the art of war

My duskglass.net strategy approaches the target from two different vantage points. First, I will examine the novel's language and culture using a critical method based in whatever I am thinking about at the time. Then, I will identify other manifestations of Uskglass-like characters in books that are not Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Also, there's a trebuchet (no there isn't).

The Uskglass parts aren't as hard as the other stuff; I think Clarke's character is such a deep-myth relic that other interpretations of it are relatively common. Uskglass has some direct (that Wikipedia image is an abomination) precursors (that Wikipedia image is also an abomination) in traditional British literature, but I'm currently pursuing antecedents in other cultures — early work has indicated possible involvement by Classical mythology, and maybe even some shady Yahweh influences. These parts are not only less than but also much different from the sum of their accumulation, of course. The transmitted object is not the clean, stable lines of some hypothetical story-symbol, but an atmosphere of mystery. Eventually the mystery usurps, and then erases, whatever was intended to be signified in the first place — and then the story itself becomes an expression of unnameable mystery. Nobody cares about that kind of thing but me, probably; I don't mind. I'm not working for tips. Vague antiquities aside, one of my favorite semi-Uskglasses appears in a recent YA novel called Archivist Wasp, in the person of a seductively nameless ghost who severs the novel's protagonist from the narrative of her own existence and initiates her transformation into the World Savior. Look at this:

The ghost was sitting in her only chair, surrounded by mismatched stacks of paper in various degrees of fire-damage, water-damage, unidentifiable staining, mildew, and general dissolution. It appeared to be reading her field notes.
“Get your boots off my table,” she snapped, and did not quite squirm under the look it fixed her with, or under the ensuing silence as it went back to reading.
Force of habit, she found herself studying it. It was all she could do not to pull out her notebook and start sketching it on the spot. Its clothing was basic and dark, something like a uniform but not one she recognized from any ghost she’d seen before. The gun and sword were in its belt. The ghost turned pages with a trained precision, a spring-loaded sort of predatory grace in which no fraction of any movement went wasted. Between its person and its clothing there was no color to it anywhere; it was all pale and dark, with those gray eyes. Its face was sharp, guarded, possessed of an icy and immaculate calm. Its posture was miles better than hers. It hadn’t moved its boots.
Usually Wasp didn’t find silences awkward and felt no need to fill them with pointless chatter, but this, this was unendurable.
“I didn’t know you could read,” she said.

And:

The ghost cut its eyes at her, pure scorn. “I see they were mistaken.”
It dropped a mocking little bow before her and walked out, trailing what remaining bonds of salt and blood she’d not yet broken, which it had snapped at whim.

I really, really, really like Archivist Wasp. I was going to review a series of YA novels last year, which I thought would be both fun and perhaps surprising. I find the Millennialesque reshuffling of gender norms inspiring, so why not their vision of the bildungsroman? Haha, what a gullible fool I am. After attempting to survive about twenty different popular books, chosen for their genre themes from Amazon, I begged off without even really starting. The worst, most conservative, heteronormative, claustrophobic, depressing, old-fashioned writing in the world is currently happening in the realm of YA novels. All the genre's heroines are exceptionally-ordinary self-inserts who are constrictingly adored by boring (and often violent) hunks. It's hunk after hunk after sad-manbaby 1950s beefcake hunk in the Young Adult World, all rendered in a primary-color paint-by-numbers palette that would strike a frustrated mid-century housewife as uninspiring. But Archivist Wasp isn't like that! Is, in fact, exactly not like that. (The ghost's lack of a gendered pronoun is suggestive, is what I'm telling you.) It was one of two YA novels published in the last 30 years by someone not named Ursula K. Le Guin that didn't make me want to kill myself. I highly recommend it, both for the Uskglass mirror-content and for itself. Best DRM-free $10 you'll ever spend. I hope there's a sequel. (That's a joke.) (Most YA novels are half-a-book's worth of content spread out into 34876 commemorative volumes.) (I would indeed be very happy to read Archivist Wasp: The Second, however.)

Well. I've also been doing a lot of reading, for the last couple of years, that pertains (in my imagination, at least) to JS&MN's literary contexts. Probably my most favorite of the contexts are written by Robert Aickman, who until very recently I believed to be a lesbian operating under a pseudonym. Aickman was not a lesbian, it turns out, but rather a very large, fluffy British cat that, in the 1950s and 60s, gained access to, and somehow learned to operate, a typewriter. I've read nearly everything Aickman ever published; I had to import hard copies of The Late Breakfasters (favorite) and The Model (not a favorite), but I read those, too. The Late Breakfasters is much different than the rest of Aickman's work, most of which he self-identified as "strange stories" because of some German mood-word that the late Mark Fisher was also interested in, and which I don't understand at all but will try to deal with later. Breakfasters has some weird-fiction attributes in common with the rest of Aickman's canon, but I believe it's primarily intended to be a social satire (?). Like Animal Farm, maybe (?), but with people. People Farm? Maybe. It's full of political and cultural details I don't get, or even understand how to unpack, but which Aickman presents in a way that makes them seem both ludicrous and performative. So... satire, right? Who knows. I identified hard with the novel's protagonist, Griselda. I consider that my life has mostly been an attenuated escape from the Geoffrey Kynastons of the world, and a simultaneous, resolute flight toward Louise. Although, unlike Griselda, I was never privileged to actually fuck Louise; I've only ever read about her in books. Still, it's maddening to imagine that she exists in the world somewhere, and I can't get to her. I'm going to keep looking. (I do realize.)

Despite the buildup, this excerpt isn't from The Late Breakfasters. I have discovered that it's hard to excerpt the book and have it look suitably meaningful, because the story is so involved with its own conditions and symbols. This is from "Bind Your Hair," a very strange story that appeared in Dark Entries:

The next morning Clarinda had to admit to herself that she was very depressed. As she lay in bed watching wisps of late-autumn fog drift and swirl past her window, she felt that inside the house was a warm and cosy emptiness in which she was about to be lost. She saw herself, her real self, for ever suspended in blackness, howling in the lonely dark, miserable and unheard; while her other, outer self went smiling through an endless purposeless routine of love for and compliance with a family and a community of friends which, however excellent, were exceedingly unlike her, in some way that she did not fully understand.

omg it me

More when I find it.

uprooted, naomi novik

The shorter of this review is: The novel was thematically indiscriminate and inappropriately old-fashioned, and Novik seemed to have no control over the mechanism of the story — but I am always #dtf wizards. Here's the longer:

[AND OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE A GREAT MANY SPOILERS]

I have the same problem with Uprooted that I had with Novik's very successful genre franchise Temeraire/Her His Majesty's Dragon ¹ (whoops!), which is that it is sordidly, pointlessly conservative and it makes me want to vomit. Temeraire is, in fact, much easier to detest than Uprooted, because it possesses an authority-worshipper's monomania for the war-theatrics of colonial-era England (and France), a temporal location for which hatred is painless — which, indeed, invites hatred. Everyone who matters has disavowed all the things that colonial Europe celebrated, pursued, and believed in; uninhabited now (or, "now inhabited only by barbarians"), it's become a safe place to romanticize, to cleanse of its intrinsic annihilative compulsions and retcon into a fairytale kingdom that only makes the kinds of mistakes that can be fixed.

This fills me with a mindless, igneous rage.²

Uprooted is more subversive even than that, though! It hides behind the same lopsided romanticization of a familiar elsewhere, but instead of occupying itself with various babyish wargames it attempts, among other objectionable goals, to equate goodness with guilelessness.

Begin at the beginning: Uprooted is a genre romance novel, sort of; looked at dispassionately, it's a slightly dirty fanfiction dedicated to the popular pairing The Great Magician/Nerdy Female Reader. The novel's love object is a wizard called "the Dragon" (lol), who is mostly just a more athletic version of Snape, but tethered to the mystical architecture of Luthe the Mage-Master (we have discussed Luthe elsewhere) (if you don't know him, you should contrive to meet him forthwith) (basically Luthe is a less-scary version of Galadriel) (but with a penis) (he self-reports a penis) and with a few elements of Howl stuck onto the back end of him to make the novel's conclusion look bittersweet and strange. And maybe also some Chrestomanci? The Dragon isn't as glamorous as Chrestomanci, for certain, but he shares that character's enthusiasm for dressing like Liberace. The much-less-interesting heroine is an amalgam of Hermione, Sophie, and, as I mentioned earlier, the Reader. I began to have some real trouble with the story because of this character, whose name is Enoby Agnieszka, because there was a very wide, very cold expanse of blank space separating her perception of the story's reality from my own (no, I don't think it was fancy postmodern backtalk). The fantasy landscape that surrounds the two protagonists is above average, in fact, but it includes some peculiar topography and is mostly just a map, if you see what I mean (you will).

The novel's plot is this —

In a fake version of feudal Poland, some shitty little rural towns are perpetually menaced by an evil enchanted Wood that ruins the people's crops and food animals and turns them intermittently into homicidal maniacs, by means of an impenetrable magic. Therefore, there are wizards. This one wizard collects girls, but he lets them go later, and on one special occasion he chooses to collect the novel's narrator instead of her importantly pretty friend. The wizard is very mean to the narrator, and doses her with invalidating insults at every encounter, while also saving the lives of the poor farmers that live around his castle. The narrator haphazardly performs tasks of domestic servitude for the wizard, while constantly and silently monologuing about how boring and ordinary she is, and how everything that happens to her is frightening in one way or another. It looks for awhile like the wizard has apprenticed the narrator in vain, because she sucks at magic — but later, after some scary things happen, it turns out that the narrator is actually really great at magic, because she has Feelings and also understands the tiny lives of the poor/the whispers of the wind. Suddenly the narrator's pretty friend has been eaten by the evil Wood! The narrator saves her, with Feelings, but the pretty friend is now a superhero. This is presented as a minor tragedy. Also there's a handsome and bellicose prince, who is both rapey and transiently villainous (he represents Toxic Masculinity) (much different from the masculinity practiced by the Dragon, which is 100% legit). Subsequently, many dumb and confusing events occur; they are all boring. The narrator is, for various reasons, forced to go to the City all by herself, where she finds that literally everyone is small-hearted, superficial, and vicious. They laugh at her because she's boring and ordinary and lived on a farm. This is presented as a tragedy of colossal proportions. Then the narrator realizes she loves the wizard, sort of, and other confusing and complicated things happen. They too are boring. The narrator, who has inexplicably become a powerful magician, goes back home and has sex with the wizard, but she is sad because he doesn't have Feelings, not like she does. There's an epic, unusual battle between the forces of Good and Evil, and then a long denouement which is not super-consistent in either its tone or structure. The reader learns the secret of the evil Wood. It is one million times more interesting than the rest of the book. Then there is a happy ending, for certain questionable definitions of the words "happy" and "ending."

book reviews, part one of ∞

Oh my god, I forgot!

"Friday" is very similar in construction to "Wednesday," ask any expert.

Rather than writing stupid capsule summaries of these books — you can look those up on Wikipedia or Amazon, you goddamn lazy bastard —  I have tried to convey a general idea of what they felt like to me, and to communicate whether I found them worthwhile diversions, without going into elaborate specifics about their plots. I don’t want to spoil a great story for anybody, obviously, but also I frequently disagree with other readers about what constitutes a spoiler. I never really know what to mark. You should consider that all these micro-reviews contain bales and bales of unmarked spoilers — or perhaps no spoilers at all. We’re all mad here. Let’s do it:

Daybreak On A Different Mountain, Colin Greenland - Currently in purgatory. Although very well-written and intelligently plotted (it seems to contain the rudiments of some of the John Uskglass parts of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) (Greenland is Clarke’s husband, and the two met during one of Greenland’s writing workshops) (Daybreak was published in the 80s), this novel has two of the most obnoxious protagonists ever in history. One of them is an unrepentant pederast, and he’s by far the less-annoying one. The book does a pretty decent job of suggesting that its female and non-straight characters are worthily human, but it also features a bit of instructive, violent misogyny and a creepy association between physical deformity and spiritual impurity — which, to be fair, might get finessed in the novel’s conclusion in a way that could turn out to be inoffensive. (If I ever get there to meet it.) I absolutely loved Greenland’s Plenty Series when I was in high school, though, and I would certainly consider reading the author’s other works. And maybe also finishing this one, when I’m in a better mood.

Elidor, Alan Garner - A childhood favorite! It felt less cohesive and explicable to me as an adult, but that will happen. Also, the confluence and eventual intersection of recognizable reality and the novel’s fantasy realm is handled in a much scarier and more interesting way than similar events that appear in most children’s fantasy novels. I am looking at you, Harry Potter and the. (And also at all the other children’s fantasy novels.) Also, there is a unicorn. That’s very important. I would, and have, read other Garner books.

Lud-In-The-Mist, Hope Mirrlees - This novel is almost certainly the birthplace of John Uskglass proper, whose narrative forefather appears here in the form of a horrible, jolly, rapey Lord of Misrule named Duke Aubrey. One cannot help one’s relatives, of course; 47% of my fuckheaded family voted for Donald Trump. I’m trying not to hold it against him. The novel itself is quite weird, and suffers (as nearly all novels do) from a shortage of fairy action — but it’s still a haunting and beautiful work, and worth tracking down. If you’ve read it and think you know what’s happening in it, please feel free to look me up and explain it to me. ("Something something the transformations of magic as a metaphor for the ecstatic transcendence of death something something something"?) Also: It appears that "Lud" could be the Aulde Tymes word that mutated, eventually, into the modern name "London," a fact which you may or may not find edifying. And: The ebook’s cover borders upon "malicious vandalism." (A common problem for old books put out by philanthropic epublishers.) Many thanks to the Big Bad Bald Bastard for recommending this novel to me; I’m sorry it took me so long to say thank you. I would read more work by Mirrlees, but she’s been dead for ages now and her other two books are regular realist fiction :[

Among Others, Jo Walton - A really wonderful, unique fantasy novel. I read Among Others years ago when it first came out, but I couldn’t remember it very well & so I decided to go through it again. It’s a metafictional text, I guess, but postmodern novels usually go out of their way to be obnoxious about themselves, and this book isn’t like that at all. Narrative works as a symbol and a signifier in Among Others — as does magic — but it’s also just a story. Things that I’d remembered as textual flaws the first time around seemed on this reading to be sophisticated character work (subtle, unconscious misogyny as an expression of discomfort with your designated identity, for example), and the only element I ended up actively disliking was the boring rebellious super-gorgeous boyfriend. But, even he was a manifestation of the self-fulfilling powers of storytelling, in the end. (I think.) Recommended highly, and I would certainly read more of Walton’s novels/stories. (I hope she minimizes further readerly contact with ultra-beautiful dreamboats, however.)

This Census-Taker, China Miéville - I have no real idea what the material events in this novella actually consist of, which I gather is more a feature than a bug when it comes to Miéville, but I had an intense emotional reaction to the story & I read it from cover to cover without stopping. Effortlessly attuned to the humanness of its characters, no tacky world-building, lots of very original detail which rendered his setting explicable while also dislocating it from anything identifiable as reality. Frightening violence which was not instructive at all. I’ve never read anything else by Miéville despite the fact that he’s a heavily-hyped critical favorite; I’ve always been skeptical of the "urban fantasy" aesthetic in general, and also my only other contact with the author was a whiny editorial he published on the Wall Street Journal website (?) complaining that hyperrealistic CGI effects in movies like Avatar will murder the imaginations of the children of the future (???). Nobody’s perfect. My only real problem with This Census-Taker is that it used as an epigram (and praised in a postscript) the writing of an author named Jane Gaskell, whose novel The Serpent I made the terrible decision to subsequently purchase. The Serpent is one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever tried to read. It’s a fucking romance novel. It’s not even a good romance novel!!! It praises the feministic virtues of tanning!!!!! At this point I was going to say, "it was so awful that the next time Miéville comes to the US I’m going to go to a book signing and throw a shoe at his face," but I just Googled him to find that WSJ link and he’s pretty scary-looking. So I’ll just frown at him from afar. Anyway: I have purchased Perdido Street Station and I intend to read it next. (Or "next," probably.)

A Darker Shade Of Magic, V.E. Schwab - "How can I combine my mindless love of otome games, Doctor Who, and Game of Thrones in a way that suggests all my writing experience was earned in the creation of erotic Sherlock fanfiction?" thought author V.E. Schwab, who is a moron, one day. And then he or she or etc. wrote A Darker Shade of Magic, an incredibly shitty and boring novel (with a weary magical bishounen hero), which I read 38 pages of before deleting. No more V.E. Schwab novels.

A Knot In The Grain, Robin McKinley - I am a major McKinley fan, to my continuing surprise, but this short-story collection isn’t her strongest. However, its first two stories, "The Healer" and "The Stag-Man," allowed me to spend some time in the company of Luthe the Mage-Master, one of my favorite characters ever (shut up, you don’t know him). Don’t let this be your first McKinley (your first McKinley should be Sunshine, which is fucking amazing) — but it’s okay.

A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, Harry Harrison - This book stars out with the kind of vicious misanthropy I associate with British writers, who can bleed you dry of human sympathy before you even notice you’ve been cut, and so I was surprised to discover that Harrison is American. There are, indeed, reasons for this secretive contrivance of narrative identity, but if I tell you what they are I’ll spoil the novel’s Twist, and then there would be no reason for you to read it. So I won’t do that (don't waste my love and look it up) — I will, say, however, that it’s all disposed of very elegantly, considering the large number of novels that feature similar Twists and are terrible (Newt Gingrich, I'm looking at you). As a matter of fact, it may be that A Transatlantic Tunnel was the first book to perform this particular Twist in public! (It was written in the 60s.) But I don’t know for sure, sorry. I didn’t like this book enough to finish it, but I can see where someone else might think it’s really terrific (NEWT). I would try other Harrison novels.

And Other Stories, Emma Bull & Will Shetterly - A very uneven collection, with stories that are unreadably boring ("all of the stories written by Will Shetterly") and stories that are pretty great ("most of the stories written by Emma Bull"). I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re into slightly less than half a book of short fantasy stories with a crummy cover, this might be your new favorite. I like Emma Bull, but I’m not sure I would go for any Shetterly books in the future.

More on Monday, or on whatever day of the week I happen to remember I have a blog.