Wiltshire Adventure, day 2
I admitted to Kate straightaway that the second day's walking (from Amesbury to Manningford Abbots, in the vale of Pewsey) was going to be a very long haul, but even that was an understatement. I don't know that we could have walked it all even if we hadn't encountered a few nonexistent public-rights-of-way that resulted in wasted time retracing our steps. Oh well--it was still a very nice walk, full of variety, and the weather was perfect. My sister really enjoyed ambling through all the little villages and oohing over the architecture.
We spotted this behemoth in a farmyard along the route. He seemed much too big to be able to walk out into the yard on his own, so we imagined the farmer brought him out in a cart to snooze in the sunshine.
A kissing-gate at the end of a pastureful of cows. (Not so romantic as it sounds, then!)
We did a little "we're over the fold of the map" dance.It got to be 3:30 and we knew we didn't have a prayer of making it to Manningford Abbots before dark, so we gave up and took the bus. And we didn't feel the slightest bit guilty about it, because it gave us more time to enjoy our 17th-century bedroom:
I can't say enough good things about Huntly's Farmhouse. The house itself is a huge treat for someone like me (who was obviously born on the wrong continent in the wrong century), and Margot is an amazing hostess--she brought us tea and homemade lemon cake when we arrived, and breakfast in front of an enormous open stone fireplace with things like stewed figs and quince jam was thoroughly memorable. Being there reminded me that I still haven't blogged about A Traveller in Time (which I was reading during the Cotswolds trip back in November, and excerpted here).(n.b.—if you want to book at Huntly's, it's best to call. Either that internet form doesn't work, or Margot doesn't check it. She's one of those chilled-out B&B owners who just does it on the side.)
Margot gave us directions to a great little pub in Wilcot, a mile and a quarter off, so we walked over for dinner in the twilight. (Of course we used our headlamps for the walk back, and it was pretty creepy when the bluish LED light reflected off the cows' eyes in the darkness. Bovine zombies, ieeeeeee!)
We had a hearty meal (vegetable lasagna and veggie shepherd's pie) at the Golden Swan; Margot had called ahead to tell them we were coming, and they were very friendly. I took this pic as a wish-you-were-here for Elliot, and reminded myself of LOLcats: 'I bought you a beer, but then I drinked it.'Next post: Manningford Abbots to East Kennett (one mile from the great stone circle at Avebury).
Great Book #65: The Magician
"You think me a charlatan because I aim at things that are unknown to you. You won't try to understand. You won't give me any credit for striving with all my soul to a very great end."
But the terror of it was that at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads, monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features. The features were a caricature of humanity so shameful that one could hardly bear to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each head opened slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink, like the eyes of white rabbits; and they stared for a moment with an odd, unseeing glance. Then they were shut again, and what was curiously terrifying was that the movements were not quite simultaneous; the eyelids of one head fell slowly just before those of the other.
I devoured this novel. Loved, loved, loved it. Now the question is, will I ever get around to reading Of Human Bondage? (This is the problem with loving a novel too much: I'm reluctant to read any of the author's other books for fear I'll be disappointed.The Time Traveler's Wife and not wanting to read Her Fearful Symmetry is a case in point.)
Wiltshire Adventure, day 1
How every trip with Kate begins. Waiting for the bus to Amesbury last Monday morning.I wasn't online last week (apart from a few 30-second email checks) because my sister and I were walking in Wiltshire. This trip came about thanks to this New York Times article and the fact that I was already in the UK doing some book research.Instead of walking two days on the Ridgeway Trail, we decided to begin at Stonehenge and end at Bishopstone, a village between Avebury and Wantage. We had a few inevitable hiccups along the way (darn you, landowners who ignore public rights-of-way!), but it was a great trip--rolling green farmland, prehistoric stone monuments, picturesque villages, big delicious breakfasts, friendly locals and local ales (for me, anyway). From Bishopstone, we went to Oxford for a night, then returned to London for another day and a half of sightseeing with Seanan before heading home yesterday morning.Last Monday we (eventually) found each other at Heathrow and took the bus to Amesbury, the closest town to Stonehenge. After checking in at our B&B, we took the scenic route to the monument. I'd say we walked about seven miles, arriving back in town just before dark.
It must be the time of year for rethatching, because we saw several roofs being worked on. Below: tumuli in a field opposite Stonehenge.
I had heard that a busy highway runs very close to Stonehenge, but it still seemed amusingly incongruous (our favorite word on this trip). We got there about 5:30, after closing time, but the sidewalk is only five feet farther from the walkway around the stones that you have to pay £7 to access. We got a great view at sunset and didn't pay a penny.
We stayed at The Anchorage, now one of my very favorite B&Bs—and you know I've been to a few! [Edit, 2013: no longer operating as a B&B, sadly!] Nothing better at the end of a long walk than a hot bubble bath, especially when it's in that tub. If you are planning a trip to Stonehenge and want to stay in the area, you MUST stay here. Sheryll is one of the most genuinely friendly B&B owners I've ever met--she plotted our walking route for us, the breakfast was almost too generous, the rooms are incredible, and she brought us tea and chocolate treats in a cozy sitting room (with open fire) when we got back from dinner that night. (We found a very good Indian restaurant on the high street.)Next post: Amesbury to Manningford Abbots, where we stayed in a wonderful 17th-century farmhouse.
The Practice Novel
The time I spent writing (and revising, and re-revising) my first novel—my 'practice novel,' not Mary Modern—was a frustrating but very necessary period in my development. I'm a much better writer for it, and I couldn't have written Mary Modern without it. I've long since let go of that manuscript, but I haven't chucked all of the print-outs or any of the two dozen or so floppy disks I used for each new draft, and whenever I dig this stuff up again it makes me smile. Of course, I can say that now.
Part of my problem was trying to write a novel at twenty-one and twenty-two. I certainly don't mean to say that someone so young can't write a good novel (several writers have!), but I hadn't had enough life experience yet to come up with something greater than the sum of my parts. The manuscript does have its moments; there are a few passages I'm still a tiny bit proud of having written, and I still consider it an achievement.
I want to tell you a little bit about the timeline between 'finishing' the novel and giving up on it. Even when it looks to everyone else like a clear and easy path (people do tend to assume that when they hear you published your first book at 26), it almost never is.
1. Worked on the manuscript my last year at NYU in 2002. Passed on several weekend trips while studying abroad in Florence to hole up and write. (Ehh...maybe I shouldn't have done that.) Got a job as an editorial assistant at a nonfiction imprint at HarperCollins that summer, and kept writing.
2. Fall 2002, sent 600 pages to a very nice agent, who told me it had promise.
3. More revisions into 2003, and a few more rejections.
4. Signed with a junior agent at a terrific boutique agency in the spring of 2003. Winnowed 600-page behemoth into an almost-as-bloated 475.
5. Racked up loads of rejection letters that year, from two rounds of submissions. She has yet to master the concept of a plot.
[Snarky, maybe, but also a much-needed kick in the pants. Thinking back on that letter once I'd decided to shelve the practice novel, I thought, Next time I'm going to come up with a real plot, and it will be tight and exciting and build momentum on every page. Most useful rejection letter I've ever received.]
6. Personal problems with agent #1 (which of course I won't get into here). Realized in the spring of 2004 that we would probably have to part ways, and soon after we did.
[I learned a very important lesson there: always, always be professional. The messy details of your private lives have no place in the publishing process. You may meet up for a drink after work, but your agent is not your friend—at least not until you actually have a book deal and can relax a bit!]
7. Signed with my current agent (whom I now consider a dear friend even though she is 100% professional at all times) in June 2004. Pared the manuscript down to 350 pages.
8. More rejection letters through the end of 2004. Agent unfazed, said I had two choices: she could sell it to a small indie publisher for a $500 advance, and that would likely be the only money I'd ever see out of it; or I could throw myself into a new project. Naturally she wanted me to choose option #2, because if I settled for a $500 advance (if that) and a print run of a few hundred copies (if that) then I'd most likely never see the level of success I was hoping for.
When I set it down in points it doesn't sound too tortuous a route, but I can tell you that I spent plenty of time crying, loathing myself and loathing my work and wondering what I could possibly do with my life if I couldn't write a novel anyone would want to read. Thank goodness for my family—my parents said I should focus on when, not if, and that really helped me keep my chin up. I tried to let go of my ego, to get out of my own way so I could just tell the story already; and it was amazing how much easier the whole thing became when it was no longer about proving myself. That's the thing I didn't understand when I was twenty-two.
Anyway, I moved to Galway in September 2004, wrote Mary Modern, and handed it off to my agent. After a few rounds of revisions, she sent it to a bunch of editors in February 2006. It was a blessing that I'd gotten the Moon Ireland travel-writing gig, because life was busy and exciting enough on its own, and I didn't have too much time to think things like 'what if this novel doesn't sell either?' (I did think it, of course, but I couldn't obsess over it when I had a 500-page guidebook to write.)
Guess which editor was the first to call my agent and say 'I love this and I'm going to bid on it'? The same editor who said I didn't know what a plot was! You can just imagine what a sweet moment that was for me.
I talk about my 'juvenilia' whenever I'm in the company of aspiring novelists. A practice novel is not a waste of time. You're still learning your craft. Heck, it's not unheard of to have three or four or five (as I said, you're in very good company). The tricky thing is knowing when to throw in the towel—because isn't perseverance the key to success in publishing? Yes, but I discovered there is also such a thing as revising a dead horse. So when do you know this novel isn't going anywhere?
1. Enough agents have said no that when somebody asks you how many rejection letters you've racked up so far, you find you've lost count.
2. You start to get a nagging feeling that this isn't your very best, and it never will be.
Okay, you might lose track after only twenty or thirty, and I'm not saying you should give up at that point. Like I said, your agent has to fall head over heels for your work, and that's a sort of chemistry it can take months and dozens of rejection letters to find. But if you've approached the agents (and/or their junior associates) who represent the authors you love (i.e., you're writing in a similar vein), and you're still only getting complimentary rejection letters, then it's time to rethink. You may very well find that after multiple rounds of revisions and query letters, this manuscript doesn't get you excited anymore. You're tired of it. You read over the lines you thought were clever, and they're not; you know you can do better now. What's giving you that warm, shimmery feeling in your gut now is the prospect of a fresh start.
Having said all this, I do believe there are some writers with terrific first novels who will probably wind up publishing them after their 'break-out' novel. An amazing, publishable novel will eventually find the right home, even if it doesn't happen quite the way you think it will. That may be the case with yours, but you still have to put it aside to give your new story the headspace it needs to grow.
Anyway, I hope this has been at least somewhat reassuring—do leave a comment with your own experiences, or any questions you might have!
Adventures in Glasgow
One of the mid 19th-century 'Munich windows' at Glasgow Cathedral.I've heard that Edinburgh is the city to visit and Glasgow is the city to live in, and I can see why they say that--one's got the history and the other's got the edgy arts scene, nightclubs and suchlike. Though I've been living in Edinburgh these last five weeks I've been spending quite a bit of time in Glasgow, for a reason I may one day share with you. Until then, some sightseeing.Ready for the creepiest thing EVER?
Okay, maybe not THE creepiest thing, but she sure spooked the heck out of me on a gloomy afternoon. Spotted inside the Houldsworth mausoleum on the Necropolis (you can see the exterior of this mausoleum on the front page--it's the one on the right).A view of the cathedral from the cemetery, and another photo from the Houldsworth tomb:
I told some new friends I had gone to the Necropolis, and they seemed shocked. 'But it was two o'clock in the afternoon!' I said. I've heard that people often sleep in the tombs (and do, y'know, whatever else), but it never occurred to me to worry about going up there by myself during the day. I didn't see any unsavory characters lurking around, anyway--just other tourists, a gardener, and some locals walking their dogs.
On February 26th I went to the Tramway, a really neat post-industrial theatre space, to hear my friend Rhona's choir. This is a very lively and supremely talented ensemble group, the Second Hand Marching Band.And on my last afternoon in the city, I went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. What a treasure trove! If you're ever in Glasgow, don't miss it. The building itself is stunning too.
'Floating heads' high above a hall full of taxidermies, 19th-century portrait busts, and other interesting thingamabobs.
War-time Soup
As a young married woman writing to a friend expressed it, "We live mostly on entrails."I spent yesterday in 1917. Felt like it, anyway! I was reading Dorothy Constance Peel's How We Lived Then, 1914-1918: A Sketch of Social and Domestic Life in England During the War. Here's a gem from the appendix (originally distributed by the Ministry of Food in 1917 and 1918):
War-time Soup
All outer leaves and peelings and tops and tails of vegetables, all fruit peelings, stones and cores, all saucepan and dish rinsings, bread crusts, remains of suet, batter, and milky puddings (but not jam or sweet puddings), cheese and bacon rinds, skim milk, sour milk, remains of sauces (not sweet sauces) or gravy, vegetable water, margarine (if liked), pepper and salt, water.
Wash thoroughly all vegetable peelings and leaves (do not use potato peelings); use the outer leaves of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, curly kale, lettuce, leeks, and onions; the tops and peelings of turnips, carrots, parsnips, swedes, kohlrabi. Put all into a cooking box saucepan with plenty of water, bring to the boil, boil 20 minutes; add some or all of the other ingredients; season to taste; boil 10 minutes without removing cover, and place in the cooking box 2 to 3 hours. Take out and rub through a sieve and, if necessary, reheat on gas ring.
Every economical housewife should have War-time Soup constantly going; it is both delicious and nourishing and, above all, cheap.
Today we'd call this 'compost stew'! Cheap? For sure. Delicious? I'm doubtful. (It's the 'dish rinsings' mostly. And the sour milk!) Any brave soul want to try this?(I took down another recipe for vegetable pie with a potato crust, which would have been a sensible thing to cook during meat shortages. That one I'm going to try next month when I'm home again.)[Edit: to put the above quote into context, offal wasn't rationed, so it was much easier to obtain scrap meats.]
New Lanark
I spent most of Saturday at New Lanark, a late 18th-century mill town (and World Heritage site) situated along the River Clyde in South Lanarkshire. There's a lovely hourlong wooded walk that takes in three waterfalls (harnessed for hydroelectric power in 1927), although the weather was pretty dismal, so my photos of the falls aren't really worth sharing.The exhibition was open by the time I got back from my walk:
Above: the engine house; YARN!; the roof garden; a phrenology model in the restored 1820 period classroom.Robert Owen purchased the business from his father-in-law, David Dale,in 1799, and over the next few decades turned the weaving mill complex (which originally milled cotton picked by American slaves) into a celebrated experiment in utopian socialism. Owen thought even the humblest factory worker deserved a comprehensive education (at least until the age of ten, although continuing ed classes were offered at night), fresh air and exercise, a sick fund in case of illness, hygienic living spaces, and quality meat and produce available at reasonable prices at the village store. My inner cynic piped up as I went through the exhibition--no doubt such reforms resulted in a very obedient workforce; 'Institute for the Formation of Character,' ieeeee!, etc.--but it's true his ideas were well ahead of his time, and that what we take for granted now was pretty revolutionary back then. You learn on the cheesy 'Annie McLeod Experience' ride (narrated by the ghost of a 10-year-old millworker--!) that they worked six days a week, ten (or was it twelve?) hours a day, and only got two holidays a year--but back then that work schedule was generous.
The history lesson was interesting and all, but this was what I really came for. Bwahahahahaha. Proceeds benefit ongoing conservation efforts.
My kind of church
The south chapel murals depict the first part of the parable of the ten virgins (i.e., the wise and foolish virgins).On Sunday, thanks to my new friend Kate ('blessed by Kates', as I like to say), I was able to visit the Mansfield Traquair Centre, a deconsecrated church full of the most wonderful murals I've seen outside of Italy. (This building is actually called 'Edinburgh's Sistine Chapel', although tourists don't generally hear about it; it seems like they have sufficient income through space rental that they don't need to push for tourism.) It's only open to the public one Sunday afternoon per month, so I was very fortunate to be able to go!
The neo-Romanesque chancel arch, featuring the first set of murals (1895-1897). The worship of heaven as given in the Books of Ezekiel and Revelation.Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936) was the foremost artist of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland. She spent eight years on these murals, doing hardly any preparatory drawings before sketching the figures right onto the walls. This is a particularly stunning achievement given the curved surfaces of the chapel ceiling.
I wasn't surprised to hear that she took a holiday to Italy before returning to start the south chapel murals, because the virgins all have Botticelli coifs!
Two of the four angels symbolizing the ministries of the Catholic Apostolic Church: the Prophet in blue and the Pastor in silver (the other two are the Evangelist in scarlet and the Apostle in gold).
The north aisle features the conclusion of the parable of the ten virgins. The ornamentation on the walls and sloped ceiling are reminiscent of both William Morris and medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The happiest Judgment Day you will ever see.
So if you are coming to Edinburgh and are a huge art history nerd like I am, it's worth planning your visit around the opening days! I believe it's open daily during the theatre festival in August.
Great Book #48: A Farewell to Arms
I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I just knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died.I tried reading Hemingway in college, just the one short story, and it was so misogynistic that I swore I'd never bother with him again. His brief appearances in Marion Meade's Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin softened me up a bit, so I put this novel on my 100 great books list even though I still didn't want to read it. Then someone at the Common Good Books event asked if I'd ever read A Farewell to Arms (since, y'know, it's got the whole love-in-war thing going on). I told her I was allergic to Hemingway, and to my satisfaction everybody got a chuckle out of it.So imagine how taken aback I was to find that, apart from one annoying instance of the N-word, I actually liked this novel. People always praise his spare prose, and I get it now, I see the beauty in it.
I sat up straight and as I did so something inside my head moved like the weights on a doll's eyes and it hit me inside in back of my eyeballs. My legs felt warm and wet and my shoes were wet and warm inside. I knew that I was hit and leaned over and put my hand on my knee. My knee wasn't there. My hand went in and my knee was down on my shin. I wiped my hand on my shirt and another floating light came very slowly down and I looked at my leg and was very afraid. Oh, God, I said, get me out of here.
Frederick Henry—an American ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War—is an unremarkable character, but I think that must be the point; there's nothing remotely romantic or heroic about him, nor anything 'epic' about his situation. Even his relationship with Catherine underscores the absurdity, the mess, the out-and-out wrongness of war. What would otherwise have been a passing attraction turns into a great love; he runs from the battlefield to live with her in peace and quiet, and in the end finds life would have been kinder to let him die in uniform.The ending is inevitable, of course. It made me cry.Gosh, this is turning into quite a surprising experiment, isn't it? Who would have thought I'd be bashing Peter Pan and writing admiringly of Hemingway?!(Oh, and I went back and forth between my paperback copy and the audiobook read by John Slattery, who is excellent. Isn't he on Mad Men? I think that's the guy.)
A Tiger in the Kitchen (and zucchini souffle!)
Remember when I was at Yaddo last April? (Sheesh, I can't believe it's going on a year ago already.) Well, when I walked into the common room my first evening there, we were doing the usual introductions and one of my new friends said, ' Wait a minute—I've read your book!' Cheryl turned out to be the social glue the whole time I was there, always hatching plans for fun things to do in the evenings, acquiring bruises all over in the name of PIG (official rules posted here, also thanks to Cheryl), and taking wonderful pictures to remember each other by.I blog family recipes from time to time, and you all know how fond I am of my grandparents, so of course Cheryl's new memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, is right up my alley. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (it'll be waiting for me when I come home next month), but here's the book description:
After growing up in the most food-obsessed city in the world, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America—proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before? In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations.A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the charming, beautifully written story of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.
Now, Cheryl has some pretty sophisticated tastebuds (as evidenced by her popular blog), but she's no 'food snob.' Recently a reader commented that her grandmother's recipe for pineapple tart was 'run of the mill', which of course annoyed anybody who ever had a grandmother. My grandmom Kass' cooking is unabashedly 'run of the mill'—simple, no-fuss recipes for good old-fashioned comfort food. So what if the zucchini soufflé recipe calls for Bisquick? I'll take my grandmother's cooking over haute cuisine any day. (Besideswhich, those pineapple tarts look pretty extraordinary to me! Bewitching bite-sized marvels, indeed.)
Ever hear that saying, 'every time an old person dies a library burns'? So far as I've observed, my grandparents' generation were and are a humble bunch, and they don't think too much about posterity or how valuable their life experiences are. Family recipes are a huge part of this trove of knowledge. Grandmom Kass learned how to cook from her aunt, because her own mother wasn't exactly Betty Crocker (we heard stories of how she used to dump sugar on the salad, and her jello always came served with a nice thick skin on top). Pumpkin soup, onion pie, creamy horseradish carrots, broccoli baked with cheese and breadcrumbs, rice pudding, depression cake...for me, my grandmother's culinary repertoire typifies mid-century blue-collar Philadelphia—nothing fancy, just good, wholesome food. (Though by 'wholesome,' I don't necessarily mean healthy. Philly is best known for cheesesteaks, pizzas, and spaghetti-meatball dinners, after all.) None of those recipes are original, but to me they are hers. She could have made up her own, of course, but I don't think it's ever occurred to her. Every cook makes her own modifications as she works, and given that she probably added a dash of this and a pinch of that without ever making a note of it, I doubt my versions of her signature dishes will ever taste as good as hers; but at least we have the recipes, and every time we make one we'll think of her.
So to celebrate the publication of A Tiger in the Kitchen, I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe for zucchini soufflé.* This one is, hands down, my favorite of everything she has ever made. It's light and delicately flavorful and I always try to snag a nice golden-crusty corner piece.
Combine in mixing bowl:
--3 cups grated zucchini--1/2 cup vegetable oil--1 cup Bisquick mix--4 eggs--1/2 cup grated parmesan--1 small onion, grated
Mix well, spoon into greased two-quart casserole dish. Bake at 325º for 50-60 minutes. Serves 6-8.
*From The Best of the Zucchini Recipes Cookbook, compiled by Helen and Emil Dandar and published locally in 1988; this recipe was submitted by Antonette Biasotto of Newark, Delaware.
Happy Pub Day, Cheryl!
(Note: A veganized recipe is forthcoming.)
Hexenhammer
Today's spot of witchery offers no witches, but merely the rumor of them.I first heard of the Malleus Malleficarum, "The Witches' Hammer," during my semester abroad in Florence. My friends were taking a medieval and Renaissance lit course, and I remember being in the cafeteria and laughing at the idea of runaway penises. There is plenty of cause for snickering when taken out of context, and I refer to it with no small degree of sarcasm in Petty Magic.But the Malleus Maleficarum belongs at the top of a list of books that should never have been written, because its publication in 1487 led to the persecution and murder of thousands of accused "witches" all over Europe. Written by "holy men"? Now there's a big fat W-T-F!Anyway, the book popped up again in Muriel McCarthy's history of Marsh's Library in Dublin, and this brief passage made me shiver.
Malleus maleficarum is a terrifying and cruel book. When it was first published it bore on the title-page the dreadful warning: 'Haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere' (To disbelieve in witches is the greatest of heresies). The Dominican inquisitors amongst other quaint beliefs suggested that witchcraft was more natural to women than men because of the inherent wretchedness of their hearts.
'Quaint' isn't the first word that comes to mind, but you get the gist. If you'd like to learn more about the book and the resulting witch-hunts, here's a good online resource.
Fast asleep in mermaid pajamas
(NERD ALERT:) I used french seams for the first time, which was very exciting. That's when you sew the seams on the right side (i.e., wrong sides facing), then turn it inside out and encase the first seam in the second seam. No fraying! What a revelation!
I wore these for the first time last night and, probably not coincidentally, had some lovely lovely dreams, none of which I can recall, although I'm pretty sure I composed the best novel I'll ever write, which was lost, of course, as soon as I woke up.(Nope, I'm not going to edit that.)And a couple more mermaidy goodies: Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon (pre-order!), and her interview (just posted today) with Alice Hoffman, which includes advice to aspiring mermaids. HAH! Love it.
Great Book #5: Peter Pan
"It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."Of all the books on my great 100 list, this is probably the biggest why-didn't-I-read-this-when-I-was-a-kid? I'll tell you why: along with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which I finally read four or five years ago), I watched the Disney movie several times and then somehow convinced myself that I had actually read the book. (I know. I am so ashamed.)Anyway, Seanan recently told me he was reading the novel (which I listened to on Librivox) and mentioned this particular passage, which he rightly thought I would appreciate:
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
How delightfully eerie! (I wanted to call it magical realism, but can there be such a thing in a fantasy novel? The first couple chapters do take place in ordinary London...) After this passage I figured I'd enjoy the rest of the story just as much.Well...no. Actually, I didn't enjoy the rest of Peter Pan at all.Call me excessively P.C. for cringing every time I heard the words "redskins," "savages," or "Piccaninny tribe," or unimaginative for finding it utterly ridiculous that grown men (no matter how dastardly) should fight little boys to the death as if they were equally matched. It is, of course, Peter Pan himself who annoys me most, partly because I see his echo everywhere in popular culture. We tell our young men that it's okay to be selfish and irresponsible, that they can hop on a carousel of hedonism and never come down again. Wendy, Tinkerbell, and Tiger Lily--and oh yes, the mermaids too!--all squabbling over the same cocky, self-indulgent little boy: sure sounds like reality TV to me. Peter goes away for years and expects Wendy to wait for him, and eventually he trades her in (and her daughter, and her granddaughter...) for a younger girl. Heck, during their original flight to Neverland he even forgets who Wendy is! Peter Pan is the original man-boy, and I see enough of him in real life, thank you very much.
"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things," he told herpassionately. "I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was towake up and feel there was a beard!" "Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a beard;" andMrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her. "Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man."
I don't want this post to turn into a full-on rant (I don't know, is it too late?), but I just need to mention two more things that bothered me. Once Peter and the lost boys have defeated Hook and his crew, he starts wearing Hook's clothes, brandishing an imaginary hook, and generally behaving like a pirate captain. Hmm...now which Orwell novel does this remind you of? I know, I know, it feels very wrong to speak of Animal Farm and Peter Pan in the same blog entry, but it is what it is.But the thing that really annoyed the hell out of me is this line from the last chapter:
Boonsboro
Crawford's Restaurant, Guns & Ammo. Bwahahaha.I've been meaning to write about my weekend in Boonsboro, Maryland for ages. On November 6th I was invited to Turn the Page bookstore for a group signing thanks to my cousin Suzanne, who is the innkeeper at Nora Roberts's gorgeous Inn Boonsboro. My mom and I spent Friday night in the penthouse suite, watching "Bell, Book & Candle" on the king-size four-poster bed.
The bathtub, oh my goodness. And the toilet is heated, goes up and down by itself, and even rinses your bits for you. Not that I pressed that button. Oh no.People stood in line for hours (no, I'm not exaggerating) to get their Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb novels signed, and sometimes they picked up my book while they were waiting. I lost track of how many copies I signed, and that almost never happens. Hooray!
More importantly, I got to meet a group of wonderfully witty, fun, and all-around nice writers. Here I am with Jeanine Cummins, Lisa Scottoline, and Lisa's daughter and co-author Francesca Serritella. I also got to meet Mariah Stewart and Carolyn Turgeon, author of Godmother and the forthcoming Mermaid; I'm particularly excited about those because Carolyn writes my kind of stuff. Jeanine too, actually--she has strong Irish connections, so of course we had a lot to talk about. Here's one of my favorite passages from her novel, The Outside Boy:
Her voice was thin, watery. She opened and closed her toothless mouth. Her eyes was shining in the faint light. Granny could do that, she could change, like. Granny of the Transformations. Right now in the grief-stricken wagon she was a mournful fish. Mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, in silence. I imagined that one more gape of the mouth and she would sprout fins and gills, and she would rend off her black funeral dress and reveal a breastplate of hard, beautiful scales beneath, like the blue and green glass scattered on the ground outside. And then she would swim away in a river of her own tears.
I really, really love that image.My dad and grandparents came down too, and Kate drove out from Baltimore, so after the signing we had a big family dinner at a pizzeria down the street. None of us had seen Suzanne in a long, long time, so it was pretty special. (I wanted to post a group picture, but none of them came out very well. Too much flash.)
Anyway, thanks to Janeen at Turn the Page for putting together such a wonderful event, and Nora for inviting me, and Suzanne for making it happen in the first place!
For whom do you write?
(I wanted that to say 'who do you write for,' but I don't want you to think I don't know my grammar. Which is a teensy bit ironical, really.)I was invited to speak to the book club at my local library last night--they were reading Mary Modern--and someone wanted to know if my editor or publisher had asked me to remove the overly political bits, or if I ever considered doing so. She pointed out that I was potentially alienating half of my readership. I replied that my editor had said she expected I would be criticized for it, but she left it up to me. And I decided to keep it, I said, because taking it out would have been disingenuous. Mary Modern was written around the time of the 2004 election; it is a product of that era, and of who I was when I was 23 and 24. (Actually, I remember thinking I ought to follow my own character's advice--that life is too short for subtlety.) But more importantly, I write to please myself. I write the story I myself would want to read, and if you like it too, then I'm thrilled; and if you don't like it, well, what can I say--I'm not your circus monkey. (That's not to say the lady at the book club didn't have a good point to make; when readers say the novel's politics 'take the shine off somewhat,' I completely get that.)If you are thinking about your audience as you write, calculating your every word to please, flatter, shock, or elicit any other sort of reaction, then what you are making is not art--it is product.You write for you.
Hobberdy Dick
The moon had set, however, before they reached Stow churchyard, and found old Grim, playing a subdued and melancholy air upon the bones.Long ago, long before our great-grandfathers were born and before the ancient ways left our countryside, there was plenty of secret folk-life in England, particularly hobgoblins who guarded the houses and lands and watched over the families who lived in them, until their task was done and they were released. These hobgoblins were shy folk who stayed out of sight, but they were also determined and meddlesome creatures with strong likes and dislikes. Happy the human they took a fancy to, and woe betide anyone who crossed them.
Our eponymous hero is a hobgoblin bound to Widford Manor, and though the novel is set in the 17th century Dick has already been around for several hundred years. The plot centers on the kind young man of the house, Joel Widdison, and his romance with his stepmother's handmaid, Anne, who happens to be a gentlewoman of reduced circumstances (she's a relative of the manor's former owners, who were on the losing side in the Civil War). Of course Hobberdy Dick aids the young lovers any way he can, protecting Anne and all the rest of the servants from the ire of the ridiculous Mrs. Widdison and rescuing Joel's little sister from a witches' trap.As you might expect from that introductory bit, Briggs' prose sometimes feels rather didactic, but for a folk historian I guess it's somewhat hard to help; and the trade-off is, of course, the ancient superstitions and bygone traditions brought into vivid color by her passionate expertise. I particularly relished all the lovely little details in the Christmas chapter (despite the curious absence of semi-colons):
There must have been more than a score of people in the room, for convivial labourers had come from the farms round...Martha, Diligence, little Samuel, Ned the houseboy, Charity and half a dozen others were playing at hot cockles. Rachel, Maria Parminter and Nancy, the oldest of the maids, were roasting chestnuts and crabapples, the butler, Jonathon Fletcher, a grave, silent man, was brewing a bowl of lambswool in which the crabs were to float, a group of lads at the far end of the room were improvising clothes for the mumming play, George Batchford, with a cushion on his head to mark his rank as King of the Revels, was directing everyone, his usually gloomy and impassive face aglow with good humour, and the nips he had taken to quicken his spirits. Hobberdy Dick unperceived added his own ho! ho! ho! to the sound of merriment which went up from the place, and slipped into a dark corner beyond the fire, from which he could watch all that went on...
Their talk of dying had sent a pang through his heart, and he realized that he had never loved human beings as he loved these two.
Enchanted Scotland, part 4
Danny had parked the van at the turn-off, a ten- or fifteen-minute walk up a hill, to avoid getting stuck in the morning, so we carried our bags through the snow. It was an invigorating way to start the day, that's for sure.
See that church? That's somebody's house. (I was too giddy to feel envious at the time, but I sure do looking back at the photos now!)
Mary Beth walking along ahead of me:
Later that day we went to Loch Ness. As you can see, Danny likes to flash his bum whenever there are enough cameras around:
(That's Adrienne pretending to be appalled. Why oh why didn't I have a snowball handy?)
(I'm not sure where this is exactly, we were just getting out to take pictures.)
We spent our last night at Oban. Here's the view over the town from McCaig's Tower:
Our last morning we got to visit Dunstaffnage Castle before it opened:
Late in the morning it started to snow pretty heavily, and Danny was worried we wouldn't make it back to Edinburgh that night. We made a quick stop at Kilmartin to check out the stones at the parish church, which date from the thirteenth to early eighteenth centuries:
I wish we'd had more time to wander through the graveyard; it doesn't get much more romantic than this:
Next we stopped at St. Conan's Kirk, one of my favorite places on the whole trip for its general wackiness (Danny aptly described it as a church built by people who had no idea what a church is supposed to look like--the rain spouts were shaped like rabbits, all that sort of thing) along with our snowball fight out back:
And that concludes my November trip to Scotland!
A sulky monkey, and other knitted goodies
Eamonn's christening gift. (Pattern here, raveled here. I love this little vest, will be knitting more of these for sure.)
Calorimetry, one of those patterns everybody and their uncle has knit, and now I know why. Really want to knit one for myself now. (Raveled here.)
Waffle socks using Cascade 220 Superwash (also for Kate). These knit up so fast, I may never make another pair with fingering-weight and itty bitty needles! (Pattern here, raveled here. That is the gorgeous UK edition of Philip Pullman's Four Tales in the background, a gift from Ailbhe. I ♥ Philip Pullman, as you know. Perfect holiday treat.)
A fuzzy-wuzzy cowl for Mamacita, using a strand of aran-weight mohair (that had been languishing in my stash for ages) and a strand of Cascade 220 on size 15 needles. I had to frog and reknit once but it was still a nice quick project, and I had no problem grafting with the mohair. (Pattern here, raveled here.)
This monkey (pattern download via Ravelry, raveled here) was a pain in the took to put together, but totally worth it, as you can see:
When Olivia comes over she likes to go 'yarning' with me. I knit with it while she unravels the rest of the ball.
I knit mostly smallish things this year, apart from Kate's cowl neck sweater (link to the designer's blog here, it's a free Ravelry download, and my project link here; I also made my grandfather's reindeer jumper and my short-sleeved sweater, both Rowan patterns):
(I played with his hair so it would flip like that. He's not just a good sport, he loves being fussed over.)
And speaking of the pleasure of seeing someone wearing a sweater I knit them...
Here is Ailbhe and Christian's little man (he's the bebe I made the zig-zag quilt for; cardigan Ravelry link here. I used Berroco Vintage, which has held up very well.) Talk about the unbearable cuteness of being! He and I got on very well while I was in Galway last month. My friends were joking about hiring me to be their nanny and I said, only like 10% kidding, SIGN ME UP!
We have a winner!
Guess how many entries there were? THREE. You pansies!
Brian, as an Eagle Scout.
I think I had said initially that I'd let you all vote, but there really is no contest here—Brian wins. Now that's what I call rockin' a unibrow.
And, as an extra-special bonus entry:
There are no words, only paroxysms of laughter.