Observation Journal — First Sentences

On this observation journal page, I was taking some more time on another favourite first sentence (following on from my earlier attempt to batch-process first lines).

Left page: “Greengrocer’s glowing with oranges, lemons, apples, melons, tomatoes”; also, I forgot how to draw a shopping trolley

Really, it was just an excuse to spend some time in the first line of Sarah Caudwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered:

Scholarship asks, thank God, no recompense but Truth.

I love this first sentence. There’s no reference to persons, places, or events. There is, however, a very clear narrator: portentous, comically formal with fits of frank informality, weighty and oblique but perhaps (perhaps) not as complex as they perceive themselves to be.

And there’s already, here, a note of the relief and resignation on which the narrator (though not the plot) will end the book — ultimately, the narrator (Hilary Tamar) is more concerned about their own overlooked brilliance than the guilt or innocence of the accused Julia.

It’s punchy and funny and a little startling, and a definite Mood. There’s no action, but there is a tension — between the latinate and English words; elevated diction vs brevity; lofty principles vs grumpy relief; that very brevity vs the irony and doubled negatives. Why “thank God”? What has happened, what due was not given, who would express themselves this way? (If you’ve read the books, you’ll know this is a question that is immediately, constantly, yet also never answered.)

I then did a couple of replacement exercises (from Stanley Fish, see also previously: bodysnatching). I switched out each element (without particular attention to elegance of phrasing) to get, e.g. “Breakfast seeks, thank the cook, no pinnacle save omelette” and “The star requests, thank agents, no special treatment save a sedan chair.”

What this brought out (for me) was the personification, the irony, the echoes of Pride & Prejudice in the dubious veracity of a broad statement, and how difficult it is not to be sarcastic when using this particular sentence structure.

It’s also just a great book.

A previous take on Caudwell: The Caudwell Manoeuvre.

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Observation Journal: The Caudwell manoeuvre

I’m glad I’m up to this page of the observation journal, because I was just telling some people about this exercise last night. (Also, hey! it’s a rare non-Flyaway post.)

Left page: Gearing up for O-Week, university stereotypes, and remarkable feats of dexterity. Also, how much easier it is to remember to review pages when they are all thick and textured from paint.

Right page: I might have mentioned Sarah Caudwell once or twice before. One of the many things she did in Thus Was Adonis Murdered was to have her narrator take — as if it were the most obvious thing in the world — the stereotypical behaviours that many books would expect of a young male lawyer loose on holidays and ascribe them to a young female lawyer, offer no explanation, and play it completely seriously. There’s a distinct Wodehousian strain of comedy in the book, but this aspect startled me because the character of Julia was suddenly just like so many women I know, whom I so rarely see in books. It was endearing and problematic and hilarious and lively. (Another interesting study in this sort of thing is to read Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London (a.k.a. Midnight Riot) immediately after Nicci French’s Blue Monday.)

So this exercise was simply to take a pair of commonly-associated opposites (whether they should be opposites or even exactly how to define them is a separate question — this exercise was playing with what I saw most frequently in books etc), pick their most common (even offensively common) stereotypical traits, and then swap the two. For example, assuming it to be very obvious, to the point of it being a stale joke, that men are always buying shoes promptly describes many of my (basketball-playing, shoe-collecting) relatives, a great many put-together and fashion conscious office workers, and nearly every man I know with a boot-centric job (construction, farming, military).

Or describing a cat, for example, as loyal, a little bit inclined to drool, and friendly although not precisely intellectual suddenly describes so many particular and specific cats I know, while elusive, aloof, independent and mysterious dogs are also far more often to be found in the world than they are in books.

This was the first lesson of the exercise: that the stereotype conjures only the stereotypical template (and this has its uses, especially as a form of shorthand). Flipping the stereotype, however, suddenly brought to mind living individuals (or at least highly temperamental vehicles). (This is related to the exercise in A Discovery of Headstrong, Obstinate Girls.)

The second lesson is that the flipped stereotypes almost always start to resonate off each other. Individually, they create a deeper characterisation as well as an often unexpected appreciation of reality; together, they begin to hint at a story. (The marauding Julia, in Caudwell’s novels, is after all offset by the beautiful and virtuous Ragwort).

Bush turkey

Art/writing exercises:

• Make some pairs of obvious (or not so obvious) opposites. Dogs and cats. Day and night. Ship and shore.
• Quickly note down one or two words (or textures, or identifying visuals) commonly associated with each.
• Flip the descriptions between each pair.
• Write a sentence or two (or do a sketch) using those features as the most obvious descriptors for that person/creature/object/concept (fine-limbed, doe-eyed, fleet and elusive dragons, and snorting and furious knife-footed deer; days shadowy and mysterious, haunted by terrors, and nights brimful of light and flowers, markets and industry).

Read (not seen) — May 2020

Read

• Sisters of the Vast Black — Lina Rather. Nuns! In! Space! and much more earnest and focussed and charming than that sounds. But also: nuns in space!
• Lord Ashwood Missed Out — Tessa Dare. The high glee of Tessa Dare’s romances is very welcome in difficult times.
• A Lady by Midnight — Tessa Dare. See above. I started a list of “unlikely abrupt intense proximities” in lighter-hearted romances at about this point.
• Delicious — Sherry Thomas. Something about Sherry Thomas’ books always makes me feel like I’ve run into someone who agrees with me about certain decidedly unromantic historical novels. It also prompted me to work out my thoughts about food magic (this will probably show up at some point in the observation journal posts).
• The Monster of Elendhaven — Jennifer Giesbrecht. Nasssty oily murderous far north industrial gothic fantasy, my precious. Lovely writing.
• The Tallow-Wife — Angela Slatter. Not published yet! But I’ve been illustrating it…
• You Let Me In — Camilla Bruce. I quite liked the origin of the fae in this one.
• Chalk — Paul Cornell. Argh! Also it was interesting reading it beside You Let Me In, working out the boundaries of folk horror and my own tastes. Also loved opposing magics (earth vs ad-hoc pop magic).
• Thus Was Adonis Murdered — Sarah Caudwell. (Reread). The straight-faced flipping of steretypes. The wine. The legal humour. The first line. “Scholarship asks, thank God, no recompense but Truth.” The beautiful Ragwort…
• Black Sheep — Georgette Heyer. (Reread). There’s a trick played at the end of this book that I always kind of forget is coming.

Unseen

For obvious reasons, I didn’t get to a cinema in May, and I hadn’t been in the habit of recording other things I watched.

Thinking about this month’s reading, and doors, and shadows, and things that ought not to be let in

Books and Movies – March 2015

Books

• Burial Rites – Hannah Kent: A historical novel about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman executed in Iceland. Such a small, slow, bleak, beautiful book and history. Also some interesting Anne of Green Gables parallels, which is not at all to say that if you like Anne you should read this (you should read it, just not for any similarity!). I’m curious, however, to know if anyone else thought this.
• A Darker Shade of Magic – V E Schwab: (One of several I grabbed from Tor based on the cover) The structure of the beginning of this novelreminded me of Diana Wynne Jones. It didn’t unfold or particularly explain, just… started, and then went on, so the whole book felt on the cusp of Telling You What The Plot Is And Tipping Into The Middle. This gave it a sustained, off-balance momentum which I always find both puzzling and enjoyable (it’s something that’s usually discouraged but high on my wish list). Schwab also starts with the point of view of someone not of our world looking at our world (or something like it) and just assumes the divided state of the worlds is normal. This is something else DWJ trained me to like.
• Thus Was Adonis Murdered – Sarah Caudwell: The first and, as I read them out of order, the last. Alas. Such a delightful balance of classic mystery/comedy, and unexpected, understated messing-with-stereotypes.
• Am I Black Enough for You – Dr Anita Heiss: Part memoir, part musing on identity (and how others perceive it, particularly the Aboriginal identity of an academic city girl), part story of the growth of an academic and author. Both this and Palmer’s book (below) had some interesting intersections on the themes of (a) speaking up and (b) listening.
• The Art of Asking – Amanda Palmer: I really enjoyed this, and have recommended it to people for very different reasons: as an account of controversy (whichever side of several you fall on), as an artistic memoir, as biography, as a bohemian fantasy, as a crash-course in creative business, to read as a novel, for some unexpected Sayers parallels in the themes of growing up and negotiating adult relationships.
• Gobbolino, the Witch’s Cat – Ursula Moray Williams: A classic. I may have cried at the end.

Movies

• Cinderella: Just nice, in the nicest way. Terri Windling pointed out this review by Grace Nuth, “Have courage and be kind”, which points out the charming kindness and politeness. It sounds like a small thing, but as KHR Smith pointed out, we didn’t realise until we came out of the cinema that we’d been missing it.

The little gouache Cinderella painting above is available as a print on RedBubble.

Books and movies – February 2015

Books

• Miss Pym Disposes – Josephine Tey: I was expecting a murder mystery, but this is a psychological musing, a novel of when-will-someone-murder rather than a murder investigation. The gentlest, sweetest novel of a soft-hearted person looking back on youth and high spirits ever to bear traces of Picnic at Hanging Rock and Primal Fear.
• [a forthcoming novel]
• And be a Villain – Rex Stout: Still loving them.
• The Shortest Way to Hades – Sarah Caudwell: These books are the reason for my recent Gorey obsession.
• The Sirens Sang of Murder – Sarah Caudwell: Alex Adsett pressed these books upon me and they are absolutely charming. Witty and knowing, a healthy dash of PG Wodehouse, and full of lawyerly in-jokes and asides (Alex had annotated her copies). A rather charming approach to assumptions about the behaviours of the genders, flawed lively young barristers, convoluted mysteries with convenient classical connotations… just fun.
• Shadows – Robin McKinley: A different note for McKinley, simultaneously much more modern-YA and much more Diana Wynne Jones. Lovely, charming shadows. Also exceptionally lifelike dogs. And a sheep. This was also courtesy of Alex (I made her read Dorothy Sayers).
• The Sibyl in Her Grave – Sarah Caudwell: Best. Cover. Ever. Also, another approach to how-to-deal-with-time-in-an-episodic-series, similar in this case to Rex Stout. We last left the chambers at 62 New Square reeling from Cantrip’s recent enthusiasm for the telex machine. Now, they are using computers. Yet no-one seems to have aged, at least in their own estimation, or that of that most energy-efficient, self-satisfied and mysterious of narrators, Professor Hilary Tamar.

Edward Gorey cover for The Sibyl in Her Grave

Movies

• Kingsman: No.
• Jupiter Rising: Yesss.

 

 

 

Illustration Friday: Reflection

In some other universe, Agatha Christie’s Ariadne Oliver lived, and her crime novels were illustrated by Edward Gorey.

Materials: Pen, ink, and a crash diet of Gorey-covered Sarah Caudwell novels.

The title is, of course, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”, which also provided the title for Christie’s novel The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, and two previous Illustration Friday mock covers: