A Wednesday in the Hand
Jan. 23rd, 2019 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
In It Was the Nightingale, Phil Maddison loses his unconvincing wife (to childbirth complications), loses his highly convincing otter (to his own sadness and a rabbit trap), goes tramping around the country looking for the otter and meets some down-at-the-heel toffs on the otter hunting circuit, gains a more convincing, because less idealized wife and a heightened sense of class anxiety, mends fences a bit with his parents and sisters, tries and fails to write more books about himself, and decides to write a book about an otter.
There is a great crushing moment when Phil sends his fiancee a clipping about some neurotic artist guy with marital problems, with the note, "I am exactly the same sort of character." She writes back that she doesn't see why either of them should care about some loser who can't get his life together, and that "we will be different," which makes him feel indescribably lonely. Poor Phil probably shouldn't get married if he's having so many doubts about it, but he does anyway, probably because Williamson did anyway; also he can't go on letting local-color farm families do all the cooking and child care for him forever while he chases otters and puts off writing about the war.
What I've Been Complaining About
The January issue of Poetry comes bearing a redesign, along with an editorial all about how the publishers of Poetry see you itching to complain about the redesign, but slow your roll, Grandpa Simpson; shrinking the font and margins and shoving everything up into the upper left corner of the page "allows for more new forms of poetry - pieces that are paving the way toward the future of the art form." I do not like the new design. I think it's crowded and clumsy-looking compared to the old. But I also appreciate the elegant snideness with which Don Share, Editor, has chosen to pre-empt all my complants with insinuations about my hideboundness and quotes from Poetry founder Harriet Monroe about the limits of tradition.
What I'm Reading Now
A Wizard of Earthsea is a great book that I wish I'd read when I was nine or ten, but am happy to be reading now. When he was just a child at wizard school, Ged made a stupid and terrible mistake. Now that he has grown up to be a very young wizard, he is trying to undo the damage, or at least to live with it as non-destructively as possible. Every chapter is an emotional rollercoaster.
I'm also re-reading Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century, which is so general a history of British and Also American Women Doing Stuff in the Past that it's more of an annotated bibliography than a book. It's not bad! But it's very breezy and scattered and tries to cover so many disparate groups at once that I don't find it very satisfying as a reading experience, as opposed to a grove or bramble from which I can pick names to read about later.
What I Plan to Read Next
Probably more Henry Williamson, when I get the chance. And Stories of Your Life and Others, a short story collection by Ted Chiang, for the infrequent book club.
In It Was the Nightingale, Phil Maddison loses his unconvincing wife (to childbirth complications), loses his highly convincing otter (to his own sadness and a rabbit trap), goes tramping around the country looking for the otter and meets some down-at-the-heel toffs on the otter hunting circuit, gains a more convincing, because less idealized wife and a heightened sense of class anxiety, mends fences a bit with his parents and sisters, tries and fails to write more books about himself, and decides to write a book about an otter.
There is a great crushing moment when Phil sends his fiancee a clipping about some neurotic artist guy with marital problems, with the note, "I am exactly the same sort of character." She writes back that she doesn't see why either of them should care about some loser who can't get his life together, and that "we will be different," which makes him feel indescribably lonely. Poor Phil probably shouldn't get married if he's having so many doubts about it, but he does anyway, probably because Williamson did anyway; also he can't go on letting local-color farm families do all the cooking and child care for him forever while he chases otters and puts off writing about the war.
What I've Been Complaining About
The January issue of Poetry comes bearing a redesign, along with an editorial all about how the publishers of Poetry see you itching to complain about the redesign, but slow your roll, Grandpa Simpson; shrinking the font and margins and shoving everything up into the upper left corner of the page "allows for more new forms of poetry - pieces that are paving the way toward the future of the art form." I do not like the new design. I think it's crowded and clumsy-looking compared to the old. But I also appreciate the elegant snideness with which Don Share, Editor, has chosen to pre-empt all my complants with insinuations about my hideboundness and quotes from Poetry founder Harriet Monroe about the limits of tradition.
What I'm Reading Now
A Wizard of Earthsea is a great book that I wish I'd read when I was nine or ten, but am happy to be reading now. When he was just a child at wizard school, Ged made a stupid and terrible mistake. Now that he has grown up to be a very young wizard, he is trying to undo the damage, or at least to live with it as non-destructively as possible. Every chapter is an emotional rollercoaster.
I'm also re-reading Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century, which is so general a history of British and Also American Women Doing Stuff in the Past that it's more of an annotated bibliography than a book. It's not bad! But it's very breezy and scattered and tries to cover so many disparate groups at once that I don't find it very satisfying as a reading experience, as opposed to a grove or bramble from which I can pick names to read about later.
What I Plan to Read Next
Probably more Henry Williamson, when I get the chance. And Stories of Your Life and Others, a short story collection by Ted Chiang, for the infrequent book club.
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Date: 2019-01-23 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 02:50 am (UTC)The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight is by the guy who wrote Tarka the Otter, right? Maybe I should read Tarka as, like, a companion piece to your epic read of the Chronicle.
I'm kind of impressed by the chutzpah of the Poetry editors, tbh.
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Date: 2019-01-24 04:48 pm (UTC)You'll be happy to know that the otter in this book lives - just not with Phil. It loses two toes in the rabbit trap, and bites him when he releases it, then otters away into the open world where, arguably, it belongs. Like the unconvincing wife who truly understands and loves him for who he is, the wild animal companion is a dream Phil can't hold onto for long.
I'm kind of impressed by the chutzpah of the Poetry editors, tbh.
Same here. I hate the redesign, but with the chutzpah I'm a little in love.
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Date: 2019-01-24 09:52 pm (UTC)I'm glad Phil's otter escapes back to the wild! Doubtless it will be happier there, even missing a few toes.
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Date: 2019-01-24 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-27 02:36 pm (UTC)