Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
Obviously you would think I’ve seen the film. I haven’t. I want to. This is the sort of surreal book that lends itself well to art and design because there is both a sense of blank canvas in the characters and in the design, but what is not alterable is the setting and time. It makes the book unique in a lot of ways as the main character is, frankly, the world and Bella is absorbing information and character as she becomes integrated into it.
I enjoyed Bella’s assessments of the world, the eyes of an innocent frankly discussing the state of the world. I enjoyed also the multiple narratives contradicting one another as each character puts their light onto that world, influenced by how they have benefited in society.
This book is, genuinely, much more complex and sophisticated than I think even many movie goers would say the film is. Having not seen it yet, I’ll have to update you later.
In the meantime, however, read this book. It’s one of the first books I was truly able to sing my teeth into this year. It would easily be its own book to analyze it properly.
Tag: fantasy
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
An analysis,
It’s not often I find something like this; specifically, a book I hadn’t heard of by an author I love. the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only fully completed novel by Edgar Allen Poe, someone I learned to do voicework by narrating. I’ve literally read, cover to cover, multiple compendiums but somehow this story slipped past me. It was only because of House of Usher on Netflix that I had heard of it and because I felt deeply compelled to figure out Mark Hamill’s character (who was my favorite).
The Pym story is odd for Poe because it doesn’t follow his normal tropes. I could probably make a key for Poe: dead wife, remarried; main character with high sensory perception, etc cetera. But the Pym story is a high seas novel in the vein of Treasure Island.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t surreal. It does have the trope of a man trapped in a confined space which he details, similar to Pit and the Pendulum, in the chapters in which Pym is a stowaway on a vessel then overtaken in a mutiny with no one aware he’s below deck. And there is, of course, the novel’s abrupt end which plays out a bit like M. Valdemar where the whole narrative could Be taken for a hoax—the Pym narrative claims to only be transcribed by Poe.
No, what’s surreal and out of pocket for Poe about it is how he plays a straight face for most of the novel. Only toward the very end is there any supernatural happening, instead, much of the book could have been written by someone else.
It seems almost like a writing exercise. Published in 1838, the Pym narrative covers shipwrecks, mutiny, cannibalism, hollow earth theory, and touches on the race for the poles– infamously leading to the deaths of many explorers. It seems to have been an obvious inspiration for The Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne fifty years later.
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Hedonism hedonism hedonism!
Dorian Grey often falls into philosophical and what’s called ‘decadent literature’. Decadence, broadly, refers literally to decay and so in that sense, The Picture of Dorian Grey is a perfectly decadent book.
The decadence movement boasted the superiority of aesthetics over logic and naturalism. Decadence, as a term, referring to the decay of societies as a result of the loss of cultural standard–Case in point, the over expansion of the Roman Empire. French writers such as Baudelaire exalted in being decadent writers, romanticizing the decline of Rome and scoffing at progressive cultural agendas. This is where that slipperly slope to Ayn Rand makes itself available.
In the Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde challenges and stylizes decadence.
Oscar Wilde is of course extremely famous as a satirist, my favorite of Wilde’s is actually The Importance of Being Earnest, and I feel he can’t help but be silly with Lord Henry’s character. Lord Henry can, in fact, only make me think of Graham Chapman’s Oscar Wilde sketch. But I digress.
Dorian listens to Lord Henry’s hedonistic philosophy and determines that the only important quality in life is beauty, priding beauty over all things. Wilde tells us just what he really thinks of this in what he has happen to Dorian, the lives Dorian destroys, and the hideousness of Dorian’s aging portrait. Beauty is a mask and fleeting, and the hideousness of your actions will always catch up to you.
DRACULA
I may someday have to write an essay, perhaps create a video essay, about what a bad person I think Bram Stoker was and the unintentional cinematic phenomena of Dracula.
Like all Vampire stories, Dracula was about fear mongering and the zeitgeist of the time. In Dracula, Stoker tells a reverse colonialism story. Here is a person who comes from, by the estimations of Johnathan Harker, a backwards land. Harker is meant to introduce you to the character and culture of Dracula; Harker’s frequent disparaging tut-tuting of the eastern Europeans he encounters is meant to be the prevailing opinions of the time. And then, here, this cloaked and despicable figure who pretends to want to meld within British society and become a part of the western European culture –turns out he is actually an infiltration of backward eastern myth come to feed upon those most vulnerable Victorian White Ladies™ that minorities cannot get enough of. But don’t worry, white guys, we have a slightly better eastern European who’s more integrated into our society, Van Helsing, who can hopefully bridge the gap by killing the embodiment of eastern European mythos. and the
…
Does it not make sense that vampires have become so much more a sympathetic figure since 1897? Does it not make sense that so many retellings of vampire stories now within western culture focus on the suffering of the vampire? And is that not, still, pretty fucking condescending?
I like Dracula, he who has ruled so long that he would rule still. I hope he gets to eat everybody.
FRANKENSTEIN
I could write essays on Frankenstein. I could likely write books on Frankenstein. For February I’ve decided to talk about some classic horror novels and where better to begin than Frankenstein.
Here is my most recent take after my most recent reading of Frankenstein:
I feel bad for Captain Robert Walton. Here he is, lonely, an innocent, just doing some minor vanity expedition-ing to the North Pole. He’s a scientist, probably not a colonizer even if he is British, and he’s lonely. He’s real, real lonely. He’s been on this ship a while. His men are losing faith. His sister probably thinks he’s a loser. He just wanted to be a writer. He just wanted a friend. He just wanted to go to the North Pole so he could say he did something worthwhile with his life.
And then there he is! A friend appears! Walton’s prayers for companionship at the edge of nowhere miraculously —oh wait, It’s Victor Frankenstein.
Victor Frankenstein then spends, like, forever telling Walton all of the minutia of his life and crimes with such a minimal level of empathy or remorse except for the consequences Victor has received that you just want to quietly slip Walton a book on narcissistic abuse. Just as a head’s up.
Victor Frankenstein, who isn’t a doctor. He’s a med student who fucks around and finds out, yet somehow still thinks the world is unfair to him specifically.
And then! He dies! And Walton is just sitting there, having had the ultimate vicarious trauma experience, alone once again. And he thinks to himself, well, that was something. Ravings of a mad man I hope —oh, nope, there’s Adam burning Victor’s body that he stole. It was all real. Well damn.
I feel bad for Captain Robert Walton.
Review: My Evil Mother
My Evil Mother
Margaret Atwood
Another short story, easing into the New Year. At 32 pages, another Amazon Prime original story, My Evil Mother details the relationship between mother and daughter and how one bestows strength. I loved the quirky but serious depiction of mother and daughter, the interwoven urban legends of witches and trauma, abandonment, and perseverance.
The depiction of the mother’s self assured, unwavering confidence as her daughter interpreted it pitted against her reality is both heartbreaking and aspirational.
Review: Orfeia
Orfeia
Joanne Harris
Finishing out the year with Joanne Harris yet again, and far from the only Joanne Harris novella I read after indulging in Honeycomb, Orfeia stuck with me in a biting way.
I find with Harris’s work I have a tendency to incorporate it into my understanding of a given mythology. Blue Salt Road is how I always saw selkie stories, isn’t it?
Orfeia was unique and beautiful. I absolutely recommend it, her prose style reminding me of George MacDonald or Edgar Rice Burroughs but deeply cemented in a network of fae stories with Harris has been weaving through her many novellas and Honeycomb.
Orfeia follows a mother who has lost her adult child and is willing to travel into the land of the dead, through various fae traps, to restore her.
It was absolutely lovely.
Review: You Feel it Just Below the Ribs
You Feel it Just Below the Ribs
Jeffrey Cranor, Janina Matthewson
Wheewwww
I loved it. I struggled with it a bit because it feels at times too unreal and at other times too close to home, which I imagine is exactly the sliver of reality is seeks to exist between.
I have realized something very crucial in reading this book; I would follow Jeffrey Cranor into the ocean. Which I imagine would be terrifying for him, but I love the biting realism in this dystopian thriller.
Typically, I am not a fan of books told in journal format, it’s just not my preference, but this was excellently written, sci-fi horror.
I absolutely recommend it for people who like darker, more realistic portrayals in their fiction.
Review: SisterSong
Sistersong
Lucy Holland
This book was beautiful; a retelling of the Twa sisters, it follows three siblings through an Arthur-adjacent tale with links both to real history and myths in The Matter of Britain.
As an Arthurian nerd (read: everything nerd), I loved seeing a story I wasn’t familiar with, a murder ballad that I was familiar with, an amazing queer representation, and a new take on Merlin.
The story manages to do all of it without beating you over the head with its source material, instead guiding through a world that feels totally Holland’s creation. The narrative and characters are remarkably organic and conflicted.
I would absolutely recommend it, especially to a queer audience which all too rarely sees representation outside of mundane coming out stories.
Review: The Night Circus
The Night Circus
Erin Morgentstern
This was a reread for me, which typically I don’t reread books so soon after the first time I’ve read them. It tends to be a decades later ‘oh yeah, I can appreciate this differently now’ vibe. But I read this book for the first time in 2020 and I’ve probably aged a few decades between them and now.
I remember, both times I’ve read it, immediately thinking of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The opening lines are from the perspective of and detailing the Night Circus itself, the edifice, and I remember the first time I read it being drawn in by this comparison. It’s something that promises something unusual.
What I find funny, having read this book twice, is that the characters are so crisp and well developed while giving the smallest amount of detail necessary. That’s how a mysterious air is achieved, after all, but it really does smack you in the face to realize how little you know and how much you still attach yourself on.
My opinion of certain aspects has changed given the time and life experiences I’ve had between readings; I am far more sympathetic to Isobel the scorned card reader; far less sympathetic to Tsukiko who betrayed her love.
I still love the man in grey and Chandresh.
The characterization is evocative. The storytelling and pacing; the sense of being out of time in several aspects, is something which manages to draw you in while keeping you separated, exactly as a circus should.
Plus, who doesn’t live a story that comes with an aesthetic?
It’s an absolute recommendation
Aliactast 
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