Hanging in there

[pameladean]

I am not having a very good time. As a number of people, most notably Anne Frank, have observed, being reminded or reminding oneself that other people are having a worse time is not really notably comforting. Even the old saw "Could be worse, could be raining" is untrue, since it would be far better if it were in fact raining.

One thing I will say for the present sent of circumstances is that I have realized how much I need a vacation. And I'm going to get one. It's attached to Eric's departure for at least a year, possibly longer, but it will still be a vacation. I'm looking forward to that a lot.

Having read as much of Mary Renault's historical fiction as I can at the moment, I have devolved upon the Anne of Green Gables books. I never saw any of those as a child or young adult; then for some years we had Anne of Avonlea and, I think, Anne's House of Dreams about the place. A few years ago my sister-in-law gave me an Amazon gift certificate as a birthday present, so I got the entire series. They became instant comfort reading, despite my great dubiety about a number of their underlying assumptions.

At the moment I'm reading one of the ones I'm more used to, and so am trying to assimilate comfort and instruction at the same time, wondering what makes these books so appealing and whether I can do it. Probably not, to the second; it's really no use my contemplating these things, I have contemplated them regularly for years and years and it simply does not work for me to take a list of attributes alleged to be successful either for other people or for me, and put them into a book. I am not trying to be all high-falutin here or preserving my lonely artistic integrity or anything of that sort. I acknowledge it as a flaw that I can't do this, but really I can't.

I am trying it again anyway because the prospects of the current project's ever being bought by anybody look exceedingly grim. I don't really want to talk about it more just now.

In other news, there are three or four plants of the volunteer pink phlox, which pleases me tremendously; and I have about a dozen green tomatoes growing assiduously now that the weather pleases them. My Madonna lilies never came back and only one of the three Casablanca lilies did so. This is not a year when I can afford to buy any lilies, but I think, as Minnehaha K. suggested to me, I will move some of the ones in front that are being crowded out by the goldenrod, and put them around back where they can expand.

David and I went down to Northfield last week because a cousin of his was visiting. He hadn't seen her in about 23 years and I had never met her at all. I was very grumpy about meeting strangers (her husband was there too), but it was foolish of me to be so, after all. They were delightful people and we had a lovely time. I did have cause to ponder my utter lack of social skills. Both the cousin and her husband asked us a great many questions, as is indeed reasonable for relatives who have not seen one another in years or met one at all, as the case may be, and we were happy to answer them. But it occurred to me later that we hadn't returned the favor. I don't mind being asked a barrage of questions about my writing methods -- they were quite clueful and didn't make any stupid assumptions. But I am much too shy to ask a similar barrage, even though I think that would probably have been the proper thing to do. I felt I hadn't done my share of the work. David is not shy, but he isn't in the habit of asking a lot of questions, and he didn't acquire it for the occasion.

There was a visiting cat named Lexy who reminded me enormously of Lydy's Lilith.

My mother had David and Lydy and Eric and me over for dinner, in order to see Eric before he left. He was very sleepy, having been awakened by the appalling fire alarm in his apartment building and then having had to get up early for work-related reasons, but he had a good time, and so did the rest of us. It was nice to see my brother again too; I'm not sure how much longer he will be here. He regaled us with the details of the Teapot Dome scandal, among other things.

I'm having a terrible time with the very moderate heat we are having. This summer is nothing compared to last; it's been cool to average. But I have to turn on the air conditioner in my office when the temperature gets above 80, which vexes me when I think of the electric bill.

My cat is crammed onto half of the cushion I put on my desk for him, the other half being inconsiderately occupied by a couple of dirty plates I haven't removed from the room yet. If I move them he will probably leave. There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

Pamela

Comments

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I have always thought that the comfort of the Montgomery books is the utter transparency of everyone's motives. They're like the anti-mystery. I agree that the underlying assumptions sometimes stick in the craw, especially true for me with the Pat books, but they're still . . . cozy.

It might also be the comfort of archetypal stories. I tend to think of Anne's progression as the perfect example of a storytelling curve. Most other stories deviate slightly from the bell. Take, for instance, Jack of Kinrowan, which I re-read recently. At the beginning of the book, you deal with relationship angst, and then are wrenched around to deal with weird supernatural stuff, non-optionally. It's a very steep start. Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, burbles pacifically. Interesting things happen, but there is very little arc.

Er, or something.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My sympathies with regard to the grim and uncomfortable aspects of things. *hug*

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Sympathies both broad (for the entire situation) and narrow (for the heat). I'm having a miserable-in-my-skin summer, thermoregulatory system-wise, myself, alternately steaming and freezing and generally feeling as if I've borrowed someone else's not-very-comfortable skin.

This part, at least, is bound to pass. Isn't it?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Even the old saw "Could be worse, could be raining" is untrue, since it would be far better if it were in fact raining.

My dear friend alendrel has always said "It could be worse; it could be raining molten lead."

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry things are being rough. I hope they get better.

I agree with you, btw, about the tempting futility of that check-list idea. I can't do it either. I especially can't do it for comfort-reading. I'd love to be able to write books that do what MacCaffrey's Harper Hall books did for me when I was about thirteen, but for me that's completely the wrong way round. I can't start from that end. I can't even say, I will now write a book that does X. Because it won't. Generally, after ten pages or so, it won't do anything at all.

To jump topics, I have the same problem with forgetting to ask questions in return. It always takes a conscious effort--and the conversation has to last long enough that I remind myself to do it. I'm always genuinely interested in what other people have to say; I just never think to ask. (I think I also have a little residual trouble with having been taught that asking too many questions is nosy and impolite.) I often feel like I must come across as the most self-centered person in the universe, when in fact it's just that that piece of the flow-chart in my head is broken.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I love the phrase "comfort reading" because sometimes it's just what you need. I read the Anne books as a pre-teen, and they bring back that sense of security I had at that time. You know, before all the hormones and angst kick in.

and congratulations on the phlox!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My security books are books that do amazing things with story and/or language and confirm for me that it's possible to do such amazing things; like The Anubis Gates and The Dragon Waiting and much of Ian McDonald. They don't actually seem to need to be emotionally positive at all; I'm the only person I've ever known who thinks of Use of Weapons as a comfort book.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you're having a hard time.

My library had the first two or three Anne books when I was a kid; my cousins' library several states away had some of the rest. We visited them for two weeks every summer, and I'd take out the books on a cousin's card. Then when I was sixteen or so, Bantam reprinted them, which I think was the first time I even learned of the existence of Rilla of Ingleside and Rainbow Valley.

I preferred the Emily books, because they had what was to my mind clearly the right ending (Emily becomes a writer and goes off on a European tour) rather than the wrong one (Anne has lots of children and never writes again).

If it is any consolation, Tam Lin has been one of my comfort books ever since my senior year of high school, and I know it is a comfort book for a great many of my friends.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i think of tam lin as a comfort book, too.

you are a wonder. just so you know.

[blackholly.livejournal.com]

Though you don't know me, I feel compelled to jump in with this: I have the opposite problem in social situations--I ask questions, but often become anxious when talking about myself. So, comfort yourself with the knowledge that question-askers often don't want to talk about themselves and can be greatly pleased by listening.

[pameladean]

Livejournal wouldn't let me post a response last time; let's see if things are less crowded.

I think "the anti-mystery" is a very good way of putting it, and I think that is one of the charms of the Anne books. The other, for me, is the nature writing.

My very favorite Montgomery is The Blue Castle, which also has wonderful nature writing and is a little snarkier. I haven't read Jack of Kinrowan (I assume you are referring to the de Lint book rather than to a book of Montgomery's, but either way I haven't read it, I am sorry to say) nor any Stephenson either; I am so dilatory.

I really like the Emily books better than the Anne books and am permanently fascinated with them; but they contain a few too many genuinely distressing moments. I am not sure they were as distressing to the author as they were to me, but the fact remains. They don't work quite so well as comfort books, anyway.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Thank you. Something will change, sooner or later. Just this moment, though, is icky. *hug back*

Pamela

[pameladean]

If it were, at least one would be in a science fiction novel!

Pamela

[pameladean]

Yes, yes, yes, neither can I say that I will write a book that does X. Entirely the wrong way round. Writing theories and teachings and exercises that assume one can do that are one of my many profound irritations. Fie.

And I too feel that I must come off as dreadfully self-centered when it's merely a matter of a broken brain bit. I love the flow-chart metaphor.

Pamela

[pameladean]

I can't have that purely comfortable a reaction to the Anne books because of when I discovered them, but I feel that way about some really rather prickly books, Louise Fitzhugh's, because I read them at the magic age of eleven.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Mine have varied over the years; until I got oversensitive to violence, one of mine was The Mask of Apollo. That's still, if not a far cry, at least a middling cry, from the Banks, though!

Pamela

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with this, and try not to get all giddy fangirl. In college, it was my comfort reading, (along with LotR) and still brings me back to that time where I felt so free and able to do anything!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The Emily books contain one of the worst moments in all literature, right up there with Lisa Tuttle's "Flying to Byzantium" and the children hanging themselves in _Jude the Obscure_.

I don't know how any writer could have written that like that.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

((waves shyly)) Not only is Tam Lin my comfort book, I have given copies to other bookish girls in college having a rough time, and it has become the comfort book of three of same.

moi

[(Anonymous)]

Gotta chime in on the Tam Lin comfort chorus; also, The Blue Castle and the Emily books are my favorites of her stuff, too. The Secret Garden and practically anything by Lois McMaster Bujold will serve much the same purpose.

If wishes have any influence, things will get better for you soon, no doubt. Add mine to the heap. :)

--Quill

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I used to have this grandiose theory, when I was in high school and college, that there were two kinds of writers: clockwork and organic. I was one of the organic ones, in that nothing I wrote ever had an outline or a destination or anything; I just wrote and watched it grow, like planting seeds to find out if they're marigolds or triffids. The clockwork writers were the ones who could plan everything out and thought about, you know, theme and stuff. In my heart of hearts, I scorned them, although I paid lip-service to the idea that everyone writes differently and everyone's way is right, yada yada. I was convinced that my way was really and secretly the best and that those other people weren't really writing, not like I was. You know how that goes.

Of course, my binary was a completely false one, as so many binaries are. I'm now a steampunk-cyborg writer, part organic and part clockwork. And I won't extend that metaphor further, because it's getting disturbing.

But I still don't really believe that there's anyone out there who can decide what things the story is going to do before they start to write it. (I mean, yes, I know they're out there, but I don't believe in them; if they were fairies in Peter Pan, I don't think I'd be able to clap for them. Which is okay, since they're not fairies and they don't need me to believe in them anyway.) One of the articles I've been reading recently about audience response to Jacobean tragedy points out that there's an important and necessary difference between what the audience feels during a play and how they analyze it afterwards. For me, in some weird way (and even though I don't agree with the argument the article goes on to make), that maps onto my writing. The writing and the analysis of the writing (the thing that lets you say, This story does X) are different processes. They bleed into each other around the edges, and I'm sure sometimes I'm practicing both simultaneously without noticing, but the writing had damn well better go first, or there's not going to be anything to analyze. Trying to analyze before there's a story there--I shall write a story that does X--is like trying to build a castle, not only without any blocks of stone, but without any peasants to do the work.

holiday

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

Indeed you do need a vacation. Not every difficulty can be solved by a simple resolve to fly the country but it solves more than it has any right to.

Caroline

[qwerty88.livejournal.com]

What moment would that be? I haven't read the series in ages.

[ionas.livejournal.com]

I hope that the life-curve turns upward for you.

I don't know if you have encountered L.M. Montgomery's journals, but if you haven't, I recommend them. Fascinating reading, for both her alien voice and her startlingly contemporary views, hidden in the journal, particularly with respect to sexuality and falling in love. But they are quite harrowing at times--not for reading when one wants comfort.

My comfort read used to be P.G. Wodehouse, but has been replaced by Patrick O'Brian.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I am also fond of the Emily books, but I haven't read them in years. I found books 2 and 3 on the 50 cent cart at my used book store a while back, but there was no book one, nor I have I come across one since. (And I enjoy the hunt sufficiently to not just order one.) When I find one, I will re-read them; it's been too long.