Gillian Polack's Blog, page 91
November 29, 2013
On Pepys, the giving of gifts, reflexivity and writers
Work was slow taking off today because my own slowness is infectious. I had a lovely time with a friend who dropped in this morning and we went to the library. This is good. What isn’t so good is that my week was so… interesting that I gave up after lunch and went back to bed. I don’t hurt nearly as much and I can now think again. Which is a shame, for it means I have to deal with two aspects of the problem that is Pepys.
The first aspect is the amount of gift-giving he documents. I think that this is just an element of the early modern economy: people gave Pepys gifts because of his role (socially, politically, economically) as well as for the reasons we assume that people give gifts today. In other words, gifts were an aspect of finances. This is not so unexpected – Australia is unusual in not tipping and in seldom using favours to oil wheels. My problem is that I don’t know where this stops and where the social starts. There may not be a boundary at all. The problem with no boundary is that the practice of gift-giving and recompense (the price is a gold coin, offered after the event with no strings attached) for small favours done is it makes it almost impossible to see how women fitted in. I rather suspect that one way women were disempowered was by being excluded from this aspect of the economy except in certain circumstances. Actresses were part of it, mistresses were, and prostitutes were, but where did housewives and estate owners and businesswomen and servants fit? This is my first problem.
The second Pepysian problem relates to my ongoing work on how writers see history. I didn’t realise that variety of questions that Gillian-the-historian poses the texts she reads. Somewhere in the last thirty years I put some of my reflexivity away, for safekeeping. Now that I’ve taken it out of storage, I find that some writers ask the same level questions I do, but that most don’t.
What I need to find out is whether the type of questions writers ask of primary sources changes according to genre. I don’t need to measure the research of writers against the research of historians, but against the research of other writers. And it’s not a simple theoretical structure (the way we’re taught to conceive of research as undergraduates) but a complex one. I’m certain now that our use of certain notions as writers (“I’m working on the research for this novel.” “I’m deep in reading primary sources.”) hides more disparate uses of sources and decisions and quite different understandings of the past than they demonstrate similarities between writers. And I’m beginning to think that this, too, may be genre-linked and that only a very, very small minority of fiction writers make reflexive and aware decisions concerning the nature of the research they’re undertaking.
Later on today I’ll post a recipe. Right now I’m still puzzling over Pepys.
The first aspect is the amount of gift-giving he documents. I think that this is just an element of the early modern economy: people gave Pepys gifts because of his role (socially, politically, economically) as well as for the reasons we assume that people give gifts today. In other words, gifts were an aspect of finances. This is not so unexpected – Australia is unusual in not tipping and in seldom using favours to oil wheels. My problem is that I don’t know where this stops and where the social starts. There may not be a boundary at all. The problem with no boundary is that the practice of gift-giving and recompense (the price is a gold coin, offered after the event with no strings attached) for small favours done is it makes it almost impossible to see how women fitted in. I rather suspect that one way women were disempowered was by being excluded from this aspect of the economy except in certain circumstances. Actresses were part of it, mistresses were, and prostitutes were, but where did housewives and estate owners and businesswomen and servants fit? This is my first problem.
The second Pepysian problem relates to my ongoing work on how writers see history. I didn’t realise that variety of questions that Gillian-the-historian poses the texts she reads. Somewhere in the last thirty years I put some of my reflexivity away, for safekeeping. Now that I’ve taken it out of storage, I find that some writers ask the same level questions I do, but that most don’t.
What I need to find out is whether the type of questions writers ask of primary sources changes according to genre. I don’t need to measure the research of writers against the research of historians, but against the research of other writers. And it’s not a simple theoretical structure (the way we’re taught to conceive of research as undergraduates) but a complex one. I’m certain now that our use of certain notions as writers (“I’m working on the research for this novel.” “I’m deep in reading primary sources.”) hides more disparate uses of sources and decisions and quite different understandings of the past than they demonstrate similarities between writers. And I’m beginning to think that this, too, may be genre-linked and that only a very, very small minority of fiction writers make reflexive and aware decisions concerning the nature of the research they’re undertaking.
Later on today I’ll post a recipe. Right now I’m still puzzling over Pepys.
November 27, 2013
Chanukah 2013 aka "The footnotes of my footnotes have footnotes."
Once upon a time there was war in the Middle East (a). This is a rare and unusual occurrence. As a result of that rare and unusual occurrence, Israel (1) was overrun by rather pagan invaders. This led to some interesting history being written, down the track. It also led to the establishment of a festival which can be technically classified under "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." Unlike other festivals in this category (2), the story is not about death. Also, the invasion was more about freedom of religion than about mass murder and eliminating Jews from the face of the earth. This qualifies Chanukah as a cheerful festival.
Permeating the Jewish tradition about the reign of Antiochus in Judea are many exciting tales. They include histories of patience in adversity and of blood and gore (b). There are stories of alcoholism, preceded by patience in adversity and followed by blood and gore, and of weaving cloaks from those odd bits of wool that get caught on brambles when sheep walk too close (3).
Of all these stories, the most famous one is how the Maccabees (4) won back the Temple. They won back a lot more than the Temple, but the Temple was the important bit. The straw that broke the camel's back were the pigs, apparently. Pigs in the Temple. And straw. And camels.
No, only pigs. Sorry. (c)
Still, the problem with the Temple was that it was being used for worship of a rather interesting Hellenistic pantheon. The pigs were the symptom, not the problem.
The Maccabees were a strong Jewish family. They could have been role models for Che Guevara, because their preferred type of politics was charismatic, and their preferred form of warfare, guerrilla. They had not, however, read Karl Marx. They also didn’t speak Spanish. (d) They did, however, practise all those heinous acts forbidden under Antiochus' enlightened pagan rule, namely Torah study, keeping Sabbath holy, keeping a kosher kitchen, circumcision... They didn’t like the obligatory nature of Antiochus’ intriguing variety of paganism. Other rebellious souls who kept kosher suffered martyrdom for their efforts (e). But then, those other rebellious souls weren’t charismatic guerrilla leaders.
After long and bloody trials and much hiding in the wilderness (5), the Maccabee family and their followers won back Judea and most importantly the Temple (6).
Let me remind you that Antiochus had insisted that all Jews worship his own, not-at-all-Jewish, deities (7). This worship was enforced everywhere, including at that holiest of holies, the Temple. It was used for worship that looked decidedly unsavoury to the pure-minded revolutionaries. (Revolutionaries are always pure-minded.) When the Temple was won back, they wept because it was defiled (putative pigs! (f)).
The solution for the defiled Temple was simple. Firstly came a big spring clean. After that, re-sanctification.
Re-sanctification was somewhat of a problem. Not that re-sanctification in itself was a difficult procedure, but there was no holy oil. The Temple had, after all, been defiled, and that went for most of its contents, too. After much searching, extra virgin olive oil (8) was found, but only a small amount. In fact, there was only enough holy oil for one day, instead of the required eight. But one little lamp of oil lasted eight days, and the ancient Judeans declared that “A Great Miracle Happened Here (8a)” and threw a party to celebrate. Jews ever since then have spent 8 days of the year enjoying the miracle.
The Hebrew acronym describing the event became the basis of gambling using a spinning top, probably around the eighteenth century. It is pure co-incidence that the annual Jewish gambling and gift-giving stint is between Melbourne Cup Day and Christmas.
(a) Australia existed. It was appearing on some maps, maybe. We know it existed, though, because the people living here actually lived here (i), but no-one asked them. Those-who-write-these-things-elsewhere had developed a nice theory of its existence (derived mathematically, which is how it came to possibly appear on maps) and would soon define it officially as the Anti-Podes. There were no sheep in the Anti-Podes. Nor were there sheep jokes.
(i) Really. And they’d been living here a long time. And still no-one thought to ask them. Life is strange that way.
(1) Or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE
(2) Other key categories for Jewish festivals include "Let's be miserable together" and "Something important happened on this day, but it was thousands of years ago and we will spend the whole day trying to remember, and half the night too" and "Three thousand years ago or so we probably planted/harvested/rioted around now" and "We haven't overeaten for a few days, time for a festival" and "Let's do no housework."(ii) All Jewish festivals fit together under a general heading of "Let's read." The genre of the reading ranges from religious to the historical to the speculative, even when the book read is precisely the same. In an ideal day, some time is always spent arguing genre and literature and interpretation of the world. Given this, why aren't Star Wars t-shirts compulsory Jewish attire? (This is one of the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism.)
(ii) “Let’s do no housework” is canonically Jewish – if it’s possible that anything’s canonically Jewish, given that the Canon refers to Christianity. It just looks made up.
(b) No zombies. No zombie sheep. They belong to other people's stories. No vampires, either, not even sparkly ones. Our stories lack these things. Deal with it.
(3) To visualise this, think of scraggy sheep (iii). Dismiss all merinos from your minds. A modern merino would be caught up by a tangle of brambles and might die of thirst or be turned into lamb chops. Ancient Jewish stories do not encourage trapping sheep in tangles of brambles. With ancient scraggy sheep, the wool comes off in tatters anyway. It really can be collected from bushes in the wilderness. If you live in the Canberra region and want to meet the descendent of such a sheep, visit Mountain Creek Farm. They also had a Wessex saddleback pig called Beyonce, but they ate her.
(iii) Horror writer friends, I need scraggy zombie sheep in a story, forthwith. Not a Jewish story though, for it would clash profoundly with my sense of kashruth.
(4) You are advised to turn your spellcheck off at this point. The MacAfees were not major players in ancient Jewish history.
(c) I'm only apologising so that I can put another footnote in. I shall not mention sheep in this one.
(iv) not even zombie sheep.
(d) Is Karl Marx's history any less troublesome in Spanish translation? Inquiring minds need to know. Maybe only one inquiring mind. And maybe the need is more a vague and passing curiosity.
(e) These days I suspect that keeping strict kosher is its own variety of martyrdom, but that's because I've developed bad habits. If this were truly a spec fic story, I would have developed bad hobbits, rather than refusing to check cheese labels for the type of rennet. Bad hobbits are a lot more interesting than cheese labels. JRRT's missing tales.
(v) And suddenly this is topical. I shall watch to make sure that there is at least one bad hobbit in the forthcoming film. If there isn’t, I shall sic zombie sheep onto the makers thereof. They’ll go nicely with those strange rabbits in the first Jackson Hobbit film.
(5) Scraggy sheep!
(6) The hiding in the wilderness is where the cloaks came in. Public nakedness is seldom encouraged in Judaism. No, this footnote is not in the right place. The scraggy sheep got in the way.
(vi) But not the zombie sheep, for their wool is of a different quality entirely.
(7) I know, I told you a few lines ago. This system of footnotes makes a few lines seem like a long time. Someone should study it to see if footnotes really slow time down or if they just confuse people.
(f) I haven't met anyone who has evidence of pigs, just of defilement, so it might have been hobbits. Bad hobbits and their bad habits. There's an academic paper in that.
(8) For Christians, extra virgin olive oil was probably the standard in the early days. This means that Mary cooked with…no, I'm not going there.
(8a)* These days most of us say "A great miracle happened there." If you live in Israel you get to celebrate locally, though, and use the words of the ancients. That reminds me, one day I must try making the alcohol of the ancients. My family liqueurs went down very well last year and that was only the alcohol-of-the-near-moderns. Imagine how good it can get with older drinks!
*This footnote is 8a because otherwise it would be 9 and Chanukah only has 8 nights. My other option was to create 36 footnotes or 64 footnotes, or… let's stick with 8a.
(vi) and my footnotes and the footnotes of my footnotes have officially run out of footnotes.
Permeating the Jewish tradition about the reign of Antiochus in Judea are many exciting tales. They include histories of patience in adversity and of blood and gore (b). There are stories of alcoholism, preceded by patience in adversity and followed by blood and gore, and of weaving cloaks from those odd bits of wool that get caught on brambles when sheep walk too close (3).
Of all these stories, the most famous one is how the Maccabees (4) won back the Temple. They won back a lot more than the Temple, but the Temple was the important bit. The straw that broke the camel's back were the pigs, apparently. Pigs in the Temple. And straw. And camels.
No, only pigs. Sorry. (c)
Still, the problem with the Temple was that it was being used for worship of a rather interesting Hellenistic pantheon. The pigs were the symptom, not the problem.
The Maccabees were a strong Jewish family. They could have been role models for Che Guevara, because their preferred type of politics was charismatic, and their preferred form of warfare, guerrilla. They had not, however, read Karl Marx. They also didn’t speak Spanish. (d) They did, however, practise all those heinous acts forbidden under Antiochus' enlightened pagan rule, namely Torah study, keeping Sabbath holy, keeping a kosher kitchen, circumcision... They didn’t like the obligatory nature of Antiochus’ intriguing variety of paganism. Other rebellious souls who kept kosher suffered martyrdom for their efforts (e). But then, those other rebellious souls weren’t charismatic guerrilla leaders.
After long and bloody trials and much hiding in the wilderness (5), the Maccabee family and their followers won back Judea and most importantly the Temple (6).
Let me remind you that Antiochus had insisted that all Jews worship his own, not-at-all-Jewish, deities (7). This worship was enforced everywhere, including at that holiest of holies, the Temple. It was used for worship that looked decidedly unsavoury to the pure-minded revolutionaries. (Revolutionaries are always pure-minded.) When the Temple was won back, they wept because it was defiled (putative pigs! (f)).
The solution for the defiled Temple was simple. Firstly came a big spring clean. After that, re-sanctification.
Re-sanctification was somewhat of a problem. Not that re-sanctification in itself was a difficult procedure, but there was no holy oil. The Temple had, after all, been defiled, and that went for most of its contents, too. After much searching, extra virgin olive oil (8) was found, but only a small amount. In fact, there was only enough holy oil for one day, instead of the required eight. But one little lamp of oil lasted eight days, and the ancient Judeans declared that “A Great Miracle Happened Here (8a)” and threw a party to celebrate. Jews ever since then have spent 8 days of the year enjoying the miracle.
The Hebrew acronym describing the event became the basis of gambling using a spinning top, probably around the eighteenth century. It is pure co-incidence that the annual Jewish gambling and gift-giving stint is between Melbourne Cup Day and Christmas.
(a) Australia existed. It was appearing on some maps, maybe. We know it existed, though, because the people living here actually lived here (i), but no-one asked them. Those-who-write-these-things-elsewhere had developed a nice theory of its existence (derived mathematically, which is how it came to possibly appear on maps) and would soon define it officially as the Anti-Podes. There were no sheep in the Anti-Podes. Nor were there sheep jokes.
(i) Really. And they’d been living here a long time. And still no-one thought to ask them. Life is strange that way.
(1) Or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE
(2) Other key categories for Jewish festivals include "Let's be miserable together" and "Something important happened on this day, but it was thousands of years ago and we will spend the whole day trying to remember, and half the night too" and "Three thousand years ago or so we probably planted/harvested/rioted around now" and "We haven't overeaten for a few days, time for a festival" and "Let's do no housework."(ii) All Jewish festivals fit together under a general heading of "Let's read." The genre of the reading ranges from religious to the historical to the speculative, even when the book read is precisely the same. In an ideal day, some time is always spent arguing genre and literature and interpretation of the world. Given this, why aren't Star Wars t-shirts compulsory Jewish attire? (This is one of the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism.)
(ii) “Let’s do no housework” is canonically Jewish – if it’s possible that anything’s canonically Jewish, given that the Canon refers to Christianity. It just looks made up.
(b) No zombies. No zombie sheep. They belong to other people's stories. No vampires, either, not even sparkly ones. Our stories lack these things. Deal with it.
(3) To visualise this, think of scraggy sheep (iii). Dismiss all merinos from your minds. A modern merino would be caught up by a tangle of brambles and might die of thirst or be turned into lamb chops. Ancient Jewish stories do not encourage trapping sheep in tangles of brambles. With ancient scraggy sheep, the wool comes off in tatters anyway. It really can be collected from bushes in the wilderness. If you live in the Canberra region and want to meet the descendent of such a sheep, visit Mountain Creek Farm. They also had a Wessex saddleback pig called Beyonce, but they ate her.
(iii) Horror writer friends, I need scraggy zombie sheep in a story, forthwith. Not a Jewish story though, for it would clash profoundly with my sense of kashruth.
(4) You are advised to turn your spellcheck off at this point. The MacAfees were not major players in ancient Jewish history.
(c) I'm only apologising so that I can put another footnote in. I shall not mention sheep in this one.
(iv) not even zombie sheep.
(d) Is Karl Marx's history any less troublesome in Spanish translation? Inquiring minds need to know. Maybe only one inquiring mind. And maybe the need is more a vague and passing curiosity.
(e) These days I suspect that keeping strict kosher is its own variety of martyrdom, but that's because I've developed bad habits. If this were truly a spec fic story, I would have developed bad hobbits, rather than refusing to check cheese labels for the type of rennet. Bad hobbits are a lot more interesting than cheese labels. JRRT's missing tales.
(v) And suddenly this is topical. I shall watch to make sure that there is at least one bad hobbit in the forthcoming film. If there isn’t, I shall sic zombie sheep onto the makers thereof. They’ll go nicely with those strange rabbits in the first Jackson Hobbit film.
(5) Scraggy sheep!
(6) The hiding in the wilderness is where the cloaks came in. Public nakedness is seldom encouraged in Judaism. No, this footnote is not in the right place. The scraggy sheep got in the way.
(vi) But not the zombie sheep, for their wool is of a different quality entirely.
(7) I know, I told you a few lines ago. This system of footnotes makes a few lines seem like a long time. Someone should study it to see if footnotes really slow time down or if they just confuse people.
(f) I haven't met anyone who has evidence of pigs, just of defilement, so it might have been hobbits. Bad hobbits and their bad habits. There's an academic paper in that.
(8) For Christians, extra virgin olive oil was probably the standard in the early days. This means that Mary cooked with…no, I'm not going there.
(8a)* These days most of us say "A great miracle happened there." If you live in Israel you get to celebrate locally, though, and use the words of the ancients. That reminds me, one day I must try making the alcohol of the ancients. My family liqueurs went down very well last year and that was only the alcohol-of-the-near-moderns. Imagine how good it can get with older drinks!
*This footnote is 8a because otherwise it would be 9 and Chanukah only has 8 nights. My other option was to create 36 footnotes or 64 footnotes, or… let's stick with 8a.
(vi) and my footnotes and the footnotes of my footnotes have officially run out of footnotes.
On authenticity, foodways and festive fare
houseboatonstyx
asked for my thoughts on festive foods and authenticity. I've seen the question around a lot this season. How can we eat turkey-stuffed pumpkin doughnuts when our ancestors didn't?I went through a stage when I argued that one had to eat the ancestral food right down to the precise botanical bitter herb for Passover. The more I learned about food history, however, the more I discovered that this is actually quite impossible with our current state of knowledge. We can only approximate at best. Not that reconstructions are bad things, but they are modern attempts to find the flavours of yesteryear: they are not the flavours of yesteryear.
More recently, I've taken to thinking about the family side of food history as something like folk etymologies for words. It's an ever-changing feast. There's no one origin. There is no single, simple answer.
For instance, potato latkes are one of the iconic Chanukah foods for Ashkenazi Jews. Potatoes are New World, however, and the Maccabees would probably have fed them to the goats if they were presented with a bag of them and if they realised they were edible. Not foodstuff for human beings. And yet, iconic, in a folk etymology sort of way. We have folk foodways and they overlap with the historical just enough to make life interesting. If we become purists about reconstruction ("We must eat the precise same food that was eaten at the first Thanksgiving meal") then we're in danger of losing the folk elements from our own family and culture.
Foodways change. This is why they're so rich. Every year one makes decisions about them. Foodways are dynamic and even volatile, despite the fact that, exactly like folk etymologies, most of us are convinced that they are eternal and that we're completely right and perfect and authentic and everyone else is just WRONG. SO they're volatile and dynamic and have the reputation for stability. This is why the US public is reacting so strongly this year to the possibility of their tradition not being technically correct.
Technical correctness mostly doesn't matter unless you're a specialist checking things out for purposes of research. What really matters is your relationship to the festival, your family's food tradition, your sense of what brings comfort of togetherness or whatever other emotion the food helps call. There are so many kinds of authenticity and reasons for authenticity. Each of us needs to work out their own. It's very important. Knowing how much the foodways mean to you and your family is the first step, not finding out if turkey was on the table in the seventeenth century (unless this is important to your foodways of course). If you or your family are not bonded by food then the question is far less important than if you an unruly mob of food geeks.
What do I do personally? A bit of everything. If I want to cook a dish using Maccabean spicing, I have several spices in my spice rack that would do the trick. (We don't have much in the way of Maccabean recipe books, I'm afraid.) If I want to have pickled cucumber that has an older mouth feel and flavour profile than Polish dill pickles, I know which bottled variety fits the bill best, and have sourced it locally. I can place the food of my ancestors in their longer historical context with this increased level of understanding. Trying to reproduce older foodways rocks, from this angle.
It shouldn't replace family traditions, though, and I won't let it. My family and its potato latkes, my US friends and their turkeys... they're just as much a part of food history as that very first Thanksgiving meal. Not as famous, maybe, but not unimportant for all that. And those family and personal foodways will change. I'm not eating potatoes this year, for instance, but frying up asparagus on zucchini and onions and broccolini.
The trick is to be aware of the changes and the memories that are lost with them. Not to lose those memories. Not to lose (in my family's case) the Christmas pudding because Jewish Australia didn't make Christmas pudding as an ancestral dish after World War II. Not to lose the foodstuff that brings people together in a desire to be authentic. There are, you see, many types of authenticity. Rediscovering those older foodways has a special magic, but so does eating scrambled eggs the way my father made them on Sunday mornings.
I think the trick is balance, and not losing the wood for the trees in which ever foodie direction one is travelling. If there is no soul in the festive food, then you've lost more than a recipe.
Which reminds me, does anyone want particular recipes this Chanukah? No Christmas recipes (for this year Christmas is going to be bleak for me and I don't want to add to that), no recipes for other Jewish festivals, but if you want historical recipes, or Chanukah recipes or even Thanksgiving recipes (I know some, but not many) then I am happy to give them to you over the next few days.
gillpolack @ 2013-11-27T19:29:00
PS If you want my version of the Chanukah story, now's the time to say.
I was doing this to my students all this morning. I refused to teach unless they gave me clear indications of what they wanted/needed. It was very good for them. Although it backfired when I commented on how terrifying some people found me and they looked at each other and voted that I was not scary at all.
I was doing this to my students all this morning. I refused to teach unless they gave me clear indications of what they wanted/needed. It was very good for them. Although it backfired when I commented on how terrifying some people found me and they looked at each other and voted that I was not scary at all.
November 26, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-11-27T18:25:00
Chanukah is about to start, and I've already had some fried food. It's all so much easier when one stays old-fashioned. I decided I would cook something, and so I did. Partly I was hungry, partly I was in need of a break, and partly I had some asparagus and some chia and some egg and some sour cream and I found myself wondering what kind of fritters they would make when combined.
The chia is something I've wanted to test in fritters for a while. It has a lovely stickiness when left in contact with water and I wanted to see if that same stickiness appeared with other liquids (mostly with eggs). It does, but it has to sit for a bit. The actual fritters were half late fourteenth century English and half Japanese in technique, simply because I followed the needs of the mixture and used the techniques I already possessed. I ate them with sour cream.
They can be improved, but they're not a bad start (in fact, they'd be very yummy as teaspoon-sized cocktail nibbles). No gluten (which doesn't matter for me, but does for so many friends) and they can be made without dairy and they have no flour binding (which does matter for me right now). And I no longer feel in need of sustenance. One bunch of asparagus makes only four fritters, but they're very filling.
My class and I were a bit zanier than usual. We compared artesian bores with artisan bores and discussed what sort of rosellas we prefer to drink in champagne. We also played with the Schitt Creek paddle, which mysteriously appeared in our classroom. If anyone finds themselves up Schitt Creek without a paddle, we have it.
I introduced them to the Griffith Review and to the very first principles of semiotics (not even semiotics #101 - just the approach). Both turned out to be good things: they'd heard of semiotics and wanted to know more, and they're all going out hunting copies of the Griffith Review. The issue I took in for them to look at wasn't as good as the one I saw the other week. The writing had a sameness to it, which depressed me.
We finished the class with the beginning of a couple of weeks on how to listen to language. I re-introduced the alphabet and its history (which they already knew - proof some of my teaching sticks) then added the grouping of consonants according to voiced and unvoiced, fricative and labial and etc. They have homework on this. Next week we'll look at what the simple classifications mean for language and what this can do for their writing. Some of them know instinctively, but from now until the end of the year they get to explore one small element of linguistics.
I've done a lot of messages today and want to sleep for an hour. I can't sleep for an hour. I have a deadline or two today that I'd forgotten about. My break was basically to make sure that I didn't make too many idiot mistakes by racing with the deadline. I've got the whole evening - I might as well use it and do a better job.
The chia is something I've wanted to test in fritters for a while. It has a lovely stickiness when left in contact with water and I wanted to see if that same stickiness appeared with other liquids (mostly with eggs). It does, but it has to sit for a bit. The actual fritters were half late fourteenth century English and half Japanese in technique, simply because I followed the needs of the mixture and used the techniques I already possessed. I ate them with sour cream.
They can be improved, but they're not a bad start (in fact, they'd be very yummy as teaspoon-sized cocktail nibbles). No gluten (which doesn't matter for me, but does for so many friends) and they can be made without dairy and they have no flour binding (which does matter for me right now). And I no longer feel in need of sustenance. One bunch of asparagus makes only four fritters, but they're very filling.
My class and I were a bit zanier than usual. We compared artesian bores with artisan bores and discussed what sort of rosellas we prefer to drink in champagne. We also played with the Schitt Creek paddle, which mysteriously appeared in our classroom. If anyone finds themselves up Schitt Creek without a paddle, we have it.
I introduced them to the Griffith Review and to the very first principles of semiotics (not even semiotics #101 - just the approach). Both turned out to be good things: they'd heard of semiotics and wanted to know more, and they're all going out hunting copies of the Griffith Review. The issue I took in for them to look at wasn't as good as the one I saw the other week. The writing had a sameness to it, which depressed me.
We finished the class with the beginning of a couple of weeks on how to listen to language. I re-introduced the alphabet and its history (which they already knew - proof some of my teaching sticks) then added the grouping of consonants according to voiced and unvoiced, fricative and labial and etc. They have homework on this. Next week we'll look at what the simple classifications mean for language and what this can do for their writing. Some of them know instinctively, but from now until the end of the year they get to explore one small element of linguistics.
I've done a lot of messages today and want to sleep for an hour. I can't sleep for an hour. I have a deadline or two today that I'd forgotten about. My break was basically to make sure that I didn't make too many idiot mistakes by racing with the deadline. I've got the whole evening - I might as well use it and do a better job.
November 25, 2013
At home to visitors
Summer starts on Sunday.
I've given the matter great consideration and I've decided to return to my old habit of having an at-home once a week.
Instead of making much cake and bread and jam and assisting the broadening of waistlines, I shall play B grade SF, or one of my favourite French TV series. The shorts will either be more French TV (Kaamelott, probably) or Robot Chicken. If friends don't want to watch French TV (for it is only subtitled in French), they get to choose their favourite B-grade SF from my small collection or to avoid the television entirely. I'm happy to just to talk or play historical games* if there is a lack of interest in 1960s French TV** or comedy, or B grade SF.
The food my friends will receive in this, my middle age, will probably be a cuppa and maybe nibbley things or a glass of fine fortified wine, though I won't rule out interesting culinary experiments if I happen to be reading a historical cookbook and the need to make something overcomes me.
However each week works, I shall have a whole afternoon, regardless.
I will be at home to visitors every Sunday afternoon in December and January (and possibly February - we'll see about that). If you want a cake, let me know you're coming and be willing to make significant inroads into it. If you really don't care about the food, then just turn up, anytime from 2 pm until 5 pm.
Before those friends who notice such things say anything snarky about my housekeeping, yes, this is partly an attempt to make myself do more housework. I have pointed this out so that you don't have to. It's mostly, however, a way of taking time out and encouraging friends to drop in. Working from home makes me normally non-dropinable-upon, and it's about time I went back to the old, good habits.
*Of which I have a small collection mainly of reproductions.
**Although I totally will not understand the lack of interest. I shall try to look sympathetic nonetheless.
I've given the matter great consideration and I've decided to return to my old habit of having an at-home once a week.
Instead of making much cake and bread and jam and assisting the broadening of waistlines, I shall play B grade SF, or one of my favourite French TV series. The shorts will either be more French TV (Kaamelott, probably) or Robot Chicken. If friends don't want to watch French TV (for it is only subtitled in French), they get to choose their favourite B-grade SF from my small collection or to avoid the television entirely. I'm happy to just to talk or play historical games* if there is a lack of interest in 1960s French TV** or comedy, or B grade SF.
The food my friends will receive in this, my middle age, will probably be a cuppa and maybe nibbley things or a glass of fine fortified wine, though I won't rule out interesting culinary experiments if I happen to be reading a historical cookbook and the need to make something overcomes me.
However each week works, I shall have a whole afternoon, regardless.
I will be at home to visitors every Sunday afternoon in December and January (and possibly February - we'll see about that). If you want a cake, let me know you're coming and be willing to make significant inroads into it. If you really don't care about the food, then just turn up, anytime from 2 pm until 5 pm.
Before those friends who notice such things say anything snarky about my housekeeping, yes, this is partly an attempt to make myself do more housework. I have pointed this out so that you don't have to. It's mostly, however, a way of taking time out and encouraging friends to drop in. Working from home makes me normally non-dropinable-upon, and it's about time I went back to the old, good habits.
*Of which I have a small collection mainly of reproductions.
**Although I totally will not understand the lack of interest. I shall try to look sympathetic nonetheless.
gillpolack @ 2013-11-26T15:38:00
Normally on Tuesdays, my phone rings madly and disrupts work. I've been so conditioned by this that today, when the phone is strangely silent, I'm finding it impossible to concentrate. A bunch of friends reported bad news yesterday and obviously I've run out of calls. Part of the problem is that - because of yesterday's various bits of bad news and the complete lack of movement on any big lifenews at my end - I'm hyper.
My candles are also hyper. They move from their careful piles (for Chanukah is tomorrow night and I didn't know if I had any - by improvising, I have plenty, and they're all kosher and they diminish a rather big candle stash I had unintentionally developed) onto the floor, at regular intervals. They'll be placid for an hour, then roll around merrily and create chaos.
I can't do much about the candles except put them in new places, with more firmness and better stacking, but I can drink chicory coffee (from New Orleans, of course, which is another stash I found when I was stash-hunting earlier, for those candles) instead of my regular coffee.
About the only thing I'm succeeding at right now, therefore, is curbing candles and diminishing stash.
One of my next-door neighbour's (age 10, I think) just shouted to his mother "And there's nothing!" which means he's got the chaos bug, too. I think it's infectious.
My candles are also hyper. They move from their careful piles (for Chanukah is tomorrow night and I didn't know if I had any - by improvising, I have plenty, and they're all kosher and they diminish a rather big candle stash I had unintentionally developed) onto the floor, at regular intervals. They'll be placid for an hour, then roll around merrily and create chaos.
I can't do much about the candles except put them in new places, with more firmness and better stacking, but I can drink chicory coffee (from New Orleans, of course, which is another stash I found when I was stash-hunting earlier, for those candles) instead of my regular coffee.
About the only thing I'm succeeding at right now, therefore, is curbing candles and diminishing stash.
One of my next-door neighbour's (age 10, I think) just shouted to his mother "And there's nothing!" which means he's got the chaos bug, too. I think it's infectious.
gillpolack @ 2013-11-25T22:54:00
I've done a bit of cooking today. Not much. Just enough to prove I still can.
I had much turkey broth. A half of it is for me to drink. Maybe a bit less than half, for I had some tonight. It's very yummy. Turkey with just enough mushroom and a mere hint of onion. I may have to make it again.
The other half is very slowly simmering into a very rich sauce for later in the week. I'm thinking meatballs with maybe a hint of mint or native mint or something else entirely*. For me on Thursday (for I have a busy week), it will be a whole meal. For Friday, it will be enriched with finely chopped fried onion and then eaten with rather nice pasta.
This brings the total count of types of meals from the one piece of turkey to five, I think. It might be six. It's six: I forgot one. This is my way of dealing with the sad truth that places I buy from assume that one does not eat single portions unless one is wealthy. I take 3.8 kg of bird when it is on special and create many different meals from it.
My work tonight began with me rediscovering that Pepys' diary really doesn't help me create a London for women. It only helps to create a London for Pepys, and his London happens to contain women. I need to finish with Pepys much faster than I had intended, since obviously he's more peripheral than I had intended.
What one knows intellectually and what one understands as a writer are not always the same thing, is the moral of this story. Not all sources are equal for all novels. If I'm writing from the viewpoint of certain characters (as one does) then I have to be able to see the world through their gaze. And none of them are young or youngish career men living in London.
The reason I checked is because I didn't want to let my assumptions about the gendering of society run unchecked. I was right to check. And I'm right to keep reading Pepys. His gendered society has some distinct nuances that I wouldn't have expected. I was right about the gendering, in other words, but not quite right about how it operated in daily life.
There is a simple solution to this, for Pepys' world intersects with women's lives in several places. I could choose one of those places and write women from those areas. My problem with this is that the majority of women did not live lives that intersected with that of Pepys. Also, I'd be repeating every fifth novel set in the London of Charles II if I did that, for Pepys is a popular source for writers. And one of the aims of this project is not to simply repeat what others have done in modern fiction. I'm not writing their book again, I'm writing my book for the first time.
This means that my novel won't intersect with quite a few of the stereotypes of the period. I'll have to work out on a case by case basis how my main characters measure and express their sexuality, for instance.
I need to find diaries by women of the right background, of the right age, and of the right places. If those diaries don't exist (or if they're sketchy, or if they're impossibly daft), I'll do the old-fashioned historian thing and piece together things from other sources. There are lots of other sources.
Pepys is beloved of fiction writers because he was at the right place, at the right time, and wrote with the right amount of detail. He really only fills one of the three for me. Male London is not female London, 1660-1669 is not 1682. To be honest, even his detail is filtered through that very male gaze of his. Even when he mentions cheese, he mentions the social act of eating cheese and it's constructed in a particular way.
Not all documents are as strongly gendered. It's foreign to all my main characters. It's still a grounding, though, in what he thought and saw and what his circles were like and how London felt underfoot and how a lot of small things fitted together and made a society that was (mostly) functional.
Time to finish today's volume of Pepys while my sauces simmer.
*May I gently encourage suggestions? I have no idea how I'm going to season it, at this stage.
I had much turkey broth. A half of it is for me to drink. Maybe a bit less than half, for I had some tonight. It's very yummy. Turkey with just enough mushroom and a mere hint of onion. I may have to make it again.
The other half is very slowly simmering into a very rich sauce for later in the week. I'm thinking meatballs with maybe a hint of mint or native mint or something else entirely*. For me on Thursday (for I have a busy week), it will be a whole meal. For Friday, it will be enriched with finely chopped fried onion and then eaten with rather nice pasta.
This brings the total count of types of meals from the one piece of turkey to five, I think. It might be six. It's six: I forgot one. This is my way of dealing with the sad truth that places I buy from assume that one does not eat single portions unless one is wealthy. I take 3.8 kg of bird when it is on special and create many different meals from it.
My work tonight began with me rediscovering that Pepys' diary really doesn't help me create a London for women. It only helps to create a London for Pepys, and his London happens to contain women. I need to finish with Pepys much faster than I had intended, since obviously he's more peripheral than I had intended.
What one knows intellectually and what one understands as a writer are not always the same thing, is the moral of this story. Not all sources are equal for all novels. If I'm writing from the viewpoint of certain characters (as one does) then I have to be able to see the world through their gaze. And none of them are young or youngish career men living in London.
The reason I checked is because I didn't want to let my assumptions about the gendering of society run unchecked. I was right to check. And I'm right to keep reading Pepys. His gendered society has some distinct nuances that I wouldn't have expected. I was right about the gendering, in other words, but not quite right about how it operated in daily life.
There is a simple solution to this, for Pepys' world intersects with women's lives in several places. I could choose one of those places and write women from those areas. My problem with this is that the majority of women did not live lives that intersected with that of Pepys. Also, I'd be repeating every fifth novel set in the London of Charles II if I did that, for Pepys is a popular source for writers. And one of the aims of this project is not to simply repeat what others have done in modern fiction. I'm not writing their book again, I'm writing my book for the first time.
This means that my novel won't intersect with quite a few of the stereotypes of the period. I'll have to work out on a case by case basis how my main characters measure and express their sexuality, for instance.
I need to find diaries by women of the right background, of the right age, and of the right places. If those diaries don't exist (or if they're sketchy, or if they're impossibly daft), I'll do the old-fashioned historian thing and piece together things from other sources. There are lots of other sources.
Pepys is beloved of fiction writers because he was at the right place, at the right time, and wrote with the right amount of detail. He really only fills one of the three for me. Male London is not female London, 1660-1669 is not 1682. To be honest, even his detail is filtered through that very male gaze of his. Even when he mentions cheese, he mentions the social act of eating cheese and it's constructed in a particular way.
Not all documents are as strongly gendered. It's foreign to all my main characters. It's still a grounding, though, in what he thought and saw and what his circles were like and how London felt underfoot and how a lot of small things fitted together and made a society that was (mostly) functional.
Time to finish today's volume of Pepys while my sauces simmer.
*May I gently encourage suggestions? I have no idea how I'm going to season it, at this stage.
November 24, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-11-25T15:35:00
I'm back in the Middle Ages this afternoon. My colleague has pointed out the difference between the way hair is depicted and the way it is actually worn and the importance of symbolism.
Obviously, the symbolic is haunting me this week. Or maybe it's only haunting me symbolically.
Obviously, the symbolic is haunting me this week. Or maybe it's only haunting me symbolically.
November 23, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-11-24T12:07:00
I'm thinking about genre again today, and how some of the ways readers work out what genre it is reflect the type of research and thinking that goes into a novel. I guess what I'm saying is that the approach that the writer takes, shapes the choices made at the level of prose.
I had to make my first clear genre decision for my current WIP today*. Until yesterday and today, I assumed the novel would be a gentle horror. The work I've been doing on emblem books led to a decision point today, however. I could either dump the work (which I won't do, for a bunch of very good reasons) or I can choose something that is either literary or historical fiction or a very highly realistic variant of historical fantasy. I can still have undertones of horror, of course, but the horror narrative can't dominate and nor, to be honest, can a fantasy adventure one. We're talking small lives in an alien world, and those small lives have big echoes, the way small lives tend to.
What's really cool is that a lot of the illustrative material that one needs for these genres is already embedded in the novel. It belongs there. My early research choices count more than I thought, then, in shaping a novel.
This fits with my interviews of writers, a few years ago. This also fits (for anyone who remembers it) with what I was arguing in my paper for the AussieCon academic programme. That's why I'm noting it here.
I need to reconsider some of the implications of how to teach research-for-fiction. Not all research styles are suitable for every writer, though basic skills are handy for all. I suspect that how we think about research for our fiction is strongly linked to how we think about fiction in general. Not suspect - I've already demonstrated this (the AussieCon paper), but I'm finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of how it works in the mind of one writer. I don't write the genres I write automatically: I take a series of decisions that pushes me into them. This contrasts me with a whole group of writers who do much less research, but who more actively choose their genres. They tend to write more in the centre of genre and to not push boundaries as much as I do. They also, I suspect (from conversations) define research quite differently to me, and they link it into their work in a different way.
There isn't one way to research or one way to decide on what kind of novel one is writing. It's a complex set of processes. It's simple in many writers' minds, though, until they sit down to unpick it (they way I'm doing now) because we tend to follow paths that fit who we are and what our interests are. Think of the number of writers who write to fill a gap in the bookshelf, or because they have a cause that must be espoused, or because they have a hunger to be seen and heard: hundreds of choices create a fiction writer, and all of those choices are personal. That would be a fun diagram to draw, one day.
Right now, I need to keep thinking the choices writers make. Also, I need to find out what seasons of the year fig-eaters and swallows and robins and cuckoos represented in the 17th century, for in this book my wildlife is presenting itself ahead of the plot and needs to be integrated. That's the kind of book it is, apparently. Even a fig-eater will have a symbolic meaning, whether readers notice this or not. The moment I started using emblems as framing devices, this was inevitable. It works perfectly for most of my other narrative needs, as well. This gives me even more to think about. While my backbrain thinks, my forebrain will be considering fig-eaters and Geryon (but not together).
*This is where I admit that I had Big Ideas in mind when I started work on it. I did not go into this with a specific genre in mind, but with a case to present concerning cultural shift and big changes in how we assess the world around us.
I had to make my first clear genre decision for my current WIP today*. Until yesterday and today, I assumed the novel would be a gentle horror. The work I've been doing on emblem books led to a decision point today, however. I could either dump the work (which I won't do, for a bunch of very good reasons) or I can choose something that is either literary or historical fiction or a very highly realistic variant of historical fantasy. I can still have undertones of horror, of course, but the horror narrative can't dominate and nor, to be honest, can a fantasy adventure one. We're talking small lives in an alien world, and those small lives have big echoes, the way small lives tend to.
What's really cool is that a lot of the illustrative material that one needs for these genres is already embedded in the novel. It belongs there. My early research choices count more than I thought, then, in shaping a novel.
This fits with my interviews of writers, a few years ago. This also fits (for anyone who remembers it) with what I was arguing in my paper for the AussieCon academic programme. That's why I'm noting it here.
I need to reconsider some of the implications of how to teach research-for-fiction. Not all research styles are suitable for every writer, though basic skills are handy for all. I suspect that how we think about research for our fiction is strongly linked to how we think about fiction in general. Not suspect - I've already demonstrated this (the AussieCon paper), but I'm finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of how it works in the mind of one writer. I don't write the genres I write automatically: I take a series of decisions that pushes me into them. This contrasts me with a whole group of writers who do much less research, but who more actively choose their genres. They tend to write more in the centre of genre and to not push boundaries as much as I do. They also, I suspect (from conversations) define research quite differently to me, and they link it into their work in a different way.
There isn't one way to research or one way to decide on what kind of novel one is writing. It's a complex set of processes. It's simple in many writers' minds, though, until they sit down to unpick it (they way I'm doing now) because we tend to follow paths that fit who we are and what our interests are. Think of the number of writers who write to fill a gap in the bookshelf, or because they have a cause that must be espoused, or because they have a hunger to be seen and heard: hundreds of choices create a fiction writer, and all of those choices are personal. That would be a fun diagram to draw, one day.
Right now, I need to keep thinking the choices writers make. Also, I need to find out what seasons of the year fig-eaters and swallows and robins and cuckoos represented in the 17th century, for in this book my wildlife is presenting itself ahead of the plot and needs to be integrated. That's the kind of book it is, apparently. Even a fig-eater will have a symbolic meaning, whether readers notice this or not. The moment I started using emblems as framing devices, this was inevitable. It works perfectly for most of my other narrative needs, as well. This gives me even more to think about. While my backbrain thinks, my forebrain will be considering fig-eaters and Geryon (but not together).
*This is where I admit that I had Big Ideas in mind when I started work on it. I did not go into this with a specific genre in mind, but with a case to present concerning cultural shift and big changes in how we assess the world around us.
