Collection

Have you ever found yourself feeling a kind of ... distrust, when you find out someone isn't a reader? Or special admiration, even a crush, on a writer? Even the smallest phrases can be great storytelling; I am able to clearly remember some of the things that have swept my heart away: Beloved Ex's calling me a wonderful bag of things. Humorous, sure. But ... "telling" in a way that was important to me. A girl who once said to me, I have a voice like rain and brownies baking. The friend who called me a flower-eyed waterfall. And Mr. X ... that time he said to me, "You use your wit and intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."

Why the self-aggrandizing intro, today? Well, READ on, my friends. On the evolution of storytelling. It keeps humanity alive, literally. And the best storytellers get the greatest rewards, in egalitarian communities. Hmm.

And now, a little consumer culture ...

Of all the people I have known in the 25-year SUV trend, I am aware of ONE who ever used their winch, and none who ever went offroading, or even camping. (In the 1970s, my cousins did have a proto-SUV, but they skiied and camped and hunted and used its immense capacity in full, though not every single time they drove it.) SUVs looked to my contrarian eyes like a Baby Boomer/yuppie fad from the start, and what rugged behavior I ever *have* seen with them seems to be confined to drivers imagining that "SUV" confers upon them not merely invulnerability but also immunity to the existence of others on the roads when it is snowy and/or icy. (Strangely, this does not appy to rain; everyone in this whole town seems to just *crawl* when there is rain, mist, or drizzle anywhere in a 50-mile radius. No matter what they drive.) Anyway, to the link, Batman: on SUVs, and the developing social structure in America, over the past 30 years. As always, there is room for quibbling here. But it's an interesting wider look at "trends" ...

The older I get, the more I LOVE investigative journalism. Doesn't matter when it's a couple or few years old; the detective stories hold up, and truly good writing never goes out of date. Here's a great piece about discovering provenance, and for my writer friends, stay tuned to the end - the bit about publishing a book is priceless.

Here is a joyous(-ish ...) stocking stuffer for you all! More demented cover fails with the Caustic Cover Critic, guesting over at the Australian Book Designers Association. Featuring: Jane AusTIN and Slash. You know you wanna click!

the thing he loves

May I say ... something?


Oh it did annoy me when they called me Little Nell.

But when I told Chuckie he mustn’t—when he stopped, I found I missed it. Gruff old Chuck. And only I got to call him Chuckie. My duckie, my fellow. And just after I turnt twenty-one, he called me Missus, and I confided to him the secret, I had liked to be *his* Little Nell. He allowed then he would be my Chuckie.

Chuck had all the flattering words for me until we married, but the garrison must be obeyed, and once he'd dipped me and done me, he was off ... and I sighed relief.

My pain I could not feel.

I never let it be heard. But Charles. He frightened me. No idea the tiger I had gripped by its tail. And when his tail was limp, it was his fists grew hard. When he found he could not be hot, then he grew cold, and Regent's Park—a place *I* never saw—made itself my refuge.

He loved me little, but long enough to make me his claim to shame.

It was a lucky thing; perhaps still thinking me their Little one, mum and da opened up and let me come home. We called me Glendell.

But the claim. Twas a noose on me.

Would I have worn it without a sigh? Had I known?

Did we play only the roles playwritten for us, or was my life—was Chuckie's—such a dark disgrace? Perchance he found the honor in it, and maybe just as well. The Wilde might have meant that was redemption.

Where lies the collateral? To Chuckie's—to Charles'—propitiation?

What is the measure of his death to mine?

A ballad. And eleven inches. More than the tiger's tail.


***


He must have thought I might actually come. Summoned to Regent's Park, where I had not been permitted to darken the doorways an they called me Mrs. Woolridge, I sent instead the letter asking him to 

Beat my face and snap your fingers, thinking I will come for more? Not so long as there is a bolt-hole, and I will bolt under a labor of moles, if it is safe from your visitation.

Those men. They did not wish him married in the first place, and they encouraged his dissent against me in the second—she has been untrue, she is posting more than the mail, old boy—and in the third, my neck and a razor.

Collection

Rest in peace, Wallace.

This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.

Revisiting the shareholder-first business model - courtesy of The New Yorker.

On the unexpectedly morbid history of ribbons as adornment. Naturally, this piece brings to mind the Beresford Ghost, and other stories.

To my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death.

I have to say, this makes more sense to me than fear, perhaps *especially* in the direst of circumstances - precisely because those people are facing deliverance from suffering.

The real point of this article - or, really, the research it discusses - is the guiding force in American healthcare: avoidance of death. I have known more than one person who would have been happier had they not been treated not-to-death, honestly. I do not intend to become the dying person constantly snatched back from the brink, either, and I don't wish to die in a hospital. This morning, I said to someone who said, "Getting old sucks!" "Yeah, but it beats the alternative." The fact is, sometimes death beats some of the medical alternatives, too. The trick is to know when to choose what. At some point, perhaps I will have the grace and blessing to choose not to incur obscene debt for life"saving" measures which prolong my agony and deplete my earthly resources. If I get there, I don't expect I'll face the end with horror or regret.

To people furious over the Kathy Griffin photo I ask, where were you when effigies of Obama were lynched and burned across the eight years of his administration...?

The Boston Globe has an EXCELLENT piece looking at the outrage surrounding the Trumpian Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar. And I say: um, yeah. Anyone who thinks this play is a celebration of assassination is ... well, let us use the term "uninformed" to be kind.

Throwback post - because it needs to be said. Again and again and again.

And again. Because we KNOW it's about power, not sex.

"Thank you, Eddie Izzard" - or - Tell Me a Story!

Somewhere along August or September of 2015, a work friend and I began making a point of getting some exercise regularly. Weather being what it is at that time of year, we first began by using the walking trails at our office. We work in, essentially, the local swamp. (Well, one of them.) So the walking trails have these awesomely hilarious signs, CAUTIONING the world that this is a WILDLIFE AREA.

The wildlife generally spotted about has consisted of turkeys, deer, and eagles, but one hears tales of snakes and bears (bit of a rabbit), and not far from here I do know there is a finned carp in a pond that'd give almost anyone a bit of a pause, as it is wont to Jaws impersonations. DUH-DUH ...

Anyway.

We started off with walking, but what self-respecting Modern American doesn't eventually retreat indoors, where there is air conditioning and a changing room and nothing but views of the parking lots?

I don't not!

Our fitness room at the office is in fact very nice, with many machines and weighty things and a television I've never used and thermostats that, it is my theory, actually function. (None of the other thermostats in the building would ever dare ...)

So workout pal and I started  using The Room for our "walks", and very early in the going, "walk" really became a misnomer for me. I use the elliptical, and for over a year now I have been attempting this weird thing I like to call actually "meaning it" - and the effects have been overwhelming.

Ohhh no - I haven't lost WEIGHT. That's strictly for amateurs (well, or people who are not women pushing age 50 with a vanishingly short stick). Women who are pushing 50 with a vansihingly short stick and expect to lose weight are mad, I tell you. Mad!

(Okay, actually I have lost roughly 25 pounds. Things still ain't what I'd like 'em to be.)

But what has come of all this work is that archaeologists have discovered traces - the most tantalizing indications - of a long-lost waistline, dating to roughly, oh, seven years ago.

Also, as a person with multiple back and leg sprains to my discredit, I find I am not in incessant pain.

My knees do still make the most comical noises when I take a set of stairs.

But plantar fasciitis and such other wonders have taken their leave of the ruins.

When many people work out, music helps to pass the time. I do well enough with it; Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" was a serious challenge when I began using the elliptical. But to truly lose the time and find my brain absorbed in some experience other than "this is HARD!" and "I am super sweaty!", I have to be told a story.

Words, senator. I need words!

Probably the writer in me - or, at least, the reader (which is all "writer" even means, in my case).

Music can set a beat, but only a story can take me out of the workout and mean it.

There was a long, long series of Gayle Waters Waters to sustain me. Indeed, during her tenure literally talking me through many months of workouts, I went from being unable to complete seven minutes on the machine, at level four, through an incremental progression of bumping my levels slightly and increasing time spent at each level. I went from seven minutes at four to ten minutes at five, then fifteen, then twenty - then back down to ten minutes, but at six - then fifteen - then twenty. By this method, I had gotten up to twenty minutes on twelve by election day here in the U.S.

I took a bit of a tumble after that. And I can attest to how quickly pain will happily return to a body not in motion. Pain rapidly becomes more nimble than thou, and will cut ya soon as look at ya. Pain is a punk, and lies in wait.

These days, I'm at a steady level nine, twenty minutes, and the elliptical tells me I'm getting in three miles a day. (These ten or fifteen or twenty minute increments are, ideally, a twice-daily routine.) It's still enough work I haven't bumped up yet, but within a week I expect, I'll have to go to ten.

Gayle has, sad to say, run out on me. I turned to Looney Toons classic shorts for a bit there. I grew up on these, and do still love them (see also, Gossamer).

Somehow, though, they didn't quite work for me. Spectacle more than story? I'm not sure what it is(n't).

Image: Wikipedia (of course)

Enter, Eddie.

Eddie Izzard's brilliantly educated, daft, beautifully made-up standup has been Just the Ticket for me of late, particularly the closer we get to The Inauguration.

One wants to see a more recent show of his, given history's ... fascinations ... since Dress to Kill.

Plus, he is one of the extremely FEW famous people I am capable of finding attractive in anything more than the most ephemeral, useless way. I love to watch his face, and hear his voice, watch him ranging across the stage as he confirms/denies/confirms/ denies/confirms/denies/confirms/no-really-COMPLETELY-denies the death of Engelbert Humperdinck.

Nummy.

I've always had a weakness for a certain British mode of speech (it's less the accent than the gloriously aristocratic carelessness - and, in his case, a rather foxy heedlessness physically). Izzard modulates through many modes, effortlessly. It's gorgeous to witness. Talent and funny, tasty stuff. I also happen to share a birthday with him, so that's fun.

Birthday cake, or death? I'll have tea. (By which I mean, Stoli and tonic, no fruit - no, NO FRUIT, please. Thank you.)

I know for Brits, gin and tonic would be more the thing, but I am a woman all my own, and long ago realized gin is just wretched. I drink it only on the occasion it is necessary to remember that one crush from college, and oddly enough that occasion is nonexistent. And so.

Eddie Izzard is capable of something perhaps even surpassing storytelling. The casting of Sean Connery as Henry VIII (even though he is Scottish), and occasional cameos from James Mason - his rollicking trips across Western history. Holy Jeff. The guy is something more than just a raconteur.

AND he has helped off with ten pounds of ugly fat!

Bonus!

Whatta guy. I should buy him a drink, in thanks.

Gin optional.

Music, too.

In the News

More and more lately, entertainment seems to reflect the news - not because it is even possible to be prescient and to write, produce, and release works that could have known what is happening around us just.this.month, but because human behavior is repetitive.

For all we feel stunned by human events, for all predicting what is happening - what WILL happen next - seems impossible, still it is true: nothing is new, under the sun. Perhaps any sun.

And so it is only fair that the news reflects entertainment as well.

Not for the first time, I am brought to mind of Star Trek Deep Space 9's brilliant episode, Duet. This week the story walks among us again in Oskar Groening, the bookkeeper at Auschwitz. No echo at all of the bookkeeper at Gallitep.

I won't add much more than what I observed in that first link, my post above.

Today in American (Not Necessarily United States) History

Many American readers will have heard of the Native American called “Squanto” (Tisquantum – or the rage of manitou: an encompassing spiritual rage, something like “divine wrath”), but may not be able to tell any of his story. Fewer will know the name Samoset – and, possibly, fewer still may be familiar with Massaoit. Yet these three men make up a seminal part of the history of Native and European relations in our country, and the history is not always what we think.

On March 16, 1621, a lone man came unarmed into the village of the Europeans, and greeted them in their English language …

This piece is LONG, but it may be the most excellent *storytelling* link I have put up in ages. This is what makes history exciting, frustrating, beautiful and awful, and endlessly intriguing. Give it the time. It is worth the read, if only to learn what invasive species can do even beyond fell intent.

Side note … Even Smithsonian Magazine still can’t seem to bring ourselves to describe Native history in its own terms or on them (watch for anachronistic terms like “suburban” and, of course, New England, in the discussion of ancient settlement in the region), but the history is still tantalizing and should be considered, even if we’re still at it by faulty methods. (It does, for a while, call the region Dawnland, a translation for its natives’ name for their land, and includes good information about local lifestyle and politics, though still necessarily from European sources.) Side side note … there’s a bit about handkerchiefs I know my brother will appreciate. Heh.

A Simpler Time

I’ve reached that age where, with a certain chauvinism and privilege, the memory of youth and childhood appear to me “a simpler time.” This isn’t couched in the presumption that my childhood was better than YOUR childhood, if you are of a different age – nor that my childhood could beat up your childhood on the playground. It’s not even a reflection of technology and so on. It probably IS the result of responsibility; we all think in those terms, I think. And (assuming I have gained any), there is the influence of increased knowledge, and emotional experience, always mucking up the works in life.

My kid-dom in the seventies, and teen years in the eighties, weren’t an exceptionally halcyon period. I didn’t like either stage of life very much at the time, and have zero yearning to return. Yet it wasn’t bad stuff, my youth and childhood. There were bullies, but they never physically harmed me, and if they scarred me much emotionally – well, it still led to who I am now, and I like that person pretty well, so though I can remember them it’s not with feeling.

Much was forbidden, especially in the very much younger years, and I was one of those kids always griping of boredom. I didn’t love going outside to play, and though I did love reading, when I read about agents and other writers’ PASSIONS for it, devouring Proust and so on from the earliest ages – I won’t lie, a lot of what I read for a good long stretch was MAD magazine anthology books, and as much as I liked The Secret Garden and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories, I couldn’t say with any accuracy that they changed my life or have a tearfully cherished place in my heart. My reaction when given the first NOVEL I ever read, was resentment that there were no damned pictures. Seriously – it didn’t mean maturation and getting older (that attainment that meant finally gaining every privilege denied to the very young), it meant my parents were trying to bore me to death.

Then, of course, I read the book (a blue hardback with dustcover I am fairly certain I still have, and in mighty good condition – unless I gave it to my elder niece …). It was called “War Work”, which was an extremely unfortunate title to proffer to young-me. I found the very word War a complete drag (reasons I am a Trek nerd and not Star Wars – seriously), and where my parents, especially my mom, undoubtedly associated the WWII story with certain halcyon days of their own, all I heard was “this is a story about war, something that interests me precisely not at all.”

Of course, the novel was about a bunch of kids many thousands of miles and nicely protected continents removed from actual wartime, and involved playing games and the small hurts and so on of the characters and the times.


As I’ve said before here– the fact is, I generally feel like I fall short in the “passionate reader” aspect which is pretty strongly emphasized in the industry I aspire to. I don’t have moist stories to share about the first time I ever heard Charlotte’s Web read to us in school, though it certainly affected me, at least at the time. (My readerliness falls short in so many ways.) I can’t pretend I was outlining my own career nor plans as an authoress, indeed, before my mid-thirties. And we see how I have progressed there … ahem.


Back when things (and my brain) were simpler, the prevailing assumption was still that a girl child grows up and gets married, and husbands provide the breadwinning function. Yet even by the time I got to middle school and high school, that was changing. For a while, it was, “women CAN work” … and I was all, “Well, who needs THAT!?” – and then it pretty much became apparent that we were all going to have to work, aspirations or no. I was not excited by this aspect of social change, but let it be said I was never really into the whole wife-and-mother thing either. It’s just that I was an underachiever, I did LIKE boys, figured for (perhaps too long) sooner or later I’d find one who could feed me well enough, and nothing much shone forth in the firmament, leading me toward some magical calling.

Once high school had worn on for a couple of years, I began to realize the inevitable – not only that I was probably going to have to work for a living, but that the likelihood of being able to do so by simply being admired by millions and made independently wealthy thanks to my beauty and (acting) talent was vanishingly slim. I still majored in theater (or Theatre/Dance, as the also vanishingly slim department at the school I unfortunately chose as a non-launch-pad for this career) in a ditch effort to get some program to do that work for me, but knew well enough that I’d probably have to get a job.

Job, for me, meant “secretary” – and still does, though my level of commitment has arisen somewhat.

I took typing at age seventeen, in a horrible room at the back of the school filled with Selectrics and a punctilious teacher with little use for my brains and creativity (ask me about the jobs where that was the case too! not.), and managed to get out of there with the necessary skill set to feed myself if the right rockstar didn’t come along.

Of course, he did, but he ended his rock starring career in support of our marriage, which I promptly discarded. There were conversations during our bliss, as to whether we could afford toilet paper or not. I can’t even say “we were rich in love” because I was a nasty little vain shrew (back then), and money wasn’t even my problem.

Things, already, weren’t very simple anymore. And didn’t get moreso from there.


One of the biggest ways life is no longer simple lies in the fact that there is only one soul to manage the whole thing. From kitty litter scoops to mortgage payments and some sort of social life, there’s nobody to share it with. Nor, as when my childhood was so *delightfully* simple, to depend upon without thinking. Anything gets put off? That’s me without gas in the car or a slipping credit rating, or no heat because – no oil. Or hungry cute furbabies, subtly bonking around metal bowls, because mommy’s distracted. Aww. My life’s not actually all that complex, Batman – but heck if even the smallest detail can be left to somebody else.

It scarcely leaves time for the dazzling gorgeousness of Authoressial glamour, I tellya. And I am nothing if not heart-stoppingly glamorous. Just ask the cat.


So of course there’s a fantasy, that publication will somehow change things around here.

I don’t want to be Rowling, or King. Yet I’m well aware the old dreams I joked about, of “midlist glory” are frankly kind of dangerous, second-career-wise.

Yeah, I’ve always got typing. But typing isn’t paying for refinishing my kitchen floors, or vapor-sealing the basement. The joke about glamour – look, I picture myself talking at colleges and JRW_____ events and even churches and doing signings, hopefully. I like the idea of my bespectacled, turtlenecked nerd-chic portrait, and working to support my books. I *love* the idea of some fourteen-year-old kid falling for the story, and studying the history, then maybe turning around and telling more stories of their own – because they read me, once upon a time (har). I can’t wait to get scared that nobody showed up at that bookstore where I’m shilling, and even more scared because lots of people did.

I can’t wait for things to get MORE complicated. Unexpected. Unusual. Even frustrating, whatever the frustrations may be between advance and paying-out, another novel, and royalties. I can’t wait to cross the ocean, even if only vicariously flying on the leaves of my book, as it’s sold in Europe – and, hopefully, maybe even beyond. If I ever got to GO where I write about – Istanbul, Ravenna, the Channel Islands (oh yes, I have a third book in mind, once Ax and the WIP are out) … dang, that’ll be something neat.

And I hate flying, y’all.

Lay on the complications; childhood gave me much to be grateful for, but life’s not done yet, and I’m not persuaded my simple, safe youth and childhood are the be-all and there’s nothing left to seek. Let’s find out what sort of kinks this second job will bring on once it’s PAYING, at last.

Simple was so seventies. Show me the coming years. Show me the future …

Go-Nowhere Stories

I'm a well established darling-killer ...

Kipling had his Just-So stories, I have my go-nowheres.  Every now and then I get an idea and start writing something, but there is no ending, and I never even have any intention of finishing.  Short stories tend to crop up in my brain, I write for a a short while – long enough to feel limbered up – and am satisfied, with no conclusion.

I have, over time, shared two of these with my writing group looking for some way to wind up, and found nothing – and have tried to donate the ideas, actually.  They like the beginnings, and want to see endings, and at *least* one of my group’s members, I think would be really well suited to do these errant plot bunnies justice in a way I clearly don’t care enough to do.  Of course, it’s like shoes – once someone else has walked in them, it’s either kinda-gross or just uncomfortable to take them for a walk secondhand.  So these stories die on the vine, and I don’t particularly care.

It’s good writing, I’ll say that.  One in particular has some description in it – short passages, but highly effective ones – I have that consistent experience with, when it comes to my own writing; that I don’t feel ownership over the words, that I know “I did that” but I don’t feel possesive nor even proud, so much as pleased in much the same way I am pleased by ANYBODY’s good writing.  Reading good words is enjoyable, and credit for them is beside the point.  I don’t own whatever talent I have – it is simply the result of experience, of education, of my unique sensibility.  So I feel free to like it, and that’s fun.

Oddly, most of this stillbirth writing is sci-fi of one type or another, fairly “hard” (not fantasy, just extrapolations from possible science and so on).  The oldest one came many iterations of real technology ago, involving a magical cassette tape which could counteract sound waves in real time, in any given space, from the loudest to the most infinitessimally slight, and create for a listener the sensation of *absolute* silence.  If I ever even wrote any part of this (I’m sure I did), it was twenty years ago, and the remnants are lost.  Still, the idea remains – indeed, it is perhaps more viable than ever, with advances in digital sound – and that is all it does.  The idea was going to be that actual, perfect silence would in fact drive someone insane, or kill them, or something dire of that sort.  Silence doesn’t really exist – even in a quiet room, we can hear our blood in our ears, we can hear our own breath.  There is always some vibration in the world, whether we’re aware of it or not.

Anyway, freshman-philosopher 101 stuff, but it *could* be done well by the right hand.  Probably has.  Maybe fifty times.  Clearly, I don’t read enough to know.

Several years ago, I started a police procedural, set in the near future, in which breath-contact could be measured.  If, as Sherlock Holmes gave us to expect, ANY contact produces some manner of transfer – fingerprints onto a surface, fibers onto a person or vehicle – what if the DNA or some such signature could be measured from the humidity of our breath?  What if we could measure how long a person had been in an apartment – and where – by their breath-contact?  What if this could be simulated by “bagging” – by secretly stealing the breath-contact signature of a person from space they routinely occupied, or by stealing it surreptitiously in their presence, and planting that in a space they never had been, or by increasing their signature in a space they had been to, but only seldom?

This is the one that my writing pals have asked me most enthusiastically to do something with, but … “that’s all I got,” as the man says.  That’s all there is.  A police detective named Raheema following up on a fishy chick with a shaved head, a delicate portable scaffolding for a crime scene which keeps anyone from so much as treading on the floor, some forensic techs measuring signature from the walls and surfaces in a flop apartment, and “bagging” breath signature.  That’s it.

Without a verb (or even two), the thing’s dead in the water, and I won’t force it and I don’t care enough to save My Darling from oblivion.  I write enough I expect *will* get seen; for me, go-nowheres are little more than intriguing exercises.  Which is frankly bizarre, as I seem to suffer from a completist neurosis in every other way in my life, especially reading.  It is all but impossible for me to not-finish even cruddy writing, no matter its venue, if I start.  I’ve gotten easier going about that with age, but it remains a “thing” in my brain, that an article, a story, a poem, a book, must be finished, if started.

Not with writing.

The final piece I actually might like the most, might most care about someday completing – and, oddly enough, it was born of an assignment The Sarcastic Broads gave ourselves, and never saw through.  (Yes, it is true – writers occasionally set goals we don’t bother to meet.  Shocking.)  I don’t know how we started, but we decided that each of us was going to write a ghost story, and we’d relaunch the SBC blog with new material.  New blood, even, perhaps – given our chosen topic.  Heh.

This story, for me, is actually more personal than infantile philosophizing or prospecting for The Future, it’s all meaningful and junk, and I think it would be good to look back at the piece while I’m querying again.  To work on the novel in progress is probably more than my brain can take while dealing with the shilling process, and it might be interesting to see if I can get the thing to tick.

Designing Men

This article at Business Week tells the surprisingly gripping tale of a long and rewarding relationship in shambles.  The forces at work in this story – creativity and design, a friendship spanning decades, the brutal effects of legal action on a dynamic not only professional, but personal – are the stuff of the best literature we have.  And the building blocks here – fonts, and their design, which make a surprisingly interesting subject – are very much the stuff (literally) of writing.  Jonathan Hoefler almost makes the perfect betrayor, Tobias Frere-Jones his hapless, almost spousal, “victim” in the framing of the history of a relationship (I would say “partnership” – but that is the very point under contention; *were* they partners?) doomed now by lawyers.  And doomed (here is the literary part, kids) by the failure to communicate.  By diffidence and assumptions … the same things that doom so many marriages, love affairs … and partnerships, to be sure.

Font design is an unexpectedly emotional and political arena.  Most of us are aware that Lucida Handwriting makes a poor showing for a business contract, and many people are aware, or at least would not be surprised, that Comic Sans is a bit of a joke in the world of letter design.  But how many of us know that the choice or conception of a typeface design carries with it a raft of subjective baggage?  How many are aware that New York’s Helvetica subway signs   http://www.helveticasubway.com/ , so much a part of the city that people who’ll never go there in their lives recognize the font and the color scheme, raise in some folks a certain suspicion at their institutional strength bordering on the fear of brutality – and in others an almost happy satisfaction with its clean and reassuring simplicity?  How many knew just how strong the movement was, particularly beginning in the 1990s, to create messy, unpredictable – “punk” (hah) fonts?

Aggression and confrontation seem a counterintuitive part of something we might routinely imagine would be as boring as font design, and yet X-treem fonting was a big deal when it began, and its progeny are here to stay, even if their marketability may trump their nonconformity in the end.

Our heroes eschewed the paint-splatter or letters-cut-from-magazines scary effects of “edgier” fonts, but the success of the business that bore their name skirted trends like that.

The Business Week article documents the dissolution between these men with an almost leering set of insinuations about how much more the relationship was than a business arrangement.  “Divorce” is the word in the headline, and the very silence on the more personal aspects of a friendship which clearly goes back a very long way is suggestive in much the same way Victorian mores were on the topic of love which dare not speak its name.  The breathy description of Mr. Frere-Jones is heavy on pathos, casting him as a betrayed wife, and perhaps a bit of a naif or at least too delicate to be a Real Man in real business.

The entire crux of the article comes down to this:

One place where Hoefler has never referred to Frere-Jones as his partner is on any kind of contract.

At this point, I divorce myself from the engaging tale of a wronged woman (who happens to be a grown-ass man who signed, apparently, any number of legal documents NOT making a legal business partner of him, over a span of fourteen *years*) and have to consider agency over emotional outrage.  Frere-Jones, whatever his complaints, whatever the “promises” and expectations un-met – signed up to have them un-met.  His legal autonomy is no less than mine, he didn’t bother to know what he was signing up for – or he blinded himself wilfully – and the fact is, he appears very much to have participated in the truth of a situation which, no matter how often he and Hoefler teamed up to depict it otherwise publicly and for market reasons, he *could* have understood, perhaps truly did, and certainly had the responsibility to.

I’m no fan of the old “suck it up, Buttercup” school of writing off complexities in human relationships – but, as a feminist in particular, I’m not persuaded by “but but but”, “was gonna”, “coulda/woulda/shoulda” and “I THOUGHT” as legal arguments.  This is where the portrayal of Frere-Jones strangely feminized role as victim of his partner in this “divorce” falls flat.  It’s hard to see where Hoefler actively deceived F-J.  Flim-flammery and fraud are not the same thing, and Hoefler might not be the man I care to invite for tea – but, then again, neither is F-J, and the pair of them are both (so to speak) consenting adults.  With legal autonomy, and the power of their signatures.  If Hoefler took advantage – Frere-Jones let him, and could have done otherwise.

And that’s where the literary story gets *really* interesting, for me – because it’s so much more unusual than “bad man betrays wilting violet” at this point.  Frere-Jones isn’t Ingrid Bergman, pallidly and exquisitely being gaslighted by a paper-thin bad guy.  He made poor choices, he is a legal adult, and he didn’t get what he “thought” was his because he set no requirement that he should … I mean, you do not marry Henry VIII hoping he’ll change or you’ll be The One.  And Hoefler never even beheaded anyone.  I’m pretty sure.

Frere-Jones says that he agreed to this because Hoefler was always promising to formalize the partnership soon.

“Soon”, of course, is a word without legal basis.  It’s no way to have a child, plan for retirement, or conduct business negotiations – and what we have here is a negotiation.  Mounted with passive-aggression and self-interest and cross purposes – but a business negotiation, nonetheless.  The Elizabeth I-style prevarication and the failure to materialize, of a supposed mutual expectation, doesn’t change that.  The friendship doesn’t change it.  The strange framing device of this whole tale, in the trappings of some sort of unfulfilled union of a far more intimate kind, doesn’t change it either.  It may make the story more prurient, and sell Business Week advertising (using restrained, beautifully-immaculate fonts and graphics), but it ain’t journalism and it sure isn’t the truth of the story behind these two men, their business, their fame, their shared success – and their ultimate parceling out of what now can no longer be shared.

It’s a fascinating story, for a lot of reasons (design has never been my strong suit, but it’s always appealed to me), but I feel very sure it’s not quite exactly the story BW has told.  What IS fascinating is why Frere-Jones expects to be exempt from the requirements of personal autonomy and business the rest of the world has to deal with.  What IS fascinating is why Hoefler felt it was necessary to get more than the man he saw as being so valuable he proposed, when they were still semi-rivals, that they should join forces?  What were the dynamics at work, that the personal relationship had less weight for him than the potential business gains he saw in hooking up with Frere-Jones in the first place?  How strong and how deep *was* their friendship, after all?  Was it emotionally unequal?

Was there any of this behind-the-scenes folderol, with BW’s obvious (and also rather passive-aggressive) implications?  If so, what of that – does it matter, if they had a sort of intimacy which “should” have begged questions of the legal ramifications of their contracts?

In short:  Who? Are?  These characters?

Plot bunny it, kids.  Or maybe follow Henrik van de Keere down a different rabbit hole.  Or just throw a word or two in the comments, about your feelings toward Wachovia Celeste or the photos of these men or whether they SHOULD have gone DIY and messy with their fonts, for a buck.

Salt and Story

Dianne Hofmeyr spins tales of salt at The History Girls, and takes us to a number of different, fascinating times.  Anyone in need of a plot bunny is advised to click through.  So are any of you who just like language that takes you away.

Collection

Two Nerdy History Girls have another look at the textile treasures of Colonial Williamsburg - some vividly colorful embroidery, beautiful.

Becoming addicted to Tom Williams' blog, here is another excellent post about the question of genre and just what "historical fiction" really means.  It's not just for bodice-rippers, y'all.

Nyki Blatchley is another author whose blog is very good.  Yesterday, he looked at what "Celtic" really means (it's not just overpriced silver rings with knotwork sold in shops that play tootling Irish CDs).  It's a post I think is worthwhile well beyond the discussion about Hallowe'en traditions.

Shawna has some nice thoughts on being a writer, telling stories.  Tell me a story ...

Snowballs and Life-Saving Musical Pigs

This may be the most interesting Titanic survivor story I've come across - how a pig saved lives, complete with the music it played.

I knew that tune when I was little.  My cousin and I used to sing a song to it - "My mother gave me a dollar, to buy a collar, I didn't buy a collar, I bought some chewing gum.  Chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chewing gum, how I love chewing gum, I'm crazy over chewing gum, what shall I do?"  It had verses for nickel/pickle and quarter/soda water, but you get the picture.

And now I'm going to go to bed with that song running through my head, but at a slightly slower tempo and far more pingly.  Could be worse, as brain-worms go ...

What is Joss Whedon's Deal ...

... with mentally damaged/disconnected women and girls?

Protagonist

There is a phrase, "hero of the story" which, in literature classes, is generally replaced with the term protagonist.  Of course, not all main characters are heroes - nor even likeable - and so we have to find a better option.

Clovis has many of the makings of a hero, and I did not write him as a villain - but he's hardly Dudley Do-Right.

Around Clovis cluster certain legends - there are those which cast him as a rapacious Barbarian (oh good lord, the whole BARBARIAN slur and bigotry ...), and at least as much hagiography, in memory of a practically legendary king, in memory of the Christian king, in honor of the father of France.

Then, of course, there are the howlers about the Merovingian Dynasty, which he founded.  The less said the better, there - if you look at the link, it's been done.

I don't know how many authors sit down with an ax to grind (for those who even get that pun ... my apologies), but I don't have the ability to write with any sort of didactic point in mind.  I'm not that convinced of my rectitude, for one, but mostly I don't care to get into arguments - and didactic writing begs for that dang guitarist to get noisy.

I also don't concentrate well on whitewashing a character.  The ones who approach me aren't necessarily nice people - but they do seem to be endowed with much that's worthwhile.  I can't make a hero out of a bad guy - I don't have any urge to - but to invite a character into my brain, there's got to be an attraction.


We know that Clovis was capable of spectacular violence.

Regardless of the sainted memory of Clotilde's conversion of her spouse and king to Catholicism, history appears open to the idea that his spiritual choices were at least partially politically motivated.

He appears to have been a continent husband, but family history is sometimes considered to be wildly bloody.  Even the saint herself is said to have incited her sons to hideous revenge on an uncle said to have murdered her own family.

History is, as it always is, loaded with contradiction and the fascination of pretty spectacular wickedness.  This is a part of what makes parts of it, and players within it, so interesting - and which also feeds the modern sense of superiority we so enjoy when looking down on things like Barbarians, the Dark Ages, medieval violence, even the learning of the past.

It's also loaded with protagonists we sometimes apologize for.


I don't apologize for Clovis.  I do present some of those familial crimes without the prejudice of a middle-aged, middle-class white broad with excesses of privilege, looking backward at a man whose power - whatever his personality - is without question.  I hope I provide a view of him without the mask of either violent legend or glowing sycophancy.  I hope he's as compelling outside my head as he has been for me for so long now - for good and ill, for feeling and wit, for what he did, and for even his failings.

"Your Research is Showing"

The work yesterday was a satisfying swath across the novel.  I'd researched, during the formative stages, various festa, and used those to punctuate certain events and transitions.

Research is wonderful.  It can be an adventure; it can imbue a novel with the richness of setting.

It must be deployed, of course, with extreme care.

So yesterday, I moved across a field of festivals, and removed certain (especially Roman) specificity and particulars.  This has given me the idea, too, that I need to take a pass (run a search function) at G-d as well.  I need to smooth out theological detail which doesn't propel the plot either.  In one case, I can guess at one entire scene which probably needs to be cut, and perhaps turned into something radically different.  This will serve both the directive to deepen Clovis' personal perspective and character, and to eliminate "encyclopedia entries" (just thinking about it; the bit where they're reading the various texts of the (now we recognize it as the Nicene) creed is giving me the embarrassed willies).

The trick with performing surgery on a dragon with a pocket knife isn't finding a bigger knife.

It's knowing where to cut.

Quote of the Day

Leila, we love you.

"I'm all for Star Trek.  But we have to conquer them all before we can get to the Federation."