Delia Sherman's Blog, page 8

A Small Brag

We had these two duck leg/breast pieces from the farmer's market, and it was too hot to turn on the oven to roast them, which was clearly the right thing to do with them.  Which left braising on the stove-top, except for having no stock of any kind in the house.  What I did have, however, was fresh apple cider.  So I cut up half an onion and a clove of garlic, browned those with the duck pieces, drained off most of the fat, threw in the cider and some salt and pepper, put on the lid, and crossed my fingers.  When the duck was done, I threw in maybe a teaspoon of Lea & Perrins and a splash of Calvados, and served it up with leftover boiled potatoes I'd browned in the duck fat and leftover swiss chard eked out (by the resourceful Ms. Kushner) with frozen spinach.  It was pretty good, too, though not as good as it was after we looked at each other, exclaimed "THYME!" and threw some in.

There being plenty of sauce left over (are you seeing a trend here?), I returned the gnawed bones to the pot (what? They got boiled again) with celery and carrot and some water and made duck soup.  It's cooling in the fridge even as I type, and I'm feeling very pleased with myself.

The apartment is beginning to feel like home again.  Things are falling into place one by one.  The laundry is (mostly) done, the bank book is balanced, the mail is all open and sorted, my computer has a shiny new hard drive and Time Machine worked just as it should to restore all my old data, documents, mail, preferences, everything, just as it was before the Unfortunate Incident occurred.  I've spent a little more time at the Apple Store than I really wanted to, but at least it was well air-conditioned.  A couple more days, a few more business emails, a blog post about our trip to Harper's Ferry and Gettysburg, a much-needed trip to the hairdresser, a brand-new To Do List generated, and I'll feel the decks are clear enough to dig into the revisions for Wizard's Apprentice.  Which will make me very happy.

Update

There's lots of stuff I've been wanting to write about.  Teaching (fun and challenging).  Hollins (lovely and friendly).  The books I've been reading (joining the happy chorus on Linnets and Valerians).  But the other thing about teaching (particularly when it's been years since I actually taught a real course, and never a creative writing course) is that it's both engaging and time-consuming.  And the other thing about being in a friendly place with very friendly faculty is that there are cook-outs and kareoke nights and sitting around on the porch with our housemates watching the fireflies and talking about The Wizard of Earthsea and "The Goose Girl" and "The Girl Who Pretended to be a Boy" and Tolkein and Lewis and Charles Williams and Jo Walton and dragons and oh, everything.  

And I'm trying to do revisions on The Wizard's Apprentice.

And my computer died.  Hardware failure.  

I'm all backed up (thanks to Dropbox, which may be Evil, but is currently saving my butt), and I've got access to Ellen's machine (when she is not using it--oh, maybe 20 minutes a day), and the department Dell (Arrrggghhhhh!).  So I can do everything I have to do, and I'm grateful for that.  But I can't deny that I miss my computer like fury.

We'll be home next week.  I'll be glad to be in NYC again, despite the heat, the bustle, the grittiness of Summer in New York.  Because Roanoke, however pretty and peaceful, has no nearby Apple Store, my cottage has no washing machine (or decent stove), and my colleagues, however compatible and warm, aren't my writing-dating, KGB and NYRSF Reading attending, play-going, lunching, sitting around my dinner tabling Tribe of Friendly New Yorkers (and contiguous staters).  Whom I miss.  Quite a lot.  (I know I saw many of you at Readercon, but "HI!  Bye!"  hardly counts as anything more than antly antennae-waggling).

Home Wednesday.  See you soon thereafter!

Readercon

It was grand.  It was glorious.  It was like running for a train in Grand Central Station at rush hour.  With really good conversations.

Owing to the plane from Roanoke leaving almost an hour late, and traffic delays at LaGuardia stranding us on the runway--once when we landed and once when we took off--I got to Burlington something like 20 minutes before my first event, something less than cool, calm, and collected.  Had I been on my game, I would have checked my phone, seen what room we were in and where Ellen had left my key.  As it was, I showed up to my coffeeklatch dishevelled, discombobulated, and lugging a duffel bag.  It all came right in the end, though, with knitting and Ellen bringing me food and a key and a lovely conversation with two very pleasant aspiring authors with interesting questions.

And then it was time for what?  Oh, yes.  My first panel.  On the blurring of genre boundaries and how that works.  Or something.  I remember precisely nothing about it, except that Kit Reed, Leah Bobet, and Cecelia Tan and the other guy whose name escapes me were brilliant, and first I said I couldn't moderate, and then I did (with a little help from my friends), and the audience asked great questions and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.  And I woke up a little.

Then we had dinner with Geoff Ryman and caught up with our respective lives and I remembered when I met him, at a publisher's party (Tor, I think) at the Worldcon in Der Hague in 1990, dressed in my silk nightshirt (that's me, not Geoff) because the airline had lost the bag with all my actual clothes in it, and kept sending me black bags that weren't mine the whole time I was there.  We both were quite flown on genever and WorldCon-ness, and got along like a house on fire.  We still do, even without the genever.  I'm glad we dined, because that was the last time I saw him, except at a distance--which is pretty much par for the course when someone is GOH.

Saturday was a little lighter on the panel front--only one, and I wasn't moderating.  It was on Paranormal Romance, specifically the trope of the Monster Male and the Human Female.  That one, I do remember.  Sort of.  Vicky Janssen was a wonderful moderator, and Stacy Hague-Hill, K.A. Laity, and Ann Tonsor Zeddies had all sorts of interesting things to say about women getting to find their inner wildness and coming to terms with the Other.  I suspect there will be another panel on a similar topic next year, because nobody was even close to done with the conversation at the end of the hour, audience included.

And everything else (barring autographing, where I sat next to Geoff and knitted.  Some of the time) was conversations.  I met some only-on-LJ friends, like asakiyume  and rushthatspeaks  (who I have met before, but hadn't connected the face to the name) and pattytempleton  (who I've met, but only got to know on LJ because of, you know, geography).  I got to hug csecooney  in person instead of by email, fresh from her triumphs at the Rysling Awards.  And I got to have wonderful conversations about writing, reading, writing, writing, business, reading, writing, and life with more old friends and new than I can even remember.

That's really the thing about Readercon--the conversations.  The programming is awesome (and new Program Chair rosefox is so utterly made of awesome I can hardly express it), but it's the hall conversations, the bar talk, the writing, writing, writing talk that makes it--has made it since I first attended Readercon 1 at a former no-tell motel around the corner from my former apartment in Brookline--so magical.  Some Readercons are better than others, just in the general scheme of things.  This one was one of the best.

So I'm back in Roanoke now, up to my ears in stories to read for Thursday, with Ellen at Alpha, flexing her buff lecturing muscles to the workshop participants.  I'll pick her up at the airport tomorrow afternoon, and very glad I will be to see her.  Because you know how good Readercon was?  I hardly saw her for three days because we were off having different absorbing conversations.  That's how good Readercon was.

Searching for a fairytale . . .

Years ago, I remember reading a story in which a girl disguises herself as a man in order to fulfill a quest, in the course of which another girl falls in love with her.  At the end of the story, the heroine is granted one wish, which is to become a man indeed.  I thought it was "The Satin Surgeon," but I just re-read that story, and it so isn't.  Am I smoking the Andrew Lang crack pipe, or is there such a tale in the Fairy Books?

Please advise.  I'm supposed to be addressing a class on the subject of genre and fairy tale next Wednesday, and I'd love for them to read this story (supposing it exists outside of my fevered imagination) in preparation.

Sorry, Anonymous

The spam has gotten to me at last.  I've turned off Anonymous posting.  I held out as long as I could, but really.  

New Essay On Interfictions Zero!

A lovely new essay on Interfictions Zero.  Here's my co-editor Helen Pilinovsky's description:

This month, Kat Howard gives us a fascinating meditation on the nature of legend, specifically, the legend of King Arthur, and all the connotations that he bears.  "The Once and Future King," a term from Malory interpreted somewhat ... literally ... by T.H. White, is a figure who is now nigh-on impossible to consider at a single point on his continuum.  Arthur implies Camelot implies its Fall, in what's thus far been an endless circle ... albeit one that, paradoxically, promises a resolution.  Kat Howard of Stony Brook University, critic and author (her communal blog, Fantasy Matters, tackles fascinating topic after fascinating topic, and her story "A Life in Fictions" is just out in the recently published Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio), does full justice to the topic in the cleverly titled "The Once and Future Story.

I love this essay.  It makes you look at one of the old warhorses of fantasy with fresh eyes.   And a new decoration by Michael Kaluta!

Enjoy.

The History of English

Because I'd like to read some actual comments which are not links to cool new escort services, I thought I'd post this video, which my Cousin Walter sent to me.  The reason you haven't been hearing much from me is that I've been up to here in getting settled into my first reasonably long-term (6 weeks) teaching gig since I quit teaching full-time in 1993.  It's a cushy gig:  teaching writing to MA students in the Hollins University Children's Literature program, 12 students, 6 hours a week.  Now, going into the 3rd week, I've finally got most of the lessons planned out,  handouts organized, office hours posted, and ancillary exercises written.  Now I can rest on my laurels, drink mint juleps write the second draft of my current WIP and finish the proposal for the sequel.  I worked out the main plot problem I'd been having with it yesterday, on a long walk through Hollins's beautiful, rolling, green campus. 

OK, I have coleslaw to make for the potluck tonight.  Here's the video.  Should be catnip to the Anglophiles and word geeks among you.  I certainly enjoyed it.

Birthday!

This is it!  I'm 60 today.  10 years ago, Ellen and I rented a sheepfarm-turned arts colony-turned vacation rental in France--the Lot, a somewhat less-frequented but very beautiful department between Dordogne and Provence.  For three weeks, Ellen and I shared dinners in the barn, nights in the courtyard, and daytime excursions to caves and castles with a floating population of something like 40 guests (you know how we old folks are about remembering numbers :)).  It was magical, wonderful, memorable.

This year, Ellen and I are in a 1913 cottage on the campus of Hollins University.  She's Writer in Residence for the Children's Literature Graduate Program.  I'm on the faculty, teaching the Fantasy section in the creative writing division.  On Friday, we are giving the keynote speech at the Children's Literature Association Conference, which will be called something like "How Books Can Change Your Life," only jazzier.  It is very nearly as beautiful as Cubertou, the shower is a lot more appealing, and we know several people on the faculty and in town, and like them very well indeed.  Eating a celebratory ice cream sundae (mint chocolate chip and fudge, for the interested) at Pop's Ice Cream and Soda, we got in a conversation with a woman who is about to open a yarn shop, who also turns out to be a huge Bordertown fan. 

Magical.  Wonderful.  Memorable.

Wonder where we'll be for my 70th?

Born Yesterday

Despite being on the eve of the eve of the eve of leaving hearth and home to sojourn in Roanoke, Virginia for six long weeks (and running around like proverbial headless chickens laying out clothes and maps and class materials and presents for friends), we went to see Born Yesterday last week.  And I'm going to review it--perhaps more briefly than usual, owing to all of the above.  But I skipped reviewing The Importance of Being Earnest, with the Tony-nominated-but-not-winning Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell, and I don't want to wimp out completely, do I?  Of course not.

Born Yesterday is a play from 1947, a period I haven't seen a lot of theater from.  Post-War, pre-McCarthy, its characters shamelessly modeled on the film stereotypes of gangsters, dizzy blondes, and decent, upstanding journalists, Garson Kanin's play is not the most enlightened play on the block.  It's the story of how the Dumb Blonde mistress of a shady scrap-metal dealer (in Washington to make sure his pet Senator gets a war-profiteering bill through the Senate) is awakened to philosophy and literature and morality by a poor but well-educated journalist. Think Educating Rita, with dumb blonde jokes.  It's a play that pretty much rests on the shoulders of its leads, and in this case, it's very well supported indeed.

The Blonde is played by Nina Arianda.  She was nominated for a Tony for this performance, and no wonder.  Her Billie Dawn is a lot more complex than the character Kanin wrote.  She says she's dumb, and even believes it, but she's absolutely and totally not dumb, either emotionally or intellectually.  She comes off as being oddly innocent and utterly honest.  Arianda is remarkable.  I know, having seen her in Venus in Fur, that she has a lovely flexible speaking voice.  She has modeled Billie's voice on Jean Hagen, who was Lina Lamont in Singing in the Rain, who had a voice like a screech owl and an accent like an old-school New Yawk taxi driver.  Apparently, she bruised her vocal chords and isn't allowed to speak other than during performances.  I'm not surprised.  But it's certainly an effective choice.

The Golden Junk Man is played by Jim Belushi.  What can I say?  When he's funny, he's very funny, in a bumbling tough-guy way, until he gets serious, when he is genuinely and unsettlingly scary.  It's as if a different, darker, more complex play surfaces for a moment, like a shark, then disappears again, leaving only a small trail of blood dissipating in the calm, sunny water of the comic action.  As I said, unsettling, but I liked it.  I'd have liked it better if the text of the play actually reflected it.  The endgame is very fantasy indeed, with actions taken that have no consequences apart from those dictated by the need to drive Billie into the journalist's arms.  But you can't have everything.  Belushi, Arianda, and Leonard as the journalist (not to mention the ott black-and-white over-decorated set and the pitch-perfect costumes) were plenty.  And a comedy about corruption in high places and the basic amorality of capitalism?  Sadly, never out of style.

It's going to be around, but since Arianda missed Best Actress, it's not as hot a ticket as it was.  Discounts should be available, and are so worth it.

New Essay On Interfictions Zero!

Now up on Interfictions Zero:  a wonderful essay  by Rachel Zakuta on Rebecca West's The Saga of the Century . 

"Rebecca West frequented the borderlands of human experience, reporting on the very best and worst that humanity could achieve. She was a respected literary critic, an authority on the beauty of man's creations, and a journalist who reported on the horrors of two world wars. Unable to accept any dogmatic explanation of the presence of evil in man and in the world, she embarked on a private investigation of human nature. The fruits of West's quest, her copious writings, are naturally interstitial, spilling into the realms of politics, religion, culture, history, and art. Even West's fiction crosses traditional boundaries, ranging through genres in search of truth. The unfinished trilogy she called A Saga of the Century – The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund – defies all attempts at conventional categorization."

There's a gorgeous new drawing by Michael Kaluta, too.  Go read, enjoy, and comment.