What I've been reading: Pride and Prejudice

Okay, okay. This isn't the only thing I've been reading this week. It's just the only thing I've finished because it's the only thing I've been reading with any consistency.

Look, I'd been having a pretty rough week - it's the school summer holidays, we've had lots of visitors and done lots of visiting and I am an introvert with a personal space bubble of about fifteen feet. I'm worn out. I needed a comfort read, something fun, something familiar. So it was a Pride and Prejudice situation.

I have actually turned into my mother.

While it may seem strange that, with all my stated love for the darkness, for blood and thunder, I should be an Austen fan, you have not touched upon some squishy internal emotional wreck here. Let me make one thing dazzlingly clear to those who are not acquainted with dear Jane; this is as far as it is possible to get from mush.

Just as we disgrace Dumas by assuming he wrote for children, so we mutilate Austen by assuming what she created were romances at their worst - dull farragos of misunderstandings that would be resolved if people treated each other like human beings, sentimental works that end in inevitable marriages. Austen's worldview is bleak, dark, realist. Dare I even say it, they are proto-feminist novels.

Yes, yes, I know, we do not see Lizzy Bennet rolling up her sleeves and becoming a surgeon, nor Lydia eloping with Wickham because women should have freedom of sexual choice as well you know. Austen did not write speculatively; if she could not offer her heroines the hammer with which to smash the patriarchy, she at least gave them the clearness of sight to recognise it and a survival kit of workarounds to prevent it from crushing them.

One of the major criticisms of Austen is her desperate focus on marriage, but consider: a character like Elizabeth Bennet has no employment prospects. She could become a governess, work which paid - on average - a little more than farm labouring but which required a full abandonment of any social prospect. The family for whom she worked would view her as a subordinate, the servants would see her as an object of scorn and an outsider. Isolated for her working life, when she became 'too old' - at no more than 40 - she would be cut adrift on what little savings she had managed to amass.

If she could not get an appointment (likely, considering her relative lack of accomplishments) her income - after her father's death would be approximately £40. In 2008's terms that is roughly £1,400 a year before rent. Not to romanticise the position of the working classes in this time, but a labourer with a family could expect some income from his spouse and older children - an unmarried woman could not.

This is not to say that there would have been no way out. There were, of course, remarkable women who flew in the face of such social expectations (Austen herself was one of them, supplementing her family's income by writing) but she was very keen to make her heroines unremarkable. Too many of her contemporaries wrote paragons; she focused upon ordinary gentlewomen of no particular education, fortune or genius.

And yet, these unremarkable women prevail, and, as they do so, she show just how messed up is the system against which they must contend. The wonderful thing about Austen is that she shows us how the system is broken still.

Take, for example, Mr Collins; pompous, creepy, ugly and stupid. He makes Lizzy an offer (as the parlance goes), so, early in the novel, our heroine receives a proposal from a man she finds repulsive. So far, so romance. Yet this overlooks the tacit knowledge of Austen's audience - just as they would know how straitened the Bennets' prospects were, they would also know that 'marriage' is often a shorthand for 'sex'. And, boy, does Mr Collins employ that shorthand here. Among his first reasons for wanting to get hitched is to set a good example to his parishioners - doubtless reminding everyone that the traditional Anglican marriage service includes a bit on marriage being a way of allowing people to experience the pleasures of the flesh.

So, having not so much proposed to as propositioned her, Mr Collins received a refusal. And, in a move familiar to any woman who has received street or online harrassment anywhere, he refuses to accept this rejection as valid. Women, he claims, often say no at first. Of course, they don't really mean it, and with the correct inducements (another proposal, the advice from her parents) she will say yes at a later date. When Lizzy persists in her refusal, because, he turns nasty. In the most verbosely mannerly, 19th Century way he tells her that her market value as a sexual commodity is not particularly high, and she is unlikely to get other offers. Modernised, what he says is no different from the pick-up artists who go from a "Hey, sexy" to, "Fat, ugly slag!" when you tell them to stuff it.

And Lizzy is supposed to accept this. This - according to the mores of Lizzy's time - is a good match. This is security and relative autonomy and the assurance that she will continue to live in the style and class to which she is accustomed. To marry Mr Collins is to have a respectable clergyman's income for some years, and then the equivalent of £70k a year after Mr Bennet's death. She is not being offered mere financial security, but wealth.

I know, tiny violin. But this choice, this awful choice between lifelong prostitution to a man who is repelent to her in every way and poverty, shows that Elizabeth Bennet is in a damned good social position. She has privilege and opportunity in spades. She has intelligence, family, social standing. Her choices are far wider than that of many of the women around her. This option - which I defy anyone reading this not refuse - is one which Charlotte Lucas - older, less attractive, more pragmatic - grabs with both hands.That is the model, the society, the system in which Austen is working.

But she herself refuses it. Our author is clear; Lizzy should not be overwhelmed with gratitude for the attention of Mr Collins, nor for proposal of Mr Darcy (bringing an income of about 340k) - despite their dreadfully limited possibilities, Austen is adamant: her women are not commodities. Yes, they are circumscribed by money - Elizabeth give up her partiality to Wickham as she their joint income would be insufficient to raise a family - but they never sell themselves. 

Yet, Austen is not painting a utopia. She is showing a world that systematically breaks women down, beats them, constrains them. That she could have written such tales is clear from the palpable misery that surrounds so many of her characters. Would her characters welcome a world where they could love where they liked earn their own living without shame? Almost certainly. But they cannot have that, so they play upon what terms they can, and they win.

 All of Austen's heroines (with the possible exception of Marriane) marry for affection first, and have material comfort anyway. That happiness of that kind can be snatched in the face of such odds is the miracle of Austen's work. She saw the probable outcome of her characters lives and she refused it. Without leaving the stark bounds of realism, she showed that joy was possible, and love, and sexual fulfilment, despite every attempt of the world to destroy those things.

This is not a reconciliation with a broken system, this is a cry of hope. It is an acknowledgement that women are strong, that whatever else is taken from us, we can snatch a little handful of happiness. That with honesty and integrity and just a little bit of pushyness, it can work out. As a feminist model for the rebuilding of a utopia, it isn't much. But as an evisceration of the world's foibles and a, "hang on in there", it's wonderful.

Every time I read Austen, I am breathing relief that I was born in the late 20th century, not the early 19th. Every time I see the messed up conversations we are having about gender, finance, sex and relationships, it is a comfort, a promise, a ray of light. It is a cause for thanks, and for rejoicing.

 All figures taken from: http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/the-economics-of-pride-and-prejudice-or-why-a-single-man-with-a-fortune-of-4000-per-year-is-a-desirable-husband/ and http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/the-governess-in-the-age-of-jane-austen/

What I've Been Reading: The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt and Bad Dreams, Kim Newman

It appears there has been some controversy about this month's book group selection. No, not the more interesting kind of controversy where people get very shouty and use words like 'immorality', more the sarcastic and passive-aggressive controversy that confines itself to the literary establishment. If you yawned and missed it:

While some heralded The Goldfinch as the literary smash hit of last year, it has left some member of the ancien regime rather less convinced. For the hardline snobs, the novel is "further proof of the infantilization of our literary culture", it is a simplistic, hackneyed, unremarkable book. It lacks that certain special something (*ting*) which separates popularist, middle-brow, genre-dross from Art.

And, well, high handed and out-of-touch as such a condemnation might be... I kind of agree with them.

Don't get me wrong, The Goldfinch isn't a bad book. I quite enjoyed parts of it, even though it wasn't really my thing. Yet, while I don't think any less you if you found it one of those worldbendingly fabulous novels that reaches inside your head and rearranges things, it failed to satisfy. To damn it with faint praise, it was okay. Readable, but not compelling; the characters weren't uninteresting, but it never moved me. It was probably a bit longer than it needed to be. It was a little predictable.

You see, here's the thing that I and the head-in-fundament, genre defying Literary types have in common; we don't always feel books should have a payload, a message, a reveal. We know that plot, that compulsive readability is not the mark of quality. We know that sometimes artistry, or exquisite craftspersonship, can be an end in itself. They just make the mistake of assuming a marker of this is slavish realism.

The Goldfinch falls into the rather sizeable crack between our world-views. In terms of 'Art', of Literarty accomplishment, it is lacking. Its subtext is swamped by plot before being finally hammered out in tedious exposition. It slots together too neatly for a literary novel, but for a genre novel the plot is insufficiently realised to make this moment like the pleasing assembly of jigsaw pieces. It felt a little careless, gave the impression of a writer with literary spurs genre-slumming. It missed on both counts.

And here comes the sting, you see, because so many of my favourite authors have been doing what this book attempts for years, without being given the mainstream legitimacy that Tartt takes for granted. If The Goldfinch is neither fish nor fowl, then the works of John Crowley, Poppy Z. Brite and Robert Holdstock (to name but three) are glorious chimeras. Yet, outside of genre circles, you don't see their work heralded as 'Book of the Year'.

Okay, that turned into something of a rant. Now, for something shorter, sharper and sweeter, if - to pinch a metaphor - a peach on the brink of rotting can be called sweet. Genre time, and that genre is horror of the finest, gross-out variety.

 Published in 1990, Bad Dreams isn't a Newman novel I'd encountered before, and while parts of it have dated somewhat, much of it is depressingly relevant. An indictment of the '80s establishment and its exploitative denizens, much of it will seem familiar to those who've read Newman's other work - vampiric entities, left-wing principles, pop culture and vicious satire. Some of the names used appear in later novels, too, (notably, Jago) and the character of Anna Nielson channels both Geneviève and Katie Reed. While it isn't as accomplished as the better Anno Dracula novels, it's well worth a look in its own right. A tightly plotted, skilful little novel, it strikes hard and viciously in all the right places. Great fun.

What I've been reading: Angelmaker, Three Supernatural Classics, The Scarlet Pimpernell

You know, I'm not sure if I've ever read any Algernon Blackwood before - which is a little odd, given that I spent most of my youth and early adolescence reading ghost stories. What I have certainly never done before is had to go grovelling to library to tell them I ruined one of the books.

 I am mortified. 

Suffice to say that a very windy day and a child stuck in deep mud at a beach have ruined the habit of a lifetime, and, more importantly, my local library's copy of Three Supernatural Tales.

But it isn't the outside of a book that matters, *bites fist and moans softly* it's the words in it that make the difference. So, before I die of shame, our supernatural tales ; The Willows, The Wendigo and The Watcher. Of these, The Watcher was easily my favourite. Not to disparage Blackwood's ingenuity in creating less usual supernatural threats, it was the only 'proper' ghost story of the three, with a mystery to be solved based upon the lives of the unquiet dead and a threat to be averted. The denouement was a little weak, but the suspense, the sense of growing madness, the shaking passion of the narrative was utterly compelling. Good work.

The Willows and The Wendigo were far more ambitious, and while beautifully realised (and more narratively satisfying, in terms of explanations) they left me a little cold. Both these stories felt very Lovecraftian in the way that the supernatural threat was inhuman and implacable, primal and horrific. Yet while I found Blackwood a far better writer than Lovecraft (don't shoot!), and his approach rather more literary, there was a sense of missed opportunity. While our dear H.P never lets a moment slip in terms screaming horror (sometimes at the expense of style or clarity) Blackwood has a tendency to undercut his most effectively chilling writing with explanation of that fear. And while his literariness gives him greater scope for exploring the more philosophical aspects of abject terror at the universe, the sense of internal drama in his characters was lacking; we heard that they were distressed, but got no sense of it. In a genre so empathetic as the supernatural story, this is something of a short-coming - and a sadness, as it was a technique at which he excelled in The Listener.

Still, definitely worth a look for fans of the genre.

For a more open-hearted commendation, if you're looking for a holiday read,the only problem with Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker is that you may get so caught up that you forget to do ordinary holiday things like eat ice cream, swim in the sea, or play cricket.

Isn't that just a beautiful cover?

Seriously, my kids got so pissed off with me.

It's a clever book, with characters you genuinely care about, and a real light touch for poignant details. Never mawkish, or sentimental, it is perfectly balanced - like a skilfully made clock. And it's compulsive. A wild ride that flirts with steam-punk and political commentary while never losing the core value of just being a huge amount of fun. Yeah, fun. Look, it isn't the best book I've read this year, but it was beautiful, witty and entertaining. It was gut-wrenching, it was sexy, it was intelligent... and it had a bi-sexual, cross-dressing super-spy. And frankly, that should be enough for anyone.


And talking about bi-sexual, cross dressing superspies.... Except that, outside my headcanon, there is absolutely no evidence that Percy Blakeney batted for both teams. *Sigh*. Still, hot on the tail of The Count of Monte Cristo, I was in the mood for a rather more slushy and anglo-centric rip-roaring adventure narrative, which sent me back into the pages of my beloved The Scarlet Pimpernell.

Look, I could write an essay about everything that is wrong with this book, but I don't want to, so I shan't.

Instead, I'll say that what always interests me about film and stage adaptations of this novel is that Percy's mode of dress becomes part of his ploy- he acts like a brainless dandy, and to do so, he must dress like one. In the novel, he just likes dressing that way. Being daring enigmatic, intelligent and heroic does not preclude on looking fabulous. 

So there.

Why we all need a bit of Mary Sue

"That book? Oh, God. I couldn't stand that book. The main character was such a Mary-"

No. You are not allowed to finish that sentence.

Look, I get it, it's a useful term. People really do write chronically bad self-inserts. People - teenagers especially - construct idealised versions of themselves and let the relevant narrative world revolve around that character, and people do this a lot in fan-fiction and it's really very annoying, but for a moment, please, stop. Think about what you're saying.

Because, I know, in its original form it was a helpful term. The Mary Sue as a specific "self-insert in a wish-fulfilment fan fiction which disrupts the established rules of that universe" sense has its uses. And, to be fair, even when it's used as a term for 'really shoddy character writing' it has its functionality, although it's kinda imprecise. But language is defined by usage, and what most people really mean when they say Mary Sue is, "A (generally female) character who I don't much like, and therefore find implausible."

So, yeah, I'm talking about sexism again.

Because it is just such a gendered term. In a world where the generic tends to be masculine, it's telling that some blokes get described as a 'sort of a male Mary Sue'. And, oh, there is a male equivalent, of course - our Gary or Marty Stu - but seriously? Mary Sue is a name complete in its sing-song mockery. It sounds real, it sounds naïve, it is a name as bland and goody-two-shoes as they come. It smacks of a mundane world self insert into a world where everyone else has dynamic, one syllable names. It is a kitsch name, a young name, a child or little old lady name. Where a more demure, self-aware adult would just go by Mary, it sounds like a teenager's desperate attempt at idiosyncrasy. I know people with names like Mary Sue.

Gary Stu? Not so much. From a fictional perspective it's hardly got the caricature element of Jim-Bob, the pretensions of Jean-Jacques. It doesn't even scan. Who the hell abbreviates their middle name?

So, no, the male term is not as well conceived, not as convincing, not as immediately recognisable as a derogatory term. What's more, the application of the feminised form is so much more prevalent. Pick up any significant female character or love interest and - sooner or later - the name will get hurled: Bella Swan, Mary Sue. Katniss Everdeen, Mary Sue. Ginny Weasley, Mary Sue, Even, *gulp* Lizzie Bennet, Mary Sue.
 (NB, I do not advocate any of these links, I merely wish to show their prevalence. Suffice to say that these were all found on the first page of a google search. A similar search with male names throws up very few articles or discussions that use this as their main thrust, and a lot more articles where people say, "If you use that definition, there's a case for James Bond as a Marty Stu". )

Fact is, fictional men are allowed to be world-bendingly brilliant. Oh, people might complain about the way the Doctor is so intelligent and powerful he can defeat an alien invasion fleet by talking at it, but we don't have quite such a pat cultural term for it. Men - or at least, the men whose stories we hear in the genres where the Sue originates - are supposed to be unique, to have a sense of destiny, of innate worth. And yes, people do mock them, people do tear them down, but there  is no discourse through which this is facilitated. Each case of a hero who crosses the line of, "Oh, come on!" is an isolated case. Each heroine who does so is a symptom of a wider, social malaise.

And, of course, it is a charge any female character who sticks her head above the parapet must answer. "What's so special about her?" we might ask - or else, "Oh, dear. Has the author made her too special."And, yes, she might be cleared of all charges but she is immediately suspect simply by virtue of being female, of there being a handy, catchy term through which we can describe her shortcomings. Besides, she is unlikely to be cleared of all charges. These things tend to involve the desperate quoting so beloved of rabid fans: This one can't be a Mary Sue because x, y, z.

The more the term spreads, the more it becomes the brand of dishonour upon a writer, upon a fandom. The more that writers worry about making their (particularly female) characters "flawed" and "realistic", on being, "not too extreme", the blander, more understated and less ideal these female characters will become. And when writers set the standard for exceptional femininity so low, the harder it becomes for new writers to make a female character interesting, intelligent, talented without calling down the question, "Is she a Mary Sue?" This trend serves only to drive deeper the assumption that female characters cannot be 'special', but only the self-deluding 'speshul'. 

This is not to say that there isn't some chronically bad writing out there. This isn't to say that there aren't badly designed, plot-hijacking authorial dream-darlings out there, messing up their fictional worlds. This isn't to say that junk-fiction doesn't rely too often on step-into-these-shoes-dear-reader-and-become-perfect character types. It is to say, why be so aggressive towards the female examples?

It is to say, what the hell is wrong with that anyway?

You know what's hard?

Growing up.

Oh, don't call "teenage angst" on me - it was awful. Everything changed. You could no longer get any real comfort from childish things yet the adult world - even the adolescent world - was bloody terrifying. Your body, your interests, your abilities and intellect were held up against some illusory set of ideals defined by your teachers, your parents, your classmates. You didn't know what you were doing with your life. You weren't even sure who you were.

Into the bad body-image, the moodswings, the bewilderment, the frustration, the intellectual anxiety, you would dream that you were special, that you were going to go somewhere, that you would be somebody who made a big impression on the world. You felt like you had a destiny. And, yeah, maybe the world around you didn't actually treat you like shit, but sometimes it felt like it did. Sometimes you felt like the one person who didn't have friends, felt that nobody knew the true heart of you, that you were the one being singled out for punishment. Yeah, maybe you grew up, got over it, but you know what?

I bet stories helped with that.

You could open a book, or turn on a film and slip into a world where your feeling of persecution was justified, where you were proved to be the hero after all. You could use this to work out what you were, what you wanted to be - it offered dreams, escapes. It offered you possibilities, heroisms, romances.

Picking up these books, identifying with these so-called Mary Sues let you try out paths through life. Maybe you would be the kind of person who valiantly sacrifices yourself for your friends and dies in a way that is clearly written with a cinema bio-pic in mind. Or maybe you'd become a crusader for justice and kick ass while averting the apocalypse. Maybe, who knows, maybe you'd just marry that millionaire and go and have a life of moneyed luxury where the biggest worry was not embarrassing yourself in front of said millionare's bitchy relatives.

Or maybe all those were just fantasies. Maybe you knew that. But those fantasies had a function; they gave us some idea of the kind thing we wanted to do, the kind of person we wanted to be. They gave us a chance to experience things that - in our life - were probably only going to be encountered on a much smaller scale. Yeah, okay, most of them weren't written in deathless prose, but that wasn't exactly the point. Sometimes we don't care how shakily something is written if it speaks to our better selves.

 The Mary-Sue and the ideal self:

And that's what this is abut, the better self. One of the big complaints about Mary Sues is that they are not merely an authorial insert, but rather an idealised authorial insert. This is not just you, it's you with the blemishes removed and that annoying 2 stone lost. It's you with those sparkling green eyes you always wanted and... oh, wouldn't jet black hair look cool? And, of course, not only is this girl beautiful, she is the best: at everything, always, effortlessly. And she's nice, too! She's kind, caring, compassionate. Everybody loves her, and those who hate her are just jealous...

And, I'll admit it, a case of the Sues this advanced can be pretty nauseating to read, especially if it's not in a genre you like, or you know someone who won't shut up about it. But, but...

Adolescence - and I will say especially for teenage girls because I have no experience of having been a teenage boy - is a time of remarkably low self-esteem. The media is there, relentlessly undermining every aspect of our personal appearance, we have family groups yelling at us to stay kids and peers yelling at us to grow up. There are schools telling us how important it is to 'be ourselves' provided we get all our work in on time and don't contravene the dress code. Having a relationship is everything. It doesn't matter if your queer or asexual, everybody in your life will have some opinion on your immanent heterosexual experiences, whether that be forbidding them or nagging you to begin them. Because of this, we are bombarded by endless relationship advice which drives home the message that we are not to be too smart and that if we are we should hide it, that boys' egos must be flattered at all costs, that boy's desires should define what we wear, where we go. We are told we must not be 'easy' or 'frigid' and we have...

Look, we have patriarchy, alright? It sucks.

Yet, despite this, miraculously despite all this, we have a little core of self-esteem the bastards haven't taken from us yet. We have little moments of, "I got 100% on that test. That's pretty good, isn't it?", we have the races we win, the 'okay' pictures we draw, the moment we 'get' quadratic equations. We have those evenings where we discover, "Hey, if I tie my hair like that, I really don't look too awful." We have feature that we pick out of our faces so that we can say, "I'm not properly pretty, not actually, but my lips are quite nice."

And a Mary Sue - or perhaps, more accurately, an idealised, central character - comes from that place. It reaches right into that last little touch of the egotism of childhood, that final spark of, "No, I am brilliant" that the dominant cultural discourse implies adult women aren't allowed to possess. It pulls it out of us, lets use revel in it with the full weight of adolescent narcissism. We are the agents, the heroes of our own stories, a shout in the dark of the endless culture of negativity, low self-esteem, eating disorders, self harm and self abnegation. When we step into the shoes of a 'Mary Sue', every now and then, we see our ideal self. Not who we are, but who we'd like to be, and we begin to see that the two are perhaps not so different after all. They give us strength.

You know what else is hard?

Being a grown-up.

Seriously, chaps, don't try it, it rubbish. Because when you're a grown-up you no longer have the excuse of youthful self-obsession. The world expects you to know who you are, and by that it means "who it expects you to be, and that includes not contravening the dress code". All those voices that were shouting at you during your adolescence are still yelling and although they may have got a bit quieter, they've also got a lot more dull.

And again (sorry-not-sorry MRAs) the burden of this so-called maturity is heavier on women. This is because the second we hit 35 (or drop a sprog, whichever comes first), we don't get the spot-light any more, we don't have that flexibility of role - even if the only roles we were offered in the first place were 'sexy sidekick' or 'Mary Sue'.

Wonder why 50 Shades was so successful as 'mummy porn'?

My theory is that mature women got fed up of being told they weren't allowed to be sexual. Got fed up of the fact that daring to be matter-of-fact about our bodies and desires led us to be shamed, made people tell us to put it away, that nobody wants to see. And faced with that, who wouldn't want to slip back into that endless possibility of the early twenties, when one was free, single, childless?

Well, actually, no. Most of us wouldn't do that. But that's the nice thing about fantasy.

The thing about fiction is that it lets us take on roles we might like to try or - better still - would run a mile from in reality. That's the crux of this; fantasy, escape. The need doesn't die when we leave those formative years. It's nice, from time to time, to have a character doing things you'd like to be able to do, if you didn't carry the burden of too much realism. And, yeah, good writing is always a plus, but here's a little secret: When people go to that private, escapist place, they aren't doing it to please you. They really don't give a damn what you think about their dreams, their fantasies, their escapes. What gives you the right to reach in there and try to snuff out that little light, just because you didn't like a book, a film, a fanfic?

Sure, I can't stop you, not really. Freedom of speech is a human a right. But with that comes the responsibility of thinking about the effect of what you say. And do you really want to take this away from someone? Do you want to be that person?

What I've been reading: The Count of Monte Cristo.

*Checks date*

Still here, I'm afraid.

Eeek. Sorry.

So, I'm on the home stretch with this, and this post this contains spoilers. Also, much SQEEEEEEE!

Where have we got to? Well, the Count of Morcerf has shot himself (YAY!), Valentine is languishing from strychnine poisoning (which has at least cleared her of murder) Albert is adorable (but not particularly bright), the footnotes were written by an idiot and Maximilian Morrel is frankly a bit of a dick.

Oh. And Eugénie is a lesbian. In case you hadn't noticed. Or if you'd forgotten.

 Seriously, if I had one complaint with this novel (besides the chronic idiocy of the editor) it was the sheer iron-bar quality with which Dumas handles Eugénie's sapphism. Because we get it. REALLY. WE GET IT.

Other than that, it's fan-fucking-tastic. After a slow middle bit (blah, gradual bankruptcy, blah, medical details of minor characters we don't really care about, necessesary foundation laying for this bit, blah, Maximillian bloody Morell...) it's all kicked off. Four (count 'em, four) challenges to duels, three deaths by poison, two attempted suicides by honour and AT LAST, someone blows their own brains out from feelings of shame!

Oooooh! And, while we're at it, the honour code in this! All the clenched fists and the deathly pale expressions and the choice of weapons at some place of your choosing! All the fainting and the thrown gloves and sudden reversion to calling your friend, "sir" like it's an insult....It's so delicious, so sharp and complicated and brilliant...

And Haydée, Haydée.... Is she actually the first portrayal of a sexual submissive in literature? Because I am shipping so hard...

So, yeah, this is basically such sheer, sexy, ego packed brilliance that I have been grinning for the last 24 hours. It's better, even, that Three Musketeers. And Dumas is such fun! 

That's one thing I never really realised back when the only copy I had was an abridgement. Sorry to hammer on this theme, but the biggest crime of the abridged versions is how they cut all this to the bone. The important bit is that Dantès shames Fernand, so that's all they give you. They don't give you Albert's anguish, his dilemma, his pride. They don't show him almost chucking his glove at Dantès in a crowded opera house while his friends hang around him with, "Don't do it, Morcerf, really, not smart." (And, seriously, that is a wonderful piece of pacing and building tension, even for someone who knows what happens next.) Oh, you get that Haydée is beautiful and submissive, but you don't see her taking the initiative, you don't see her shouting down her opponent in court. You don't see her bear herself like a queen. Without this, she is a child with a creepy crush, not someone in what is a prototype D/s relationship.

So, after slashing away all this wonderful stuff, you get cardboard cut-outs racing around as much plot as you can fit into 300 pages (a plot whose elegance and complexity is utterly muddled by these cuts) and, reading this, generations of idiots have the audacity to call Dumas a cheap cliché-ridden hack.

And, yeah, it's a bit melodramatic, it's a thing of bold, broad strokes, but there is also subtlety and real passion there. Last night, I read a scene of such breathtaking and tragic intensity that I suspect it will be joining Renfield's desperate plea of sanity  (Doctor Seward's diary, 1st October, 4am, Dracula, Chapter 18) as one of the scenes I murmur aloud in breathless, heartfelt tones every time I read it...  This damn fool of an editor thinks Dumas is condemning Mercédès here, but she shines! She burns like falling star! Oh, these feelings, so lost, so painful, so buried beneath years of torment but strong enough to control them and.... Ah! Perfect. Perfect.

This is everything I ever want in book. This is just....

Actually, it's probably the reason I'm using so many exclamation marks. 

So, go on. Clear your reading diary and have some fun. It's the holidays.

What I've been Reading: The Princess Bride, The Count of Monte Cristo

Inconceivable!

I suppose after last week's little rant about idiot abridgements, it was only natural I returned my attention to the most lauded and memorable 'good bits' version it's been my pleasure to read. I am talking, of course, of S. Morgernstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The Princess Bride, abridged for us lesser mortals by William Goldman. This was partly because of a recent argument I got involved in regarding the sexism that pervades said text (no matter how much I love it, it does. There is. Sob. Sorry) and partly because of the way Goldman's attitude towards adventure fiction reveals a parallel, but very different course, to my own.

The Count of Monte Cristo was written at a time when the genre lines that govern fiction were not so strictly defined. We do Dumas as much as a disservice by pigeon-holing him as a historical Romance writer as we do by perpetuating the myth that he wrote children's books. The 'Rome' section (the bit I've just read) is as pure and concentrated Gothic as Udolpho. It's all Italian banditti, Edmond-the-Vampire and slightly strained reference to Lord Byron. In fact, the novel itself follows the pattern of a Gothic beautifully,we follow our hero from pastoral (or perhaps maritime) idyllic poverty, through terror and bondage (and that word is ruined forever) into the more violent, 'primitive' places where different rules govern behaviours and men - remote islands, Italian forests, the Eternal City - only to bring that terror back with us to the stylish salons of the so-called civilised world. In fact, the evidence is that Dumas really wanted to write a Gothic in the truest sense of the word, in that he wanted to start the book in Rome, have us meet Edmond-the-vampire before we met Edmond-the-poor-but-honest sailor. Like the ambiguous, Byronic villains whose apparent supernatural origins are eventually explained away, we were supposed to be mystified by the terrifying, 'savage' honour of 'Sinbad the Sailor' before we understood the betrayal that had shaped him.

Thanks to the intervention of Auguste Maquet, however, that is not the story we have. So we, with our more rigid interpretations of genre conventions, we find ourselves expecting Napoleon, vengeance, true love and high adventure and instead get dropped in the catacombs of San Sebastiano with a bunch of Byronic bandits. 

Well I, for one, am not complaining. *Whistles innocuously*

Mmm. Edmond Dantès

But coming back for a moment to The Princess Bride, Goldman perfectly captures the savage realism and emotional challenge that novels like Monte Cristo offer to young readers. Especially denuded of the societal satire, the dirty bits and the political context, these stories are incredibly shocking beneath their veneer of 'far away and long ago.' The Three Musketeers is a tale of friendship that overcomes all odds and then just sort of... ends as the four men go their separate ways. The Count of Monte Cristo is about a man getting vengeance on his betrayers, on the man who stole his future and his wife and then, all obstacles removed, their enduring love for each other admitted, he.... goes off with someone else. The Princess Bride is about a couple who brave the the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fireswamp, torture, only for one of them to die and the other to marry another. No one even 'gets' Humperdinck!


They aren't fair, these novels. There is no Providence, no ever loving God looking out for the virtuous. And actually, come to think of it, our heroes aren't that virtuous. Goldman captures - perfectly - the frustrations of a child who has grown up with the sanitised, naive, 'happy ending' versions of these stories, only to discover in adulthood that they weren't simple or as reassuring, that the undercurrent of discomfort they created was their real legacy, their enduring power. 

After all, Who said that life was fair? Where is that written?

What I've been reading: The Count of Monte Cristo and Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers

They...

They killed...

Okay, I'm not writing this just now. Let's do the other book I've been reading, because that makes me happy.I'm together. I promise.

So. The Count of Monte Cristo, or as it should be known, "Stop cutting lumps out of my novels!" I get it, I do, I really do. They are intimidating tomes. My copy of Monte Cristo could probably be used as an offensive weapon but really? Seriously? The trouble I went to trying to get a copy of this that was complete and unabridged was ridiculous. Many translations don't even bother telling you that they've whacked great chunks off the word-count, just, "here, have a shorter novel. No need to thanks us for it."

*Growls*

Is it because they thing Dumas wrote children's novels? Is it because we still think of his work as 'trash', despite its enduring popularity? Are we just missing the entire point of the genre in which he was writing?

Look, I'm on chapter 37 of 116 and I love this book. It's got everything I want in a novel - fighting, fencing, torture, poison, true love... Well, sort of. The first thing that always astonishes me about Dumas is that, the second you forget that you are holding a veritable doorstop, you are swept up in the pace, the character, the wit, the dialogue. The second thing that surprises me about Dumas is his realism. Yes, okay, not realism-realism, but psychological realism, political realism. This is probably because our understanding of him is filtered through abridgements, through film and television adaptations that take at face value Dumas' claim as a moral authority, that give us clean jawed, morally upright heroes and excise all those nasty, dirty bits. Abridgements and adaptations that pay into the conception of the Historical Romance as trash inhabited by stock characters.

Look, we know Dumas was a hack. We know he wrote at a terrifying speed but has it occurred to you that his perennial popularity has less to do with the swash and the buckle, and more to do with the fact that he was damned good at this? We are told, again and again, that this is a novel of providence, a novel where Dantès is transformed into its agent. It seems to me that it is more a novel written against naïveté, against the idea of an impassive, providential force. The characters who believe their virtue will protect them, will justify them, are doomed to fail. It is only those who take fate into their own hand who will succeed. God offers no justice, it is left to mankind to take vengence, to reward virtue and to punish wickedness. That the near-blameless Abbé Faria is twice foiled in his attempts to escape on the very eve of their accomplishment should convey this. That, after foresight, intelligence and labour fail, Dantès then escapes through mere opportunism and base cunning should suggest that fate does not favour those who work hard, that providence does not support virtuous. In a cold and Godless universe, The Count of Monte Cristo tells us that mankind is the highest authority, and that it is a race of crocodiles.

Truly, excellent stuff. What's more, that Edmond Dantès is a bit of a dish, isn't he? (here we go again)

Lovely covers.

Alright, alright, I can do this now. Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers is the fourth trade paperback in Bill Willingham's Fables and has art from Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, P. Craig Russel and Craig Hamilton. The premise of the series is that the characters of all stories have been driven out of their homelands by the forces of a creature called The Adversary, and that the survivors have sought refuge in our 'mundane' world, and have settled in an area of New York known as 'Fabletown'. 

The main thrust of the series focuses on the modern day, political situation in Fabletown, especially the characters of Snow White and Bigby Wolf and the title story takes up shortly after where volume three (Storybook Love) leaves off. After it's slightly fragmentary predecessor, March of the Wooden Soldiers is a comic that has very much found its feet. It has developed into a strong, sardonic and powerful mix of detective story and fantasy adventure. The main characters are really hitting their pace as engaging, interesting figures with story arc that is separate from their fairytale origins. Good stuff.

The real power, though, is in the conception. The very basis of Fables is that your imaginative landscape has been laid to waste, that all the varied and magical lands of narrative have been torn up, pillaged and destroyed, leaving a few impoverished survivors to make a desperate living in a mundane, hostile world. To a reader, a storyteller, this will always be painful, and this is where Fables finds its real wings. They take the investment, the magic, the hope that you as a reader have placed in these characters, they take everything they represent to you and they...

They...

They killed Tam Lin.