Yatterings

As a curio, I read Melissa de la Cruz’s Blue Bloods, the first of the Blue Blood YA vampire series. I’m certainly not in the right market (wrong sex, too old) but the book does worry me slightly. The blue is not so much royal but a paler shade…

Don’t get me wrong; fast reading fluff is fun. Occassionally you need to read something that does not make you think, reflect or want to do anything apart from just disengage brain and enjoy. Yet the rampant label dropping and commercialism are slightly worrying. At some level I understand (and remember) the social standing with regard to clothes and places to be seen in but the constant need for the various protagonists to belong limits the individual.

Schuyler van Alen, though moving in the same circles, never belongs to them, preferring to begin questioning the inner circle, the Blue Bloods. They control the social scene and operate like a fraternity to preserve their anonymity. So far the social scene becoems deterministic, that certain people will always rule. Underlining this there is a message that the reader needs to belong and that not belonging means that one is on the outside and somehow inferior. Even Schuyler who leaves the world temporarily appears to come back to the exclusivity.

At the same time, de la Cruz constantly links them to the Mayflower landings, linking it to the Roanoke disappearances and the legend “Croatoan”. Somehow this reminds me of Anne Rice when she started mixing all the mythologies together which de la Cruz does here: vampires, fallen angels, strange historical mysteries and devils. Rather than coming across as an American take on the vampire, it comes across as merely messy.

There’s something Twilightesque about the world, archaically out of touch and projecting a certain lifestyle though here de la Cruz opts for aspiration and attention rather than religion. It’s all about me, myself and I. Rather than looking towards the Story of the world, it tries to set down another layer on it; the arteries further thicken rather than thin, adding to the strain on the heart.

I’m sure that the series will do well and I may dip into it again but this is not a series that I’d actively try and follow.

A list I’m on had a link to this interview with Ursula le Guin on the Oregon Live website. Le Guin talks about the Google books settlement which she calls the “Google books grab” but the thing which shocked me was:

“There seems to be nothing to follow at this point except poetry … I do not seem to have a story to tell, which is very disappointing and upsetting to me because I love to write and I know how to do it.”

She, and I suspect other people, hope that it isn’t permanent but she appears to be busy with other things. One of ther questions raised is the idea of sf and writing fiction of “now” and the genres melding and perhaps the genre becoming less fun. I’m reminded of somethng that John Clute said to me about sf being the only genre which can deal with the new century / millennium. I need to dig out the reference but it is certainly one that requires thought and another blog post entirely. Le Guin does say though that:

I’ve never written about the future. I don’t know anything about the future. The future, as Milan Kundera said, is a big blank bore. We don’t know what it is.

It is certainly true of the sf (and perhaps fantasy) that I’ve (re-)read and love. Most sf fans know and appreciate this though and it is those from outside who appear to have an issue with this.

Anyhow the interview is an interesting read.

Just got back from a trip to the Czech Republic with photos and more prints (though a distinct lack of wall space). Anyhow Jim Steel, reviews editor at Interzone, let me know that Jesse Bullington has commented on my review of his book on his blog.

Jesse, I’m glad you liked it and, to be honest, that version of the review is the short one. I did plan a longer one but I’ll need to check out the issues for rewriting and whether I’m allowed to. Otherwise, I’ll need to find another way of doing it. It is however gratifying to find that reviews are being read.

AS Byatt has an interesting article on Alice in the Guardian as the film opens in the UK on March 5th. As she muses, she comes up with the idea that Alice and her other favourite childhood books are so popular because they encourage the reader to recreate themin their own mind.

The story of Alice is one that so many people have written stuff onto; hers is a body continually re-illustrated, re-written. I’m looking forward to seeing the Burton version of Alice as it is his version, not Carroll’s (which appears to confuse some).

I’ve just finished Jamila Gavin’s wonderful The Blood Stone (Egmont, 2003) which is a really unsettling but rewarding read. I read an interview with her in Wasafiri (Issue 60) which made me pick this up and I’ve made to attempts to read it twice but I’ve aways been too tired and this is certainly not a book to be read lightly.

When Geronimo Veroneo gies missing on trip to Hindustan, his wife and children are left alone in Venice suposedly under the protection of Bernardo Pagliarin. As the years goes on, Pagliarin coerces the daughter Elisabetta into marriage with him to gain control of the diamond, Ocean of the Moon. When news of Geronimo’s imprisonment comes through via a mysterious stranger who claims he was imprisoned with him, Filippo, the youngest son, is sent on the journey to Afghanistan with the diamand trepanned into his skull to free him.

It reminded me that Venice appears to occupy a strange location. As the Levant, it has always struck me as a strange crossing place for Europe and the Orient. It is neither part of the other and perhaps this is why Gavin uses it. Filippo’s journey exposes him to cultures of the Middle East, Hindustan and Afghanistan. Coming across the Dutchman in Basra, he hears tall tales of the sub-continent but he travels to the place and finds it stranger and perhaps more banal than anything his European acquaintance can dream up or repeat.

A salutory reminder of the way that ours, and his, views of other cultures are informed by what we read rather than necessarily experience, a peril of the Internet in that in can make armchair anthropologists of us. Despite our exposure to other culture, we can be reticent in experiencing them and challenging ourselves to find this through travel and exploration.The most extreme (and for some reason this reminds of nineteenth century fiction) example comes when he finds his father, who has been driven insane by his treatment. Holding on to his out of date memories, he does not recognise his own son and dies in Dilhi where he is buried. He is out of place where his son can find his own way through his experiences, his youth allows him to adapt far more readily

When he is the palace of the Shah Jehan, he meets a European lady who crosses cultures. Noor, or Marianne as her father prefers, was born in India, where she wants to stay and dance for the emperor.Her own preferance is for Noor and signifies her own desire to stay and assimilate herself into the rhythms of an adopted country with its cultural. Gavin encourages the reader to consider the notion of names and what they mean as a cultural marker. What is home for Noor / Marianne? Her father favours England although he would have a less wealthy standard of living. It is a cultural choice. Although Noor does get to dance for the Emperor it is not in an exalted position though she manages to make a living for herself.

Fate and the notion of the gods taking control, enters the frame and the most obvious link to Odysseus. Gavin drops in parts of the travels and their reliance on fate and quick thinking to survive. When the diamond is placed into his skull, Filippo sees the metaphysical world and learns to escape his own mental prison. I need to do more reading on the notion of third eyes but the stone functions certianly functions as one as Filippo learns to trust other people around him even if they do not share his own path.

The Blood Stone reflects on the desire for home and she reflects on what it means for the actors whilst updating the Odyssey in a subtle way. I’d heard an adaptation ofthe Corum Boy on the radio years ago and should be kicking myslef for not having followed up so quickly. I see Bali Rai’s City of Ghosts on my shelf which I’ll be reading shortly as Joan Aiken’s Stolen Lake (which is a library book and due back in the next couple of days)

I’ve just come across an argument on one of children’s mailing lists regarding Jaclyn Dolamore’s debut novel, Magic Under Glass. The publisher, Bloomsbury USA, have put a white girl on the cover of  a novel where the protagonist is dark-skinned which reprises the cover issues that Justine Larbalestier originally had for her novel, Liar.

The Reading in Color blog is apoplectic as are Ah Yuan and Aja Romano. All are calling for a boycott of Bloomsbury USA as one response and writing emails to the marketing department about this as another. Dolamore does not appear to have had any input to the cover but it does appear somewhat astonishing error from an American branch of the publisher, especially when done twice.

It does make me slightly curious as to how to approach this. I’m not sure that “don’t buy the book” is productive in the long term since it reinforces feelings that books won’t sell or that authors are difficult. Larbalestier, in the same post, questioned:

Are the big publishing houses really only in the business of selling books to white people? That’s not a very sustainable model if true.

I rather think, but do not definitely know, that the model is to sell to one demographic in this case, that these cases are more carelessness by designers thinking of standard covers. Larbalestier appears to have had a great Australian designer who “got” the book and reacted to it. Perhaps that was more luck than anything else.

Got a feeling that I’ll be ordering this through the library as its premise intrigues me.

The Guardian reports that another book in the seminal Gormenghast series is to be published in 2011. “Titus Awakes” was taken from notes left by Mervyn Peake byhis widow, Maeve Gilmore, who completed the book before her death which appears to bring the story to a natural conclusion. Sebastian Peake, who has championed his father’s work, comments “[t]he leitmotif of the whole thing is his search for some sort of final home”.

2011 is the centenary of Peake’s birth and sees the publication of a new edition of the original trilogy with 60 extra drawings as well as this novel.

Just a quick note to mention that the new term list for the Oxford Children’s Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium series of seminars has now been posted. I’ve presented and been to a couple of these and they really are good. Shame their not online afterwards though.

Jonathan Lethem is one of those writers whom I admire but don’t pretend to always “Get”. On and off, I’ve begun (re)reading his books which I’ve got on my shelf and I’ll probably try and get hold of his comic as well. I think I interviewed him for The Third Alternative (as it was then) for Fortress of Solitude but I can’t find the issue so I’ll assume it was my imagination.

Gaby Wood of the Observer has a great interview with him for his new book, Chronic City, in which he moves his attention to Manhattan from the previous attention to Brooklyn where he grew up.

What I had not appreciated fully was how much of a psychogeographer of his area that he is. Like Iain Sinclair or Peter Ackroyd on London, he delves into the known and personal histories of the city. New York become something tangibly different and deeply personal. I rather suspect that each reader sees a different city, one resonates differently to them. It’s not just a reader response but the way that he blends the personal and public.

There is something else that also intrigues me about him and also Michael Chabon (which I think China Miéville also does) and that is to write fiction that is aware of genre but not to worry about writing genre fiction. He happily moves through sf and the Western, film, music (Observer article on his dancing career here) and literature without appearing to worry about the boundaries. All that really matters is the best way to narrate his Story.

The publication of Chronic City has made me come back to him and to re-enjoy him. No doubt, like a favoured record, I’ll come across books that I really don’t ‘get’ or enjoy but perhaps I can take that in my stride.

Front Row interview (iPlayer so it’s on a limited time – sorry!)

I’ve started catching up on some favourite authors who I’d put down whilst trying to finish my own book and finally got around to reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. Right from the top, I think this is Cory’s best novel to date and his most accomplished. Makers is a generational musing on the idea of the hacker and how it has changed over last 20 or so years in a slightly stilted generational form which emphasises the time changes.

In the first part, we see Perry and Lester who invent things and an new economics, New Work. Initially it appears to work but bursts in gigantic bubble as it is commercialised, expanding far faster than anticipated. Bad decisions made for the best reasons come back to haunt the players as their worlds are adopted by players who don’t understand their ethic or technologies that they adopt.

Part 2 explores the consequence of that collapse and how the players deal with the commercalisation (or at least Disneyfication – he returns to his obsession with Disney and its rides) of the ideal. There are moments when his antagonism to the corporate antics of media companies does get in the way of the fine exploration of the way that the corporate creative economy tries to repackage commodified versions of the ideas without understanding their history. Sammy, the Disney exec, spends an inordinate amount of time trying to shut Lester and Perry down but eventually replicates their ideas but in locked format, leading them to rehack the idea and open it up again.

Part 3 follows the rise again of Lester and Perry getting back to the basics of what they like doing: making things. Suzanne, the blogger who has followed them since the beginning, charts them coming to an arrangement with Sammy.Perhaps nothing has fundamentally changed for either character, each living with their choices, but Doctorow uses them to explore the changing nature of hacking. Whilst Lester and Perry are true hackers and inventers, they open up the protocols to their rides for others to use and encourage remix culture. The nature of hacking therefore changes with the re-use of materials rather than seeing them making new things from scratch. Its a theme that Doctorow has come back to again, with the other editors, on BoingBoing and where he has an interest.

Doctorow also explores the idea of the changing society and is perhaps less optimistic, more sanguine about it that the earlier Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or Eastern Standard Tribe. On his website he comments:

I wrote it years before the current econopocalypse, as a parable about the amazing blossoming of creativity and energy that I saw in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash, after all the money dried up.

His view on society has certainly changed in the last few years, from what comes across as pehaps over optimistic to the pessimism of Little Brother. It seems here that he’s taken step back and to the better as his world is more nuanced.

It is still fresh and an exciting, thoughtful read. As ever there is a free download available on his website.