Greer Gilman's Blog, page 20

Snatched from the Sun

I'm thinking of proposing a talk at Readercon.  Would you be interested in this, if you saw it on a program?

Snatched from the Sun:   Alternative Shakespeares and the Zemblance of Reality

Why does a small but vocal and impassioned band of conspiracy theorists believe that Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare?  Why do they read his work for the common stage as encrypted secret history?  Like the delusional Kinbote in Pale Fire, they must see through the text to read what they desire:  the story of a genius suppressed, a king uncrowned.  Why do they think that Hamlet was a selfie?

I have long been fascinated and infuriated by these Kinbotean crackpots.  Their antics drove the writing of my Tiptree Award-winning novella, Cry Murder! In a Small Voice, in which I imagined an alternate alternate history of the Earl of Oxford.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of self-published lunacy.  Along the way, we’ll explore the shipping of John Donne’s muse, sepulchral monkey-heads, canals on Mars, vice-versal doublets, the Elizabethan elevator pitch, the seacoast of Bohemia, ciphers, triflers, Templars, and the true author of As You Leak It.

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Blood wolf moon, 1º F

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Mistress Masham's Unrepose

The Favourite is excellent:  dark, dazzling, scathing, yet with enough soul to be tragicomedy.  All three leads are Oscar-worthy—Olivia Colman transcendent—and Rachel Weisz cross-dressed by Sandy Powell should power Yuletide for years to come.  My one complaint is the illegibly stylish screen font, which justifies white-on-black ant-sized text, dragging words apart into letters.  I would have loved to read the credits as they rolled.

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Nonesuch

Dreaming, I saw the image of a nun in a grey habit with a long black mantle, pushing an old-fashioned high-wheeled pram:  more like Miss Clavel than any order I know.  But in the dream, I thought she would fit into a story I was writing, and the first, frost-fragile tendrils began to—

Whoosh!  I was pitchforked into what felt like a Worldcon, without so much as a purse or pencil.  Clothed, thank heavens, but dishevelled in all senses.  It was already halfway through Saturday, and before I could draw breath, I was pounced on by a frantic man I knew to be my editor.  He dragged me up before his corporate overlords to explain why I hadn't written anything marketable in all these years, and in desperation I began to elevator-pitch the nun as an alien, much like Gorey's Insect-God beneath her veil...

Ye gods, it was terrible.

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With hey, ho, the wind and the rain

Beyond Epiphany there lie new seas.  Let's hope that tempests are kind.

If you were designing or directing a production of Twelfth Night, what would you do?

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At the light returning

A lovely serendipitous encounter.  I just now dropped into Burdick's to—ahem—admire the chocolate snowmen.  On my way out, I passed two nice women at the corner table.  One stopped me to say, "I love your colors!"  (Bluegreen and greenblue, of course.).  And the other said, "Oh.  You're a writer, aren't you?"  I am, yes.  "You wrote Cloud & Ashes."  Glowing, I admitted that.  And she said, "You have to teach yourself how read that book.  I adore it."  And I told her that I write for readers like herself.

That was the very best solstice gift ever.

Wishing you, as I did them, a joyful, healthy, prosperous, creative New Year.

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Shawl-strappists

     "On the first day of February we three will sail from Boston for Messina, in the little fruit-ship 'Wasp.' We shall probably be a month going, unless we cross in a gale as I did, splitting sails every night, and standing on our heads most of the way,' said Amanda, folding up her maps with an air of calm decision.     

"Hurrah! what fun!" cried Matilda, waving a half-finished dressing-case over her head.

But Lavinia, with one sepulchral groan, fell flat upon her bed, and lay there, dumb with the horrors of such a voyage.

 
In Louisa May Alcott's little-read Shawl-Straps, three sisters embark on a Grand Tour in 1870 (they arrive in Rome just in time for the Risorgimento and the great flood of the Tiber).  They land, after all, in Brittany, and decide to jettison their impedimenta: 

"Are these trunks a burden, a vexation of spirit, a curse?" demanded Amanda, tapping one with her carefully cherished finger-tips.

"They are! they are!" groaned the others, regarding the monsters with abhorrence.
 "Then let us get rid of them, and set out with no luggage but a few necessaries in a shawl-strap."

"We will! we will!" returned the chorus. 
In short, they have just invented backpacking round Europe.


 Shawl-straps of the largest, strongest sort were next procured, and the three bundles made up with much discussion and merriment. Into Amanda's went a volume of Shakspeare of great size and weight, but as indispensable as a tooth-brush to its owner; toilette-articles tied up in a handkerchief, a few necessary garments, and much paper,—for Amanda was inspired with poetic fire at unexpected moments, also had five hundred bosom friends, in answering whose epistolary gushings much stationery was consumed. A pistol, a massive crust of bread, and an oval box containing all the dainty appliances for the culture, preservation, and ornamentation of the finger-nails, made up her store. Matilda's bundle consisted of sketch-books, a trifle of haberdashery, a curling-stick that was always tumbling out at inopportune moments, yards of blue ribbon, and a camp-stool strapped outside in company with a Japanese umbrella, a gift from the stout doctor, destined to be cursed in many languages by the unhappy beings into whose backs, eyes, and stomachs it was poked before its wanderings ended. Lavinia confined herself to a choice collection of bottles and pill-boxes, fur boots, a grey cloud, and several French novels,—the solace of wakeful nights. A scarlet army blanket, with U. S. in big black letters on it, enveloped her travelling medicine-chest, and lent a cheerful air to the sombre spinster, whose black attire and hoarse voice made the sobriquet of Raven most appropriate.
 With these imposing bundles in one hand, little pouches slung over the shoulder, plain travelling-suits, subdued hats, and resolute but benign countenances, our three errant damsels set forth one bright June day, to wander through France at their own sweet will. ... No lord and master, in the shape of brother, spouse, or courier, ordered their outgoings and incomings; but liberty the most entire was theirs, and they enjoyed it heartily.
  Still playing at Pilgrim's Progress...

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"Pure joy"

Eritrean refugee children discover snow.

There's still a world I want to live in, out there.

Snow not ash.

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Remembrance

An officer on leave is staying with his sister:

"They dined at a restaurant, and went on to a music hall. That night he took
longer to fall asleep. She had allowed herself a thread of hope,
when he began to talk again. Three Justins competed, thrusting each other
aside : a cold, attentive observer, a debased child, a devil bragging in hell. At
intervals they were banished by a recognisable Justin interminably muttering to
himself, ‘Here’s a sword for Toad, here’s a sword for Rat, here’s a sword for
Mole, here’s a sword for Badger.’ The reiteration from that bible of their
childhood would stick on the word, ‘Rat’. ‘Got you !’ And he was off again.

[...]

"She felt herself growing icy cold, couldn’t remember if
she had wound her watch, couldn’t remember what diversion she had planned
for the morrow, was walking over Richmond Bridge in a snowstorm, when she
noticed he had begun again. She noticed. It had come to that. Two nights of a
vicarious endurance of what was being endured, had been endured, would
continue to be endured by a cancelled generation, had so exhausted her that
now she felt neither horror nor despair, merely a bitter acquiescence. Justin
went on with his Hail Devil Rosary, and in France the guns went on and on,
and the mud dried into dust and slumped back into mud again. People went
down to Kent to listen to the noise of the guns: the people in Kent said that
they had grown used to it, didn’t hear it any longer."

Listen for the echoes.  Witness.  Remember.

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"There's one thing you can do well, Jo, that is, wear a shawl."

Here's that paisley dress I wrote about, a beautiful piece of needlework. It's warm enough to wear in Jo's garret or the Haworth parsonage.







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