Katharine Beutner's Blog, page 8

The devil's dictionary of fragrance, & SF thought experiments

I love this short essay by Charles Yu about how all family stories are time travel stories, particularly this bit:

Science fiction allows a writer to selectively question assumptions about the world, about ourselves, to fiddle with this dial, tweak this parameter or that one, then run the simulation, boot up a cosmos and see what happens. For me, it is about possibility more than probability.

I know I always bring up Johnson's line about Shakespeare approximating the remote and familiarizing the wonderful, but it's applicable once again — Yu enjoys SF because it allows him to play out a trial to which a person (or a family) could not really be exposed, "and see what happens." Yes, I say. Yes! Really looking forward to reading Yu's book.

And on an entirely unrelated note, this book about perfume is worth a look even if you, like me, know nothing about the topic. The reviews are beautifully detailed, crisp, cutting, and wittily allusive. For example, here's a bit from Luca Turin's review of Guerlain's "Quand Vient l'Été," a "dry floral" that gets three stars out of five:

I'm of two minds about this fragrance: on the one hand, I am not fond of this style, a slightly sour, metallic (helional) floral accord that smells like a sucked silver spoon. On the other hand, this one is beautifully executed and has a prim, starchy prettiness that suggests Edwardian TV drama and passions corseted to the bursting point. It brings to mind Ambrose Bierce's definition of garters: "An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country."

One of the things I love most about the internet is the way niche interests become more accessible to clueless outsiders. Like I said, I know nothing about perfume or its history, but that doesn't mean I can't take pleasure in watching people who do deploy their knowledge.

Crowdsourcing reprint edits

Alcestis will be going back to print soon — the trade paperback edition will be published in February 2011. I've been asked to submit any necessary changes for the reprint. So: if you've read Alcestis in hardback or e-book form and noticed any typos or other weird artifacts, would you be so kind as to comment here or email me at katharinebeutner at gmail dot com?

In return, I'll give you. Uh. A link to a very good article at the Huffington Post about why we need to teach programming in schools? Not that there's any relation between the two; it's just one of the more interesting things I've read in the last week, and I'm pretty short on content yet again. (I know I'm on fellowship this year and am supposed to be a lady of leisure, but I don't think my workload has gotten the memo.)

A little CocoRosie for you

One of my favorite songs from their latest album:

Reassurance & catch-up

First of all, I was nowhere near campus earlier this week when the shooter opened fire — I was still in Oregon, on the last day of a nice long visit with my mother, who turned 60 this week. I was, however, emailing back and forth with my dissertation director, who was stuck in his office while the SWAT teams searched our building and who, earlier, saw the shooter fire into the pavement near the Dobie Mall building across the street. Another former colleague from the Ransom Center was also quoted in the local news because she was out in that courtyard when the gunshots started. It's terrible that the shooter died and mystifying that he chose this way to die, but I'm so glad he didn't actually shoot anyone else in the process.

Anyway: I'm still in catch-up mode right now — I did work a fair amount while I was in Oregon, but this semester continues to be more hectic than I expected. So here, have a big list of links:

Ann Patchett on plot in the WSJ (outliners represent!).
Laura Miller on Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx in Salon.
Elizabeth Chadwick on writing historical fiction about real people.
A recap of the Margaret Atwood/Ursula K. Le Guin conversation about SF recently held in Portland. I am so sad to have missed this! I was even in Oregon when it happened, but about six hours away and being stomped by a migraine, so.
Sarah Prineas guest-blogging against authorial self-promotion online.
An earth-like planet that may sustain life has been found, about 20 light-years away.

And finally, two links relevant to my plans for the evening:

An interview with Paul Harding, the author of Tinkers.
Cocorosieland. (They're playing at Emo's tonight! I'm so excited.)

'Alcestis' review & interview at Hipster Book Club

Hipster Book Club has just posted a lovely thoughtful review of Alcestis and a long interview with me, both by Matthew Merendo.

Matthew originally posted a similar review of the book on Goodreads, and after I sent him a message to say thanks, he pitched the interview — and I'm so glad he did! We had a great back-and-forth via email, definitely one of the most in-depth conversations I've had about the book since it was published. As Matthew says in the interview's introduction, we talk "about...

Elif Batuman knocks it out of the park*

Okay, I'm going to have more to say about this once I read McGurl's book. But for now, if you're interested in

MFA/MA creative writing programsCritical historiographyThe recent history of American literature/fictionIt-narrativesThe history of free indirect discourse and other narrative styles"High cultural pluralism," "lower middle-class modernism," and the denial of historical consciousness in contemporary American fictionJewish characters in the European novelAnxiety and shame and what they...

It's Monday, so no creative title

Links! Because my brain is turning into dissertation mush.

A. L. Kennedy interviewed about her new short story collection. I laughed at the last question, as will you all.Dinosaur Comics on TERRIFYING ROMANCE STORIES. Whenever I want to post about romance in the future, I may do it with dinosaur clip-art. It just makes everything better.FDR's Third Inaugural recorded. No sound, but it is in color.Matt Gross's new travel column for the Times begins with an article about Tangier, a place I...

Oh, and–

Here's what revising this dissertation chapter feels a little like, right now:

Lord Peter and others

A quick Friday link: do go read Sarah Rees Brennan's charming descriptions of mystery series, including an imagined dialogue between Dorothy Sayers and her publisher about Harriet Vane's, uh, rather idealized nature. Great recommendations in the comments, too. I'd add Tana French's books — I didn't love Faithful Place as well as the first two in the series, but The Likeness is just brilliant, especially if you love The Secret History.

And on that note, here's a great NY Times profile of Colin...

"Speculative fiction of the very recent past"

I haven't read William Gibson's Spook Country yet, and my memory of Pattern Recognition is a bit fuzzy — I recall a lot of descriptions of the protagonist's Pilates routines? — but this review of his new book Zero History, by Paul Di Filippo at the B&N Review, includes an interesting quotation from Gibson about the trilogy's aims:

His latest book, Zero History, marks the culmination of a trilogy too new to have been named yet (although I will offer a suggestion at this review's end), a...