nineteen: a medley of extemporanea/the clip show episode
Issue nineteen comes to you from the day after my first vaccine shot, which I booked entirely off from every form of toil in case of bad side effects and--is turning out to be a rather nice spring afternoon with big fat white clouds, music, and a slightly sore arm.
So I am doing the last formatting pass on this while rewatching the entire first (short, hilarious, delightful) season of The Way of the Househusband on Netflix, which deeply speaks to me because I too wish to quit the drama-high world of the yakuza to become a househusband and grow balcony veggies and do DIY projects for the neighbours. I will tell my Roomba to sleep with the fishes.
Things et for birthdays (as in the past tense of eaten)
On that topic (I have a dog named segue) I had my second lockdown birthday this month, obviously restricted as we're still under a stay-at-home order here for at least another two weeks, maybe four? It hasn't been decided yet. But it meant another year of being creative about one's fun in the space I have.
So since I haven't been to Readercon (or Boston) since 2016, we recreated as best we could a Summer Shack binge dinner at home. In-home pop-up seafood restaurant included shrimp cocktails, sake-steamed Manila clams with rice pilaf, Japanese-style potato salad, apple coleslaw, lobster with drawn butter, and lemon pudding for dessert, since we didn't quite have all the ingredients for the Bananas Foster pudding we had there on the last visit. There could have been oysters (our fish store had them), but I have no idea how to safely shuck an oyster at home; I kind of want to learn, when things are better and it isn't the kind of ruined decadent-splendour skill that would probably get a person killed offscreen as the protagonist walks slowly down the road, pan to moody horizon shot.
But: shrimp cocktail sauce is shockingly easy to make. A little ketchup, a little horseradish, a little lemon juice, and you're mostly there save personal flavour adjustments. It's like watching the curtain come down and seeing Oz as a messy-haired old man. Except a little brighter, because hey, I can have this all the time now. Do you know how many things you can dip in seafood sauce? I am here to tell you: It is a lot. Like the universe, that field is ever-expanding.
Things read
At this late juncture, I've finally started reading Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I'm three deep (Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death) and finding their mix of wit and systems thinking and introspection, of post-influenza precautions, WWI aftermath, and determined coping mechanisms very relatable right now, in a comforting way. People have been here before; people have seen worse. There has been, in hard times, acknowledgment of full human complexity.
They're really good mysteries, and I appreciate the little kindnesses they sprinkle around here and there, like slips of paper tucked between pages ("and after all, one can't really blame people if it's just that they need an outlet. I mean, why be bitter? They can't help it. I think it's much kinder to give them an outlet than to make fun of them in books--and, after all, it isn't very difficult to write books."). Like: geez, yes, thank you. Prosocial action reaches out its hand from the last century, like a revenant, into today.
What I'm sticking on as I read is the memory of a few people characterizing these books as antisemitic. The problem is, I don't remember who: just the idea floating around recurrently in some places they were mentioned, of these books as particularly problematic toward Jews.
It's the kind of thing I wish I could have a long bar conversation about -- some of it the kind of thing I'd usually put on Twitter to see who had an interesting thought to add to it, if I didn't have to preface everything I put on Twitter this year with I promise I am not picking a fight and that reflexive need to hedge against assumed bad faith didn't make the whole enterprise exhausting. (A little after I drafted this, Maya, Sonya, and I did the thing really satisfyingly over on Facebook, so the itch is somewhat scratched here, thank you both.)
So I've been trawling around reviews, trying to see what other people are seeing as bad faith on Sayers's part so I can, well, meaningfully think about what's being said, and look there for myself. And in some cases, what I'm finding is that it seems to be the very mention of the thing. Which is not something disputable, because the universe she is rendering is engaging tangibly with antisemitism. Her fictional Britain is a world where people are baseline prejudiced against Jews. And I wonder if I'm coming at that differently, because I know a few things about that London. My grandmother was an alive Jewish person in London in the 1920s and 1930s (yes, she is still alive and in her nineties; she rode out the Blitz in place as a teenager, and she is the source of at least half my knowledge on how to walk through hell unkillable). The few stories she's told me about the day-to-day normalcies of that childhood paint a much rougher portrait of things than Sayers is offering up. I see someone (coded as an asshole) in a book throw out Jew-boy and think "yup, that sounds about right from what I've heard of it."
(Things my grandmother has told me: Apparently you did not read the Yiddish newspaper in public or on the bus in London in those years; it was dangerous and not done. The occasional snark characters deliver about people fumblingly passing; my family was one of those that were trying it. In the census records, the given names in my father's family get more earnestly, overcorrectingly British with every generation, and the skilledness of their professions -- and their financial stability -- go up with them. Antisemitism is all over the sparse records of my own family history like a wind, the kind you can pick out after the fact by the way everyone's bodies have gone crooked leaning against it.)
So the gap between what I see from that piece of context and what's been said/read into the gaps has me, despite the unknowability I'm working with in my own position as a reader, thinking about the relationships people form with their reading. I'm thinking about what people seem to want books to be to them, and I'm thinking about the Mr. Rogers truism that what is mentionable is manageable. I'm thinking about shame and the idea that even pointing out a difference constitutes an assault (as one reviewer seemed to feel), because it's so hardwired, as an assumption, for some that difference will equal violence. That in those spaces, it is baked in that difference constitutes a permission.
There are about five ways I could go with this idea -- five ways I jotted down and might be going -- but the one I'll throw out here is that reading can really be revelatory, just it's in the other direction than we mostly expect. You read, and your reactions don't tell you a thing about what the author did on purpose, really; but what you think they did on purpose -- what constitutes an act that needs a motivation, response, or curbing -- tells you a lot about the water you're in. What shortcuts you've formed about the world in your own head or which exist in your local space. What you've assumed is everyone's unmarked state.
I've had Joseph Gold's The Story Species out from the library for months now--a book on the psychology of reading, kindly recommended by August Bourré the last time I was picking at this particular King Rat readerly theory thing. I think it's time to crack that one open. It might have something useful to say about all this.
Things to read
"The Instructions" will be in the Spring 2021 issue of Neon Literary Magazine. It is an exoplanetary magical realist story about domestication, colonial exploitation, and wolves, aka the Susannah Moodie/Ursula Le Guin/Margaret Atwood Raise a Murderbaby Story. It is the best thing I have ever written, because it does exactly what I wanted it to without ever breaking that deliciously straight face. You can preorder here in print or ebook.
Update from last month: The Deadlands has very unsurprisingly funded after a very successful Kickstarter, and so that poem I mentioned, "Rows of Houses," will appear in one of the early issues (not the first issue, which drops May 19). I'll update when I have a when.
And finally: "The Death of the Gods", which ran in Uncanny Magazine last January, is a Prix Aurora Award nominee in the Best Poem/Song category. I've read some of the other pieces in that category so I'm not exactly fixing my heart on a win, but it's quite good company to be in. I get a continuing delight from seeing awards recognize work from lots of different people about a wide range of things, all in this one mode. We were this big on the inside all along. :)
So I am doing the last formatting pass on this while rewatching the entire first (short, hilarious, delightful) season of The Way of the Househusband on Netflix, which deeply speaks to me because I too wish to quit the drama-high world of the yakuza to become a househusband and grow balcony veggies and do DIY projects for the neighbours. I will tell my Roomba to sleep with the fishes.
Things et for birthdays (as in the past tense of eaten)
On that topic (I have a dog named segue) I had my second lockdown birthday this month, obviously restricted as we're still under a stay-at-home order here for at least another two weeks, maybe four? It hasn't been decided yet. But it meant another year of being creative about one's fun in the space I have.
So since I haven't been to Readercon (or Boston) since 2016, we recreated as best we could a Summer Shack binge dinner at home. In-home pop-up seafood restaurant included shrimp cocktails, sake-steamed Manila clams with rice pilaf, Japanese-style potato salad, apple coleslaw, lobster with drawn butter, and lemon pudding for dessert, since we didn't quite have all the ingredients for the Bananas Foster pudding we had there on the last visit. There could have been oysters (our fish store had them), but I have no idea how to safely shuck an oyster at home; I kind of want to learn, when things are better and it isn't the kind of ruined decadent-splendour skill that would probably get a person killed offscreen as the protagonist walks slowly down the road, pan to moody horizon shot.
But: shrimp cocktail sauce is shockingly easy to make. A little ketchup, a little horseradish, a little lemon juice, and you're mostly there save personal flavour adjustments. It's like watching the curtain come down and seeing Oz as a messy-haired old man. Except a little brighter, because hey, I can have this all the time now. Do you know how many things you can dip in seafood sauce? I am here to tell you: It is a lot. Like the universe, that field is ever-expanding.
Things read
At this late juncture, I've finally started reading Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I'm three deep (Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death) and finding their mix of wit and systems thinking and introspection, of post-influenza precautions, WWI aftermath, and determined coping mechanisms very relatable right now, in a comforting way. People have been here before; people have seen worse. There has been, in hard times, acknowledgment of full human complexity.
They're really good mysteries, and I appreciate the little kindnesses they sprinkle around here and there, like slips of paper tucked between pages ("and after all, one can't really blame people if it's just that they need an outlet. I mean, why be bitter? They can't help it. I think it's much kinder to give them an outlet than to make fun of them in books--and, after all, it isn't very difficult to write books."). Like: geez, yes, thank you. Prosocial action reaches out its hand from the last century, like a revenant, into today.
What I'm sticking on as I read is the memory of a few people characterizing these books as antisemitic. The problem is, I don't remember who: just the idea floating around recurrently in some places they were mentioned, of these books as particularly problematic toward Jews.
It's the kind of thing I wish I could have a long bar conversation about -- some of it the kind of thing I'd usually put on Twitter to see who had an interesting thought to add to it, if I didn't have to preface everything I put on Twitter this year with I promise I am not picking a fight and that reflexive need to hedge against assumed bad faith didn't make the whole enterprise exhausting. (A little after I drafted this, Maya, Sonya, and I did the thing really satisfyingly over on Facebook, so the itch is somewhat scratched here, thank you both.)
So I've been trawling around reviews, trying to see what other people are seeing as bad faith on Sayers's part so I can, well, meaningfully think about what's being said, and look there for myself. And in some cases, what I'm finding is that it seems to be the very mention of the thing. Which is not something disputable, because the universe she is rendering is engaging tangibly with antisemitism. Her fictional Britain is a world where people are baseline prejudiced against Jews. And I wonder if I'm coming at that differently, because I know a few things about that London. My grandmother was an alive Jewish person in London in the 1920s and 1930s (yes, she is still alive and in her nineties; she rode out the Blitz in place as a teenager, and she is the source of at least half my knowledge on how to walk through hell unkillable). The few stories she's told me about the day-to-day normalcies of that childhood paint a much rougher portrait of things than Sayers is offering up. I see someone (coded as an asshole) in a book throw out Jew-boy and think "yup, that sounds about right from what I've heard of it."
(Things my grandmother has told me: Apparently you did not read the Yiddish newspaper in public or on the bus in London in those years; it was dangerous and not done. The occasional snark characters deliver about people fumblingly passing; my family was one of those that were trying it. In the census records, the given names in my father's family get more earnestly, overcorrectingly British with every generation, and the skilledness of their professions -- and their financial stability -- go up with them. Antisemitism is all over the sparse records of my own family history like a wind, the kind you can pick out after the fact by the way everyone's bodies have gone crooked leaning against it.)
So the gap between what I see from that piece of context and what's been said/read into the gaps has me, despite the unknowability I'm working with in my own position as a reader, thinking about the relationships people form with their reading. I'm thinking about what people seem to want books to be to them, and I'm thinking about the Mr. Rogers truism that what is mentionable is manageable. I'm thinking about shame and the idea that even pointing out a difference constitutes an assault (as one reviewer seemed to feel), because it's so hardwired, as an assumption, for some that difference will equal violence. That in those spaces, it is baked in that difference constitutes a permission.
There are about five ways I could go with this idea -- five ways I jotted down and might be going -- but the one I'll throw out here is that reading can really be revelatory, just it's in the other direction than we mostly expect. You read, and your reactions don't tell you a thing about what the author did on purpose, really; but what you think they did on purpose -- what constitutes an act that needs a motivation, response, or curbing -- tells you a lot about the water you're in. What shortcuts you've formed about the world in your own head or which exist in your local space. What you've assumed is everyone's unmarked state.
I've had Joseph Gold's The Story Species out from the library for months now--a book on the psychology of reading, kindly recommended by August Bourré the last time I was picking at this particular King Rat readerly theory thing. I think it's time to crack that one open. It might have something useful to say about all this.
Things to read
"The Instructions" will be in the Spring 2021 issue of Neon Literary Magazine. It is an exoplanetary magical realist story about domestication, colonial exploitation, and wolves, aka the Susannah Moodie/Ursula Le Guin/Margaret Atwood Raise a Murderbaby Story. It is the best thing I have ever written, because it does exactly what I wanted it to without ever breaking that deliciously straight face. You can preorder here in print or ebook.
Update from last month: The Deadlands has very unsurprisingly funded after a very successful Kickstarter, and so that poem I mentioned, "Rows of Houses," will appear in one of the early issues (not the first issue, which drops May 19). I'll update when I have a when.
And finally: "The Death of the Gods", which ran in Uncanny Magazine last January, is a Prix Aurora Award nominee in the Best Poem/Song category. I've read some of the other pieces in that category so I'm not exactly fixing my heart on a win, but it's quite good company to be in. I get a continuing delight from seeing awards recognize work from lots of different people about a wide range of things, all in this one mode. We were this big on the inside all along. :)
*
And on that note, stay safe. We'll pick this up next month.
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