Here's a love poem for the week of Valentine's day. It struck me anew as lovely, in the wake of the Twilight jokes about watching a loved one sleep and towards the end (I hope) of my powerful winter somnolence:
Variation on the Word Sleep, by Margaret Atwood
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
In truth, though, the odds of me being awake to watch anyone else sleep are low. I need more sleep than other people do, as I learned unequivocally 29 years ago this month when a doctor confirmed I was suffering from "exhaustion" after a week during which I got only about 4 hours of sleep a night. But hey, is romance about truth? No. Romance is about what you wish for. A person can dream!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Someplace with Monkeys
This morning I read the newspaper and looked at google news, and then I read some of the blogs I follow, and all of the sudden, some of my inarticulate fears coalesced into an image, and that image is the house in Dr. Zhivago full of desperate people after the revolution, courtesy of the Green-Eyed Siren. She says what a lot of bloggers are feeling about the economic crisis:
"... I feel like I’m developing dual identities. One part of me is happily Facebooking and Tweeting and blogging about all that is random and useless, generally with an ample helping of bad-economy gallows humor. The other part of me is in a constant state of fear and depression, like a background application gone haywire, breaking through my online party time more and more frequently to have anxiety attacks about our collective future."
I've been feeling this way since September, when I started feeling like maybe I was like Nero, fiddling in the local symphony and reading books to escape present reality. And yet, as the Siren points out, what more can any of us non-experts do than continue to take care of the things important to us, including our children? One of the questions Harriet got this week is about whether we should all chuck our "serious writing pursuits" and collaborate on a money-making romance novel, and she said yes, "let's go write it in Bermuda. Or someplace with monkeys." Now, that's escapism.
But I'm thinking about W.H. Auden (which you know I do a lot), and about how his poem "September 1, 1939" was revised during his lifetime and then how very often it was quoted in September, 2001, and how important it still seems right now:
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives:
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge iimago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what Dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
All I have is a voice, and even if I would like to go write nonsense someplace with monkeys, that's just talk. It's connecting with others. And if "we must love one another or die" or any of the variations on that line that Auden tried, connection itself is important.
And humor is important; think of the father in Life is Beautiful, and the courage it can take to get through what later might be identified as a Bad Time in History. Also, Dr. Zhivago may be scary, in parts, but why is it one of the few Russian novels made into a movie that many Americans have seen? It's a love story.
"... I feel like I’m developing dual identities. One part of me is happily Facebooking and Tweeting and blogging about all that is random and useless, generally with an ample helping of bad-economy gallows humor. The other part of me is in a constant state of fear and depression, like a background application gone haywire, breaking through my online party time more and more frequently to have anxiety attacks about our collective future."
I've been feeling this way since September, when I started feeling like maybe I was like Nero, fiddling in the local symphony and reading books to escape present reality. And yet, as the Siren points out, what more can any of us non-experts do than continue to take care of the things important to us, including our children? One of the questions Harriet got this week is about whether we should all chuck our "serious writing pursuits" and collaborate on a money-making romance novel, and she said yes, "let's go write it in Bermuda. Or someplace with monkeys." Now, that's escapism.
But I'm thinking about W.H. Auden (which you know I do a lot), and about how his poem "September 1, 1939" was revised during his lifetime and then how very often it was quoted in September, 2001, and how important it still seems right now:
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives:
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge iimago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what Dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
All I have is a voice, and even if I would like to go write nonsense someplace with monkeys, that's just talk. It's connecting with others. And if "we must love one another or die" or any of the variations on that line that Auden tried, connection itself is important.
And humor is important; think of the father in Life is Beautiful, and the courage it can take to get through what later might be identified as a Bad Time in History. Also, Dr. Zhivago may be scary, in parts, but why is it one of the few Russian novels made into a movie that many Americans have seen? It's a love story.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Sometimes It's Important to Take a Stand
The Booking Through Thursday question (Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse - a biography has made you love an author more?) has continued to stir up a controversy that I helped to begin, however inadvertently, with a comment about why I will no longer buy books by Orson Scott Card on Maw Books Blog. If I had been thinking at all, I probably wouldn't have left the initial comment, because I didn't realize that the blog author is a Mormon, as Card is. But now that I have spoken without thinking, I find myself in the position of having to take a stand, and I'll do it without any more apology to Natasha, who seems to be a lovely person, because I don't think that all Mormons spread hate of homosexuals any more than I believe all Roman Catholics are from big families or all Muslims are terrorists.
As I've said in several places (Hey, Lady, Watcha Readin'? for example), I'm usually not aware of an author's views, and it wouldn't make any difference to my enjoyment of their fiction if I were. But I do have issues I feel strongly about, and I think anyone who has a public forum, however small, is obligated to speak out about issues they see as wrong, lest they perpetuate that wrongness by failing to object. The most horrifying examples of perpetuating evil by failing to speak out against it are the Germans who managed not to notice the concentration camps in their country, and the slaveowners who thought it was enough not to mistreat their own slaves, while the neighbors' slaves were suffering untold (literally) agonies. A more recent example of the dangers of thinking that the "live and let live" philosophy is enough is Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder (see my post on that here).
I can't imagine being "put off an author's books after reading a biography of them." Not reading is never the answer! But financially supporting an author I disagree with so vehemently--and who is so public in his support of what I consider evil--is not something I want anyone to do. Even though his books are wonderful. Read them, but get them from the library.
As I've said in several places (Hey, Lady, Watcha Readin'? for example), I'm usually not aware of an author's views, and it wouldn't make any difference to my enjoyment of their fiction if I were. But I do have issues I feel strongly about, and I think anyone who has a public forum, however small, is obligated to speak out about issues they see as wrong, lest they perpetuate that wrongness by failing to object. The most horrifying examples of perpetuating evil by failing to speak out against it are the Germans who managed not to notice the concentration camps in their country, and the slaveowners who thought it was enough not to mistreat their own slaves, while the neighbors' slaves were suffering untold (literally) agonies. A more recent example of the dangers of thinking that the "live and let live" philosophy is enough is Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder (see my post on that here).
I can't imagine being "put off an author's books after reading a biography of them." Not reading is never the answer! But financially supporting an author I disagree with so vehemently--and who is so public in his support of what I consider evil--is not something I want anyone to do. Even though his books are wonderful. Read them, but get them from the library.
Feeling Like Harrison Withers
I woke up this morning with a big grin like Harrison Withers' in Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy. Because yesterday we brought home a kitten. Now I'm spending the day trying to placate the older felines and comfort the younger one, who seems genuinely puzzled to find that anyone doesn't like him. Like Harrison, I'm spending a considerable amount of time watching the kitten, who just accepted my offer of a toy mouse with enthusiasm. This is what Harriet sees when she spots Harrison's new kitten:
"Into the room, as though he owned it, to the accompaniment of loud cooing and baby talk from Harrison Withers [see XKCD comic] walked the tiniest cat Harriet had ever seen. It was a funny-looking little black-and-white kitten which had a mustache which made it look as though it were sneering. It stopped, looked at Harrison Withers as though he were a curiosity, and then walked disdainfully across the room. Harrison Withers watched in adoration. Harriet leaned back and wrote:
SO THAT'S IT. WONDER WHERE HE GOT THAT CAT. I GUESS IF YOU WANT A CAT YOU RUN INTO ONE SOMEPLACE. HEE HEE."
We've always believed in serendipitous cats. They turn up (especially if you frequent the local humane society). Now if I could just persuade the older feline residents to take their very dramatic paws down from their foreheads.
"Into the room, as though he owned it, to the accompaniment of loud cooing and baby talk from Harrison Withers [see XKCD comic] walked the tiniest cat Harriet had ever seen. It was a funny-looking little black-and-white kitten which had a mustache which made it look as though it were sneering. It stopped, looked at Harrison Withers as though he were a curiosity, and then walked disdainfully across the room. Harrison Withers watched in adoration. Harriet leaned back and wrote:
SO THAT'S IT. WONDER WHERE HE GOT THAT CAT. I GUESS IF YOU WANT A CAT YOU RUN INTO ONE SOMEPLACE. HEE HEE."
We've always believed in serendipitous cats. They turn up (especially if you frequent the local humane society). Now if I could just persuade the older feline residents to take their very dramatic paws down from their foreheads.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Interview With the Non-Necromancer
Anna at Diary of An Eccentric was kind enough to interview me about books this week, in the process of passing along the "Interviewing Other Bloggers Meme" (she got her questions from Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit, and she formulated her own questions for me and also Christine at She Reads Books and Marie at Boston Bibliophile).
Anna: Out of all the books you've read, which one affected you the most, and why?
Jeanne: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I read it when it first came out, in 1986, and it made quite an impression on me. I was 26 years old, at the height of my fertility, and an adamant supporter of the pro-choice movement ever since an experience with a high school friend whose "religious" parents would have quite literally kicked her out of the house for being pregnant, except that she had a miscarriage before all of her friends could give her the money we'd pooled to get her an abortion. I had never so clearly connected being forced to carry a baby with women's rights and with what was happening with the Taliban in Afghanistan until I read the passage in which Offred has her picture taken by a group of Japanese tourists and tells them yes, she is "happy" (because she has already had her daughter, husband, mother, and best friend taken away and she has been beaten and terrified into submission). Later I came to appreciate The Handmaid's Tale for its deft weaving of the rights guaranteed by the United States Bill of Rights into the fabric of the fiction, but at first reading, it was the visceral aspect that got me. Offred is a womb with legs, nothing more.
Anna: Everyone always asks for book recommendations, but what is one book you think people should avoid at all costs?
Jeanne: Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. To me, it is the epitome of a novelist's misguided attempt to write nonfiction thinly disguised as fiction. It is an environmentalist argument that she made much better in her (later) nonfiction book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I love most of Kingsolver's novels, but she really needs to guard against her tendency to try to preach in her fiction.
Anna: What is the first book you remember reading?
Jeanne: Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss. My parents read this to me every year on my birthday--still will, if we're together. So I memorized it very young and could "read" it before anything else. One of my favorite parts was always when the animals would stand on their tiptoes because it was such an honor to be "the tallest of all-est." I have always been taller than almost everyone else, so I liked thinking that was a good thing.
Anna: When I'm browsing books, sometimes I come across a title that hits me. I don't always read the book, but the title amuses me or gets to me in some way. What's your favorite book title? Have you read the book? (Ex: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. I probably won't ever read this book, but I chuckle every time I see the title.)
Jeanne: If I have to pick just one, it will have to be another YA title, one that I chuckle at every time I go to a bookstore: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. I haven't read it because my daughter skimmed through it in the store once and told me it wasn't really worth reading. What a great title, though!
Anna: What's the one book you love and wish you'd written?
Jeanne: Whoa! I'm going to take this in the spirit of "what book do you think it's even remotely possible you could have been in the right spirit to be able to write if you were a million times cleverer and more patient than you are?" And the answer is: Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, yeah, I know. It's presumption to even think it. But it's the way I wish I could write, if I could write fiction at all, which I can't. If I had written something like that, I would have just strutted around the rest of my life crowing like Peter Pan: "Oh, the Cleverness of Me!" But really, I'm too earnest.
And that's my interview. If you would like me to interview you about books and what you think of them and all, leave me a comment with your contact information. If you would just like to comment on my opinions, well that's okay, too.
Anna: Out of all the books you've read, which one affected you the most, and why?
Jeanne: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I read it when it first came out, in 1986, and it made quite an impression on me. I was 26 years old, at the height of my fertility, and an adamant supporter of the pro-choice movement ever since an experience with a high school friend whose "religious" parents would have quite literally kicked her out of the house for being pregnant, except that she had a miscarriage before all of her friends could give her the money we'd pooled to get her an abortion. I had never so clearly connected being forced to carry a baby with women's rights and with what was happening with the Taliban in Afghanistan until I read the passage in which Offred has her picture taken by a group of Japanese tourists and tells them yes, she is "happy" (because she has already had her daughter, husband, mother, and best friend taken away and she has been beaten and terrified into submission). Later I came to appreciate The Handmaid's Tale for its deft weaving of the rights guaranteed by the United States Bill of Rights into the fabric of the fiction, but at first reading, it was the visceral aspect that got me. Offred is a womb with legs, nothing more.
Anna: Everyone always asks for book recommendations, but what is one book you think people should avoid at all costs?
Jeanne: Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. To me, it is the epitome of a novelist's misguided attempt to write nonfiction thinly disguised as fiction. It is an environmentalist argument that she made much better in her (later) nonfiction book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I love most of Kingsolver's novels, but she really needs to guard against her tendency to try to preach in her fiction.
Anna: What is the first book you remember reading?
Jeanne: Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. Seuss. My parents read this to me every year on my birthday--still will, if we're together. So I memorized it very young and could "read" it before anything else. One of my favorite parts was always when the animals would stand on their tiptoes because it was such an honor to be "the tallest of all-est." I have always been taller than almost everyone else, so I liked thinking that was a good thing.
Anna: When I'm browsing books, sometimes I come across a title that hits me. I don't always read the book, but the title amuses me or gets to me in some way. What's your favorite book title? Have you read the book? (Ex: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. I probably won't ever read this book, but I chuckle every time I see the title.)
Jeanne: If I have to pick just one, it will have to be another YA title, one that I chuckle at every time I go to a bookstore: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies. I haven't read it because my daughter skimmed through it in the store once and told me it wasn't really worth reading. What a great title, though!
Anna: What's the one book you love and wish you'd written?
Jeanne: Whoa! I'm going to take this in the spirit of "what book do you think it's even remotely possible you could have been in the right spirit to be able to write if you were a million times cleverer and more patient than you are?" And the answer is: Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, yeah, I know. It's presumption to even think it. But it's the way I wish I could write, if I could write fiction at all, which I can't. If I had written something like that, I would have just strutted around the rest of my life crowing like Peter Pan: "Oh, the Cleverness of Me!" But really, I'm too earnest.
And that's my interview. If you would like me to interview you about books and what you think of them and all, leave me a comment with your contact information. If you would just like to comment on my opinions, well that's okay, too.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Blogoversary
Today is the one year blogoversary of Necromancy Never Pays!
As a fitting subject for the day, I offer you a review of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, by Jonathan L. Howard. This book is scheduled for publication on July 7, 2009. It's not that compelling in terms of plot (in fact, I found the plot entirely predictable), but it has a lot of very funny situations and turns of phrase that kept me reading and laughing out loud.
Johannnes marches into hell and demands an audience with Satan, bypassing the supercilious clerk who keeps everyone else filling out forms for all eternity by showing him his own skull and threatening that he will "go back to the land of the living in a truly abominable mood, raise you as a body, and then make you wish you were dead all over again. Repeatedly." Johannes then makes a deal with the devil and gets put in charge of an evil carnival designed to identify people who will sign away their souls. He goes by a crypt and picks up his brother, who he had left for dead 8 years before and who is now a vampire, and they begin riding the rails with the "Cabal Brothers Carnival," which is really Satan's "Carnival of Discord." When they select the first person to sign away his soul, however, the plot twists a little, as the vampire brother, Horst, has selected a brutal man who beats and terrorizes his girlfriend. Johannes says "being dead has made you rather less liberal than I remember," to which Horst replies "my motto always used to be 'Live and let live.' Under the circumstances, I need a new one." And Johannes responds, saying "we're supposed to be doing the devil's work and you've gone and contaminated it all with the whiff of virtue. I really don't think you've quite got the hang of being an agent of evil." And, of course, as they continue selecting souls, the brothers manage to pick out only people who richly deserve to lose their souls.
The best parts of the novel are the parts in which Johannes or Horst lets a person go free, as they discover who is worthy of being damned and who is not. There's a wonderful scene with Johannes and a ghost he ends up sending off to heaven, and another with Horst in which he saves a young boy from signing away his soul to become an astronaut. The young boy writes his story for a school assignment, complete with the bits of the seduction adventure that didn't work very well on him, like the attention of "Valerie, the commandant's beautiful daughter" to whom he responds "I meen she's a GURL, uech, yak, spu. She wil want to kiss and talk about ponys."
After a climactic meeting with a lunatic would-be necromancer called Rufus Maleficarus and his singing Maleficarian Army, which makes Johannes remember "that the musical genius who'd decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster," and during which Rufus manages to send Johannes to a "pocket world" in which time stands still and croquet is played sedately, even though "Cabal knew enough about croquet to know that it is a game with undercurrents: calculating, ruthless, and with a cold-blooded desire to destroy the opposition," Johannes lectures Rufus on necromancy:
"Your problem, Rufus Maleficarus, is that you never understood why magic was superceded by science. If you listen to the sad old wizards up in their keeps and the witches in the dales, you might believe it had something to do with the passing of the Seelie and the Unseelie from our world. Or the dust-sheet of cynicism settling on our hearts and driving out the wonder. Or children refusing to say that they believe in fairies. Poppycock. I'll tell you why. Convenience. I only practice necromantics because there's no other way of doing it. But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin."
The Johannes shoots Rufus, in a manner reminiscent of the Indiana Jones scene in which Indy shoots the guy who is whirling around in martial arts poses in front of him.
The predictability of the plot is broadcast before the end by a quarrel between the two brothers. Horst is horrified that Johannes is willing to tempt a woman into doing evil, rather than just taking the soul of someone who has already done evil. He tells Johannes to "look at yourself. Ye gods, Johannes, you were going to be a doctor! You wanted to help people." And Johannes replies "Doctors. Frauds and quacks. Just trying to hold back the dark and full of pat excuses when they fail. Too stupid or too scared to bring back the light. Not me. Not me! I'll be the modern Prometheus no matter what I have to do, no matter how dark I have to make it before I can find the secret." Yeah, modern Prometheus. In case you haven't seen a copy lately, that's the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
But Johannes does not completely turn to "the dark side" in the end; neither does he give up necromancy. He and Satan finagle each other and Johannes comes out with some of what he wanted, and then goes home with two of the human figures he raised from the dead to work at his carnival:
"He opened the gate and walked in, followed by Dennis and Denzil. A multitude of tiny chiming voices started whispering from the herbaceous borders. 'It's Johannes Cabal! Johannes Cabal! He's back!' Dennis and Denzil, clown faces creaking, looked dubiously at each other. Cabal stopped by the corner of the house and pointed down the path that led around the side. 'You two. Nothing personal, but I'm not having a couple of shambling disasters like you shedding pieces all over the Persian rugs. Down there you'll find a hut. That's your new home.' As he watched them shuffle slowly out of sight, he ruminated that--not for the first time--he'd have something rather nasty in the woodshed."
It's the juxtaposition of Johannes Cabal's dark obsession with regaining his own soul and bringing the dead back to life for his own purposes with his acute sense of morality and the ridiculousness of the situations he finds himself in, especially with his brother, that gives this novel the tension that makes it worth reading.
Of course, as usual, necromancy doesn't pay.
As a fitting subject for the day, I offer you a review of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, by Jonathan L. Howard. This book is scheduled for publication on July 7, 2009. It's not that compelling in terms of plot (in fact, I found the plot entirely predictable), but it has a lot of very funny situations and turns of phrase that kept me reading and laughing out loud.Johannnes marches into hell and demands an audience with Satan, bypassing the supercilious clerk who keeps everyone else filling out forms for all eternity by showing him his own skull and threatening that he will "go back to the land of the living in a truly abominable mood, raise you as a body, and then make you wish you were dead all over again. Repeatedly." Johannes then makes a deal with the devil and gets put in charge of an evil carnival designed to identify people who will sign away their souls. He goes by a crypt and picks up his brother, who he had left for dead 8 years before and who is now a vampire, and they begin riding the rails with the "Cabal Brothers Carnival," which is really Satan's "Carnival of Discord." When they select the first person to sign away his soul, however, the plot twists a little, as the vampire brother, Horst, has selected a brutal man who beats and terrorizes his girlfriend. Johannes says "being dead has made you rather less liberal than I remember," to which Horst replies "my motto always used to be 'Live and let live.' Under the circumstances, I need a new one." And Johannes responds, saying "we're supposed to be doing the devil's work and you've gone and contaminated it all with the whiff of virtue. I really don't think you've quite got the hang of being an agent of evil." And, of course, as they continue selecting souls, the brothers manage to pick out only people who richly deserve to lose their souls.
The best parts of the novel are the parts in which Johannes or Horst lets a person go free, as they discover who is worthy of being damned and who is not. There's a wonderful scene with Johannes and a ghost he ends up sending off to heaven, and another with Horst in which he saves a young boy from signing away his soul to become an astronaut. The young boy writes his story for a school assignment, complete with the bits of the seduction adventure that didn't work very well on him, like the attention of "Valerie, the commandant's beautiful daughter" to whom he responds "I meen she's a GURL, uech, yak, spu. She wil want to kiss and talk about ponys."
After a climactic meeting with a lunatic would-be necromancer called Rufus Maleficarus and his singing Maleficarian Army, which makes Johannes remember "that the musical genius who'd decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster," and during which Rufus manages to send Johannes to a "pocket world" in which time stands still and croquet is played sedately, even though "Cabal knew enough about croquet to know that it is a game with undercurrents: calculating, ruthless, and with a cold-blooded desire to destroy the opposition," Johannes lectures Rufus on necromancy:
"Your problem, Rufus Maleficarus, is that you never understood why magic was superceded by science. If you listen to the sad old wizards up in their keeps and the witches in the dales, you might believe it had something to do with the passing of the Seelie and the Unseelie from our world. Or the dust-sheet of cynicism settling on our hearts and driving out the wonder. Or children refusing to say that they believe in fairies. Poppycock. I'll tell you why. Convenience. I only practice necromantics because there's no other way of doing it. But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin."
The Johannes shoots Rufus, in a manner reminiscent of the Indiana Jones scene in which Indy shoots the guy who is whirling around in martial arts poses in front of him.
The predictability of the plot is broadcast before the end by a quarrel between the two brothers. Horst is horrified that Johannes is willing to tempt a woman into doing evil, rather than just taking the soul of someone who has already done evil. He tells Johannes to "look at yourself. Ye gods, Johannes, you were going to be a doctor! You wanted to help people." And Johannes replies "Doctors. Frauds and quacks. Just trying to hold back the dark and full of pat excuses when they fail. Too stupid or too scared to bring back the light. Not me. Not me! I'll be the modern Prometheus no matter what I have to do, no matter how dark I have to make it before I can find the secret." Yeah, modern Prometheus. In case you haven't seen a copy lately, that's the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
But Johannes does not completely turn to "the dark side" in the end; neither does he give up necromancy. He and Satan finagle each other and Johannes comes out with some of what he wanted, and then goes home with two of the human figures he raised from the dead to work at his carnival:
"He opened the gate and walked in, followed by Dennis and Denzil. A multitude of tiny chiming voices started whispering from the herbaceous borders. 'It's Johannes Cabal! Johannes Cabal! He's back!' Dennis and Denzil, clown faces creaking, looked dubiously at each other. Cabal stopped by the corner of the house and pointed down the path that led around the side. 'You two. Nothing personal, but I'm not having a couple of shambling disasters like you shedding pieces all over the Persian rugs. Down there you'll find a hut. That's your new home.' As he watched them shuffle slowly out of sight, he ruminated that--not for the first time--he'd have something rather nasty in the woodshed."
It's the juxtaposition of Johannes Cabal's dark obsession with regaining his own soul and bringing the dead back to life for his own purposes with his acute sense of morality and the ridiculousness of the situations he finds himself in, especially with his brother, that gives this novel the tension that makes it worth reading.
Of course, as usual, necromancy doesn't pay.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Time to Dream
The powerful sleep lobby has taken me over in the past week, and when I get enough sleep and don't have to wake up in what seems the middle of the night to get the kids off to school (6:30 am), I remember my dreams more. The rule at my house is that you don't tell your dream before breakfast unless you want it to come true, and I've recently told two of mine before breakfast. The first was that we had our existing three cats, plus three new kittens. The second was that we were in Hawaii, on the big island.
Fairly often I dream about doing things with people who, when I wake, I know are dead. Then the rest of the day, I go around thinking about what those people would think if they saw what I was doing. My dead are kind people, so I imagine them having a more-than-mortal capacity to forgive my daily foibles. They're like the dead in this poem, "The Dead" by Susan Mitchell:
At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.
We're more likely to stay up playing a card game called Rage into the night in the dining room, but surely it's the same kind of noise (when my children were babies, we used to say that we could only play "Mildly Irritated" rather than "Rage" because we're loud people). I remember the sound of my parents murmuring to each other in the hall after I'd gone to bed, or the sound of them watching Hawaii 5-0 on the television in their living room. It's a reassuring sound, my daughter says, to hear adults talking after you've gone to bed.
And it's a reassuring feeling, to wake thinking of someone and to imagine that she's looking down on you, in turn. It's like in this poem, also called "The Dead," by Billy Collins:
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
If you're a parent, do you remember waiting for your baby to close his eyes so you could tiptoe out of the room? I remember singing 427 verses of "Froggy Went A-Courting" while my youngest went to sleep. The last 400 verses, of course, were entirely made up. That's a kind of attention that surely endures even after this life is over.
Fairly often I dream about doing things with people who, when I wake, I know are dead. Then the rest of the day, I go around thinking about what those people would think if they saw what I was doing. My dead are kind people, so I imagine them having a more-than-mortal capacity to forgive my daily foibles. They're like the dead in this poem, "The Dead" by Susan Mitchell:
At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.
We're more likely to stay up playing a card game called Rage into the night in the dining room, but surely it's the same kind of noise (when my children were babies, we used to say that we could only play "Mildly Irritated" rather than "Rage" because we're loud people). I remember the sound of my parents murmuring to each other in the hall after I'd gone to bed, or the sound of them watching Hawaii 5-0 on the television in their living room. It's a reassuring sound, my daughter says, to hear adults talking after you've gone to bed.
And it's a reassuring feeling, to wake thinking of someone and to imagine that she's looking down on you, in turn. It's like in this poem, also called "The Dead," by Billy Collins:
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
If you're a parent, do you remember waiting for your baby to close his eyes so you could tiptoe out of the room? I remember singing 427 verses of "Froggy Went A-Courting" while my youngest went to sleep. The last 400 verses, of course, were entirely made up. That's a kind of attention that surely endures even after this life is over.
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