C.A. Lang's Blog, page 9

. . . On Dieselpunk and Ayn Rand.

 

 

 

Narrow Definitions?

 

The main factor in whether or not to label something “dieselpunk” is that it’s based in the era of 1920-1950. After that, to me at least, it gets kind of . . . complicated.

 

So you have places like www.dieselpunks.org that outline what a dieselpunk is in a manifesto. It’s a good rundown of the ideas behind it. It’s a little different to mine, in that it’s a little more specific.

 

If you haven’t read Blightcross, I’ll explain what my take on it was. I placed it at around 1920 in our own world, but of course it’s a secondary world story with a lot of fantasy elements. The reason I did that is this: what I wanted to do was highlight the high modernist idea of progress. I can’t do that properly by simplly fetishizing the era. I need to move through chronologically. So naturally the intent is to start there and move the story along the decades and try to explore modernism if it hadn’t been derailed as it had in our world.

 

To me this is such a global thing that I couldn’t allow just one viewpoint to drive it. At the time in our own history, there was a diverse intellectual and artistic climate. Not so much that diversity overtook the art’s progress and sincerity, as it did in the postmodern era, but to pin down dieselpunk to a single utopian view isn’t what I was after. In my novel, the global situation reflects this intellectual competition.

 

I’ve mentioned earlier how I’m more concerned with industry and grit than I am bourgeois in flying jackets or detectives. Those are all important parts of the dieselpunk aesthetic–I use them, love them, and stylistically I do write in a fast-paced pulpy manner. But something that gets me in this arena is the focus on bourgeois aspects. Especially in the 1920s, workers did have a lot more power than we seem to acknowledge now. Nowadays, a “general strike” is some Occupy Movement protesters scheduling a day off work. Not so back then. This is an issue in steampunk as well, but since Victorian attitudes didn’t include a lot of political consciousness, I think it’s rightfully that way. But dieselpunk is more problematic.

 

On one hand, the caricatures that are most communist states clash with any dieselpunk, or modernist, idea. That doesn’t mean some of the ideas behind them, or the lot of workers, deserves to be brushed aside in favour of romanticizing the bourgeois of 1940s America. Ignoring such a force in that era is just as naive and hypocritical as the Victorian attitudes steampunk relies upon. There aren’t any dieselpunk stories that I know of involving special constables, unarmed strikers being shot, or the rampant bourgeois racism of the time.

 

Ayn Rand–The First Dieselpunk Author?

 

That might sound ridiculous at first. But if you step back and look at the characteristics of any punk genre, maybe not so much.

 

Rand is tricky because she’s been co-opted by certain factions, but she’s still fascinating, at least to me. I’ve gone from thinking she was the greatest in my early twenties for a brief period, to completely demonizing the woman for most of them. My emotional attachment to the issue has dried up and I’m left with pure intellectual interest.

 

Punk genres put forth their particular fetish as inspiration for a better society. Sometimes this idea isn’t the whole story, since so much cyberpunk is dystopian, and there is dark steampunk that ends up criticizing victorian ideas rather than espousing them. But at any rate, they do this through melodrama and exaggeration. If they didn’t, you’d just lump the story with generic science fiction and fantasy.

 

Check out Rand. Her fiction is ridiculous and this critical fact has been pointed out since her works were first published. Ignore her attempts at philosophy because they don’t hold much water–but be careful, that don’t make it junk. Her contrived aesthetic, “Romantic Realism” is interesting in so many ways. In one way, it’s interesting because stylistically it’s a dialectical movement from Socialist Realism. Her aesthetic is slightly prettier, but to me the willful influence of her hated nemesis is plainly visible in the simplistic lines and her sterile literary style. But the main point is that she’s idealizing a very narrow aspect of the human experience–and the way she does this is so stereotypically Aquarian that it’s adorable–and elevating it to some final solution to all of man’s ills.

 

What I mean is that had she graduated high school in 1985 instead of whenever it was she did, she’d have made a hell of a cyberpunk author. Now that I’ve got you on that line of thinking, boot her back to the 1930s. If you go to the dieselpunks.org site I mentioned and read their manifesto, it’s a little Randian. There’s no Marx nor Engels or Hegel in it; there’s no Adorno. Rand’s glorification of bourgeois self-interest advancing everyone’s lot is, in my view, a good distillation of that manifesto. Approximately. Let’s just call it Libertarianism for simplicity’s sake.

 

Again I have to be careful to stress that this is neither good nor bad–I’ve gotten over my political axe-grinding. Rand herself was confused, as am I, as was Heinlein (come on now, For Us, The Living as a poorly-veiled polemic advocating social credit? Let’s hope that the subtle semantic shift from Rand’s We, The Living is not lost on the reader), as are most people who think for themselves.

 

The point is that Rand’s novels, besides taking a page from socialist realism (Tractor punk? Eh. Just sayin’), display the same kind of purposeful, somewhat narrow obsession with something that embodies our saviour as a society. At the time of course the terminology wasn’t available, but retroactively, I think Rand’s worship of industrialism, self-interest, and her occasional praise of the workingman (what????? yeah, just wait . . .) as pretty fawking dieselpunk. And the way in which she presented her ideals seems to be one of the first instances of the “punk” genre.

 

The Matter of Workers

 

Rand is universally despised by anyone on the left. But Rand says a few things that also make you wonder if some of that Russian stuff hadn’t stuck with her even after she tried to convince herself she was a Californian, then when she realized that Californians are sketchy, a New Yorker. Her quote, that I’m too lazy to find so I’ll paraphrase: “There are no lousy jobs, only lousy men who don’t want to do them.”

 

I don’t know about you but that seems kind of worker-ish to me. Or maybe it’s not. Seems like there could be arguments for both. But her scenes that glorify the bourgeois hero’s willingness to do labour (Hank Reardon has a scene like this, where he saves the poor dumb working-class sap by doing poor dumb working-class things really well) kind of make me wonder: Does she really place workers far below their architect and CEO superiors, as leftist hatred would imply? Or does she glorify the architects and CEOs because they are the embodiment of workers who excelled? Does she not acknowledge that any worker is free to become the heroes in her novels?

 

Who could really argue with that on a basic level?

 

I think Rand was so innocent and naive and enthusiastic that she seriously did not think of the problems that arise with her line of thinking. And it’s that adorable naiveté that embodies any punk genre. Dieselpunk may claim to be above it, but so far I’m not convinced–I’m not immune, and I’m even critical of its positions . . . I think nobody who is willing to think beyond the everyday doesn’t suffer from some kind of naiveté, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With punk genres, the trick is just passing off that naiveté to different coordinates.

 

It takes a certain dogmatic stance, or fetishistic disavowal of reality, to move anything forward. To me it’s plain that Rand’s position is one of the earliest examples of the punk genre, and if it’s any punk genre, it’s going to be dieselpunk. I mean really–how else can you break free of the current reality if you don’t pretend that it’s not the final state of things? That might have worked for a brief time when Fukuyama wasn’t so boring, but I mean . . . really?

 

Now back dieselpunk, and my observation that it’s overly bourgeois. A lot of dieselpunk is pretty clean. That part of it is fine and part of the appeal. As for me, the initial attraction to dieselpunk was that I could delve into the psychology of an industrial society–not just the highlights of a certain class or nation or even continent. This can get pretty dirty and fascinating–industry is a lot more than Indiana Jones. There is a bigger picture, and pining over The Shadow might be a good lesson in technique and aesthetics for the genre, but I think it’s a disservice to focus too much on a love of American 40s pop culture rather than the modern world as a whole. And that means it should include, like my novel does, the reality of our first stumbling into an industrial society–politically and economically and psychologically.

 

It’s not the kitschy picket-fence paradise it makes itself out to be. It can be dark, it can be confusing, and it can be oppressive. But the difference between then and now is that back then we thought we had the capability to figure it out. Now we don’t–we’re lost in a world of compromise and political correctness and gender neutrality and non-aggression. And there is where I think the crucial definition of dieselpunk should lie.

 

And Ayn Rand? I still cringe a little admitting that I think she’s the first dieselpunk author ever. But I think it’s true. Whatever my own opinions, she valued industry, innovation, and the future. She might, secretly, have even valued workingmen. And the melodramatic way in which she presented her ideas seems like a prototype of the punk genre. You get a kind of familiar but still foreign vibe from her work–like an alternate universe–and I think that tension is a major hallmark of this literature.

Book signing poster. ‘N stuff.

I’m always thrilled by them pretty pictures my publisher gives me. Here’s the poster for my signings:

That photo of me is a profile shot from the POF. Yep. From like 3 years ago now. I don’t know how it keeps popping up in places. Probably because the only time I’ve felt it necessary to have photos of myself is to convince people to be my girlfriend. Otherwise I’ll avoid pictures.

You know how people on your facial book post photos of themselves in bathrooms at the bar every week? I don’t do that, or even find it fun or attractive. Nor do I want to stop a fun moment with friends and break the 4th wall by bringing out the camera. It just seems weird. Adorno and Kundera would definitely label such a thing as kitsch. It’s not enough that we’re having a good time–we need to add that second tear that we shed due to realizing that we’re showing emotion by dropping the first. Wow. Obscure reference. Even with the hint I dropped in that sentence, who the hell is going to get that? If someone writes a detailed essay on what I just wrote and gets it, I’ll send them a free signed copy of my book.

I’m not opposed to appearing in such photos, but it’s just not in my instinct to create them.

It’s like good books or movies. I don’t want to read or see them ever again, because why would I want to add in the complication of future perceptions if it was so great when I experienced it? What if the second time I read my favourite book, I thought it sucked? Old photos seem depressing to me. I realize it’s entirely unrealistic for people who live far less internal lives than me to view their billions of cheap photos like I do. I just feel the need to justify some of my oddness. This especially comes up during summer, because as I’ve mentioned, I’m not captivated by it like everyone else in this area is. I have tons of shit to do and I can’t picture not doing it because society has said that I have to lie on a beach just because the weather is a certain way. I’d do that stuff if I had kids, because that’s different, but meh. It’s just weird being the obsessive stick in the mud busy with things people don’t find fun while the entire town is wearing really dumb clothes and smelling like sunscreen.

Funny thing: I don’t burn. Must be the Ukrainian in me. Never use suncreen, never had a problem, and I do hike and take long runs in the summer. Love nature’s irony. All these people bitching about sunburns because they adore the beach so much, and here I am, not a beach person but with the most godawful tank-top tanlines and feeling fine.

I’m off track. It’s also occurred to me that a lot of dieselpunk right now is focused on cleaner 40s visions. The poster rightly shows my personal take on it, which is gritty and industrial. I’m not sure who is to be believed in this case, or if there’s room in the club for both. I’ll have a long post up soon that delves into the finer philosophical and class issues I see popping up in dieselpunk. If dieselpunk people don’t like that I’m as equally concerned with mechanics and oil rigs as I am bourgeois adventurers in flying jackets, I might just shift over to the petropunk name, which of course I only chose on here because dieselpunk was already taken. But it’s handy to have should I need any distinction from dieselpunk.

Anyway. Book signings. POF profile shots. Yup.

If you’re trying to find me on the POF out of morbid curiosity, I’m not on anymore. Just sayin’.

Youth Write Camp debriefing

So my holiday is over and I get to stop driving between three cities for a while. On one hand, this is a good thing because the cars loaded with canoes and other pathologies of summer are starting to overtake the highways here. But in other ways I kind of got that silly kid vibe where camp ends and you’re sad. Now, the last experience I had with this was Air Cadets 100 years ago, and in that situation, it’s a little bit of that feeling with a little hatred of the place smeared over it.

Yes, I started off completely awful. I even questioned whether or not I deserved to be there. But one of the things that keep me going is picking up gauntlets like these and surviving. Public speaking is something I’m phobic about, but I do it anyway, and that’s the only way to get over it. Throw in kids aged 10-18 and you force the speaker to adapt every single time.

I had this all outlined–I’m a big outliner, never go into something without knowing exactly what I’m doing–and by today wasn’t using my notes at all. These children are smart. And not just the oldest group, who were all so very interesting and thoughtful and were really into talking about big ideas.

Funny thing–as I’m writing this there’s a Family Guy episode on the TV where Brian writes that dumb motivational book and turns into an author diva. Hilarious.

Anyway, they’ll call you on everything. The group of 12-year-olds I had today actually had the most experience with steampunk. There are a lot of steampunk YA novels, and I think that’s because the victorian mindset is well-suited to YA books (but that’s another post altogether), and they literally had read more steampunk than I have. They may not know who Michael Moorcock or Jules Verne or Arthur Conan Doyle are, but the reality is that they’ve grown up while this is in, whereas I’m probably more familiar with cyberpunk since that’s what was going on during my era.

The biggest thing is that they allowed me to figure it all out and not judge me too much. And I didn’t expect that. I mean someone who did as bady as I started out deserves endless humiliation.

Also, the kitty has become a little viral. If not viral, at least bacterial. Here’s what the kids came up with during an illustration class–they put this on my free book bag thing and gave it to me.

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The steampunk bean kitty.

There it is. At the end, a valuable, awesome experience.

I might do a series of posts based on the workshops, but I have to mull it over for a while. I don’t want to repeat stuff everyone else on the web has already said. And I fear it may not be the same without the experience of looking up during your writing and finding a crudely-drawn cat for no apparent reason.

Now I get to think about writing my own stuff again. And get to the damn gym. Need some deadlifts. Going nuts here.

These are my holidays.

 

 

Driving, dealing with real estate matters, and more driving, and leading writing workshops. This is how I’ve chosen to spend my holidays.

I swear, I’ve had like maybe 12 total hours to myself the entire week. That’s being generous. This may sound like bitching, but it’s not: all I’m really trying to say with this random post is that even though I’m exhausted after day 4 of the B. C. Youth Writers’ Camp, I would not have traded it for all the free, boring vacations in the world.

I’ve been getting little sleep, but it feels good to be sleepless due to doing constructive things, rather than having been conned into staying up all night drinking or any of the other boring activities people associate with summer holidays.

To be honest, sometimes it feels like I’m violating some big taboo by being uninterested in partying or being on a boat and instead using free time to do things that make me really uncomfortable but are constructive. Like trying to teach people how to write fantasy when I’m not even sure I know how to do it properly. That is the shit that gets me going.

And continuing with the “to be honest” heading, I find people who are coked-up partiers are often not at all that funny or have a good sense of humour. They’re actually pretty boring. Nothing gets them fired up and it seems they have nothing to really live for. This is partly why I’m obsessed with psychoanalysis, because it displays plainly the structures behind these things that seem to keep me on the outside most of the time.

Just sayin’.

Okay so I clearly have issues with this. And it’s because summer seems to bring on this weird pressure to act a certain way. I don’t like it. I have shit to do all year round. I left behind the party attitude of summer when I left school, because after you enter reality, that’s just the way it is. And yet I’m always on the outside because friends never see it that way. Summer = get shitfaced and find someone to hold the tail for you while you accomplish absolutely nothing and indulge superego commands. Nobody is interested in things like writing workshops, but you can be damned sure you’d be a hero if you vomited in a taxi at 4am. I don’t get it. And a lot of the time I wish I did. It would be so much easier.

That’s partly why presenting my workshop is such a pleasure. I don’t socialize with anyone even remotely on the same wavelength that way–none of my friends are socially awkward writers or artists of any kind. But being around a bunch of people who are willing to spend their time sitting at a desk instead of fucking around during their precious holiday time, even if they are 10-year-olds who force me to change my serious science-based world-building class into a discussion about a planet made of marshmallows and chocolate, is my own holiday from the world of everyday mediocrity.

Yes, party douche with a boat: 10-year-olds are more intelligent and fun than you are. I’m not being a smartass or bitter. I’m being honest. They’ve got more going on than you do. Just sayin’. And I just hope to fuck that they all keep that instead of getting sucked into stupid shit when they get older. It’s getting tougher to do that, but the older kids gave me a lot of hope.

At any rate, there’s one more day left. And I just signed up for that twitter thing. Gotta admit, I feel a bit dirty. Never wanted to get mixed up in that stuff. But I told myself I wouldn’t turn down any gig offered to me, and essentially a tool millions of people use to keep track of stuff they like is a gig in itself, so I can’t avoid it forever. So find me on the twittermachine and get ‘er going. All sorts of dieselpunk jackassery is sure to follow.

When In Doubt, Draw Kitties — B.C. Youth Writers’ Camp Day 2.

I’ve survived two days of being in over my head with a children’s writing camp and a sketchy mortgage situation. And ten different things going on in three different cities each about 50 mins apart. I’m using day job holidays to do all this, and my holidays are being spent driving, stumbling through things I don’t know anything about, like buying houses and helping children learn stuff, and getting up really early.

Day one – I bombed big time. I was nervous, but didn’t think I was as nervous as the preteen class perceived. Today word got around about me and apparently I was “shaking” because I was so freaked. I’d planned for worst-case scenarios like this, and my strategy is to be too endearing in my failure to completely turn them off. I just didn’t know how long stuff would take and managing that time is tricky, especially when dealing with such a broad subject like fantasy world-building.

So that means the thirteen-year-olds today had come in ready to rip me to shreds over being a clueless wreck. Thankfully I didn’t know this until the end when they mentioned that I’d done better than they heard I’d done yesterday.

Yesterday I cobbled together a workshop that revolved around them completing world-building exercises only. I didn’t actually get them to write scenes. And that was a huge mistake. At the end one girl asked me, with a befuddled look, how on earth they were supposed to apply anything I’d said. Derp.

Today I brought it down to just writing scenes that emphasize each part of world-building. It’s ridiculous that I would overlook that, because even in my diatribes I stress how they need to bring this pre-writing work into their scenes in a show-don’t-tell manner and let it flow, so they avoid big boring blocks of fantasy novel description.

By now anyone who has read a few posts on here has run into the matter of the bean shaped cat. Or, the bean kitty. The bean kitty has saved my ass. My gut made me draw the bean kitty on the whiteboard during the writers’ first block of writing time. Partly because the bean kitty is awesome and they need to understand this, and partly because I’m a fidgety nervous person. This kitty, along with self-deprecating humour, was my lifeline.

Stuff starts getting bad, bring the kitty into it. The kitty is universal. How the hell I’d managed to make the kitty relevant in this case is beyond me, but I’m getting better at it. Today, a writer said it was a “fun” class. They could have been patronizing me, but I’ll just assume they weren’t. And as my wise Polish coworker told me–all that matters in the end is that they have fun. Their parents sent them there to keep them busy. It’s not about my rants about this or that or me explaining why Ursula K. LeGuin is a genius.

Another tough issue is that the ones who are really into it already know how to do it. I had one girl today who was already writing a novel and had basically had examples that fit my exercises already on her computer. There are others who know nothing about the subject and don’t care because they don’t write fantasy. But surprisingly even the ones who weren’t into fantasy were paying attention. Throughout the whole thing, even though I might have been a nervous dillhole, at least I haven’t noticed a lot of yawning.

Anyway, it’s actually a lot of fun. I’ve learned to get over myself and just enjoy it.

 

By the way, here’s the brisket I made yesterday. Drove two hours just to be able to feed it to my girlfriend. Totally worth it.

Although since I had to be back at my place so I could make it to Penticton reasonably this morning, I didn’t get to braise it for as long as I’d like to have. I haven’t used that much grass-fed beef and still need to get my head around how much more it takes to soften it, so it didn’t fall apart like I’d planned. But the beet-port-and-shallot gravy made up for any lack of tenderness. Yes, I said beets. BEET GRAVY. Throw beets in the braiser with the meat, then use some of the braising liquid for gravy later on. Awesome.

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brisket, brisket, yorkshire pudinggggggggggg

 

 

B.C. Youth Writers’ Camp thoughts

So I’m presenting at the B. C. Youth Writers’ Camp in Penticton. This is the town in which I did a lot of growing up. Yes my bio says Nelson but that was only until I was 11 or so until I ended up here. Anyway, it’s at the Okanagan College campus. I’ve only been into a post-secondary institution twice in my life before now. The first time was November of last year when I went into the Kelowna campus to write a math diagnostic test, since I was thinking about taking a business administration course. The second time was to re-write that same test that I had failed. I still failed.

Anyway, I was a little terrified before today’s introduction and dinner with the other presenters at the coordinator’s house. Not so much now, though. First, the keynote speaker gave me a good reality check–this twenty-three-year-old poet with cerebral palsy has more guts than I do most of the time. She’s also a better public speaker than I’ll ever be. She’s taking courses at the college, which I–the able-bodied personal trainer/writer/musician/neurotic nuisance–failed to do, and is contributing far more to society with her dedication to the Agur Lake Camp than I could ever hope to. As a running enthusiast sidenote, I’m thrilled to see there’s a run on the KVR to raise funds for this project. The KVR is one of the most precious runs I’ve ever done, and to do an actual event on this course for such a good cause will be an awesome experience. I’m just a bit pissed that I’ll have to wait nearly a year to do it. I wish I’d known about it earlier. I’d have done it despite that my ankle was quite screwed at that time.

Funny story. I’d somehow thought that my presentation would be two hours. It’s actually supposed to be three. So I’m an hour short in the material I’d prepared for it. I started to scramble to figure out more exercises for these writers to do to fill the time. But I had another reality check.

The kids submitted stories for an anthology when they signed up. Us presenters each got a copy today. The kids all signed their pages too. And at some point tonight, I realized that I had to stop stressing about it and get over myself. So I stopped surfing for writing exercises, stopped being worried about myself and how I’d do on my first day tomorrow, and picked up the anthology and started reading what these writers were producing.

I’m sure spending the time ripping off other presentations would have yielded a tonne of material I could use to take off the pressure I felt about doing this, but doing that seemed selfish and petty for some reason. And I’m actually moved by reading this writing. I didn’t expect what I read tonight. I’m such a jaded, sarcastic jackass much of the time and to read the kind of honesty these kids have written is a bit of a game-changer.

So I’m still going to have to improvise tomorrow, but it’s okay. It’s not about me making a good impression. These kids are in a position I never even dreamed of at that age, and all I’m there for is to facilitate the talent they already have. So being nervous is such a selfish, immature thing. I daresay it’s even decadent.

Big reality check. I’m good at doing 21 kilometre reality checks to stave off the crazy, but this kind of reality check is a lot more valuable.

Tomorrow is kind of nuts. I’ll be doing the workshop, trying to arrange a better bank account to deal with the  mortgage I’ll be getting, potentially dealing with the broker who is in an entirely different town, driving two hours to my princess to make her brisket, then coming back to my place so I can be up at a reasonable time to make it back here to do the next day’s presentation at 9:00 am.

And the junkie logic muscle in my limbic system is trying to figure out how to squeeze a 10k in all of that. *shrug*

Blightcross review from Val’s Random Comments

 

Interesting detailed review over at Val’s Random Comments.

Ebook Apothecary feature + giveaway

Blightcross is featured at Ebook Apothecary for a giveaway and interview. Check it out and enter to win a free copy!

Yet another interview.

 

Book Whispers has an interview with me up.

 

Got nothin’ else. Bench press time.

I’m a multitasker.

 

 

Here’s some proof of my scattered energies. A client/friend of mine is leaving forever. So I wasn’t going to let him leave without the workout plans I always write for him. He also consistently loses the sheets I give to him, which means I have to remember what I wrote (I only train people I know now, because there’s no money in trying to make a business of it, at least for someone with scattered energies like me). And this way he will hopefully not lose his workouts while on another continent.

 

Fitness and fantasy novels, together at last.

 

I think I’ve mentioned this other guy before. He’s a dude at the YMCA who always has a fantasy/science fiction book when I see him using the recumbent bike. I’ve even seen him read it in between weightlifting sets. There’s my situation in some kind of weird reversal. I think this guy could be potential fan. I don’t talk to people at the gym, so don’t know what his deal is, but maybe I should try to interest him in my novel and write him an exercise prescription inside the book too. I’d be so thrilled to have that photo opportunity–someone genuinely reading my shit while in the gym.

Sometimes multitasking sucks though. Right now I’ve clearly torn off the largest piece of delicious meat I’m able to fit in my mouth, and it’s starting to hurt on the way down. Chewing went all right, because all I could think about was the texture and flavour and sheer amount of what I had in my mouth. But swallowing all of it is stretching me a bit. To put it mildly.

Taking on too many things at once has a kind of exhilaration that I won’t deny that I enjoy on some level. But my adrenals are so fucked right now. They won’t be in a good state until August. I find myself saying stupid things, obsessing over non-issues, being all introverted and stuff, overanalyzing everything, and generally being a douche.

Given that, I’m not going to be able to make it to When Worlds Collide. It sucks. I was nervous about it, like anything related to this writing stuff, but was so looking forward to for once mingling with other authors and readers. I will still make it to V-Con, though. I won’t miss that for anything.

I cannot wait for Canada Day weekend to be over–it’s nothing but an albatross to me. It’s not going to be a party for me at all.

Not that I’d change that though; I’m exactly where I need to be.