[Bookwoman] [bookwoman] K2O Completely Off Topic

[Lee Anne Phillips]

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 10:50 PM ( 3/6/07 7:50 PM -0500), Hcaston at aol.com wrote:

> Lee Anne, I couldn't agree with you more.

> But frankly I'm more interested in the fact that "we"
> ARE still alive; perhaps literacy isn't dead?
> I'm simply reading pure escapist stuff these days

I'm so sorry to hear you're having a hard time.

I read a lot of "escapist" stuff as well, but am
completely unapologetic about it. What's the
point of reading, if not to escape from time to
time the reality of daily life or the dreary
necessity to "keep up" with one's field,
whatever that is? Whether we *need* to
read the financial pages, the fashion news,
or the journals, much of what we really
remember the week after next is just
those things which gave us pleasure.

Here's one I sent out to another list I help
manage, Laura Quilter's Feminist SF list:

Renfield: Slave of Dracula by Barbara Hambly

Revisiting a work like Dracula is something like 
making a souffle. If one doesn't fold in each
ingredient at the proper time and in just the
proper manner, it falls flat.

This one doesn't fail.

I can't recall ever reading a book by Barbara
Hambly that I didn't like, and this is no
exception to that general rule. 

This new book finds the perfect interstices
within which a brand new story can lurk,
with the same old story a distant echo,
as if heard from far off. Which it is, of
course, because *this* story is told from
the viewpoint of Renfield, poor mad
Renfield locked up in the that madhouse
near Carfax Abbey, while the real madness
goes on all around him. 

Yes, we know what's going to happen.
Yes, we can't stop it, no matter how we
might wish it, and isn't that enough to
drive one mad?

Reading the original, one was often struck
by how incredibly thick the various heroes
and heroines were; they went into the 
proverbial horror flick cellar, despite having
been warned -- with accompanying organ
crescendo -- never to go there, they
opened the window, just for a bit of air,
and in flits Dracula, cape swirling, 
batwings flapping, and there you go.

Another one bites the dust.

But from Renfield's cell, even hanging
in chains, we can see exactly how
stupid and silly these stalwart Victorians
really are, how smug, and how cocky,
because it all happens just as we know
it will, in horrible slow motion, despite
Renfield's every effort to speak through
his madness, to save someone, anyone,
from the coming wreck. 

This book is a small miracle, in that
we are made to engage Renfield, to
pity him, even to like and admire him,
despite his many flaws. He has good
reason to be out of his wits, after
all, the shell-shocked victim of
near fatal torture and murderous
abuse, one of the first victims of
what later became known as 
Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Unlike the original, this lovely book
doesn't have the trite and predictable
ending that cloys with its literal
deus ex machina, improbably
coincidental, and richly undeserved,
final resolution.

Oh, it happens, but we hear of it only
by distant report, as a whisper of
wind, as life goes on.

-------------------

As background, I dote on vampire novels,
since they address, in my opinion, core
issues of human existence in metaphor.

It's not for nothing that the concept has
transferred bck from metaphor into
mundane description, from sultry movie
"vamps" to political comment -- i.e. the
"Is GW Bush a Vampire?" website -- to
reverse metaphor for sociopathic killer
or even selfish jerk.

There are usually twinned issues; the
ethical problem of living at the expense
of other living creatures, addressed many
milennia before Bram Stoker in the Vedic
karma stories and paraphrased in Ralph
Waldo Emerson's Brahmah, "If the red
slayer thinks he slays...," and the perennial
pseudo-Victorian fixation on female
sexuality, a sort of "Girls Gone Wild"
for the prim and proper. These are
often combined with the geek's lament,
"Why do 'bad boys' get all the foxy girls?"

Next on my list is C.E. Murphy's Urban
Shaman, which appealed to me because
the heroine is part Cherokee, and I always
like to read about my homies.

Cheers,

Lee Anne
=============================
Flying from passion, fear, and anger,
burnt pure by the fires of knowledge,
trusting in me, taking refuge in me,
you come to my estate.
              -- Krishna to Arjuna