Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Oof, it has been a long time since I posted one of these. October last year! Welp. Nine whole months.

I present to you this excellent New Yorker essay, from the editor of the Norton Book of Ghost Stories (Brad Leithauser), on The Turn of the Screw. I tried to get my students to look away from "is she mad?" and even beyond "the text invites multiple interpretations" to "the text invites any single reader to hold multiple interpreations at once - and then remember it's serial fiction in a magazine, ie, would be COMMUNALLY read". I'm not sure how well I succeeded.

All such attempts to “solve” the book, however admiringly tendered, unwittingly work toward its diminution. Yes, if we choose to accept the reality of the ghosts, “The Turn of the Screw” presents a bracing account of rampant terror. (This is the way I first read it, in my teens.) And if we accept the governess’s madness, we have a fascinating view of a shattering mental dissolution. (That’s the way I next read it, under a professor’s instruction in college.) But “The Turn of the Screw” is greater than either of these interpretations. Its profoundest pleasure lies in the beautifully fussed over way in which James refuses to come down on either side. In its twenty-four brief chapters, the book becomes a modest monument to the bold pursuit of ambiguity. It is rigorously committed to lack of commitment. At each rereading, you have to marvel anew at how adroitly and painstakingly James plays both sides.
...
“The Turn of the Screw” provides an unrivalled opportunity to read in a bifurcated fashion, to operate paragraph by paragraph on two levels. Logically, the effect of this ought to be expansive. James is trafficking in openness; readers can shift, at whim, from ghostly tale to character study.

Yet—the book’s greatest feat, its keenest paradox—the ultimate effect is precisely the opposite of openness. “The Turn of the Screw” may be the most claustrophobic book I’ve ever read. Yes, you’re free to shift constantly from one interpretation to the next, and yet, as you progress deeper into the story, each interpretation begins to seem more horrible than the other. As the gruesomeness gathers, the beautiful country house effectively falls away, like flesh receding from the skull of a cadaver, and we’re deposited in a hellish, plantless, low landscape of bone and stone: plenty of places to run, but nowhere to hide.

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Currently Reading:
Fiction: Alexis Hall, "The Affair of the Mysterious Letter". Which is a romp and a delight and a fantastic piece of metafictional snark - the narrator plays with retrospective narration while the author plays with his-and-the-audience's shared knowledge of Holmes and post-Holmes genre conventions. The way that Hall pulls off the 1st p narrator being a giant prude in print while making it, a, perfectly clear what is said and/or done in front of him and b, that he actually doesn't mind: beautiful.
Non-fiction for personal interest:
- Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote, "Gender Failure". This has been on my shelf for about a year, and I've been putting it off, lest it Awaken Something In Me, etc. Too late now, and I'm loving it.
- Twist, Barker, Vincent and Gupta (eds), "Non-Binary Lives". Featuring a contribution by none other than sfred. Some bits I'm like "yes, this I must find this person and read anything else they've written", and some I am not. Par for the course.
Lit Mag: Finally started the Lapham's Quarterly "Friendship" issue
Poetry: Nothing right now
For work: Oh so many things, in such chaos. Notably, however, Leah DeVun's "The Shape of Sex", and Marion Turner's "Chacuer: A European Life"
On hiatus: Most notably, "Women of a certain rage", and "The Body Keeps the Score".

Finished, at some point, not all that recently:

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had somehow picked up, from a twitter conversation that I had misinterpreted, that this was, like, dubcon lesbian Kushiel's Dart, with necromancers.

It is not that.

It is pretty great, though! It juuust about holds together the flimsy worldbuilding that it has at this stage, and the anachronistic narratorial voice. It has many things I like in pulp sff and/or fanfic.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A solid second book. I enjoyed it at the time; however, unlike Gideon the Ninth, relatively little of the plot has stuck in my head. I do remember enjoying the elaborate switcheroos in terms of whose "side" we're on - reminds me of Sara Douglass at her best.


Paladin's Hope by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On the one hand: I'm delighted Ursula turned her hand to queer romance, and I have hope for more.

On the other hand: it has a very "test case" feel about it, like the author isn't quite used to thinking outside how she is attracted to people, yet. At times it's very clear that Ursula's modus operandi involves plump women and lorge men, and it's difficult for her to convincingly write about being attracted to men who aren't lorge, or to lorge men from some position other than that of plump women.

But I havve every confidence that the way to fixing that is, well, to write more things that aren't m/f, and I have great hopes for Judith's book.


The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I enjoyed this a lot! Delly Wells makes for a great POV narrator, a delight.


A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I know lots of people loved this, but I just didn't. I know Ursula originally had a teen narrator, then aged her down for trad pub then up again. I'll put it bluntly: aging her up again was a mistake. She doesn't think or act like a teen protagonist. The plot is flabby, and its devices swing wildly between middle grade or even kidlit and YA level logics. The best bits are the bits that felt like they were written for 9-y-olds. Most of the book is not those bits.


So there you go, I was unimpressed by the 2021 Lodestar winner. Grumblebum that I am.

Other things that I've been unimpressed with since October 2021 include: Annie Bellet; Aliette de Bodard; Ben Aaronovitch; Freya Marske; Torrey Peters; Tad Williams.

Recently added to my TBR:
Fiction: Most recent additions are Maya Deane's "Wrath Goddess, Sing", which appears to be a trans femme revisioning of the Illiad; and the 90s lesbian fiction anthology "Leatherwomen".
Non-fiction for personal interest: That would appear to be Alex Iantaffi's "Gender Trauma"
Academic TBR: Kadji Amin's "Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History". I've put this under Academic because the thorny question of how to deal with the entanglement of not only queer figures but also key queer theorists with pederasty, either in attested practice or really quite adamantly in theory keeps coming up in work contexts.
Other: Only the stack of back issues of Meanjin and Archer and Laphams that I've accrued.

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