Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 181

Cherry Saturday, July 28, 2018

 

July is World Picnic Month.  

Bring enough for everybody.

 

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It’s Gonna Be a Good Go-To-Hell Day

I was not looking forward to today because I had an MRI scheduled.  I don’t mind MRIs, I can sleep through those, but the drive there included I-80 to 287 S, and that’s a bitch and I was stressed.  But they called and asked me to reschedule and I said, “YES!” and now I have the whole day free.  Oh, joy, joy, happiness, happiness, joy.  Of course I should be spending my time doing a decent blog post for here, but instead, you’re getting this and I’m going to go out and leap about, having a good time.

My plans are:

• Go to Walmart and pick up my last prescription and some picture hanging hooks and possibly some cheap white towels.  The possibilities are endless.

• Hit the grocery for eggs and garlic and sour cream and onions and steak and high fiber noodles and mushrooms and panko and mayo and chicken and Diet Coke and Snickers ice cream bars (the minis).

• Stop by the farm stand for NJ tomatoes and Romas and blueberries.

• Possibly go to Applebees for steak and garlic mashed potatoes while I go through my plot notes for Act 2.

• Set up my printer in the living room so I can do hard copy edits.

• Maybe get a chocolate shake at Friendly’s since this is clearly a go-to-hell-day.

• Take the dogs out in the yard again so they can run free and I can laugh at how fuzzy they are as their fur grows out.

• Make sour cream chicken and noodles for dinner, with extra onions and mushrooms. 

• Finish Act Two.  That might take the weekend.  So I’ll have a real go-to-hell weekend.

• Wallow in happiness.  

It’s a plan.  Anyway, you can see why I’m being such a lousy blogger lately.  Having just escaped death (in theory), I’m wallowing 24-7.  I recommend it.

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This Is A Good Book Thursday, July 26, 2018

I’m currently re-reading the Rivers of London series by Aaronovitch because I mistakenly thought the next one was out in August.  Nope, November.  I’m still enjoying them after multiple re-reads, so it’s about time I started taking them apart to see why.  There are minor things that annoy me, but mostly they’re really solid stories about a great world full of great characters.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

So what have you been reading?

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Working Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Today, I am going to set up my new office.

I figure if I state that here, I’ll finally have to do it.

What’s your work plan this week?

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The Rat Bastard Protagonist or How Long Can You Play a Reader About a Central Character?

I’m reading an old Michael Gilbert novel called End Game which has a rat bastard protagonist.  David Morgan is hard-drinking, insensitive, and immoral, a man who comes in late to work, late to dinner, and stays late to search the boss’s office.  He picks fights with his girlfriend who supports him financially, deliberately upsets a fussy, older woman at work who rightfully suspects him of slacking off and drinking on the job, sleeps around, and picks the locks of people who trust him to read private files about a business titan named Blackett.  He’s a creep.  The first time I read the book, I thought, “Why am I reading about this guy?” and kept reading anyway.  The next time I read it, I looked at the plot which was as finely tuned as any of Gilbert’s stories.  This time I read it just for that bastard protagonist: Why would any reader (especially a woman reader) stay in a story with David Morgan?

After the beginning, David gets worse.  He takes his boss on a pub crawl where he insults a big client of the firm, and because he insists on many drinks, they arrive late at the girlfriend’s apartment to find dinner ruined.  The girlfriend, Susan, is not amused, there’s a big fight that David starts and then ends when he packs and walks out, leaving a fuming Susan and an embarrassed boss.  And of course, he gets fired.  Well, he outraged a powerful secretary, insulted a major client, and burgled his boss’s office, what else did he expect?

But by then I knew that David was smart.  Very smart. Which means that he must have wanted to get fired.  He blackmails the big boss to get a much worse job in a travel firm, and by the time he’s making waves there you know that whatever David is, he’s got a plan. Meanwhile, as David falls in society, Susan rises, promotion after promotion in the business empire run by a man named Blackett.  In her spare time, she fields angry, self-pitying phone calls from David that she tapes and then listens to again with pen and pencil.   By the time I realized that David and Susan were in something Big together, I couldn’t put the book down.

But that was good third of the way through the book.  How long can a writer expect a reader to stay with an obnoxious protagonist who apparently has no redeeming value?  I’m not talking about anti-heroes, say Moist in Going Postal, although David clearly is an anti-hero.  I’m talking about a protagonist you read about and think, “Ewww.”

I really studied that this time, and I think Gilbert does some subtle things that kept me reading.

David is not universally mean; he never picks on the weak or the vulnerable, and he always insults up at people in power over him.
David’s smart; the stupid things he does turn out to be a path to an outcome he wants.
David is competent; he can pick locks, understand financial files, speak at least three languages, and see trouble coming a mile away.
David plays fair with women; he doesn’t seduce, he suggests, and while he does tend to suggest sex to women who have information he wants, he makes sure they’re happy about it. My last qualms about David as a womanizer went when he saw a woman in trouble in a bar fight and took her out through the kitchen and escorted her home to her husband without so much as a leer. 
David has a lot of good people who like him; his former boss sticks by him, his old friends rally to him when he needs help, and Susan not only keeps taking his phone calls, she analyzes them closely. If smart, efficient Susan is part of David’s equation, then David is not a rat bastard.

While none of those things excuse his lousy first impression, I think they undercut it subtly enough that I kept reading as the plot began to knot up nicely, following David’s descent into homelessness and Susan’s rise to the top of Blackett’s empire. The narrative clips along and David becomes that gift to story, The Protagonist You Worry About.   David is playing a very dangerous game for very high stakes and his antagonist is watching his every move, much more powerful than he is, incredibly wealthy with hundreds of men at his disposal all over the world.  All David has is brains, an exhaustible supply of fast talk and faster action, and, of course, Susan.  

I’m trying to think of other I-don’t-like-you protagonists I’ve read and stuck with, and David’s the only one I can remember.   Moist, as I mentioned before, is likable from the get-go, plus he has a marvelous redemptive arc.  I’ve never been able to bear Scarlet O’Hara. Macbeth is fascinating, but you keep reading his story to see him fall, and by the end, I have sympathy for him.   I don’t think I ever felt sorry for David, he’s too much of a cocky smart-ass for that, but I was rooting for him, and I think it was a combination of all those buried cues at the start that made me want to read more, with the jet fuel boost of competence porn and an antagonist who was prepared to kill him to stop him. 

So here’s a question: What protagonist did you dislike that you stuck with for a whole book?  And beyond that, why?  How did an author keep you reading an unlikable character?  Where do you draw the line as a reader?

 

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Shopping for Happiness

Sometimes when I’ve been holed up in the cottage too long, I do some shopping therapy.  Also, any time Krissie comes to visit from the wilds of Vermont, we do shopping therapy (she calls visiting the backwater where I live “visiting civilization,” which gives you some idea of the backwater where SHE lives).  The point is not to buy anything, although we sometimes do, it’s to go and find out what’s there. (Basically, we’re Rikki Tikki Tavi.)  Since we’re hitting places like Home Goods, Staples, Walmart, and Target, we are not spending big bucks, but we are satisfying our ancient roles as gatherers.  We were bred for this.  You know, like this guy:

How did you go and get happiness this week?

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Cherry Saturday, July 21, 2018

Today is National Junk Food Day.

I object to the term “Junk Food.”  Okay granted, if a food is 90% sugar, salt or fat (or 90% sugar, salt, AND fat), it’s probably junk, but a lot of perfectly good food gets lumped under the Junk Food label.  Like Krispy Kremes.  Okay, probably not those.  Or Big Macs.  Okay, not those either.  Or Snickers ice cream bars–  okay, no, not them, but how about french fries; they’re a vegetable.

You know, you probably shouldn’t eat junk food.

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This Is A Good Book Thursday, July 18, 2018

I’m still in Golden Age Mystery mode, more so since Amazon Prime put some of Christiana Brand’s books on sale for $1.99 for Prime Day.   I started with the third Inspector Cockerill novel, one I hadn’t read and was amazed all over again by her characterization.  Then I went back and got the first one and then the second, which is Green for Danger, one of the best mysteries I’ve ever read, about a military hospital during the Blitz.   One of the reasons it’s so superb is that Brand wrote it during the Blitz, next to the military hospital where her husband worked, typing in her hard hat. It’s considered by mystery experts to be a classic, but everything she wrote is marvelous.  I’ve got four more to go, and Amazon put some Catherine Aird on sale, too, so I’m good for the rest of the week.

What did you find to read this week?

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Working Wednesday July 18, 2018

I think I need a new regular weekly post: Sleeping Sundays.  I’m sleeping all the time now, which makes it hard to make stuff.  Must learn to multi-task and write while sleeping.  Still, I have Big Plans.  BIG plans.

What was on your to-do list this week?

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Happiness is Summer with Friends

When I ended up in the hospital, I explained to my doctors that I had to go home and get my dogs and board them at the vet.  Just as they were prepared to taze me to keep me from leaving, Krissie drove down, collected the dogs (who adore her), schlepped them to the vet, and washed my dishes.  She also came to the hospital twice a day and made me laugh.   And when I got out four days later, we went to the diner and assessed the situation which, as far as I was concerned, came down to one thing: I am extremely lucky in my best friend and my daughter, who did everything while I was flat on my back getting holes punched in me.  Krissie’s coming down again at the end of July, preferably without another heart failure on my part, and we will laugh again because she is my best friend, and because laughing in the summer (or winter) with friends is the best recipe for joy I know.

How did you kick up your heels this week?

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