Emera | The Black Letters

“Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter”

Marina Warner writes with beautiful force and exuberance about Angela Carter’s fairy tales, sensuality, ethics of the erotic, and more, here in the Paris Review.

A particularly breathtaking passage, arising from a remark on the origin of one of the stories in The Bloody Chamber as a radio play:

‘Very few writers use the imperative as she does—conspiratorially. Carter wanted to practise the atavistic lure, the atavistic power, of voices in the dark. “The writer who gives the words to those voices,” she wrote, “retains some of the authority of the most antique tellers of tales.”

The voice isn’t on its own, ringing in a hollow space. Open any page and a full score rises from its word-notes, of winds howling, teardrops falling, diamond earrings tinkling, snapping teeth, sneezing, and wheezing. Storytelling for Angela Carter was an island full of noises and sweet airs, and like Caliban, who heard a thousand twangling instruments hum about his ears, she was tuned to an ethereal universe packed with sensations, to which she was alive with every organ. Acoustics are not the only means, however, that she draws on to convey the lucid dreams she creates in her action. Her imagination is spatial, an architect’s axonometric vision, as she moves us through palaces and castles, forests and tundras, dungeons and attics, tracking with us down pathways towards her various sealed depositories of secrets, those bloody chambers. What reader does not explore with her these passages and woodland tracks? Who does not feel the Beast’s dark carriage like a hearse rumbling towards his eerily uninhabited domain? And who does not sense, through her powerful evocations, the pricking of thorns, the jaw-cracking stringiness of granny, the jangling of bed springs, the licking of a big cat’s tongue, the soft luxurious furs and velvets and skin, and the piercing contrasts with ice, glass, metal?’

Warner’s essay is from the new Folio edition of The Bloody Chamber. (Folio’s gorgeously illustrated editions might be my new crack, by the way. I’m particularly hankering after the Jillian-Tamaki-illustrated Irish Myths and Legends.)

– E

The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (2004) E

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 10.15.2012
Book from: Borrowed from cousin

“…or, The Purloined Coronation Regalia: being a revelation of matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, including extracts from the intimate diary of a Noblewoman and the sworn testimony of a Lady of Quality

Dear Reader,
We are having the most wonderful time on our tour of Europe with our new husbands, Thomas and James. We’ve been shopping in Paris, sightseeing in the Alps, and riding gondolas in Venice – there’s nothing like exploring the Continent!

However, there have been some troublesome moments. There was the midnight intruder who left behind a fashionable Turkish slipper. We also always seem to be running into the same peculiar people on our visits to ancient sites. And, oh yes, there was our discovery of the mysterious parcel that hints at a murderously magical plot of international importance!

Clearly, this isn’t quite the calm and relaxing journey we were expecting. But this Grand Tour is turning out to be the best adventure of our lives!

Love,
Cecy and Kate“

The Grand Tour is an equally witty and fun sequel to the classic Regency fantasy Sorcery and Cecelia (my review). Plotwise, it’s over-reliant on convenient coincidences to move things along – the first half of the book verges on tiresome in this respect, as the girls and their husbands meander from attraction to attraction and just keep on bumping into those “peculiar people.” Eventually, though, the protagonists do go on the offensive and start trying to think one step ahead of the evil conspirators, as the extent of their plot becomes increasingly clear. But even before then, the affectionately combative dialogue, occasional brushes with danger (thieves! highwaymen! societal embarrassment!), and opportunities for secondhand touristry (there’s plenty of amusing and curious detail on 19th-century European travel, with the bonus of magical conveniences like anti-flea charms) kept me trundling on through the pages.

One of my only disappointments with Sorcery and Cecelia was the authors’ exceedingly light touch when it comes to fantastical worldbuilding, so I was gratified that The Grand Tour, with its international stakes and post-Napoleonic anxieties about war and rulership, goes a bit further in weaving magic into the world’s political and historical fabric. Its climax, especially, hints intriguingly at the depth of ancient magical practice.

Mostly, though, The Grand Tour is happy to remain a character-driven romp. The epistolary form rarely generates any real plot tension, since dramatic events are necessarily recounted after the fact, so I found that more tension arises from any distress the characters might be feeling during the events, than from the events themselves. This is especially so since the universe is a quite moral one, and threats to life and limb of the main characters are rarely serious and never permanent. Very comforting.

I did previously also complain about it being difficult to distinguish the personalities of the main characters; it turns out the nearly 500 pages’ worth of sequel is an effective cure for that, especially when one of the major subplots is Kate’s continued efforts to overcome her nervousness at all social obligations. This is resolved in a heavy-handed but still charming way.

The last page of the book suggests, of course, the possibility of another sequel, which I’ve only just realized was released in 2006: The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, which I’ll have to keep in mind for the next time I’m looking for the bookish equivalent of a frothy cup of hot chocolate. All three books have recently been released as ebooks with beautifully designed covers (link includes an interview with Stevermer on the trilogy).

Go to:

Patricia C. Wrede: bio and works reviewed
Caroline Stevermer: bio and works reviewed
Sorcery and Cecelia, by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (1988): review by Emera

The worst sentence I have seen

– in recent memory, courtesy who else but H. P. Lovecraft:

“And yet, as I have said, vague new fears hovered menacingly over us; as if giant bat-winged gryphons looked on transcosmic gulfs.”

– from “The Lurking Fear”

Don’t you just HATE it when those giant bat-winged gryphons look on your transcosmic gulfs?

(Also, the semi-colon is [sic]. Lovecraft abuses them as if he were being paid by the punctuation error rather than the word.)

I’m reading a fat paperback collection of Lovecraft right now, to get in the Halloween spirit, and thinking of making a drinking game. Drink for every “demoniac,” every “unutterable,” every “hideousness,” every “unutterable cacodaemoniacal hideousness”…

– E

“Huntswoman,” by Merrie Haskell (2005) E

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 10.7.12
Read online at Strange Horizons Fiction.

“Huntswoman,” a Snow White retelling, is a quietly moving and thoughtfully constructed puzzle-story – the kind that invites you to read it again from the start once you’ve finished, reexamining each piece of language and dialogue for new significance. It works very effectively with dream-symbols and -logic to create a sense of wordlessly uneasy compulsion and claustrophobia. Ultimately, Haskell subverts the original story’s subtext of female jealousy and competition for male attention (which Angela Carter placed at center stage and heightened to grotesque effect in “The Snow Child”), turning it instead into an argument for healing within a specifically female community.

Looking at readers’ responses online, there seems to be some confusion as to interpretation of the story. The following is to me the most straightforward (spoilers follow, naturally): The huntswoman is the embodiment of Snow White’s dissociated and wandering consciousness during her poisoned sleep; there is an implication of previous abuse by her father, the king, who repeatedly and brutishly breaks things, and refers with desperately insistent imperiousness to Snow White as “my girl.” The stepmother queen, by contrast, is a repairer and healer, but conditioned by the canonical Snow White framework, we regard her magic at first with suspicion and incomprehension. (After all, she does keep asking for Snow White’s heart and hands.)

The bone china and pastry offered by the queen turn to humbler items in the huntswoman’s hands because she reflexively rejects knowledge of her true (royal) self. When she finally achieves synthesis and reawakening, it is overseen by her witch-stepmother, whom we now understand to be nurturing and benevolent, and contingent on her own efforts, rather than those of “a thousand princes.”

Go to:

Merrie Haskell: bio and works reviewed
Read the story online

“Portrait of Lisane de Patagnia,” by Rachel Swirsky (2012) E

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 10.8.2012
Read the story online at Tor.com here.

This is my first time reading anything by Rachel Swirsky; I’ve had her multiply-award-winning/nominated “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” bookmarked for a while, but got lured into this one first on the basis that it’s illustrated by Sam Weber, one of my favorite contemporary illustrators of weird stuff.

“Portrait of Lisane de Patagnia” is a dark, erotically charged tale concerning an embittered artist with more magical than painterly ability, who is summoned to fulfill a final commission for her former teacher, the incandescent, ambition-devoured Lisane de Patagnia. In this world, magically imbued artwork is considered inferior to sheer human talent, which is a good parallel to contemporary regard of technology-assisted/-enhanced skills – the devaluation by some of digital artwork as compared to traditional, say.

The story’s Italian-Renaissance-inspired setting is refreshing, and the few descriptions of magic are unsettlingly beautiful, playing off of the cool poise of the narrator’s voice. (I particularly liked the opening description: the narrator’s process of painting a river sips away at the jug of water next to her.)

However, though Swirsky is clearly familiar with the principles and history of visual art (the story touches on a Brunelleschi-analogue who invented linear perspective, which serves as the basis of a pleasing image of his artistic lineage stretching out into the present), she doesn’t write about any of it very movingly. The descriptions of composition are labored (“the oval of his head bowed toward the shaking rectangle of his chest, his newly shorn hair dark against his pale scalp”), and when writing about color, rather than the evocative, alchemical specificity of actual artists’ pigments, she relies on a commonplace toolkit of “emerald” green, “faint yellow,” and so forth. When you could be using names like Naples yellow, madder lake, azurite, and bone black instead, why wouldn’t you? The cumulative effect was that I rarely felt as if I were actually inside an artist’s head.

When it comes to the story’s negotiation of the relationship between artist and art, I cringed to see a scene dramatically hinged on the old chestnut, “What is art but madness anyway?” Clearly it’s meant as an indictment of Lisane’s psychological failings that she pulls that one out, but such literal use was to me indicative of the story’s failings as a whole: it renders a conflict centered on romantic clichés about art in careful but often broad strokes, and lacks in freshness and exactitude of image and feeling as a result. It’s thoughtful, but not complex. (See also the fact that it explains its own conclusions in the last few paragraphs, when it could have ended just as well with them hanging unsaid but obvious.)

Go to:

Rachel Swirsky: author bio and works reviewed
Read the story at Tor.com

Princess^2

Apologies for the utter deadness around here lately; Kakaner is fiendishly, horrendously, unspeakably busy with a very exciting new job, and I’ve been occupied trying to not get kicked out of wildly succeed in my graduate program.

But here’s another round of gender-subversive fun for fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and anyone whose interest was piqued by my review of Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight: Katie O’Neill’s gently goofy and heartfelt new webcomic Princess Princess, in which a dashing princess errant is the one to rescue a tower-immured damsel.

“I have a sword, a unicorn, and kick-butt hair!” – Princess Amira

Princess Princess updates once weekly, and is predicted to run up to 30 or 40 pages. You can also find additional art and bonus comics over at its Tumblr.

– E

“Recovering Lolita”

Recovering Lolita (via design blog Imprint) is one of the most visually/literarily fascinating and provoking posts I’ve seen this year.

Several years ago, blogger John Bertram held a contest inviting designers to create new covers for Lolita, citing a history of coy misrepresentation of Nabokov’s novel. In Bertram’s words, “We are talking about a novel which has child rape at its core.” Yet as Imprint points out, “[Lolita is] chronically miscast as a teenage sexpot—just witness the dozens of soft-core covers over the years.”

Bertram was not that much more satisfied with the results of the competition, and invited 60 new designers (most of them women) to contribute images, accompanied by essays by both designers and Nabokov scholars, for a book entitled Lolita: Story of a Cover Girl. The book will come out next spring; in the blog post you can check out a number of the images submitted to the contest, as well as a brief interview with Bertram, in which he touches on the ethical considerations that accompany creating a cover for Lolita (or even simply enjoying it as a novel), and the way that book covers can, indeed, change our perception of a book and its meaning.

Some of the images in the post are visually pleasing but entirely noncommittal from a thematic standpoint (e.g. Kelly Blair’s); I think the best combine cool wit with a deep sense of the ominous and invasive, i.e. Jamie Keenan’s:

– E

The New Deadwardians #1, by Dan Abnett & I. N. J. Culbard (2012) E

Reviewer: Emera
Date read: 7.22.2012
Book from: Personal collection

I know the universe loves me because there’s a new comic called The New Deadwardians, and it’s about vampires, zombies, and class conflicts in alternate Edwardian England. I saw the first issue (from March of this year; there are to be 8 issues total) still hanging around in a comic store, picked it up, read it as soon as I got home, and wished I had bought the rest.

The cover art gives away the punchline, though the first issue never says it outright: the English aristocracy have embraced vampirism – “the cure” – in order to escape the zombified lower classes. (It’s not clear yet what’s happened to the rest of the world.) As Twilight literalized class (and race) conflict via Bella’s choice between sleek, chilly, uber-white vampires vs. rough-n-tumble, blue-collar, Native American werewolves, so Deadwardians does with poker-faced pish-posh vampires vs. sloppy Cockney zombies. Caught in between are living servants, police officers, and other members of the working class, who also appear distantly as angry unionists demonstrating against the military zoning of London. The undead – and presumably some living survivors – have been pushed back beyond “Zone B,” and hence are referred to as Zone-B’s. Har de har. I also winced at the use of “Deadwardian” in the comic itself – it’s too cutesy to be believable in-universe. Luckily, it’s the only false note struck in this issue.

The protagonist is George Suttle, a vampirized detective afflicted with some degree of existential angst, and a pruny mum who should appeal to fans of Maggie Smith as the dowager duchess in Downton Abbey. The end of the issue sees Suttle confronted with a puzzling mystery: the murder of an already undead man.

Most of the issue is devoted to building up atmosphere and setting. Artist I. N. J. Culbard and colorist Patricia Mulvihill work gorgeously together in the ligne clair/clear-line style, with smooth inking and planes of muted color that emphasize the setting’s eerie placidity and the script’s deliberate, brooding pace. A scene of Suttle walking into his almost entirely deserted office building, its many untenanted desks draped over with white sheets, and numerous shots of meticulously rendered architecture looming over sparse inhabitants, recall the trademark scenes of deserted London streets that opened 28 Days Later – this is just a century earlier.

Gloomy atmosphere, sociopolitical satire, a burgeoning mystery, immersive art: I’m hooked. I can’t wait to see what Abnett and Culbard do with the rest of the series; I’m particularly excited to see how hard they’ll play the alternate history angle. The Edwardian era was characterized by both great economic disparity, and increasing social mobility and political activism – I can’t imagine the latter two will do very well against an immortal and literally parasitic upper class…

You can see a free 6-page preview of The New Deadwardians and a brief interview with Culbard here (source: L. A. Times – did you know they covered comics? I didn’t).

Go to:
Dan Abnett: bio and works reviewed

Aspirational reading

From Carl Sagan’s notes as an undergraduate: have a look at his list of planned “Outside Readings” for the “Autumn Quarter, 1954.” It’s an impressive sampling of scientific and Western thought; there’s Hubble, Oppenheimer, the Bible, André Gide – and also, of course, a science fiction anthology from Ballantine’s Star line. If I’m looking at the right one, it included short novels by Theodore Sturgeon, Lester Del Rey, and Jessamyn West.

– E

A dispatch from SDCC

What Neil Gaiman has been working on for the past 18 months.

If you’d like to cut to the chase: it’s a Sandman prequel, with art by DC artist JH Williams, explaining from what travails Morpheus was returning when he was captured by Roderick Burgess at the very beginning of the series. “This has been an incredibly long time coming. It was one of the few stories that actually felt, when I finished Sandman, like I had failed because I had not told this story.”

See Williams’ first piece of promotional art – which I quite enjoy, it’s a weird slick space-agey Art Deco-ish Klimt-y portrait of Dream – for the comic here! I have mixed feelings about prequels generally (when I saw that there were Watchmen prequels coming out, I… … …), but they’re shaded positive here since this is a story that’s always been a part of the Sandman universe; it just hadn’t yet been shared.

– E

Go to:

Neil Gaiman: bio and works reviewed