What Fools These Wednesdays Be

[evelyn_b]

Cross-posted from Livejournal

What I've Finished Reading

I liked Among Others a lot more than I expected to like it in the beginning, which was the opposite of my experience with The Just City. Mor has to choose between joining her dead sister in the world of the fairies and going back to her living boyfriend and their book club, then finds that she's already made the choice. The odd pacing and messy verisimilitude justifies itself in the end.

There is one strange scene toward the beginning of the book in which Mor's dad (whom she hasn't seen since she was a baby) gets drunk and tries to get in bed with her. Mor records this in her diary, then tries to normalize it with a couple of paragraphs about how there's probably nothing wrong with incest in principle, and she would like to be touched, but it just wasn't for her. Then Daniel goes back to being a normal well-meaning but awkward dad and the incident is never mentioned again. If I had to guess, I'd say that Walton includes these scenes of sexual threat (this one, the rapes in The Just City) because they're part of life and it would be dishonest to leave them out of a story just because the story also has fairies or time-traveling Greek gods. I find this admirable in theory but I also resent it a little.

This is a book that looks like it's going to be escapist comfort reading (young outsider loves books and talks to fairies!) but refuses from the start to conform to expectations. The magic in particular is a confusing, difficult and isolating obligation, like taking care of a sick relative. It can be beautiful - as in the understated final confrontation - but so can anything, once it's written down.

I didn't feel as much love and pain with A Fox Under my Cloak as I have for the others in the Henry Williamson sequence, but I don't know if it's because it's a weaker book or just because wars are less interesting than growing up. The war stuff isn't uninteresting to begin with, but it's starting to feel a little familiar, all the coat lice and bully beef and commanding officers who aren't all they're cracked up to be - which isn't fair of me at all.

What I'm Reading Now

A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene. Here I am, reading Graham Greene when I don't even have to - I don't know what's happened to me. It's short and it was in the free books bin at the used media superstore (along with a beautiful vintage edition of The Victim by Saul Bellow), and it's great so far; there's a guy on a boat who can't relate to anyone who laughs or enjoys a game of cards, and we don't know exactly why he's feeling so burnt out but this is Graham Greene we're talking about so some educated guessing is possible.

Also: it's time to read some poetry! Body Switch is a new book of poems by Terri Witek and it's pretty good. I know how to talk about poetry even less than I know how to talk about paragraphs, but I love the comment on the Portuguese title of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet: Livro do Desassossego:

an SOS hisses through the last gorgeous word (can our eyes take it in?) as if a person couldn't decide whether to ask for help or fall asleep.

I know that feeling! Maybe you do, too.

What I Plan to Read Next

Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood, maybe Portnoy's Complaint if I get to it.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I remember the narrowly-averted-incest scene. The book is so loosely structured and oddly shaped that I'm not sure it's out of place exactly (how would you even tell?), but like you I also resented it a little; as if Mor doesn't have enough problems already, you know? And the "well, I guess incest is okay but I'm not into it" thing seemed weird, although weird in a very period-appropriate way - I totally bought it as something Mor would think, but at the same time it's jarring.

I expected to resent the fact that it looks like escapist comfort reading and then really isn't, but the book makes that obvious from page one so actually I quite appreciated it. It's only when something pretends to be comfort reading to lull you in, and then near the end pulls the rug out from under you yelling "HAHA! All comfort is a delusion!" that I resent it.

How prominent are the rapes in The Just City? I've been vaguely planning to read it but if it's going to be all rape all the time then maybe not.

[evelyn_b]

Yeah, the diary musing definitely feels period-appropriate and true to Mor's character, but if the dad was going to be an ordinary non-incestuous inadequate awkward dad for the other 99.9% of the book, why couldn't Walton just have given him the full hundred percent? Because all things are marred and men are weak, I guess. As a decision by the author, I get it, but that doesn't mean I liked it. Mor has enough problems, like you said.

My resentment isn't a criticism, even - I was really wary throughout but by the end the subtle magic won me over.

The Just City is not all rape all the time, but it's an important part of the failure of the experiment that some of the citizens (gathered by time-traveling gods from a wide range of centuries) don't see anything wrong with forcing themselves on the proteges (also collected from all over time and "rescued" from slavery for the sake of the experimental city) and everyone just has to go on living together anyway, as in our unjust cities. There's one rape that's a major story element, and a brief but vivid offhand description of the rape of child slaves right at the beginning.

The latter was really just a detail, but it was the most disturbing because it happens in just a few words with no warning - just so you know this won't be one of those escapist stories. But that's my personal very subjective pet peeve; I hate it when I'm just innocently reading a sentence and then suddenly rape is happening. I don't mean that no one should ever write that way, or even that my reaction isn't overly precious and self-protective (like my reluctance to go anywhere where news programs might come into earshot) just that it's something I would avoid in most cases if given the chance.

Give The Just City a try! I have mixed feelings, I was bored a lot, and I didn't feel when I read it that it was totally successful (though I feel more favorably disposed toward it now that I'm not reading it anymore) but there were some things I really liked. Walton's definitely an interesting writer.

[thisbluespirit]

and it would be dishonest to leave them out of a story just because the story also has fairies or time-traveling Greek gods.

To be fair, Greek gods are pretty high on the list of types likely to commit incest/rape/dodgy sex while disguised as a swan etc. (Although it doesn't sound as if the gods are the ones doing this in the book, so I take your point, but it still made me grin a bit.)

(Have never read any of these people, so I have nothing more sensible to say.)

[evelyn_b]

Hah, you're right! I was just thinking about how "wacky fantasy elements = relaxing escapism land" in my expectations, even though I know my expectations are 100% unreliable.

The Greek gods are such a ridiculous crew. I've started reading the Iliad lately and idk, they just live to be capricious and petulant. Being a god is bad for the morals.