it was his number, too.)
What’s most remembered about Carrie are the set-piece scenes. The shower and the prom scene are iconic for a reason, but there’s quite a few in the book that have that same extraordinary vividness of emotion and image. They’re bizarre and singular in terms of events (so you recall them) and depicted with perfectly selected details, like the sort of nightmare you wake up from to lie sweating and telling yourself “It’s not real, it’s not real,” and dread having again for the rest of your life.
The other notable element is the blistering, raw, absolutely dead-on portrayal of what it feels like to be a bullied teenager. And also what it feels like to be any teenager in the sort of world I was a teenager in, which I hope to God is less common nowadays, when high school was their society, adults did not give a fuck, and it didn’t make much of a difference that the majority of the teenagers were perfectly decent people, if self-centered in a developmentally appropriate way, because God help you if the bullies close their eyes, spin around, and come to a stop with their finger pointed at you. Tag, you’re it. Your life will now be hell for the next four years.
Sue Snell is a good person. So is her boyfriend. It almost saves the day. But, as in Cujo, there are other forces at work, though here it’s human factors rather than chance or fate. Bullies gonna bully, and Carrie is emotionally fragile, primed to snap by her abusive mother, and in an act of agency with truly bad timing, she’s been practicing her power. The kerosene was already pooling on the floor, but some assholes just had to toss in a match.
Finally, Carrie is not spectacularly but still quite nicely structured, partly in a way that King was later to make one of his trademarks (multiple plotlines coming together into a dramatic unified climax) and partly in one that I don’t think he ever did on that scale again, which was to construct the book largely out of “found materials,” like newspaper articles, court transcripts, interviews, etc. The latter is interesting but distancing, fine but not noticeably better than what a lot of competent writers could do. The present-day sequences are way more impressive and have King’s specific voice.
A lot of what makes King a great writer was there right from the start: the well-crafted structure, the storytelling, the memorable scenes and images, the way with character and place, the trainwreck you see coming, the sympathy with his characters even as you know that a lot of them are not going to make it, and the moral force.
Even more interestingly to me as a writer, it shows how he overall had the sense to build on his strengths rather than his weaknesses in subsequent books. The found materials? Only ever used again in small, judicious doses. But the idea that he could do odd things with structure and that he should feel free to experiment and write each book in the way he thought suited it? That stuck. And most of all, the willingness to just go there with whatever outrageous, taboo, gross, or “you can’t write that” image that popped into his mind. Forty years later, those girls throwing tampons at Carrie still feels dangerous. If he’d never written it and someone submitted it now, there’s an excellent chance they’d get the exact same “what the everlasting fuck am I reading?” reaction.
King wasn’t the writer who taught me the value of just going there (Harlan Ellison did that) but it’s a good lesson to learn. Maybe the best. You don’t have to be gross or horrifying or shocking. You just have to be true to your self. We all have an inner voice and outer critics saying, “This is too revealing, too embarrassing, too weird, too risky; if I write it people will know the inside of my head looks like that.” But the insides of all of our heads are full of weird, embarrassing, scary stuff. It’s powerful stuff, too.
Maybe it’s tampons and a bucket of pig’s blood. Maybe it’s walking trees and a golden ring. Maybe it’s you and a gun and a man on your back. Whatever it is, it’s the real deal. Go there.
Carrie[image error]
comments
January 9, 2017
Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich (published as Smile or Die in the UK)
Barbara Ehrenreich rips toxic positivity a well-deserved new one in this much-needed but unfortunately poorly organized book surveying the origins, bizarre applications, and downside of the American obsession with positive thinking.
The first chapter is about how her diagnosis with breast cancer lands her in a strange new world of enforced positivity and a weird, mutant, and extremely pink version of feminist femininity.
She clearly traces the journey from breast cancer being an unspeakable and hidden doom to how genuinely needed efforts to get it more funding and make it seem less of a shameful death sentence went off-kilter in some very strange ways. For instance, support groups (needed; very helpful to many women) get so obsessed with the idea that positivity is essential to survival that they refuse to allow women to express any negative emotions, especially anger, for fear that they will literally kill them; one of Ehrenreich's ends up ostracizing a dying woman for being angry and depressed.
As Ehrenreich points out, actual research on the effect of positive thinking on illness outcomes is complicated at best. Just to start with, many studies don't actually say what people think they say, and "positive thinking" is extremely hard to measure. And then there's the whole issue of correlation vs. causation: the patients who were more positive might have felt more positive because their illness was less severe, they had better medical support, etc, while the more negative patients might have had worse symptoms, couldn't tolerate the treatment, etc. So it might not be that positive thinking causes better outcomes, but rather that people who were going to have better outcomes anyway are more likely to be positive. And so forth.
And even if positive thinking really does make it that fraction more likely that you'll live longer (even the best-crafted studies don't show large differences), can positivity be forced? If it works at all (it may not) does it work if it's forced, or does it have to be sincere? Does telling people they need to smile or they'll die produce the sincere happiness that's supposedly needed. Or is it more healthy to feel and express the emotions you sincerely feel, even if they're not positive?
And how come, out of all the illness-based positivity hammering, it comes down hardest on a disease primarily affecting women? Could it be that "smile, smile, smile, look on the bright side, use the opportunity to bond with your loved ones, and whatever you do, don't be angry" is a message that American women get anyway?
Ehrenreich's righteous fury burns through this chapter, fueling a killer takedown of bad science, not-actually-feminism, and cruelty disguised as kindness. It was brilliant and if she'd written the whole book on that, it would have been stunning. Also, there is definitely enough material for a book's worth.
The rest of the book unfortunately leaves the subject of breast cancer and, in most cases, illness behind to first explore a possible root cause of the whole positivity movement in the US, then devote a chapter each to various idiotic and rage-making applications. It was interesting but didn't live up to the beginning. Unless I missed it, the US is really overdue for a current version of something like Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors[image error]
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America[image error]
comments
The first chapter is about how her diagnosis with breast cancer lands her in a strange new world of enforced positivity and a weird, mutant, and extremely pink version of feminist femininity.
She clearly traces the journey from breast cancer being an unspeakable and hidden doom to how genuinely needed efforts to get it more funding and make it seem less of a shameful death sentence went off-kilter in some very strange ways. For instance, support groups (needed; very helpful to many women) get so obsessed with the idea that positivity is essential to survival that they refuse to allow women to express any negative emotions, especially anger, for fear that they will literally kill them; one of Ehrenreich's ends up ostracizing a dying woman for being angry and depressed.
As Ehrenreich points out, actual research on the effect of positive thinking on illness outcomes is complicated at best. Just to start with, many studies don't actually say what people think they say, and "positive thinking" is extremely hard to measure. And then there's the whole issue of correlation vs. causation: the patients who were more positive might have felt more positive because their illness was less severe, they had better medical support, etc, while the more negative patients might have had worse symptoms, couldn't tolerate the treatment, etc. So it might not be that positive thinking causes better outcomes, but rather that people who were going to have better outcomes anyway are more likely to be positive. And so forth.
And even if positive thinking really does make it that fraction more likely that you'll live longer (even the best-crafted studies don't show large differences), can positivity be forced? If it works at all (it may not) does it work if it's forced, or does it have to be sincere? Does telling people they need to smile or they'll die produce the sincere happiness that's supposedly needed. Or is it more healthy to feel and express the emotions you sincerely feel, even if they're not positive?
And how come, out of all the illness-based positivity hammering, it comes down hardest on a disease primarily affecting women? Could it be that "smile, smile, smile, look on the bright side, use the opportunity to bond with your loved ones, and whatever you do, don't be angry" is a message that American women get anyway?
Ehrenreich's righteous fury burns through this chapter, fueling a killer takedown of bad science, not-actually-feminism, and cruelty disguised as kindness. It was brilliant and if she'd written the whole book on that, it would have been stunning. Also, there is definitely enough material for a book's worth.
The rest of the book unfortunately leaves the subject of breast cancer and, in most cases, illness behind to first explore a possible root cause of the whole positivity movement in the US, then devote a chapter each to various idiotic and rage-making applications. It was interesting but didn't live up to the beginning. Unless I missed it, the US is really overdue for a current version of something like Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors[image error]
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America[image error]
comments
January 8, 2017
I have been forced to flee my kitchen
I attempted to roast some chestnuts. You will be unsurprised to hear that they exploded.
(Yes, I cut the little X into them.)
comments
(Yes, I cut the little X into them.)
comments
January 7, 2017
Cujo, by Stephen King
I read or re-read a lot of Stephen King this year. (Of the new-to-me ones that I have not yet reviewed, so far my favorite is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon[image error].) In some cases, the re-reads were of books I’d read once thirty years ago. Cujo[image error] was one of those. I hadn’t re-read it before partly because I’d vaguely classified it as a high-concept potboiler along the lines of Christine (“car/dog/lawnmower turns EVIL”), and partly because I remembered it as really emotionally brutal. But when I was sorting through King’s long backlist, I realized that those two recollections don’t mesh. So I re-read.
The latter is correct. Along with Pet Sematary, it might King’s most emotionally traumatizing novel. It’s surprisingly well-written and interestingly constructed, with way more going on than “rabid dog traps mom and son in car.” And I will probably not re-read it for another thirty years, so you’re getting the long analysis-for-posterity now.
King, of course, is a horror writer. But I’d like to separate out two worldviews that often get lumped together as “dark,” “grimdark,” or “horror,” but which are actually quite different.
One is “everything sucks.” Terrible things happen because most people are terrible, there is no God (or God is evil), and good people are either idiots for trying to do right or subconsciously not good at all, but merely deluded or self-righteous.
The other is “life isn’t fair.” Terrible things happen for a lot of reasons (bad people also have free will and may exercise it on you, nature can kill you, etc), God may or may not exist but either way is unlikely to personally reach down and save you, and while most people are not terrible (in this worldview, usually most people are neither angels nor monsters), neither altruism nor innocence is a shield of protection.
In general, King’s worldview is “life isn’t fair.” One of his main themes is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” This is one of those huge life questions that doesn’t have any easy answers, and if you read a lot of his books you see him tackling it in different ways and providing different possible answers.
In The Stand, an interventionist God exists, but can only save the world from the Devil at the cost both of a huge death toll of innocents and the willing sacrifice of good people; this brings up questions like is “Is it worth it?” and “Is that God worthy of worship?” In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, God probably exists but is not interventionist in large or obvious ways, though he/it may be in small and subtle ones; bad things happen because tiny errors can snowball and nature is an inhuman force that’s much more powerful than any given human, though that doesn’t mean the human doesn’t have a chance. Cujo reads like there is no God and no Devil, just people: some good, a few bad, most flawed but trying, in a universe that doesn’t even know they exist.
A lot of King’s books say, “Bad things happen because life is like that. Maybe you made a mistake or a bad choice, but we all do because we’re all human. You got caught and chewed up in the cogs of fate or chance, not because you did anything to deserve it, but because we live inside a big scary machine and sometimes it eats people. What happened to you could happen to any of us. And if along the way you were brave or good, even if it didn’t save you or anyone, even if no one but you will ever know, at least you tried. And that matters.”
There can be a bleak but real comfort in that worldview, and if you feel it, King is a good writer to read when you’re going through hard times. (Apart from the more obvious comfort of “My life sucks but at least I’m not imprisoned by a killer fan who addicted me to painkillers, cut off my foot, and is forcing me to write on a typewriter missing the letters r, n, and e.”)
Sometimes what you really need to hear isn’t “Everything will be okay.” Sometimes you need, “Maybe everything won’t be okay. But it’s not because you did something wrong. It has nothing to do with you at all. It’s just the way life is.”
(You may be thinking, “How the hell is that comforting?” Two reasons. One is that if things are going sufficiently badly, hearing nothing but “No they’re not! Stuff like that can’t happen!” is unhelpful at best, crazymaking at worst, and definitely makes you feel like people aren’t listening. The other is that the alternative possibility is that everything is your fault and if you can’t fix it, it’s because you personally are a failure and also suck.)
Cujo is the purest expression of the “Bad stuff happens because life is like that” view that I’ve read from King so far. A lot of its literary interest is how that theme is reflected in both content and structure. And in case you missed it, toward the end King states the theme explicitly:
It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.
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The latter is correct. Along with Pet Sematary, it might King’s most emotionally traumatizing novel. It’s surprisingly well-written and interestingly constructed, with way more going on than “rabid dog traps mom and son in car.” And I will probably not re-read it for another thirty years, so you’re getting the long analysis-for-posterity now.
King, of course, is a horror writer. But I’d like to separate out two worldviews that often get lumped together as “dark,” “grimdark,” or “horror,” but which are actually quite different.
One is “everything sucks.” Terrible things happen because most people are terrible, there is no God (or God is evil), and good people are either idiots for trying to do right or subconsciously not good at all, but merely deluded or self-righteous.
The other is “life isn’t fair.” Terrible things happen for a lot of reasons (bad people also have free will and may exercise it on you, nature can kill you, etc), God may or may not exist but either way is unlikely to personally reach down and save you, and while most people are not terrible (in this worldview, usually most people are neither angels nor monsters), neither altruism nor innocence is a shield of protection.
In general, King’s worldview is “life isn’t fair.” One of his main themes is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” This is one of those huge life questions that doesn’t have any easy answers, and if you read a lot of his books you see him tackling it in different ways and providing different possible answers.
In The Stand, an interventionist God exists, but can only save the world from the Devil at the cost both of a huge death toll of innocents and the willing sacrifice of good people; this brings up questions like is “Is it worth it?” and “Is that God worthy of worship?” In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, God probably exists but is not interventionist in large or obvious ways, though he/it may be in small and subtle ones; bad things happen because tiny errors can snowball and nature is an inhuman force that’s much more powerful than any given human, though that doesn’t mean the human doesn’t have a chance. Cujo reads like there is no God and no Devil, just people: some good, a few bad, most flawed but trying, in a universe that doesn’t even know they exist.
A lot of King’s books say, “Bad things happen because life is like that. Maybe you made a mistake or a bad choice, but we all do because we’re all human. You got caught and chewed up in the cogs of fate or chance, not because you did anything to deserve it, but because we live inside a big scary machine and sometimes it eats people. What happened to you could happen to any of us. And if along the way you were brave or good, even if it didn’t save you or anyone, even if no one but you will ever know, at least you tried. And that matters.”
There can be a bleak but real comfort in that worldview, and if you feel it, King is a good writer to read when you’re going through hard times. (Apart from the more obvious comfort of “My life sucks but at least I’m not imprisoned by a killer fan who addicted me to painkillers, cut off my foot, and is forcing me to write on a typewriter missing the letters r, n, and e.”)
Sometimes what you really need to hear isn’t “Everything will be okay.” Sometimes you need, “Maybe everything won’t be okay. But it’s not because you did something wrong. It has nothing to do with you at all. It’s just the way life is.”
(You may be thinking, “How the hell is that comforting?” Two reasons. One is that if things are going sufficiently badly, hearing nothing but “No they’re not! Stuff like that can’t happen!” is unhelpful at best, crazymaking at worst, and definitely makes you feel like people aren’t listening. The other is that the alternative possibility is that everything is your fault and if you can’t fix it, it’s because you personally are a failure and also suck.)
Cujo is the purest expression of the “Bad stuff happens because life is like that” view that I’ve read from King so far. A lot of its literary interest is how that theme is reflected in both content and structure. And in case you missed it, toward the end King states the theme explicitly:
It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.
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January 6, 2017
Chocolate Box 2017 Letter
Dear Chocolate Box Writer or Artist,
This is my first chocolate box! Thank you for writing or doing art for me. My likes, DNWs, and requested fandoms (The Magnificent Seven (2016), Dragonriders of Pern, Gentleman Bastards, and Nirvana in Fire are below the cut.)
If you haven't heard of Chocolate Box, it's a fic and/or art exchange, vaguely similar to Yuletide but lower pressure (300 word minimum), focused on relationships; you sign up with This Character & That Character for a non-sexual/romantic relationship, or This Character/That Character for a sexual or romantic one. Sign-ups are still open today and close some time tomorrow; Explanation and rules are here.
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This is my first chocolate box! Thank you for writing or doing art for me. My likes, DNWs, and requested fandoms (The Magnificent Seven (2016), Dragonriders of Pern, Gentleman Bastards, and Nirvana in Fire are below the cut.)
If you haven't heard of Chocolate Box, it's a fic and/or art exchange, vaguely similar to Yuletide but lower pressure (300 word minimum), focused on relationships; you sign up with This Character & That Character for a non-sexual/romantic relationship, or This Character/That Character for a sexual or romantic one. Sign-ups are still open today and close some time tomorrow; Explanation and rules are here.
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January 5, 2017
Hamilton Mixtape: Part II
If you missed it, click on the Hamilton tag for the first part of this review.
“Wait For It “— Usher. I was excited to see this on the album, because it instantly struck me as an excellent match of song and singer, but was underwhelmed on actual listen. It’s fine but he doesn’t make it his; as a cover, it’s nice but nothing special. Sorry Usher, it clearly wasn’t just you because I had that exact issue with a lot of the covers.
“An Open Letter” (feat. Shockwave) [Interlude] — Watsky. A cut song, Hamilton’s outraged letter to John Adams. It’s fun (and a good performance) but you can see why it was cut; Hamilton screaming, “Sit down, John, you fat mother—” and being drowned out by a chorus of shrieks and sirens goes beyond fun and into Crowning Moment of Hilarious.
“Satisfied” (feat. Miguel & Queen Latifah) — Sia. A cover, with slight lyrical changes. The part that’s very prettily and expressively sung by Sia is one of the better of the cover songs, but it also contains one of the two best covers on the album, which is the verse rapped by Queen Latifah. Without any lyrical changes at all, she takes that verse and owns it and makes it hers. It’s terrific. I would love to hear Queen Latifah do more Hamilton - actually, I’d like to see her perform in an all-women version. I think she’d be an amazing Jefferson.
“Dear Theodosia” (feat. Ben Folds) — Regina Spektor. Another cover, minor lyrical changes. Very pretty, not all that memorable.
“Valley Forge” (Demo) — Lin-Manuel Miranda. A cut song, or more accurately a cannibalized song; the majority of it was used in the show with a different melody and in different contexts. Like the other demos, it’s mostly interesting to fans as a "making of" Easter egg rather than something you’d want to listen to on repeat. I really wish all the cut songs had been given full productions rather than demos, because if they had been, you probably would want to listen on repeat.
“It’s Quiet Uptown” — Kelly Clarkson. A cover with minor-ish rewrites that feel more substantial than they actually are, because the performance sounds so different and the reason for them – removing the play’s specifics to make it a more universal song about grief and forgiveness— makes a big difference. I liked this a lot. It and Queen Latifah’s “Satisfied” verse are my favorite of the covers. (I’m counting Dessa’s as a cut song, not a cover; if you count it as a cover, it’s also a favorite.) It’s beautifully sung and emotional. And, bonus for me, I can listen to it because it’s not specifically about Philip Hamilton. I can’t listen to “It’s Quiet Uptown” on the cast album because it’s just so damn sad. This is also sad, but for me a lot less of gut-punch, and in this case that’s a good thing.
“That Would Be Enough” — Alicia Keys. Cover. Nice, not that memorable.
”Immigrants (We Get the Job Done”
— K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC, Residente. FUCKING BRILLIANT. Go listen if you haven’t already.
A stunner of a song in every way: lyrics, music, performance. I was not previously familiar with the performers on this, and they’re so good. (And also very musically appealing to me personally, which as you’ll see is not always the case just because someone is objectively good.) Snow Tha Product gets more feeling and rhythm out of a single “Uh!” than a lot of singers get on an entire album.
This song samples two key bits from Hamilton: Hamilton and Lafayette’s bring-down-the-house line, “Immigrants: we get the job done!” and (referring to slavery in context, but also to racism in general) “Does this mean freedom?” “Not yet.”
The lyrics tackle various aspects of immigration, from sharply observed personal details (“I got one job, two jobs, three when I need them/I got five roommates in this one studio but I never really see them” (because the roommates are always out working their three jobs)) to equally sharply observed politics (“We’re America’s ghostwriters”) to the inner experience (“You can be an immigrant without risking your lives […] All you got to do is see the world with new eyes”), in multiple languages and from multiple perspectives, different journeys and backgrounds contrasting and finding unexpected correspondences, all of which is, of course, the essence of the immigrant experience: all those people with all their different stories from all their different places, converging on a single destination.
The hypnotic refrain of “Look how far I come” has multiple meanings— literal travel from afar, success against the odds, “look at where we are/look at where we started,” give me some fucking credit for what I’ve accomplished instead of blaming me for existing, let me tell you about my struggle to get here and then survive here, look at me instead of pretending I don’t exist— and sounds like an incantation, a blessing, a prayer, the spoken expression of the act of faith and hope required to leave everything behind for a leap into the unknown.
Like the best protest songs (which it is, though it’s also more than that) I think people will be listening to this one fifty years from now, when the topical references are incomprehensible without research and all the details that are now current have changed. It won’t matter. The heart of the issue will be the same. And it’s just that good.
“You’ll Be Back” — Jimmy Fallon & The Roots. Cover. The best thing I can say about this is that it’s not as terrible as its own intro led me to expect. It’s still not good. Worst song on the album, hands down.
“Helpless” (feat. Ja Rule) — Ashanti. Cover with fairly substantial rewrites placing the song in the present day. This is pretty adorable. Ashanti’s singing is really nice, and Ja Rule’s brief but memorable section amusingly takes the exact opposite tack from LMM’s. LMM’s delivery admits to his humble origins, but emphasizes that he’s risen above them now. Ja Rule’s says he doesn’t need to rise above anything: he is what he is, what he is is fine, come on baby you know you want me just as I am.
“Take A Break (Interlude)” — !llmind. Little musical snippet.
“Say Yes To This” — Jill Scott. Cover, moderately rewritten. Scott definitely makes this hers, as an old-school sexy torch song. It’s very well done, but musically not really my thing. However, that’s a “it’s not the song, it’s me.”
“Congratulations” — Dessa. Cut song. “You have invented a new kind of stupid.” Angelica tells Hamilton how she really feels about the Reynolds Pamphlets. I can see why it was cut— Angelica’s verse that this song was transformed into says basically the same thing in a much shorter space— but it’s a really good song in its own right. Dessa’s take is excellent: sarcastic, funny, bitter, heartfelt, angry, sad. Great delivery, great range of feeling and singing, just really well-done all round.
“Burn” — Andra Day. Cover, no or very minor rewrites. It’s fine but not memorable.
“Stay Alive (Interlude)” — J.PERIOD & Stro Elliot. Another snippet. I vaguely recall liking this one – I think it’s the one with a techno sound. The interludes are all literally 30 seconds long and I don’t think any of them add much to the overall experience whether I liked them or not.
“Slavery Battle” (Demo) — Lin-Manuel Miranda. MAN I wish this had been done as a full production rather than a demo. As is, it’s mostly of fannish/writerly interest. As a full production, it would be much more re-listenable. The Cabinet Battles on the show are fantastic.
It's a good song but probably would have been better with more drafts, which I assume it would have gotten if it had stayed in. It’s about slavery, and I agree that keeping the song wouldn’t have added that much to the points on the subject that did get made during the show. You’re always making choices when you have a limited length of time, and I can see why this song ended up being less central to the story LMM chose to tell than it would have been if the play took slavery as a central focus.
"Washingtons By Your Side" — Wiz Khalifa. Really interesting original song, very good performance. This re-interprets “Washington” to mean money (his face on the bill), and a lot of stuff that comes along with money (or the lack of it), good and bad. It’s a complex song and I’m not sure I understand all of it, but I like it a lot. It definitely made me want to hear more from him. It’s also noticeably original, with a much more non-obvious take on its inspiration song than the other new songs.
"History Has Its Eyes On You" — John Legend. Gospel version. Similarly to "Say Yes to This," he makes it his own and it’s very well-done but it’s not really my thing, musically speaking; again, it’s not the song, it’s my personal taste.
"Who Tells Your Story" (feat. Common & Ingrid Michaelson) — The Roots. Original song inspired by and quoting that line from the show. Really fantastic song, great performance, my fourth-favorite song on the album, just a hair behind my three faves.
This takes the theme of “who tells your story” to talk about the lethal racism of America that makes a black man’s sense of his own mortality far more present than it should be, how immediate that makes the desire for a legacy, and how “who tells your story,” is both the racism that endangers black men and their urgency to tell their own story before they’re cut down. And beyond politics and the death of the body, the spiritual implications of death and life after death.
I really like how it begins with very concrete matters and then shifts to more intangible ones, its structure mirroring the way we we start with a body and, if you believe, end as a soul. Lyrically complex, very well-structured, beautiful production, just all-around excellent.
"Dear Theodosia (Reprise)" — Chance The Rapper & Francis and The Lights. Cover. The song selection was a good album closer in concept (passing the torch to the next generation) but once again, it’s a solid cover that doesn’t rise above that. “Who Tells Your Story” would have been better to end on, IMO.
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“Wait For It “— Usher. I was excited to see this on the album, because it instantly struck me as an excellent match of song and singer, but was underwhelmed on actual listen. It’s fine but he doesn’t make it his; as a cover, it’s nice but nothing special. Sorry Usher, it clearly wasn’t just you because I had that exact issue with a lot of the covers.
“An Open Letter” (feat. Shockwave) [Interlude] — Watsky. A cut song, Hamilton’s outraged letter to John Adams. It’s fun (and a good performance) but you can see why it was cut; Hamilton screaming, “Sit down, John, you fat mother—” and being drowned out by a chorus of shrieks and sirens goes beyond fun and into Crowning Moment of Hilarious.
“Satisfied” (feat. Miguel & Queen Latifah) — Sia. A cover, with slight lyrical changes. The part that’s very prettily and expressively sung by Sia is one of the better of the cover songs, but it also contains one of the two best covers on the album, which is the verse rapped by Queen Latifah. Without any lyrical changes at all, she takes that verse and owns it and makes it hers. It’s terrific. I would love to hear Queen Latifah do more Hamilton - actually, I’d like to see her perform in an all-women version. I think she’d be an amazing Jefferson.
“Dear Theodosia” (feat. Ben Folds) — Regina Spektor. Another cover, minor lyrical changes. Very pretty, not all that memorable.
“Valley Forge” (Demo) — Lin-Manuel Miranda. A cut song, or more accurately a cannibalized song; the majority of it was used in the show with a different melody and in different contexts. Like the other demos, it’s mostly interesting to fans as a "making of" Easter egg rather than something you’d want to listen to on repeat. I really wish all the cut songs had been given full productions rather than demos, because if they had been, you probably would want to listen on repeat.
“It’s Quiet Uptown” — Kelly Clarkson. A cover with minor-ish rewrites that feel more substantial than they actually are, because the performance sounds so different and the reason for them – removing the play’s specifics to make it a more universal song about grief and forgiveness— makes a big difference. I liked this a lot. It and Queen Latifah’s “Satisfied” verse are my favorite of the covers. (I’m counting Dessa’s as a cut song, not a cover; if you count it as a cover, it’s also a favorite.) It’s beautifully sung and emotional. And, bonus for me, I can listen to it because it’s not specifically about Philip Hamilton. I can’t listen to “It’s Quiet Uptown” on the cast album because it’s just so damn sad. This is also sad, but for me a lot less of gut-punch, and in this case that’s a good thing.
“That Would Be Enough” — Alicia Keys. Cover. Nice, not that memorable.
”Immigrants (We Get the Job Done”
— K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC, Residente. FUCKING BRILLIANT. Go listen if you haven’t already.
A stunner of a song in every way: lyrics, music, performance. I was not previously familiar with the performers on this, and they’re so good. (And also very musically appealing to me personally, which as you’ll see is not always the case just because someone is objectively good.) Snow Tha Product gets more feeling and rhythm out of a single “Uh!” than a lot of singers get on an entire album.
This song samples two key bits from Hamilton: Hamilton and Lafayette’s bring-down-the-house line, “Immigrants: we get the job done!” and (referring to slavery in context, but also to racism in general) “Does this mean freedom?” “Not yet.”
The lyrics tackle various aspects of immigration, from sharply observed personal details (“I got one job, two jobs, three when I need them/I got five roommates in this one studio but I never really see them” (because the roommates are always out working their three jobs)) to equally sharply observed politics (“We’re America’s ghostwriters”) to the inner experience (“You can be an immigrant without risking your lives […] All you got to do is see the world with new eyes”), in multiple languages and from multiple perspectives, different journeys and backgrounds contrasting and finding unexpected correspondences, all of which is, of course, the essence of the immigrant experience: all those people with all their different stories from all their different places, converging on a single destination.
The hypnotic refrain of “Look how far I come” has multiple meanings— literal travel from afar, success against the odds, “look at where we are/look at where we started,” give me some fucking credit for what I’ve accomplished instead of blaming me for existing, let me tell you about my struggle to get here and then survive here, look at me instead of pretending I don’t exist— and sounds like an incantation, a blessing, a prayer, the spoken expression of the act of faith and hope required to leave everything behind for a leap into the unknown.
Like the best protest songs (which it is, though it’s also more than that) I think people will be listening to this one fifty years from now, when the topical references are incomprehensible without research and all the details that are now current have changed. It won’t matter. The heart of the issue will be the same. And it’s just that good.
“You’ll Be Back” — Jimmy Fallon & The Roots. Cover. The best thing I can say about this is that it’s not as terrible as its own intro led me to expect. It’s still not good. Worst song on the album, hands down.
“Helpless” (feat. Ja Rule) — Ashanti. Cover with fairly substantial rewrites placing the song in the present day. This is pretty adorable. Ashanti’s singing is really nice, and Ja Rule’s brief but memorable section amusingly takes the exact opposite tack from LMM’s. LMM’s delivery admits to his humble origins, but emphasizes that he’s risen above them now. Ja Rule’s says he doesn’t need to rise above anything: he is what he is, what he is is fine, come on baby you know you want me just as I am.
“Take A Break (Interlude)” — !llmind. Little musical snippet.
“Say Yes To This” — Jill Scott. Cover, moderately rewritten. Scott definitely makes this hers, as an old-school sexy torch song. It’s very well done, but musically not really my thing. However, that’s a “it’s not the song, it’s me.”
“Congratulations” — Dessa. Cut song. “You have invented a new kind of stupid.” Angelica tells Hamilton how she really feels about the Reynolds Pamphlets. I can see why it was cut— Angelica’s verse that this song was transformed into says basically the same thing in a much shorter space— but it’s a really good song in its own right. Dessa’s take is excellent: sarcastic, funny, bitter, heartfelt, angry, sad. Great delivery, great range of feeling and singing, just really well-done all round.
“Burn” — Andra Day. Cover, no or very minor rewrites. It’s fine but not memorable.
“Stay Alive (Interlude)” — J.PERIOD & Stro Elliot. Another snippet. I vaguely recall liking this one – I think it’s the one with a techno sound. The interludes are all literally 30 seconds long and I don’t think any of them add much to the overall experience whether I liked them or not.
“Slavery Battle” (Demo) — Lin-Manuel Miranda. MAN I wish this had been done as a full production rather than a demo. As is, it’s mostly of fannish/writerly interest. As a full production, it would be much more re-listenable. The Cabinet Battles on the show are fantastic.
It's a good song but probably would have been better with more drafts, which I assume it would have gotten if it had stayed in. It’s about slavery, and I agree that keeping the song wouldn’t have added that much to the points on the subject that did get made during the show. You’re always making choices when you have a limited length of time, and I can see why this song ended up being less central to the story LMM chose to tell than it would have been if the play took slavery as a central focus.
"Washingtons By Your Side" — Wiz Khalifa. Really interesting original song, very good performance. This re-interprets “Washington” to mean money (his face on the bill), and a lot of stuff that comes along with money (or the lack of it), good and bad. It’s a complex song and I’m not sure I understand all of it, but I like it a lot. It definitely made me want to hear more from him. It’s also noticeably original, with a much more non-obvious take on its inspiration song than the other new songs.
"History Has Its Eyes On You" — John Legend. Gospel version. Similarly to "Say Yes to This," he makes it his own and it’s very well-done but it’s not really my thing, musically speaking; again, it’s not the song, it’s my personal taste.
"Who Tells Your Story" (feat. Common & Ingrid Michaelson) — The Roots. Original song inspired by and quoting that line from the show. Really fantastic song, great performance, my fourth-favorite song on the album, just a hair behind my three faves.
This takes the theme of “who tells your story” to talk about the lethal racism of America that makes a black man’s sense of his own mortality far more present than it should be, how immediate that makes the desire for a legacy, and how “who tells your story,” is both the racism that endangers black men and their urgency to tell their own story before they’re cut down. And beyond politics and the death of the body, the spiritual implications of death and life after death.
I really like how it begins with very concrete matters and then shifts to more intangible ones, its structure mirroring the way we we start with a body and, if you believe, end as a soul. Lyrically complex, very well-structured, beautiful production, just all-around excellent.
"Dear Theodosia (Reprise)" — Chance The Rapper & Francis and The Lights. Cover. The song selection was a good album closer in concept (passing the torch to the next generation) but once again, it’s a solid cover that doesn’t rise above that. “Who Tells Your Story” would have been better to end on, IMO.
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