Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 86

What’s Good About Stereotypes?

These last couple of weeks my pleasure reading has largely centered around rereading some of the works Dorothy L. Sayers and Terry Pratchett.

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This Will Make Sense. Honest!

Last Sunday, as I was cutting up apples for an apple/quince pie, it occurred to me that both of these authors get a lot of mileage out of using stereotypes to develop creative three-dimensional characters.

Yep.  You read that right.

I know, this seems a complete contradiction.  One of the worst things critics can say about a book is that the characters are stereotypes.  Yet both Sayers and Pratchett are repeatedly praised for their thoughtful and well-developed characters.  How can they be both?

What exactly is a stereotype?  Well, to oversimplify, a stereotype is when something – I’m talking about characters in this Wandering, but this can apply to plots or settings or nationalities and many other things – is oversimplified down to a few highly recognizable details.  The thing is, the reason stereotypes work is that there’s usually a grain of truth at the heart of them.

The first time I attended an archeological conference with Jim, I was bemused to find my weathered, long-haired, bearded husband fit in very well in the company of his tribe.  The fact is,  many male archeologist do wear their hair longer and are often bearded.  Why?  More hair protects the neck and face from exposure.  Also, if you’re living somewhere without running water, shaving is a real nuisance.  Weathered skin comes with working outdoors in all sorts of conditions.  Sunblock can only do so much.

I can already hear the “buts…”  Hold onto them.  I’m getting there.

Stereotypes certainly have a negative side.  However, the negative reaction to stereotypes has become more pronounced in recent years both as a very justifiable reaction to profiling and a cultural obsession with individuality.   The reality is that, not so long ago, people delighted in wearing the badge of their particular tribe.  And, no, I’m not talking about the traditional peasant dress of European cultures or Native American tribes.  When I was in college, the “preppie” look was all the rage.  Before that there were hippies, beatniks, and red necks.  These days we have Goths and so on…

I’m sure you can think of others.

The trick with using stereotypes effectively is knowing when and how to give the stereotype the twist that turns the character into a three-dimensional person.  An added bonus is the fun that comes when the stereotype acts out of type – or when another character judges the supposedly stereotypical character on appearances alone.

Remember I said I’d come back to your “buts”?  There are always exceptions to the stereotype – so much so that the phrasing for reacting to such has become standard in and of  itself.   “I never would have imagined you were a…” Fill in the blank: librarian, soldier, police officer, kindergarten teacher.  Or, by contrast, “He was so typically a fill in the blank that it was a surprise to find out that he fill in the blank.”

Terry Pratchett so often uses stereotypes as the building blocks of both his characters and plots that I could write an entire book on how cleverly he subverts, inverts, and probably even coverts expectations.  I’ll restrain myself to just one example here.

The classic “Mother, Maiden, Crone” triad is at the heart of his three original witch characters: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick.  However, right from the start he starts playing with the stereotypes.

Granny Weatherwax is not just the wisest because she’s the oldest – the crone (though never call her that to her face, not if you want to keep on having a face).  She’s the wisest because she’s what you might call an intellectual witch with a specialization in “headology.”

Nanny is definitely a mother…  In all senses of the word.   She’s matriarch of an impossibly large clan, deliverer of numerous babies, and definitely an “earth” mother type.  In fact, the word “earthy” was probably invented for hard-drinking, gluttonous, highly sexual Nanny.

Margrat is the modern witch.  Let her speak for herself:

“Witches just aren’t like that… We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and don’t do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked to say we don’t.”

The next line is the kicker that swerves the stereotype around into reality:

“We ought to fill their bones with lead.”  (Wyrd Sisters)

Dorothy Sayers often carries her use of stereotypes  as far as giving her characters names that reflect some aspect of their character – although even there, she’s often being sly.  Lord Peter Wimsey is thought by most who meet him to be the stereotypical British peer: idle, drawling, “a bit of an ass.”  Even his family moto “As my Whimsy takes me” seems to support this view.

But Sayers swerves this hard to one side because it turns out that where Peter’s whimsy takes him is in on unflinching quest for discovering the truth.  Those who judge him on stereotypical surface traits are in for a shock.  Is the rest a lie or pose?  Not at all.  It’s just another part of a complex human being.

I could go on at greater length, but I shall restrain myself.  After all, I might fall into the stereotype of the author, former professor of English, who cannot restrain herself from pedantic exposition.  Instead I’ll go off and paint a horse…

FF: When I’m Writing

When I am immersed a difficult or complex part of a project, I still read, but very often I re-read, because this lets me moderate the extra voices in my head.  Think of it as a literary soundtrack meant to be enjoyable and even stimulating, but not distracting.

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Kel says: Sink into a Good Book!

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Audiobook.   This book was published in 1934, and still speaks to many issues.  Two that immediately come to mind are writing from the heart, rather than only the brain, and the challenges that face professional women in a way they do not their male peers.

On Bowie by Rob Sheffield.  The author notes at the end that this book was written in a month, and that Bowie’s now-classic album Low was also done in a month.  I must admit, I didn’t see a correlation.

In Progress:

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich.  Audiobook.  Jim and I often listen to Stephanie Plum novels on road trips.  We were so taken by the scenery, that we didn’t quite finish, but doubtless will – maybe while running errands or doing a puzzle.

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.  I believe this was the first Pratchett I read, a gift from a delighted Roger Zelazny.

Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Audiobook.  Re-read.

Also:

I’ve moved on to the most recent issue of Smithsonian.

TT: Let’s Do It Together!

JANE: Last week, when we started talking about collaborations, proper and improper, you said you could think of dozens of collaborations in SF without even trying very hard.

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Hauling the Book Along

All right, I’ll give you a harder challenge.   Can you find an example of an author who has done both what you would consider proper and  improper collaborations?

ALAN: Oh that’s easy! Just look at the many writers that Arthur C. Clarke “collaborated” with over the years. Many, but by no means all, of these collaborations are the usual marketing exercises where Clarke contributed nothing but the basic idea and then left his collaborator alone to make of it what he would.

When the collaborator was a genuinely skillful writer, the result is best considered as a reasonably good stand-alone novel by that writer, so to that extent they can be regarded as successful. But when the collaborator was less skilled, the result was generally dire.

For example, I refuse to admit that that Clarke’s standalone novel Rendezvous With Rama had any sequels…

JANE: As much as I wanted to find out more about Rama, I agree.  The sequels didn’t have the same sense of wonder and mystery.

Since we’re not admitting those “improper” collaborations exist, it seems unfair to blame Clarke for doing such without another example.  Can you provide at least one?

ALAN: Yes, and I have documentary evidence for it. In an Afterword to Richter-10 as by Arthur C. Clarke and Mike McQuay, Clarke remarks that:

“…this is the first time that I have given an idea to another author to develop entirely as he wished. But it may not be the last: I’ve discovered that this gives me all the fun of creation—but none of the lonely hours slaving away at the keyboard.”

So clearly we need to look at his dual bylines with a degree of scepticism.

JANE: Indeed we do.  Simply supplying a seed idea is not a collaboration!

Before I become too dismayed by this tendency in an author who still provides the “C” in the “ABC’s” of SF, can you supply an example of Clarke doing a proper collaboration?

ALAN: I think I can.  I might be on slightly shaky ground here, but I suspect that the novels he wrote with Stephen Baxter were genuine collaborations.  After all, Baxter and Clarke were friends. Also, the Afterword to their novel The Light Of Other Days talks about the thinking behind the story and the authors consistently refer to themselves in the first person plural.

At one point they remark that “Any errors or omissions are, of course, our responsibility.”  So it does look like they were both involved.

Furthermore I’m sure that there are Clarkean stylistic flourishes all through the four books that they co-authored.

JANE: Can you provide examples?

ALAN: Yes – but you might disagree with me. After all, style is a very subjective thing. But it seems to me that these words, again from The Light of Other Days, are pure Arthur C. Clarke:

“Fingers of green and blue pushed into the new deserts of Asia and the North American Midwest. Artificial reefs glimmered in the Caribbean, pale blue against the deeper ocean. Great wispy machines labored over the poles to repair the atmosphere. The air was clear as glass, for now mankind drew its energy from the core of Earth itself.”

JANE: Ooh…  That’s nice.  I agree.  Either Clarke or Baxter doing his best imitation – which is part of quality collaboration.

ALAN: A completely unambiguous example of a proper Clarke collaboration is his final novel, The Last Theorem. This was completed by Frederik Pohl when Clarke finally admitted that he himself was too old and too frail to finish it. In his blog, Pohl was at pains to point out just how closely Clarke was involved in the writing process. At one point he says:

“There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do the book, but I looked forward to Arthur’s notes. When they arrived, they amounted to around a hundred pages of notes and drafts, some sketchy, some quite completely fleshed out.”

And then later on he remarks that:

“Arthur promised to go over every page as I wrote it and to make comments as useful as he could generate.”

The whole blog post about the writing of the novel makes fascinating reading. You can see it here.

So clearly Pohl considered the novel to be a genuine collaboration, and he should know because he was one half of probably the very best SF collaboration of all time

JANE: Should we talk about Fred Pohl as a collaborator next?

ALAN: It’s certainly something he was really good at. There was a time when he appeared to be collaborating with pretty much everyone in sight! Perhaps it was something in the water.

Let’s collaborate on that topic next time.

 

Misty Mountains, Silver City

When Jim and I left Albuquerque for Silver City last Friday, the weather was overcast with occasional light rain, so we didn’t have much incentive to stop along the way.  Nonetheless, the mists and clouds made our drive through the mountains in the Gila Wilderness breathtakingly beautiful.

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Silver City

In addition to lots of lovely mountain scenery we saw deer, wild turkeys, and — crowning glory — a grey fox!

Our hotel was the historical Murray Hotel in the old part of town.  This was definitely a great location to be staying both for the events related to the Southwest Festival of the Written Word itself and for general touring.   When we arrived we were surprised to find that the hotel didn’t have a parking lot, so we parked directly behind the hotel, on Yankie Street, then walked around to check in.

When we did this, I asked about parking.  Veronica, the very friendly clerk, confirmed that the hotel didn’t have any dedicated parking, but added that we were welcome to park in a small lot on the next street.  Because I was concerned about how narrow the street behind was, we did this…  Turns out this was a very, very good idea.

(In a story, the preceding sentence would be called foreshadowing.)

After we had checked in, we walked over to the Festival headquarters.  Despite this being Friday late afternoon in a college town, the streets were almost empty – not only of vehicles, but of pedestrian traffic as well.  Later, as we walked around, we discovered the reason.  Most of the shops closed at 5:00.

We needed dinner, so we reluctantly skipped the Opening Ceremonies and keynote speaker, Stella Pope Duarte’s, talk.  After a nice meal, we walked around so Jim could take pictures and we could get a sense of our surroundings.  A few galleries were open.  When we popped in, we found everyone universally friendly and happy to chat.

That night we were awakened by a thunder and hail storm.  The next day, we learned that –depending on where in town you were – between two and a half and three inches of rain had fallen in about an hour.

Remember the street we’d originally parked on?  The one directly behind the hotel?  Over breakfast, one of the people we were chatting with told us that the street had been at least fifteen inches deep in water.  Veronica’s kind recommendation saved us almost certain damage to our vehicle.

After breakfast – during which we had the chance to make up for missing the keynote speaker’s talk by talking to her over bagels and coffee – Jim and I set out to see more of the historic district.  Jim particularly wanted to take advantage of the soft light for photos.  The destruction from the storm was evident everywhere, including pavement that had buckled under the strain and mud heaped against the curbs.  It was probably a good thing that many of the curbs were well over a foot high, because otherwise the sidewalks would have been buried.  As it was, more than one shop was being mopped out by diligent owners.

Jim and I discovered the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market, where we bought fresh pineapple quinces that were touted by the farmer’s young daughter as “full of tropical goodness” and assorted apples from a farmer who gave God full credit for the quality of his wares.

Once stores opened around 10:00 a.m., we popped into a few of the quirkier ones.  Then, just before 11:30, I availed myself of the Tranquil Buzz Coffee Shop’s kind promise to give free coffee to speakers, and headed off to the El Sol Theater for my first program item, a chat with local writer, Frost McGahey.

Unlike far too many “interviewers” I’ve dealt with, Frost had really done her homework.  This raised the level of our chat above the bland sameness that often makes so many “meet the author” type events rather bland.  Perhaps inspired by Frost, the audience also came up with a number of really interesting questions.  We chatted right up to the wire, then I went out and signed books.

After that, Jim and I went to have lunch at the Little Toad Creek Brewery.   Over lunch, we chatted with two other participants: Peter Riva and Sharman Apt Russell.  While Jim and Peter discussed recent archeological discoveries, Sharman and I delved into why writing about the natural world fascinates us both.

Following lunch, since I didn’t have another program item until 4:30, Jim and I set out to continue our exploration of historic Silver City.  By now the sun had come out, changing the quality of the light, so Jim was busy with his camera.  The streets were less flooded now, but Yankie Street behind our hotel still had a creek running down the middle – and this with a storm sewer audibly roaring beneath.

Once again, before my program item, I availed myself of the Tranquil Buzz’s coffee, and then went to the Seedboat Gallery to take part in a seven-author round-table discussion.  Our moderator was J.J. Amaworo Wilson, who – despite having arrived from a book tour in Australia only a few nights before – was well-prepared and very, very funny.  The participants were lively and interesting.   I’ve made a note of several whose works I want to look up in the future.

Every so often, J.J. would halt the flow of questions so that he could quiz the audience.  Many of the quiz questions were built around scathing Goodreads reviews of the works of famous authors, with the prize going to the first person to identify which author had been publicly humiliated.  What amazed me was how fast people in the audience were to catch on.  I’ll admit most cheerfully that, except for some of the most obvious, I was completely lost.

Following the round table discussion, Jim and I retired to our room to rest, then headed off to a potluck dinner at J.J.’s house.  There we linked up with Adrienne Celt, a talented young writer who also does the weekly web comic loveamongthelampreys.  I’ve long been curious as to what it takes to produce a web comic, as well as what sort of person might write one.  Adrienne was extremely patient about my numerous questions.  I hope she enjoyed our chat as much as Jim and I did.

After this very full Saturday, Jim and I were happy to retire to the Murray Hotel to unwind, and finally sleep, this time without a thunderstorm breaking up the quiet of the night.

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear.  After a chance conversation with a newly arrived guest, we learned that the road through the Gila Wilderness was now clear of storm debris, so we decided to take the opportunity to see the Black Range again, this time in sunlight.  We stopped numerous times along the way, including the tiny town of Kingston, and the only slightly larger town of Hillsboro.

We made it home in time to get some groceries, reassure that cats and guinea pigs that we were back, check the garden, and then… Well, it was Sunday night, so we hosted our weekly role-playing game.

Now I’m back behind the desk with my head full of stories.  Time to put some of them into written form.

FF: Out and About

This week I was away from home on Tuesday and writing like someone possessed to make up for being away.  This did cut into my reading time.  Still, I managed.

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Ogapoge’s the Coolest Cat

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

The Father Hunt by Rex Stout.  Audiobook.  A Nero Wolfe tale.  Choppier than usual ending but I think even Nero Wolfe would say “satisfactory.”

In Progress:

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers.  Audiobook.

On Bowie by Rob Sheffield.  As is so often the case with books ostensibly about Bowie, this book is more about the author’s reactions to Bowie’s work than about Bowie or Bowie’s work.

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich.  Audiobook.  Jim and I often listen to Stephanie Plum novels on road trips.  They’re light, character-oriented, and seem to go well with being in constant motion.

Also:

Archeology Magazine is keeping up with alternately annoying and impressing me, depending on the article.  Makes me wonder about the editorial staff.  A lot.

TT: One Plus One Makes More?

ALAN: A lot of people have been posting their thoughts about the recent death of Jerry Pournelle. A common theme that runs through the comments is the suggestion that he will be remembered more for his collaborations with Larry Niven than he will for the stories that he published under his own name. There’s probably some truth in that – several of the Niven/Pournelle collaborations are generally regarded as classics of the genre.

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Working (on naps) Together

JANE: Certainly the two Pournelle novels I recall reading – A Mote in God’s Eye and Lucifer’s Hammer – were both collaborations with Larry Niven.  I can’t remember if I actually read Footfall, but I heard a lot about it.

ALAN: I enjoyed those – but my very favourite of their collaborations was Inferno. Such a clever, subtle and funny book.

Collaborations seem to be very common in the SF world. Without even thinking about it, I’m sure I could reel off a dozen or more famous collaborations. And if I put my thinking cap on I could probably come up with at least a dozen more.

But I’d be hard-pressed to name many collaborations in other genres or in the mainstream of literature.

I wonder how collaborations happen?

JANE: We must shop in different bookstores.  Where I shop, increasingly, the shelves are full of “collaborations.”  Many of these are what I have heard called “junior/senior” pairings, which in some cases seems to be a polite way of saying “Big Name Writer” and “who the heck is that…”

ALAN: Or perhaps “who the hack is that…”?

JANE: Ouch!  That’s what’s so sad about these pairings.  Often the “junior” writer is viewed as just that – an opportunistic hack.  I’ve talked with several novelists, however, who have taken on such jobs in the hope of opening doors that will enable them to see their own beloved works published.

ALAN: To that extent such exercises are probably a good thing – anything that opens previously closed publishing doors has to be taken seriously. But nevertheless I remain dubious about both the morality of it and the quality of the work. I certainly don’t regard these as being collaborations in the true sense of the word.

JANE: I know what you mean.  My nephew enjoys both Tom Clancy’s and Clive Cussler’s works, but I’ve given up on buying them for him because so many are these sort of pairings.

ALAN: Ah yes – those… I don’t really consider those as collaborations at all. Clancy actually died in 2013, so clearly his contribution to the books that are still being published under his name has been minimal. So-called collaborations like these are really just cynical marketing exercises designed to keep famous names on the book covers so as to (hopefully) increase sales.

I think the only real collaborations are those where all the writers named on the cover have had a significant input to the story being told.

JANE: I agree.  When an author or an author’s estate starts franchising a well-known name, then any sense of collaboration vanishes.  I’ll avoid naming some obvious examples because I don’t know the circumstances firsthand and don’t want to risk maligning someone…

But there are many authors who appear as “senior” author on books that I suspect they’ve never even looked at.

ALAN: I’m absolutely certain of it. And the phenomenon is not a new one; it’s just that these days the publishers are rather more blatant about it than once they were. It used to be that the junior author got no credit at all, even though they’d done most, if not all, of the work!

A good example would be the Saint novels. They were all published with Leslie Charteris named on the cover as the only author. Nevertheless many of the novels were ghostwritten with little or no input from Charteris himself. Vendetta For the Saint (1964) was actually written by the SF author Harry Harrison, though his name appears nowhere in the credits. Harrison told me that Charteris just left him alone to write the story – though presumably Charteris did approve the final version since he was putting his own name on it!

JANE: I had no idea!

ALAN: Proper collaborations, such as the Niven/Pournelle books, are a completely different kettle of fish. In an interview published in Fantastic Reviews in 2009, Niven says that he and Pournelle would talk the story out between themselves until they knew it by heart. In that sort of circumstance it really doesn’t matter whose fingers actually hit the keyboard, the story belongs equally to both of them.

JANE: I agree.  I also think that the best collaborations are those where each author has something special to bring to the project.  My first collaboration with Roger Zelazny was like that.  He’d been asked to come up with a story for a computer game, but he knew nothing about either computers or gaming.

However, he was always intrigued by a new challenge.  He said he’d take the job if I could come on board as his collaborator (because I was a gamer, and somewhat familiar with computer games), and so Chronomaster was begun.  Sadly, Roger was gone before it came out.  He never would have agreed to what the publisher did – putting his name big and mine small – because we worked the story out together.

ALAN: The game itself is still available for download from obscure corners of the internet, though you will need some kind of MS-DOS emulator if you want to play it – it won’t run on modern computers.

There’s lots more to say about collaborations, both proper and improper. Perhaps we can continue the discussion next time…

JANE: I’d like that!

 

Daily Focus

Last week I didn’t end up needing to go back for juror selection, so that particular adventure is over.  This week’s adventure will start on Friday, when I head off to Silver City, New Mexico, to be one of the speakers at their biennial Southwest Festival of the Written Word.

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Getting To Work

You can learn more about the Festival here.

I’ve never been to Silver City, and am really looking forward to seeing a new part of New Mexico.  It’s supposed to be a lovely part of the state, and autumn is one of the nicest times of the year for a long drive.   I’m also looking forward to talking about writing SF/F, and participating in an author’s roundtable.

Earlier this week, I went to Santa Fe to meet with Emily Mah Tippets, so we could consult about a bunch of on-going projects, many of which are going to get some of my stories into the hands of the people who want to read them, rather than them remaining in my office because I’m busy playing with the new idea that bounced into my head.

The reality is that, as much as big events like jury duty and book festivals provide topics to Wander on about, the real focus of my daily life is writing.  Last week, I wrote the final segment of a novel I started – more or less by accident – back in early April.  Actually, by the time I write the one scene I skipped and fill in a bunch of world-building elements, the project is probably going to turn into two novels.

So…  How could I have just skipped a scene?  And how could I write a novel (or two) without doing the world-building in advance?

Let’s talk about the scene first.  The short answer is that, while I knew what the end result of this scene had to be, I also knew the scene was important in and of itself.  The great mystery was that I didn’t know why the scene was important.  Rather than struggling miserably to just end up writing a lot of filler that I would end up rewriting later, I skipped ahead.

By the time I figured out why that missing scene was crucial, the book was surging ahead with plot complications galore that demanded my careful handling.  Rather than risk losing momentum (which is the same as being immersed in the story, which I love), I left that scene unwritten.  However, now that the story has a beginning, middle, and end, I can go back and write that scene.

As for world-building…  Well, sometimes I enjoy planning in advance, but sometimes I enjoy exploring the world along with my characters.  That’s what happened in this case.   As I discovered key elements of language, forms of clothing, magical arts, and the like, larger patterns that in turn shed light on the world and its cultures also appeared.  Rather than going back and putting these in, I created a second file in which I would periodically stop and write myself notes about things I needed to include later.

None of this material is filler.  For example, characters do need names but, unless the story is built around a name (such as The Importance of Being Earnest), I can quite easily be content with referring to even a major character as ABC or DEF.

The same is true of physical descriptions.  Again, unless what a character looks like is crucial to how the story is developing, the question of whether he is a golden-haired youth with deep violet eyes or she is a buxom maiden with dark-green locks and a distracting dimple can wait until later.

As interested as I am, delving into much of this material is going to need to wait.  I’ve promised myself that I’ll get several other new – and in their own way equally fascinating – projects moving along – which was one reason that I took a whole day away from writing to go off to Santa Fe and meet with Emily.

Now, however, I have nearly three days before I hit the road again.  You can be sure that some or all of those days will be occupied with writing that missing scene!

FF: Who Might Call?

With the possibility of further jury duty looming, I’ve been keeping my fingers on the keyboard, so it’s been audiobooks to the rescue.

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Persephone Steals a Bit of Time

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett.  Does anyone know if Pratchett ever followed up on the hints that Susan and Lobsang might become an item?  I wonder what sort of kid Time and Death might have?

Before Midnight by Rex Stout.  Audiobook.  A Nero Wolfe tale.

The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout.  Audiobook.  A Nero Wolfe tale.  The title refers to the very last scene in the book.  Very dry humor.

In Progress:

The Father Hunt by Rex Stout.  Audiobook.  A Nero Wolfe tale.  When I’m stressed, there is nothing like a classic mystery novel.

Also:

A fair amount of short fiction, as well as a quick skim through Wolf’s Head, Wolf’s Heart by a certain Jane Lindskold.  I look forward to having the time to read this one again more slowly.

TT: Food to Die For

ALAN: Last time you were telling me about your cat Gwydion’s food allergies. I sympathise with Gwydion because I have similar problems myself.

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Alan’s Bane

My mother told me that when I was very young, just moving on to solid food, she had to stop feeding me eggs because every time she gave me a bit of egg I would throw it up.

Apparently, my not eating eggs worried my grandmother. “You must feed him eggs,” she would say. “They are good for him.”

“How can they be good for him?” asked my mother. “They don’t stay inside him long enough to do him any good.”

My grandmother was not convinced by this argument and she would occasionally try and sneak bits of egg into my diet when I wasn’t looking. I continued to throw them up, much to her displeasure. Apparently this was a terrible waste of eggs…

It’s been a lifelong affliction. To this day, if I eat an egg, I do a lot of vomiting.

JANE: How can you manage?  Eggs are an ingredient in so many things!

ALAN: It seems to be a concentration effect – the more dilute the egg, the more likely it is that I’ll be able to eat it safely. So I’m fine with pastry and cake and similar things. But feed me an egg au naturelle and I can’t stomach it. Even the smell of an egg being cooked makes me feel nauseous.

JANE: I bet you don’t eat breakfast out very often.  At least here in the U.S., the majority of breakfast offerings begin with some form of egg dish, with your choice of carbohydrates, heavily salted meats, and something sweet.

ALAN: It’s the same here in NZ, so you’d definitely win that bet! But Robin does like her eggs, so we do occasionally indulge ourselves. The restaurants always seem quite happy to feed me just toast and marmalade. But your comment reminds me of something I’ve always found very puzzling. In American books and movies characters order their eggs cooked “sunny side up” or “over easy”. I can guess what “sunny side up” means, but “over easy” remains very puzzling. Can you explain it for me?

JANE: That’s an egg that has been cooked in a skillet, then gently turned over.  There are refinements, but that’s the basic idea.

ALAN: Ah – I think I understand. But you used another unfamiliar word in your explanation. What’s a skillet?

JANE: A skillet is a shallow pan.  It’s also called a frying pan, but I didn’t want to use that term because some people say that an egg over easy should not be confused with a fried egg because, in a proper egg over easy, the whites remain white, not browned.  Partially browned whites are apparently the mark of a fried egg.

ALAN: OK – I’ve got it now. So let’s get back to my food allergies… I did eventually begin to wonder if my reaction to eggs might be more psychological than physical. But one day I had dramatic proof that it wasn’t psychological at all – it was quite real.

Rosemary, my first wife, cooked a meal of schnitzel which looked and smelled absolutely yummy. Unbeknown to me, she had bound the breadcrumbs to the meat with an egg/milk mixture. The food was delicious and I gobbled it up. I had no idea that it had ever been within a million miles of an egg. Nevertheless I spent the rest of the evening worshipping the porcelain god.

JANE: Oh, that’s rough.  So dilution isn’t always the answer, I guess.  I bet Rosemary felt horrible.

ALAN: She was terribly upset and apologetic, of course, but it wasn’t her fault. After all, there really was very little egg involved. But from that day on, whenever she cooked schnitzel, she bound the breadcrumbs with just milk. I think that her schnitzel recipe was probably right on the borderline of what my body could tolerate – the egg was diluted, but not quite diluted enough…

JANE: Are you allergic to any other foods?  I’ve noticed that people who are allergic to one food are often allergic to several.

ALAN: Yes – and again it first manifested itself in childhood. My parents were very fond of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate. And on special occasions they liked to treat themselves to that curious triangular Swiss chocolate called Toblerone, which also has nuts in it. Naturally they encouraged me to eat it as well. But every time I ate a piece, my tongue and throat would start to itch madly…

JANE: Uh, oh…

ALAN: My father was quite unsympathetic. “Scratch your tongue on your teeth,” he said. I tried that, but it didn’t help.

The itching seemed to get worse every time I ate anything with nuts in it. (I later learned that this is quite common with food allergies – the effect often increases with each exposure to the allergen.)

My worst attack came when I was in my mid-twenties. I was spending Christmas Day with some friends and they served a trifle which, unbeknown to me, had a lot of nut fragments in it. The familiar itching started and then, frighteningly, my throat swelled up and closed. I couldn’t swallow and I was struggling to breathe. So I spent the rest of that Christmas Day in hospital being injected with epinephrine.

JANE: That sounds horrible. Do you carry an epipen with you now?

ALAN: No, I don’t. Perhaps I should, but I find it very easy to avoid food that has nuts in it. I’ve had no real problems since that long-ago Christmas attack.

JANE:  So you’re allergic to tree nuts.  Are you allergic to peanuts as well?  Peanut allergies are becoming a major problem here in the U.S.

ALAN: I have no problems at all with peanuts. Since you are a gardener, you probably know that despite their name, peanuts are not nuts. They are classified as legumes, and I think they are very yummy. I just have to avoid the things that you described as “tree nuts”.  I’m perfectly fine with peanuts and cashew nuts and similar things.

JANE: I see. So as long as I promise not to cook you a nut omelet when you come for dinner, everything should work out well?

ALAN: Yes, that’s right.

JANE: That’s a relief!  Allergies are becoming so prevalent that I’ve heard people claim to be “allergic” on the slimmest of evidence, as if it’s somehow fashionable.    As for me, I’d be just as happy to do without.

ALAN (sneezing and reaching for the tissue box): Me, too!

Jury Duty

This week’s Big Adventure is that I’m on jury duty, specifically for the State of New Mexico, Bernallio County, which is where I live.  When my summons arrived, I was asked to fill out several forms, including one that asked if I would incur any hardship if I were asked to serve.  I requested that I not be required to serve because I’m self-employed.  If I don’t work, there’s no one who can cover for me.

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Documents in My Case

The county was sympathetic to my request, and reduced my term of being on call (not service) from three weeks to one.  I was also given the option to postpone serving for six months.  However, since I had no idea what my schedule would look like in six months, whereas this week had a certain amount of wiggle room, I opted to select this as the week I would make myself available to serve.

As required, I checked the county court’s website to see if my group number (not my juror badge number) was on the list for service on Monday.  Imagine my astonishment when, upon checking the appropriate page, I saw that one hundred and fifteen group numbers were listed.  Mine was in the fifth row.

Over the weekend, since I don’t know downtown Albuquerque very well, I’d gone to scout the area, including locating the appropriate parking facility.  Now, with a clear visual of the area in my mind, I found myself wondering how much time I should allow to get downtown, parked, and over to the courthouse by 8:30 a.m.  Even if each group contained only five people, the number of people attempting to park would be five hundred and seventy-five.  That many cars going to one parking garage would make a line that would stretch for miles.  The garage probably didn’t have that many places.

Jim and I discussed this and decided that – despite each juror having been assigned a separate badge number as well – the group numbers must indicate only one person.  When I checked in, I asked, and this proved to be the case.

So, as Juror Group 622, I took my seat in the jury assembly room.  The courthouse courteously provided both coffee and water, and I spent a comfortable twenty minutes or so sipping coffee and reading Terry Pratchett’s A Thief of Time.  No.  I didn’t pick this novel on purpose, but the irony of the title – since my time was being “stolen” by the requirement that I do my civic duty – didn’t escape me.

Eventually, a man came and explained that we had appeared in the jury pool because either we were registered voters, had paid taxes, or had driver’s licenses.  Basically, as is so often the case, because we were responsible citizens, more was being asked of us.  Those who don’t bother to vote, dodge their taxes, or drive unlicensed get off.  Oh, I know the state has to have some system, but once again… irony.

The assembled juror pool to which I belonged was short something like four people, all of whom, we were assured, would be hunted down and informed that they had behaved badly.  With that, about half of us (including several of the absent numbers) were instructed to go up to Judge Briana Zamora’s courtroom for voir dire.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, voir dire is the process by which the judge and attorneys select the jury.

We were handed numbers that corresponded to a seating chart, then escorted into the courtroom.  Now, to my identity as Group 622, I added Seat 36.  We were greeted, sworn in, and then Judge Zamora told us the charge.  She also told us that it was likely that the trial would run for three to four days.

I can’t remember the exact wording of the charge, so rather than risk misrepresenting, I’m going to paraphrase.  The defendant (who was there) was accused of rape.  Complicating matters was that the alleged act had occurred in a correctional facility.

I’m going to jump ahead here and note something fascinating.  Voir dire had been going on for well over an hour – first the judge, then the prosecution had asked their questions – before it became evident that the fifty or so of us in the jury pool were confused as to what we thought the crime was for which we might be asked to sit on a jury.

The more literal-minded (I raise my hand here) thought that the incident in question had occurred between two inmates since all we were told was that it had occurred in a correctional facility.  Others had interpreted what was said to mean that if the incidence was “criminal,” it must be between someone associated in some form of non-inmate role and an inmate.  This latter turned out to be the case.

So, those of us who literally adhered to what was presented to us were incorrect.  Those who added (for whatever reason) information that was actually not presented were correct.  Given that over and over again we were told that we would be asked to view the matter in the light of the evidence presented, not in light of our preconceptions…

Well, let’s just say this misunderstanding did not give me a lot of faith in the system.

Since I wasn’t taking notes, I can’t take you through the long process of questions, rephrasing of the same questions, new questions, misunderstandings, and circumlocutions.  However, I will say that the number of times one or the other of the attorneys requested to approach the bench (or were called to the bench by the judge) was remarkable.

I mean that literally…  At one point, the gentleman seated to my left remarked “I wonder if we’re all going to get sent home.”

But, in the end, the questioning ended.  We retired to the juror room.  I enjoyed a nice chat about SF/F with several of my fellow potential jurors, then the names of those selected to serve were announced.

I wasn’t chosen.  On the one hand, given that I can ill afford most of a week away from my work, I am relieved.  On the other hand, I do feel I learned a great deal from my four or so hours in court, so this wasn’t a waste of time

I was reminded once again that words don’t mean the same thing to people, even when those people are all native speakers of the same language.  I was impressed by the thoughtful intensity which the members of my juror pool brought to their responses to the questions they were asked.  I learned that consent in sexual relationships is really, really important to many people – men and women, young and old.  And that people understand that “consent” does not apply in situations of unequal power.

I’m on call for the rest of this week.  My group may or may not be summoned again.   But if it is, Juror Group 622 will drive to the courthouse for her new adventure!