"Live Alone and Like It", first published in 1936 as a guide for what was, at the time, referred to as an "extra woman". Extra because an unattached woman could cause trouble for evenly gender-divided dinner parties, and generally upset the status quo of women traditionally going from home to husband in one tidy transition. Nowadays we call such persons "single".
This is first and foremost a charming historical curiosity. Imagine a time when not knowing how to make a perfect cocktail seriously influenced your social standing. Imagine a time when the most frugal young woman of the day could only afford a maid, but not a cook (but in order to keep her callers guessing, might rent-a-cook for very special occasions).
If those don't tempt you, try this these: Imagine a time when it was unheard of that someone wouldn't RSVP. Or that for every invitation extended, people fully expected to get one in return - and anyone who failed to do so was a pitiable blight on the social scene. Marjorie Hillis would probably drop her bottle of gin to hear that it is quite commonplace, now, for people simply not to turn up without any notice whatsoever.
As you might have guessed, this is primarily a guide to etiquette and lifestyle, and some of it might be well-implemented today. You do not need to be single to enjoy the occasionally outdated, but often very sound advice it has to offer. Live within your means. Impressing people is about style and ingenuity, not extravagance. Keep a wardrobe of quality, not quantity. Uphold your professional and social responsibilities, but carve out time each week to do precisely as you please. Have a variety of interests and you will be a more engaging conversationalist. Your bedroom is your personal sanctuary. You're allowed to mope up to a month, and after that it's time to get on with things. As far as men are concerned, you are obliged to be polite (unless he's pushing it), and nothing more.
Unlike our current notions of what a modern female should be like, this is no thinly veiled man grab/shoe store/wedding dress sale - compared to your average "Sex in the City" episode, this is High Mass. While you're bound to trip over a few questionable notions, the message still comes loud and clear: Have some self-respect, be presentable, keep interesting people nearby, and live well.
Cheers.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters", edited by Joshua Knelman & Rosalind Porter
I've noticed that my more recent reviews on here have been mainly glowing odes of praise. In the interests of variety, here's one that let me down like a date who didn't show up.
"Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters", edited by Joshua Knelman & Rosalind Porter, sounds good on the surface. Assemble a group of talented authors, whose varied backgrounds promise an equal variety of perspectives. Give them a broad subject, like love, and a basic form, like letters. Leave to simmer, and publish what turns up.
I have no gripe with the quality of the writing. Most of the authors have put together a succinct little portrait of the theme in capable and imaginative fashion.
My problem is with the theme itself. Or rather, the expression of the theme.
You would think, in 259 pages, a solid handful of the authors in this collection would have chosen to write about love in a positive way. To be fair, it does say "original" right in the title, and I love a clever twist on a theme. But when every single entry is a twist, the twist becomes the norm. And unfortunately, very few of the twists even begin to suggest that love might, you know, occasionally, sometimes, be a pleasant thing.
I can understand the temptation. You're working on a project that's all about bringing your own unique and fresh voice to a traditional form. You figure you'll be the story that stands out, because yours is about a stalker, or about your unhappy relationship with your now-deceased mother, or about your unhappy relationship with virtually any other human being available. Disappointment, spite, fetishism, and just plain weirdness are more commonplace in this book than cheap corner-store postcards. This is not the fault of the authors - but I was genuinely surprised that the editors, upon seeing how the collection was shaping up, didn't commission a couple of actual love letters to round things out.
Yes, love hurts. We shouldn't succomb to the notion that it's all sequins and roses and hand-made valentines (although I love a hand-made valentine). This is a modern collection by modern authors, so cynicism and a certain effort to be edgy is to be expected. But didn't anyone involved in the project take a look back at the history of love letters for a bit of inspiration? As a form, they never would have survived without the occasional dose of sincerity or poetry. The problem with calling something an "original love letter" is that it verges on the oxymoronic. If it's very original, it probably ends up not reflecting very much about love at all. Many of these stories read like listening in on a therapy session, with all the awkwardness that suggests.
The death of love, the warping of what is essentially a good emotion, rejection and resentment - all of these are a part of the big picture. Upon finishing this collection, you may be left feeling that the literature of our time has no idea what they're looking at. In general, modern depictions of love veer from saccharine to sinister, with very little time to linger on anything else. And before anyone suggests that the topic cannot be explored or discussed without these extremes, I suggest that you walk out of the fiction section and spend some time with Shakespeare, Sappho, and the Song of Songs - and TS Eliot, Noel Coward, and Robert Frost, who never let you forget the unpleasant side of things, but found love all the more important because of it. The ideas in these letters are not untrue, but they are a parody, and you should go in expecting that.
The exception in the collection is James Robertson, whose love letter is addressed to the mountains. His letter has a twist (although many great writers have written beautifully and lovingly of nature), but it never becomes a gimmick. It has all the rambling thoughtfulness, affection, and personal connection of the love letters you might find in your grandmother's attic - or your own.
Although this collection indicates that, if we were honest, we would have some hard and twisted things to say, consider the possibility that honesty can surprise everyone by being beautiful. When I finished this collection, I had the urge to write some love letters of my own. Not letters that tried oh-so-hard to be cleverer than the other children, or letters that looked for the loophole in love, but tributes to those people and places that deserve to know that (so saith Kelly Clarkson) "my life would suck without you". As we enter into hearts and flowers and Hallmark season, you might consider a hand-made valentine or two, yourself.
*
An excerpt from James Robertson's contribution:
"I used to believe that I went to the mountains in order to think. But when I considered this more carefully I realised that, whatever the intention, the effect was the opposite: I went and I did not think. The physical effort of climbing two, three, four hills, the concentration on underfoot terrain, the crossing of burns and rivers, the watchful eye kept for changing weather, the sighting of birds and other creatures, the sometimes tedious journey back out and the tired triumph of completing it - absorbed with all these immediate concerns, I had no inclination or indeed ability to think in any coherent, structured way about other things. Neither the plots of novels nor the meaning of life are worked out by hill-walking."
"Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters", edited by Joshua Knelman & Rosalind Porter, sounds good on the surface. Assemble a group of talented authors, whose varied backgrounds promise an equal variety of perspectives. Give them a broad subject, like love, and a basic form, like letters. Leave to simmer, and publish what turns up.
I have no gripe with the quality of the writing. Most of the authors have put together a succinct little portrait of the theme in capable and imaginative fashion.
My problem is with the theme itself. Or rather, the expression of the theme.
You would think, in 259 pages, a solid handful of the authors in this collection would have chosen to write about love in a positive way. To be fair, it does say "original" right in the title, and I love a clever twist on a theme. But when every single entry is a twist, the twist becomes the norm. And unfortunately, very few of the twists even begin to suggest that love might, you know, occasionally, sometimes, be a pleasant thing.
I can understand the temptation. You're working on a project that's all about bringing your own unique and fresh voice to a traditional form. You figure you'll be the story that stands out, because yours is about a stalker, or about your unhappy relationship with your now-deceased mother, or about your unhappy relationship with virtually any other human being available. Disappointment, spite, fetishism, and just plain weirdness are more commonplace in this book than cheap corner-store postcards. This is not the fault of the authors - but I was genuinely surprised that the editors, upon seeing how the collection was shaping up, didn't commission a couple of actual love letters to round things out.
Yes, love hurts. We shouldn't succomb to the notion that it's all sequins and roses and hand-made valentines (although I love a hand-made valentine). This is a modern collection by modern authors, so cynicism and a certain effort to be edgy is to be expected. But didn't anyone involved in the project take a look back at the history of love letters for a bit of inspiration? As a form, they never would have survived without the occasional dose of sincerity or poetry. The problem with calling something an "original love letter" is that it verges on the oxymoronic. If it's very original, it probably ends up not reflecting very much about love at all. Many of these stories read like listening in on a therapy session, with all the awkwardness that suggests.
The death of love, the warping of what is essentially a good emotion, rejection and resentment - all of these are a part of the big picture. Upon finishing this collection, you may be left feeling that the literature of our time has no idea what they're looking at. In general, modern depictions of love veer from saccharine to sinister, with very little time to linger on anything else. And before anyone suggests that the topic cannot be explored or discussed without these extremes, I suggest that you walk out of the fiction section and spend some time with Shakespeare, Sappho, and the Song of Songs - and TS Eliot, Noel Coward, and Robert Frost, who never let you forget the unpleasant side of things, but found love all the more important because of it. The ideas in these letters are not untrue, but they are a parody, and you should go in expecting that.
The exception in the collection is James Robertson, whose love letter is addressed to the mountains. His letter has a twist (although many great writers have written beautifully and lovingly of nature), but it never becomes a gimmick. It has all the rambling thoughtfulness, affection, and personal connection of the love letters you might find in your grandmother's attic - or your own.
Although this collection indicates that, if we were honest, we would have some hard and twisted things to say, consider the possibility that honesty can surprise everyone by being beautiful. When I finished this collection, I had the urge to write some love letters of my own. Not letters that tried oh-so-hard to be cleverer than the other children, or letters that looked for the loophole in love, but tributes to those people and places that deserve to know that (so saith Kelly Clarkson) "my life would suck without you". As we enter into hearts and flowers and Hallmark season, you might consider a hand-made valentine or two, yourself.
*
An excerpt from James Robertson's contribution:
"I used to believe that I went to the mountains in order to think. But when I considered this more carefully I realised that, whatever the intention, the effect was the opposite: I went and I did not think. The physical effort of climbing two, three, four hills, the concentration on underfoot terrain, the crossing of burns and rivers, the watchful eye kept for changing weather, the sighting of birds and other creatures, the sometimes tedious journey back out and the tired triumph of completing it - absorbed with all these immediate concerns, I had no inclination or indeed ability to think in any coherent, structured way about other things. Neither the plots of novels nor the meaning of life are worked out by hill-walking."
Thursday, December 3, 2009
"Mimus" by Lilli Thal
"Mimus" is what you might call an alternative history. I tend to think of it as historical fantasy, but the complete absence of magic might push it out of that category. We find ourselves in a mediaeval kingdom with a young prince and his friends. There is a long, vague, and unresolved conflict with the neighbouring territory. The prince's father has done some regrettable things, as has the king next door. The prince will be made to suffer for these actions. I won't give away more than that, but I assure you that whatever snippet you read on the back of the book will make it sound more lightweight than it really is.
The result is a literary flavour that is entirely different from an equivalent book in the English fantasy/alternative history tradition. The plot is a means for a character study and for psychological investigation. And as is the case with a lot of German fiction, nothing is too pretty - all the characters have dirt under their fingernails and blemishes on their conscience. If you've read Cornelia Funke or Michael Ende, you've got the idea. It might be fantastic, magical, or astonishing - but it's usually not pretty.
For the protagonist, it's a hard slog. Situations that in other hands might have a bit of levity or slapstick, are kept firmly in line by Thal. If something happens to give us cause to smile or hope, it's made all the more precious by the odds against it. Very quickly, the reader learns alongside the prince that moments of optimism aren't necessarily to be trusted, and that who you think you are probably isn't going to save you - or even help you - get your life back.
But the real artistry here is that this isn't an unremittingly depressing novel. From the first moment of difficulty, the reader is engrossed in the layered interactions, watching for those moments of hope, and needing the protagonist to find those loose ends and tie them together. This last is perhaps the strongest element of the book. What begins as desperation slowly climbs to a determination that is more impressive for the darkness it comes out of. It can be awfully difficult to throw one's readerly support behind the lissome elf sorceresses and brooding muscled swordsmen that litter the shelves. Thal stays true to the voice of her young protagonist, and plays all the nuances between the fears of a child and the self-mastery of an adult. Every setback is felt, so every victory, however small, echoes through the book like church bells. Throughout, her language is poetic but never flowery, calling up just the right images, and her pacing made this one of the few books I've read in one compulsive sitting.
This is a book that not only gives the underdog his day of triumph, but points out that there are rather more underdogs around than we suspect. Everyone, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, from fool to monarch, is scrabbling to hang on to something lost, or something dreamed of.
--
A quotation from Lilli Thal's "Mimus":
"There seemed to be a point beyond which the human spirit simply rejects an overabundance of misfortune, just as the surface of a frozen pond refuses to absorb a shower of rain."
The result is a literary flavour that is entirely different from an equivalent book in the English fantasy/alternative history tradition. The plot is a means for a character study and for psychological investigation. And as is the case with a lot of German fiction, nothing is too pretty - all the characters have dirt under their fingernails and blemishes on their conscience. If you've read Cornelia Funke or Michael Ende, you've got the idea. It might be fantastic, magical, or astonishing - but it's usually not pretty.
For the protagonist, it's a hard slog. Situations that in other hands might have a bit of levity or slapstick, are kept firmly in line by Thal. If something happens to give us cause to smile or hope, it's made all the more precious by the odds against it. Very quickly, the reader learns alongside the prince that moments of optimism aren't necessarily to be trusted, and that who you think you are probably isn't going to save you - or even help you - get your life back.
But the real artistry here is that this isn't an unremittingly depressing novel. From the first moment of difficulty, the reader is engrossed in the layered interactions, watching for those moments of hope, and needing the protagonist to find those loose ends and tie them together. This last is perhaps the strongest element of the book. What begins as desperation slowly climbs to a determination that is more impressive for the darkness it comes out of. It can be awfully difficult to throw one's readerly support behind the lissome elf sorceresses and brooding muscled swordsmen that litter the shelves. Thal stays true to the voice of her young protagonist, and plays all the nuances between the fears of a child and the self-mastery of an adult. Every setback is felt, so every victory, however small, echoes through the book like church bells. Throughout, her language is poetic but never flowery, calling up just the right images, and her pacing made this one of the few books I've read in one compulsive sitting.
This is a book that not only gives the underdog his day of triumph, but points out that there are rather more underdogs around than we suspect. Everyone, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, from fool to monarch, is scrabbling to hang on to something lost, or something dreamed of.
--
A quotation from Lilli Thal's "Mimus":
"There seemed to be a point beyond which the human spirit simply rejects an overabundance of misfortune, just as the surface of a frozen pond refuses to absorb a shower of rain."
Thursday, November 12, 2009
"The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East" by Neil MacFarquhar
To the best of my knowledge, Neil MacFarquhar has not been on The Daily Show promoting this book, which is a bit strange since Jon Stewart is so fond of books with long titles.
"The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East" stands out in the throng of books on the subject. Publishers can't get the stuff out the door fast enough, and often it shows. Books about What Went Wrong, What Is Going Wrong, and The Wrongness Yet To Come, primarily written by congressmen, senators, and generals, are even now filling display tables near you. These authors impressively - and prematurely - claim to have it all figured out.
What MacFarquhar offers is a little different. While he does have a few theories about what direction the United States could take for productive interaction with the Middle East, he is broadly agenda-free. His observations have been primarily made as a correspondent, and even in terms of that company he is well-balanced. The title perfectly captures the tone of the book, which is never slapstick funny, but never sinks into unstoppable despair, either. It is, on the whole, very pragmatic in its approach. This is, after all, an area with particular a geography, history, religion, and culture, and these things alter to varying degrees from one side of a border to the other. He makes some assessments of "the Middle East", but usually defines precisely which nation or cultural group he is focused on.
The tone of his more humorous or surreal anecdotes is kept in check. You never get a sense of dismissal or superiority from the author, and the encounters with absurd policy or ridiculous behaviour could easily be transposed into another culture. In fact, these stories most often bring to mind how close all cultures and all governments are to crossing the line between the well-intentioned and the bureaucratically loony. The more dire anecdotes come with background and context, and MacFarquhar doesn't pull his punches here. Again, it centres on something universal: the ability of human beings to do the most depraved, despicable things in the name of [insert your cause here]. MacFarquhar's suggestions for the U.S., by the way, hinge on the skills of a correspondent: looking around, listening to the conversations, and watching the news the people watch. In the end, international policy should be based on their ideals, offering people the means to be the best versions of themselves - not mediocre versions of somebody else.
The term "encounters" is the most appropriate for this work. It lacks the single-minded focus of many of the other books on the shelf, meandering between anecdotes, interviews, personal insight, and political analysis. To my mind, this is a good thing. Too many authors are crammed into the history and political science section, keen to earn those honourary doctorates (or to prove the value of their own) with a carefully defined and limited thesis that earns high marks in the academic world, but utterly fails to assess the complexity of even the smallest region or briefest historical period. MacFarquhar seems to have collected all of the information that usually gets discarded because it "doesn't prove the argument". It's not an exposé or a strategy: it's a good, long look. And we could use a few more like it.
---
A quotation (and a favourite in my ever-growing collection) from "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East" by Neil MacFarquhar:
"Is this an interrogation?"
"No, it's just tea."
"The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East" stands out in the throng of books on the subject. Publishers can't get the stuff out the door fast enough, and often it shows. Books about What Went Wrong, What Is Going Wrong, and The Wrongness Yet To Come, primarily written by congressmen, senators, and generals, are even now filling display tables near you. These authors impressively - and prematurely - claim to have it all figured out.
What MacFarquhar offers is a little different. While he does have a few theories about what direction the United States could take for productive interaction with the Middle East, he is broadly agenda-free. His observations have been primarily made as a correspondent, and even in terms of that company he is well-balanced. The title perfectly captures the tone of the book, which is never slapstick funny, but never sinks into unstoppable despair, either. It is, on the whole, very pragmatic in its approach. This is, after all, an area with particular a geography, history, religion, and culture, and these things alter to varying degrees from one side of a border to the other. He makes some assessments of "the Middle East", but usually defines precisely which nation or cultural group he is focused on.
The tone of his more humorous or surreal anecdotes is kept in check. You never get a sense of dismissal or superiority from the author, and the encounters with absurd policy or ridiculous behaviour could easily be transposed into another culture. In fact, these stories most often bring to mind how close all cultures and all governments are to crossing the line between the well-intentioned and the bureaucratically loony. The more dire anecdotes come with background and context, and MacFarquhar doesn't pull his punches here. Again, it centres on something universal: the ability of human beings to do the most depraved, despicable things in the name of [insert your cause here]. MacFarquhar's suggestions for the U.S., by the way, hinge on the skills of a correspondent: looking around, listening to the conversations, and watching the news the people watch. In the end, international policy should be based on their ideals, offering people the means to be the best versions of themselves - not mediocre versions of somebody else.
The term "encounters" is the most appropriate for this work. It lacks the single-minded focus of many of the other books on the shelf, meandering between anecdotes, interviews, personal insight, and political analysis. To my mind, this is a good thing. Too many authors are crammed into the history and political science section, keen to earn those honourary doctorates (or to prove the value of their own) with a carefully defined and limited thesis that earns high marks in the academic world, but utterly fails to assess the complexity of even the smallest region or briefest historical period. MacFarquhar seems to have collected all of the information that usually gets discarded because it "doesn't prove the argument". It's not an exposé or a strategy: it's a good, long look. And we could use a few more like it.
---
A quotation (and a favourite in my ever-growing collection) from "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East" by Neil MacFarquhar:
"Is this an interrogation?"
"No, it's just tea."
Friday, November 6, 2009
"Tam Lin" by Pamela Dean
"Tam Lin" is Pamela Dean's contribution to the aging (but still traceable) fairy tale series by Tor Books. The series started back in 1987, and "Tam Lin" was first published in 1991. If you haven't read any fantasy dating from before 1995, you will likely find the flavour quite distinct from more recent work - I suspect this is a large source of the "love it"/"hate it" response found among reviewers. Even a cursory comparison of fantasy novels of then-versus-now will demonstrate a significant difference in pacing: acres of setting up, rapid denouement, and let's not linger too long over the ending (as compared to more recent novels, where endings often get their own book and turn trilogies into quartets).
Arguably the best thing about this series as a whole were the covers by Thomas Canty - and that is no slight on the writing, as even the authors rhapsodize about those covers. Reprints have rather less evocative cover designs.
The next best thing is the historical detail that most of the authors pack into their work. Each author chooses a fairy tale and gallops off into the distance with it. This usually works well, but it's important to bear in mind that the historical period in question might not interest you. In the case of "Tam Lin", the story is set at an American liberal arts college in the early 1970s. For an audience of people locked onto the bodices and heavy breathing of "The Tudors", this period might not really start a fire.
What Dean has crafted here is a fantasy for intellectuals - not just your standard fantasy-geek fare, but those of us who enjoy a thick layer of literary and historical references that are not explained or dwelt upon, but make you snicker quietly behind your university degree. This is not to say that you have to get all the references to enjoy the book. You don't. But you need to appreciate the environment that Dean has structured - a type of university that, in North America, now exists only as a shadow of its former self. Just because it was less than fifty years ago doesn't mean that we aren't talking about a very different time and cultural place. Once upon a time, to get an English Literature degree, you actually had to read old books and learn ancient languages and - God forbid - take poetry classes.
That in itself would be enough of a fairy tale, but Dean mixes it all together with "Tam Lin", Ye Olde Scottish Ballade, about a young Scottish woman who gets tangled up with the wrong guy, finds herself pregnant, and faces impossible challenges from the faeries to get her man - which she does, and probably looks smug about it until the end of her days. So in addition to all kinds of fun literary references, Dean adds in a healthy dose of faerie-lore and, of course, Shakespeare (who claimed to know a thing or two about faeries). Most of the literal interpretation of the ballad comes towards the end of the book, and you can probably see a lot of it coming (since, you know, it's already in the ballad and everything).
But like all fairy tale retellings, because we know the story, the story can't be the point of the thing. In the case of "Tam Lin", the point is translating the indomitable will (and, okay, willingness to go for a roll in the heather) of a Scottish lass into the sense and scrutiny of an English lit-saturated American college student. There are ghosts and queens to be reckoned with - but these are no more fearsome than heartless playboys and dismissive faculty members. The point is that if you have the strength to deal with one, you have the strength to deal with the other. So give yourself a little credit and stare down the Powers That Be - whoever they may be - because there is only one thing they truly fear: a woman who is not at all impressed by them.
----
A few quotations from "Tam Lin" by Pamela Dean. Note that these may contain SPOILERS.
"I'm not a biology major at all," she said.
"Well, what?"
"English."
"What for?" said Christina.
"Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?"
"But what will you do after that?"
"Go to graduate school and read some more."
"The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and a twisty damp wind was rattling discarded paper cups in the gutters, since it was not strong enough to pick up the sodden leaves. The light was a diffuse version of the greeny-yellow that precedes a tornado, but the sky was more confused than threatening."
"I still hurt, but I don't care as much."
"Maybe you should try whiskey."
"No way. If I'm going to feel like a nineteenth-century consumptive, I demand port at the very least."
"Sure, take the poetry course," said Janet. "You can have a wonderful time telling them how awful all the moderns are, and comparing them to real poets."
"That, my child, would require first that I read the moderns, second that I have a grasp of what they are attempting, and third that I be able, ideally, to demonstrate both that it is not worth doing and that they are doing it very badly."
Janet's mother began to laugh; Janet stared at her father with a sinking and peculiar feeling. "But you've got a Ph.D.," she said.
"Take it from me," said her father, "it is possible to get a Ph.D. in English while ignoring no less than three literary periods. You must have read -something- in all of them, so as to fling their names about, but you can be quite ignorant of at least three and still do very nicely."
"It's not a happy ending, really," she said to him.
"It is not," said Thomas. "It's only the happiest one could hope for, given the world of the play."
"September ran out in a late and freakish thunderstorm, and October breezed in, golden and smiling."
"[Molly] and Tina did take the bus up to Planned Parenthood early one Saturday while Janet was struggling in Professor Evans's class with his comparison of 'Volpone' with 'Peter Rabbit'. But Janet was half convinced that Molly had gone only to get better help for her cramps.
They both came back looking a little white and subdued. It was like an assembly line at a factory, Molly said; she supposed they couldn't help it, but it made you want to go find a nice nunnery in Spain and spend your time writing steamy poetry in cipher."
"November rain stripped all the trees except for the stubborn and covetous oaks. It was unseasonably warm, bare ground and bare trees luxuriating in the springlike air. The lovely shapes of the undressed elms stood up against all the red sunsets like the leading of a stained-glass window, and all the wide lawns of Blackstock were still green for Thanksgiving."
"The warm room, bright with fluorescent lighting and smelling of library bindings and stale coffee, was full of people. Every carrel was occupied, and if you walked by them half the people hunched their shoulders in unconscious irritation and a few actually glared at you. The long oak tables under the western windows were full, mostly of desperate researchers who should have done their term papers a month ago. Every aisle between stacks had at least two people in it, their heads tilted sideways like parakeets."
"Janet considered the glass cases. Victoria Thompson, who had died in 1897, had owned an ivory comb and an ivory-backed mirror carved with a dolphin, and a couple of scrimshaw hair combs. She had owned a ruby bracelet and several rings, opal and amethyst and garnet, and she had been fond of red dresses. There were a velvet one and a red-and-blue calico and a red silk. She had also had a great deal of embroidered underwear that anybody today might be happy to wear as a dress or a pantsuit. Janet moved on around the cases, reading the typed cards interspersed with the exhibits. One of them referred to Miss Thompson, as Peg or somebody had indeed done on Janet's first day there, as a member of the class of 1899.
Janet felt as if she had been hit in the stomach. Yes, of course she must have died here, or why would her ghost run about tossing her college books out the window? But the thought of her dying as a sophomore at college made the entire display suddenly obscene. Good God, thought Janet, are they going to collect the underwear belonging to that girl who killed herself a couple of years ago and put it in a glass case with her favourite record albums and her high-school class ring and her god-damned Poli-Sci books?"
"At Blackstock, the spring of 1972 was a miracle. You could not say of it, as one commonly said of spring in Minnesota, 'If it falls on a weekend, let's have a picnic', or 'I missed it this year, I was in the shower'. It began in a leisurely manner in early April, and hindered only by a few sodden snowfalls that had vanished before sunset next day, it opened itself out slowly like a gigantic paper fan, and bestowed its gifts one at a time, instead of dumping them wholesale on your unsuspecting head and vanishing with a nasty chuckle into the wilting heat of summer."
"He looked a great deal like Janet's idea of an angel, except for the scowl, and the fact that he bit his fingernails."
"It was Robin. Janet's first though was that he was coming down with the flu. He was as pale as paste and his eyes looked feverish. He came straight up to her where she sat gaping, twisted sideways in her desk chair. 'Tina's jilted Thomas,' he announced in the tone of a man delivering the news that the besiegers have breached the walls and there is nothing to do but die bravely."
"Then they discussed the entry in Boswell's 'Life' for 22 March 1776, in which Johnson, encountering many years after their first meeting the first woman he had been in love with, laughed at the notion that a man never can be really in love but once, and said furthermore, 'I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.'
The problem with literature, thought Janet crossly, while Evans delivered one of his more sardonic speeches related these opinions to Johnson's actual behaviour and then to the profound foolishness of students, the twentieth century, and humanity in general, was that either it applied not at all to your private concerns, or else you wished it wouldn't."
"There was a crack in the tiled wall behind the toilet. Somebody had written in large black letters on the plaster wall above it, 'I read [history] a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all: it is very tiresome; and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.'
No attribution, despite the businesslike and scholarly use of those square brackets. Janet spent a relatively pleasant fifteen minutes trying to remember the source of the quotation, and finally tracked it to Northanger Abbey. Catherine, who was so silly, and read only gothic novels, had said it, which meant perhaps one was not supposed to take it seriously; and yet it would be exactly like Jane Austen to put something like that in the mouth of a character like Catherine; it gave her the pleasure of saying it and the probability that nobody would take her to task for it."
"It is easy to promise to be sensible, she thought, when one is in a sensible situation."
"Look," said Thomas in a stifled voice. "I understand that I have put you in an impossible position. But I don't think anybody's interests are served by your trying to put me in an equally impossible one."
*[From the Author's Afterword] "And suddenly it reminded me of college, where the fear of getting pregnant collaborated with the conviction that you weren't nearly as smart as you'd thought you were, that you would never amount to anything practical even if all the professors thought you were a genius, and that the world was going to hell so fast that you'd be lucky to have a B.A. to show the devil when it got there, to produce a sub-clinical state of frenzy; where juggling your love life with anything else was almost but never quite completely impossible; where we all did any number of foolish and peculiar things while surrounded by and occasionally even absorbing the wisdom of the ages.
This was a song about adolescents."
*[From the Author's Afterword] "At the moment, if you asked me, I would say that this book is about keeping the heart of flesh in a world that wants to put in a heart of stone; and about how, regardless of the accusations regularly flung at them from all quarters, learning and literature can help their adherents accomplish that.
If you asked me tomorrow, I might say something else."
Arguably the best thing about this series as a whole were the covers by Thomas Canty - and that is no slight on the writing, as even the authors rhapsodize about those covers. Reprints have rather less evocative cover designs.
The next best thing is the historical detail that most of the authors pack into their work. Each author chooses a fairy tale and gallops off into the distance with it. This usually works well, but it's important to bear in mind that the historical period in question might not interest you. In the case of "Tam Lin", the story is set at an American liberal arts college in the early 1970s. For an audience of people locked onto the bodices and heavy breathing of "The Tudors", this period might not really start a fire.
What Dean has crafted here is a fantasy for intellectuals - not just your standard fantasy-geek fare, but those of us who enjoy a thick layer of literary and historical references that are not explained or dwelt upon, but make you snicker quietly behind your university degree. This is not to say that you have to get all the references to enjoy the book. You don't. But you need to appreciate the environment that Dean has structured - a type of university that, in North America, now exists only as a shadow of its former self. Just because it was less than fifty years ago doesn't mean that we aren't talking about a very different time and cultural place. Once upon a time, to get an English Literature degree, you actually had to read old books and learn ancient languages and - God forbid - take poetry classes.
That in itself would be enough of a fairy tale, but Dean mixes it all together with "Tam Lin", Ye Olde Scottish Ballade, about a young Scottish woman who gets tangled up with the wrong guy, finds herself pregnant, and faces impossible challenges from the faeries to get her man - which she does, and probably looks smug about it until the end of her days. So in addition to all kinds of fun literary references, Dean adds in a healthy dose of faerie-lore and, of course, Shakespeare (who claimed to know a thing or two about faeries). Most of the literal interpretation of the ballad comes towards the end of the book, and you can probably see a lot of it coming (since, you know, it's already in the ballad and everything).
But like all fairy tale retellings, because we know the story, the story can't be the point of the thing. In the case of "Tam Lin", the point is translating the indomitable will (and, okay, willingness to go for a roll in the heather) of a Scottish lass into the sense and scrutiny of an English lit-saturated American college student. There are ghosts and queens to be reckoned with - but these are no more fearsome than heartless playboys and dismissive faculty members. The point is that if you have the strength to deal with one, you have the strength to deal with the other. So give yourself a little credit and stare down the Powers That Be - whoever they may be - because there is only one thing they truly fear: a woman who is not at all impressed by them.
----
A few quotations from "Tam Lin" by Pamela Dean. Note that these may contain SPOILERS.
"I'm not a biology major at all," she said.
"Well, what?"
"English."
"What for?" said Christina.
"Look," said Janet, irritated, "if the thing you liked best to do in the world was read, and somebody offered to pay you room and board and give you a liberal arts degree if you would just read for four years, wouldn't you do it?"
"But what will you do after that?"
"Go to graduate school and read some more."
"The sun had gone behind the clouds again, and a twisty damp wind was rattling discarded paper cups in the gutters, since it was not strong enough to pick up the sodden leaves. The light was a diffuse version of the greeny-yellow that precedes a tornado, but the sky was more confused than threatening."
"I still hurt, but I don't care as much."
"Maybe you should try whiskey."
"No way. If I'm going to feel like a nineteenth-century consumptive, I demand port at the very least."
"Sure, take the poetry course," said Janet. "You can have a wonderful time telling them how awful all the moderns are, and comparing them to real poets."
"That, my child, would require first that I read the moderns, second that I have a grasp of what they are attempting, and third that I be able, ideally, to demonstrate both that it is not worth doing and that they are doing it very badly."
Janet's mother began to laugh; Janet stared at her father with a sinking and peculiar feeling. "But you've got a Ph.D.," she said.
"Take it from me," said her father, "it is possible to get a Ph.D. in English while ignoring no less than three literary periods. You must have read -something- in all of them, so as to fling their names about, but you can be quite ignorant of at least three and still do very nicely."
"It's not a happy ending, really," she said to him.
"It is not," said Thomas. "It's only the happiest one could hope for, given the world of the play."
"September ran out in a late and freakish thunderstorm, and October breezed in, golden and smiling."
"[Molly] and Tina did take the bus up to Planned Parenthood early one Saturday while Janet was struggling in Professor Evans's class with his comparison of 'Volpone' with 'Peter Rabbit'. But Janet was half convinced that Molly had gone only to get better help for her cramps.
They both came back looking a little white and subdued. It was like an assembly line at a factory, Molly said; she supposed they couldn't help it, but it made you want to go find a nice nunnery in Spain and spend your time writing steamy poetry in cipher."
"November rain stripped all the trees except for the stubborn and covetous oaks. It was unseasonably warm, bare ground and bare trees luxuriating in the springlike air. The lovely shapes of the undressed elms stood up against all the red sunsets like the leading of a stained-glass window, and all the wide lawns of Blackstock were still green for Thanksgiving."
"The warm room, bright with fluorescent lighting and smelling of library bindings and stale coffee, was full of people. Every carrel was occupied, and if you walked by them half the people hunched their shoulders in unconscious irritation and a few actually glared at you. The long oak tables under the western windows were full, mostly of desperate researchers who should have done their term papers a month ago. Every aisle between stacks had at least two people in it, their heads tilted sideways like parakeets."
"Janet considered the glass cases. Victoria Thompson, who had died in 1897, had owned an ivory comb and an ivory-backed mirror carved with a dolphin, and a couple of scrimshaw hair combs. She had owned a ruby bracelet and several rings, opal and amethyst and garnet, and she had been fond of red dresses. There were a velvet one and a red-and-blue calico and a red silk. She had also had a great deal of embroidered underwear that anybody today might be happy to wear as a dress or a pantsuit. Janet moved on around the cases, reading the typed cards interspersed with the exhibits. One of them referred to Miss Thompson, as Peg or somebody had indeed done on Janet's first day there, as a member of the class of 1899.
Janet felt as if she had been hit in the stomach. Yes, of course she must have died here, or why would her ghost run about tossing her college books out the window? But the thought of her dying as a sophomore at college made the entire display suddenly obscene. Good God, thought Janet, are they going to collect the underwear belonging to that girl who killed herself a couple of years ago and put it in a glass case with her favourite record albums and her high-school class ring and her god-damned Poli-Sci books?"
"At Blackstock, the spring of 1972 was a miracle. You could not say of it, as one commonly said of spring in Minnesota, 'If it falls on a weekend, let's have a picnic', or 'I missed it this year, I was in the shower'. It began in a leisurely manner in early April, and hindered only by a few sodden snowfalls that had vanished before sunset next day, it opened itself out slowly like a gigantic paper fan, and bestowed its gifts one at a time, instead of dumping them wholesale on your unsuspecting head and vanishing with a nasty chuckle into the wilting heat of summer."
"He looked a great deal like Janet's idea of an angel, except for the scowl, and the fact that he bit his fingernails."
"It was Robin. Janet's first though was that he was coming down with the flu. He was as pale as paste and his eyes looked feverish. He came straight up to her where she sat gaping, twisted sideways in her desk chair. 'Tina's jilted Thomas,' he announced in the tone of a man delivering the news that the besiegers have breached the walls and there is nothing to do but die bravely."
"Then they discussed the entry in Boswell's 'Life' for 22 March 1776, in which Johnson, encountering many years after their first meeting the first woman he had been in love with, laughed at the notion that a man never can be really in love but once, and said furthermore, 'I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.'
The problem with literature, thought Janet crossly, while Evans delivered one of his more sardonic speeches related these opinions to Johnson's actual behaviour and then to the profound foolishness of students, the twentieth century, and humanity in general, was that either it applied not at all to your private concerns, or else you wished it wouldn't."
"There was a crack in the tiled wall behind the toilet. Somebody had written in large black letters on the plaster wall above it, 'I read [history] a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all: it is very tiresome; and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.'
No attribution, despite the businesslike and scholarly use of those square brackets. Janet spent a relatively pleasant fifteen minutes trying to remember the source of the quotation, and finally tracked it to Northanger Abbey. Catherine, who was so silly, and read only gothic novels, had said it, which meant perhaps one was not supposed to take it seriously; and yet it would be exactly like Jane Austen to put something like that in the mouth of a character like Catherine; it gave her the pleasure of saying it and the probability that nobody would take her to task for it."
"It is easy to promise to be sensible, she thought, when one is in a sensible situation."
"Look," said Thomas in a stifled voice. "I understand that I have put you in an impossible position. But I don't think anybody's interests are served by your trying to put me in an equally impossible one."
*[From the Author's Afterword] "And suddenly it reminded me of college, where the fear of getting pregnant collaborated with the conviction that you weren't nearly as smart as you'd thought you were, that you would never amount to anything practical even if all the professors thought you were a genius, and that the world was going to hell so fast that you'd be lucky to have a B.A. to show the devil when it got there, to produce a sub-clinical state of frenzy; where juggling your love life with anything else was almost but never quite completely impossible; where we all did any number of foolish and peculiar things while surrounded by and occasionally even absorbing the wisdom of the ages.
This was a song about adolescents."
*[From the Author's Afterword] "At the moment, if you asked me, I would say that this book is about keeping the heart of flesh in a world that wants to put in a heart of stone; and about how, regardless of the accusations regularly flung at them from all quarters, learning and literature can help their adherents accomplish that.
If you asked me tomorrow, I might say something else."
Monday, October 26, 2009
"Hotel Bemelmans" and "When You Lunch With the Emperor", by Ludwig Bemelmans
If the name "Ludwig Bemelmans" looks abstractly familiar, you may recognize it better on a book cover with the Eiffel Tower and twelve little girls in two straight lines - the youngest one is, of course, "Madeline".
Right! But now that you've got him in sight, let me hastily add that "Hotel Bemelmans" and "When You Lunch With the Emperor" are not children's books. They are memoirs, of a sort - a collection of short essays and sketches about various bizarre and/or reflective moments in the author's life.
My attraction to the art is fairly straightforward: I love sketches and works-in-progress, hastily scrawled out, shaded with the artist's thumb, or each line gone over and over again. They feel alive to me in a way that a finished painting, for example, rarely does (although I enjoy paintings for other reasons, I assure you). Much of Bemelmans' work is caricature, but not all of it.
The writing is not for everyone, I confess. There are moments of hilarity, but it's not a laugh-out-loud kind of funny, so much as a sly, wry, European smirk with a cigarette dangling out kind of funny. Which, for me, is fantastic. Much of the work is pure observation. Few conclusions are drawn, which may frustrate some, but it creates the feeling of a journal, in which moments have been recorded, frozen in time, and will either become significant or merely briefly diverting. Between the two books, one or two episodes are repeated, but the material that is different is very different indeed.
Of the two, "When You Lunch With the Emperor" was to me the more striking work. Here we find not only a spectacular story involving a poodle, but a sincere and quiet reflection on death. We find Bemelmans rhapsodizing about life outside the city, in all its gloried predictability - and we find him hastening back to the urban life where he thrives in all his addiction. But most of all, we find the second World War. We find it in a way that history books and historical fiction rarely capture - not as the great looming explosion on the horizon that everyone immediately understands and flees, or fights, or joins. He shows it in its smallness. In the tiny warning signs, the small acts, the slight shifts in behaviour, all of which built and built until finally it could be read by all comers as "WAR". The absurdity and the cruelty of it is exposed in a way as you will only recognize if you've spoken to someone who has lived through such a time, such an experience. People who were busily living their lives, and supposed that because they had little to do with war, that war would have little to do with them. Soldiers who were assigned little tasks, peripheral to the great thundering machine, who had as yet no idea of the morality (or lack thereof) in which they would soon be implicated.
This is the best part of Bemelmans' work - that he does not presume to understand - or even to see - the big picture. He wrote and drew what was in front of him, and let it continue on its own momentum. And so there is an honesty here, an unprepossessing admission. Unlike so many others, he makes no claims to having it all figured out - but isn't the food delicious, the wine excellent, and the afternoon beautiful?
-----
Quotations taken from Ludwig Bemelmans' "When You Lunch With the Emperor":
"It's always wonderful when something altogether wrong ends right, without the help of either religion or the police."
"The landscape was a simple as bread and water. A ring of dark, green mountains which anyone could climb reflected themselves in the silent lake. At one side of this lake, a string of gay rowboats shifted back and forth in the currents of the green water. Each boat had the name of a girl painted on its side, and from the end of the pier to which they were tied I went swimming while Wally, my dachshund (she was so small that I carried her home in my coat pocket whenever we had walked too far), slept in one of the boats, in the shade of the bench that spans the centre."
"The sounds of this remote place were as comfortable as its panorama. In the morning twilight, Wally was at the garden gate, barking at the cattle that were driven up to the high meadows. From their necks hung bronze bells suspended from heavy, quill-embroidered leather straps. The bells clanged away into the distance, and their place was taken by the church bells below calling to early mass at about seven."
"The worst sound, one that made the little dog's hair stand on end and sent her for protection under a couch, was the music that started at one, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, and Beethoven. It came from the house on our right. In its living-rooms, little girls, in one-hour shifts, glared at études, cramped their small fingers into claws and performed awful concertos on two old Bechstein grand pianos."
"We did not open the house the next summer; it was the year of the Anschluss. From letters we gathered that the village was not noticeably disturbed; a new strategic highway was being built along the lake, new songs were being sung, some people had become very quiet and others too loud, and a few places had been renamed; but to a dog, Hermann Goring Strasse and Adolf Hitler Platz are as good as Heinrich Heine Strasse and Dollfuss Platz."
"To work for me, to live with me, is hard. I am composed of disorderly habits. I live the way William Saroyan thinks people live and it's not so funny off the stage. Normally, I am filled with the greatest good-will toward my fellow men, and I manifest this with generous gestures in all directions. I stop and smile at children, and I spread breadcrumbs for the pigeons on the stairs of Saint Patrick's, but the next day I would like to kick them all in the shins."
"I walk down through the cool wet forest, its path covered with needles and bordered by small-leafed sour clover growing together with the ferns, and then out into the light green fields. I look at the flowers and think how benevolent God is, how even without the buttercup we would so lack it, how poor we would be without the shape, the motion, the smell of the horse. There is my dog; I throw a stick and he brings it back. If I throw two, he is confused and picks up neither. That and a few other things he can do, no more. So far goes the flower, it must stand there; so far goes the dog, he can run and bark and carry a stick; and so far we go - no further."
Right! But now that you've got him in sight, let me hastily add that "Hotel Bemelmans" and "When You Lunch With the Emperor" are not children's books. They are memoirs, of a sort - a collection of short essays and sketches about various bizarre and/or reflective moments in the author's life.
My attraction to the art is fairly straightforward: I love sketches and works-in-progress, hastily scrawled out, shaded with the artist's thumb, or each line gone over and over again. They feel alive to me in a way that a finished painting, for example, rarely does (although I enjoy paintings for other reasons, I assure you). Much of Bemelmans' work is caricature, but not all of it.
The writing is not for everyone, I confess. There are moments of hilarity, but it's not a laugh-out-loud kind of funny, so much as a sly, wry, European smirk with a cigarette dangling out kind of funny. Which, for me, is fantastic. Much of the work is pure observation. Few conclusions are drawn, which may frustrate some, but it creates the feeling of a journal, in which moments have been recorded, frozen in time, and will either become significant or merely briefly diverting. Between the two books, one or two episodes are repeated, but the material that is different is very different indeed.
Of the two, "When You Lunch With the Emperor" was to me the more striking work. Here we find not only a spectacular story involving a poodle, but a sincere and quiet reflection on death. We find Bemelmans rhapsodizing about life outside the city, in all its gloried predictability - and we find him hastening back to the urban life where he thrives in all his addiction. But most of all, we find the second World War. We find it in a way that history books and historical fiction rarely capture - not as the great looming explosion on the horizon that everyone immediately understands and flees, or fights, or joins. He shows it in its smallness. In the tiny warning signs, the small acts, the slight shifts in behaviour, all of which built and built until finally it could be read by all comers as "WAR". The absurdity and the cruelty of it is exposed in a way as you will only recognize if you've spoken to someone who has lived through such a time, such an experience. People who were busily living their lives, and supposed that because they had little to do with war, that war would have little to do with them. Soldiers who were assigned little tasks, peripheral to the great thundering machine, who had as yet no idea of the morality (or lack thereof) in which they would soon be implicated.
This is the best part of Bemelmans' work - that he does not presume to understand - or even to see - the big picture. He wrote and drew what was in front of him, and let it continue on its own momentum. And so there is an honesty here, an unprepossessing admission. Unlike so many others, he makes no claims to having it all figured out - but isn't the food delicious, the wine excellent, and the afternoon beautiful?
-----
Quotations taken from Ludwig Bemelmans' "When You Lunch With the Emperor":
"It's always wonderful when something altogether wrong ends right, without the help of either religion or the police."
"The landscape was a simple as bread and water. A ring of dark, green mountains which anyone could climb reflected themselves in the silent lake. At one side of this lake, a string of gay rowboats shifted back and forth in the currents of the green water. Each boat had the name of a girl painted on its side, and from the end of the pier to which they were tied I went swimming while Wally, my dachshund (she was so small that I carried her home in my coat pocket whenever we had walked too far), slept in one of the boats, in the shade of the bench that spans the centre."
"The sounds of this remote place were as comfortable as its panorama. In the morning twilight, Wally was at the garden gate, barking at the cattle that were driven up to the high meadows. From their necks hung bronze bells suspended from heavy, quill-embroidered leather straps. The bells clanged away into the distance, and their place was taken by the church bells below calling to early mass at about seven."
"The worst sound, one that made the little dog's hair stand on end and sent her for protection under a couch, was the music that started at one, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Schubert, and Beethoven. It came from the house on our right. In its living-rooms, little girls, in one-hour shifts, glared at études, cramped their small fingers into claws and performed awful concertos on two old Bechstein grand pianos."
"We did not open the house the next summer; it was the year of the Anschluss. From letters we gathered that the village was not noticeably disturbed; a new strategic highway was being built along the lake, new songs were being sung, some people had become very quiet and others too loud, and a few places had been renamed; but to a dog, Hermann Goring Strasse and Adolf Hitler Platz are as good as Heinrich Heine Strasse and Dollfuss Platz."
"To work for me, to live with me, is hard. I am composed of disorderly habits. I live the way William Saroyan thinks people live and it's not so funny off the stage. Normally, I am filled with the greatest good-will toward my fellow men, and I manifest this with generous gestures in all directions. I stop and smile at children, and I spread breadcrumbs for the pigeons on the stairs of Saint Patrick's, but the next day I would like to kick them all in the shins."
"I walk down through the cool wet forest, its path covered with needles and bordered by small-leafed sour clover growing together with the ferns, and then out into the light green fields. I look at the flowers and think how benevolent God is, how even without the buttercup we would so lack it, how poor we would be without the shape, the motion, the smell of the horse. There is my dog; I throw a stick and he brings it back. If I throw two, he is confused and picks up neither. That and a few other things he can do, no more. So far goes the flower, it must stand there; so far goes the dog, he can run and bark and carry a stick; and so far we go - no further."
"Dragonbreath" by Ursula Vernon
Children's books are very important to me. Luckily, a lot of the best writing is being done in the 9-12 genre right now, which makes it a little easier for me to shove stacks of titles at people and order them to "Read it! Read it now!" I enjoy selling them to people, and I love listening to grown-ups talk about the ones that meant so much to them, and children talking about the ones that are so hugely exciting to them right now. I get hysterically indignant at the more unseemly sides of the industry, but there are enough tasteful and devoted authors, illustrators and publishers out there to balance it out.
Enter Ursula Vernon, an artist and writer deserving of your complete and uninterrupted attention.
Her main site (for everyone): http://www.ursulavernon.com/
Her blog (for grown-ups who don't take themselves too seriously): http://www.redwombatstudio.com/blog/
Her book "Dragonbreath" should have recently hit the shelves near you. I would put it in the ballpark age-range of 6-8, although the author herself places it at 8+. Really, I fail to see how anyone could resist snickering in secret delight. The book follows the intrepid and misunderstood Danny Dragonbreath and his best friend Wendell the Iguana as they strive to survive school, parental expectation, bullies, and Terrors of the Deep. The visual format is all bold typeface and green-scale (pun absolutely intended) illustrations, with the occasional comic-strip moment. And the illustrations are fantastic, since... well, it's Ursula Vernon.
But the writing, in this case, steals the show. Vernon brings us that most coveted element of writing for children: Snark. Irreverent, subversive, cunning, punning - call it what you will, it crackles through the book with authorial sarcasm and the occasional footnote (à la Pratchett). This, friends, is the antidote to the ghastly (and seemingly endless) series of squishy Rainbow Fairies and 12-grain wholesome Magic Treehouses. Vernon has even ventured many delightful facts and educational factors in the book, so you can wave it smugly in the disapproving faces of freshly inducted and perky-aggressive (it's like passive-aggressive but so much worse) teachers and playdate parents. There's even a moral in there - but like the best children's books, it sneaks in while we're already having a good time, is polite to everyone, compliments the hostess, plays a round on the Wii, and doesn't bring down the party.
Since I am aunt to a multitude, they usually get books from me (and lightsabres that really light up and make noise that their parents won't get them!) If you find yourself in a similar situation and have a sharp kid in your life, do not hesitate. Especially if that kid was already given some Mo Willems pigeon books during its formative years.
Best of all, there would seem to be a series on the way. Bring on the ninja frogs, say I.
Indoctrinate the next generation: Let them know that a sharp wit will get you through many dark days. And if it doesn't save you from the cruellest taunting, the most tyrannical overlord, or the darkest abyss per se... at least you'll be able to appreciate the irony of the situation.
Enter Ursula Vernon, an artist and writer deserving of your complete and uninterrupted attention.
Her main site (for everyone): http://www.ursulavernon.com/
Her blog (for grown-ups who don't take themselves too seriously): http://www.redwombatstudio.com/blog/
Her book "Dragonbreath" should have recently hit the shelves near you. I would put it in the ballpark age-range of 6-8, although the author herself places it at 8+. Really, I fail to see how anyone could resist snickering in secret delight. The book follows the intrepid and misunderstood Danny Dragonbreath and his best friend Wendell the Iguana as they strive to survive school, parental expectation, bullies, and Terrors of the Deep. The visual format is all bold typeface and green-scale (pun absolutely intended) illustrations, with the occasional comic-strip moment. And the illustrations are fantastic, since... well, it's Ursula Vernon.
But the writing, in this case, steals the show. Vernon brings us that most coveted element of writing for children: Snark. Irreverent, subversive, cunning, punning - call it what you will, it crackles through the book with authorial sarcasm and the occasional footnote (à la Pratchett). This, friends, is the antidote to the ghastly (and seemingly endless) series of squishy Rainbow Fairies and 12-grain wholesome Magic Treehouses. Vernon has even ventured many delightful facts and educational factors in the book, so you can wave it smugly in the disapproving faces of freshly inducted and perky-aggressive (it's like passive-aggressive but so much worse) teachers and playdate parents. There's even a moral in there - but like the best children's books, it sneaks in while we're already having a good time, is polite to everyone, compliments the hostess, plays a round on the Wii, and doesn't bring down the party.
Since I am aunt to a multitude, they usually get books from me (and lightsabres that really light up and make noise that their parents won't get them!) If you find yourself in a similar situation and have a sharp kid in your life, do not hesitate. Especially if that kid was already given some Mo Willems pigeon books during its formative years.
Best of all, there would seem to be a series on the way. Bring on the ninja frogs, say I.
Indoctrinate the next generation: Let them know that a sharp wit will get you through many dark days. And if it doesn't save you from the cruellest taunting, the most tyrannical overlord, or the darkest abyss per se... at least you'll be able to appreciate the irony of the situation.
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