Congratulations on the Release of Double Cross, Carolyn Crane

So what, I hear you ask, is Carolyn Crane's new book Double Cross about?

A crazy woman?





A woman trapped between good and evil?

A woman in a dangerous land? Looking for a safe shelter?

All of the above. And so much more.

This book is wonderful. That's an assertion of fact, and not a review.

Congratulations, Carolyn.

Love

t x

Dear Reader...Let's Pretend

You know that I'm obsessed with the reader experience: what it is to read; what happens to the reader; where they are; who they are. Well...

(1) This week, I've been thinking about fairy tales and children and the fact that I once read somewhere that reading fairy tales is a safe way for children to experience difficult ideas, like being orphaned.

(2) And that made me think about another thing I once read - that dreams are a way of practising difficult situations.

(3 )And then I thought about Catherine Roach's article on IASPR: Getting a Good Man to Love: Popular Romance Fiction and the Problem of Patriarchy, from which I will selectively quote this small passage:

romance does deep psychic work for its readers by functioning as a fantasy antidote to patriarchy, to the extent that it is still a man’s world out there: the heroine and, vicariously, the female readers get that fantasy paradox of an alpha male who is strong and dominant, yet also caring and sensitive; sexy and desired, yet devoted totally to the heroine and her sexual pleasure; indeed he is helpless and lost without her love. Part of the reading pleasure, too, is the fantasy conquest of patriarchy.

So by this time, naturally, I was itching to blog about the idea of reading as a way of notionally experiencing something.

Being the rigorous (*laughs*) sort of blogger I am, I decided to look for something that would corroborate my woolly, half-remembered notions set out at (1) and (2) above. However, I didn't get very far. Reason being that I came across this wonderful article by Phillip Pullman about the childhood reading experience which is long but which is very much worth being read in full. I rather want to quote the whole thing, but will try to content myself with a few highlights. Firstly, this:

So: do children believe what they read in stories, or don’t they? And if they do, in what way do they believe it? Well, this is what I think about it.

I think it’s very like play – perhaps more like play than like anything else. ...we pretended to be figures from the stories we’d seen in comics, or heard on the radio, or seen at the cinema, and we acted out stories that we improvised as we went along. I knew I wasn’t really Batman, or Davy Crockett, but at the same time I was imitating things I’d seen Batman do on a printed page or Davy Crockett do on the cinema screen – say at the siege of the Alamo, where the defenders held out for as long as they could, while knowing that they were outnumbered and they were probably going to die. And when we died we did so with heroic extravagance. My body was doing all a nine-year-old body could to run out from behind a wall, fire a musket, clutch my chest, stagger, crumple to the ground, slowly drag a revolver from a holster with a trembling hand, and kill six Mexicans as I breathed my last.

Those were the physical things my body was doing. What was my mind doing? I think it was feeling a little scrap, a tiny fluttering tattered cheaply printed torn-off scrap of heroism. I felt what it was like to be brave and to die facing overwhelming odds. That intensity of feeling is what both fuels and rewards childhood play. When we children play at being characters we admire doing things we value, we discover in doing so areas and depths of feeling it would be hard to reach otherwise. Exhilaration, heroism, despair, resolution, triumph, noble renunciation, sacrifice – in acting these out, we experience them in miniature, or, as it were, in safety.

I think you begin to see where the Charlie's Angels photo comes in, no? I was always Kelly. Or Diana Prince (Wonder Woman). And Mr Tumperkin? Ponch Poncherello, from Chips, I'm told.

But how did this 'experience... in miniature' translate in terms of belief?

...I was wondering about belief, and the way we believe in stories, and in play. At no time during the endless hours of play I spent as a child did I believe that I was anyone other than myself. I was acting; I was pretending. Sometimes I was me, and sometimes I was me pretending to be Davy Crockett. But now that I think about it carefully, I realise that it was a little more complicated than that. The two kinds of me were superimposed and not separate; I could be Davy Crockett to the hilt, and be me at the same time, trying out what it would be like to be Davy Crockett – to be still myself, but close to Crockett-hood. But it wasn’t consistent; it varied a lot.

He goes on to explain yet more about the nuances of the experience; the further variations on the two experiences related above (being Davy Crockett/Wonder Woman/Ponch Poncherello and being a related Phil-Davy/Tump-Wonder/MrTump-Ponch creation). He talks about being a bit like the Davy Crockett's trusted and best friend. And that reminded me of a post Laura V did about how readers relate to characters.

You see how it all comes together?

Back to Phil:

If someone had asked me, in a serious kind of way, why I thought elephants had long trunks, I’d have scratched my head and said “I dunno.” I knew, even when I was very young, that “Because the crocodile got hold of the elephant’s child’s nose and pulled and pulled” would be the wrong sort of answer. I would have been just as fascinated, in a different kind of way, to hear the real answer; but that wouldn’t diminish my pleasure in the story, including the delight I felt in murmuring the sounds of the words: the “’satiable curtiosity” of the Elephant’s Child; the “great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever–trees.”

I knew these things weren’t real, but that didn’t matter, because I didn’t want them to be real, I wanted them to be funny. Or delightful. Or exciting. Or moving. And they could be all those
things, and real as well, as some things were, or all those things and imaginary, and I could tell the difference, and it didn’t matter.

So it's this. This belief that is not belief. This experience in miniature. It's real; it's not real. It's about the willing suspension of disbelief and it's about the desire to believe. It's about the yearning for a made-up story to convince. To be authentic.

It's something my three year old can already do brilliantly when we read The Elephant and the Bad Baby, which is a book of unsurpassing imagination and joy.

And when we - that is my three year old and I - go Rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta all down the road, at the end of the book (which is to say, when the bad baby goes to bed) we are not really the Elephant. Nor, actually, are we the pork butcher, or the baker, or the snack bar man. Or the lady from the sweet shop, or the barrow boy.

That leaves the bad baby. And his mummy. And that is who we are.

We are the bad baby and his mummy; except not. We are their friends; like them but not them. Or them for a moment. Or not. Because my littley isn't a bad baby, he tells me.

He laughs. I laugh.

Goodnight.

Friday tour de force and my week

This was the song that really made me sit up and take notice of Rufus Wainwright.




I remember the first time I heard it - I was in the car. It blew me away. I bought Release the Stars and this track became one of my compulsive listening tracks. I adore it, particularly the point, at precisely 3 minutes, when it just soars. Particularly these lines:

I've got a life to lead
I got a soul to feed
I got a dream to heed
And that's all I need

I love many many other Rufus Wainwright songs. It was between this one and Dinner At Eight to post this evening. There are similarities between the two and you can see how influenced he is by opera, can't you?

I'm still on my category glom. Coffee cremes ahoy! I'm glomming Cathy Williams with a strange fascination. The fascination is this: I read one of her books years ago - it was in one of those 3-in-1 Mills & Boon anthologies. It featured a spoiled-brat-heroine romance - possibly my least favourite character-types (although it's a close run thing with military-heroes). Nevertheless, I noticed the book and kind of filed the name away because I thought the sex scene was memorable and a bit more interesting than the usual. Anyhoo, recently, I picked up one of her books, The Italian's One-Night Love Child (that I subsequently passed to Laura V who mentioned it in one of her very interesting posts). And you know what was truly fascinating? I could have sworn it was a book written by my perernnial favourite, Lynne Graham! The style, the characters, even the phraseology (classic Lynneisms like impressed to death). Since then I've been glomming her a little and she does seem to have completely Lynne-Grahamed. Currently reading Rafael's Suitable Wife and it's holding true to form. I'm also doing a mini-Michelle-Reid-glom thanks to DA Jane's post on La Reid which prompted some fond memories.

On the single title front, I have lots of exciting recent acquisitions including Madeline Hunter's Lady of Sin, Anne Stuart's Shadows at Sunset (as recc'd by Meriam in one of her very rare forays into the world of romanceland) and a Cruisie I can't remember the name of - it has a wee doggy in it. She's a teacher. I read the first four pages. What else? Ooooh major acquisition: Heartless by Mary Balogh. It's OOP and the prequel to Silent Melody which I loved loved loved. Plus, it comes highly recc'd by Balogh Guru Janet Webb!!! (Guest posting here). I have been very naughty though - I spent ten-pounds-and-sixty-two-pence on this book. Eep! For an OOP romance novel! Luke better be good for that....

Maybe my category glom is something to do with the demands of real life? Work is, to use a charming Lola-ism, extremely very busy, Charlie.

Have a good weekend all. I will try to write a meatier and more engaging post about my reading experiences very soon.

Regular round up of reading and ruminations

Girls' comic, early 1980s

Romance novel, early 1980s

1. See above. The cover style similarities really hadn't occurred to me until I did that last post (I won't bother linking since it's the one immediately below this). What do you think? Thrills and mystery indeed.

2. Speaking of thrills, what does it say about me that my enjoyment this evening of John Barrowman performing a high-cheese version of Don't Rain On My Parade in a glittery suit was both rich and pure? I think it's to do with cynicism. Lack thereof? Or maybe the ability to suspend it? Things that are best enjoyed sans cynicism are often looked down upon. Romance, obviously, amongst them. Is that why so many readers find contemporaries harder? Because it's harder to displace ordinary every day cynicism? Is that why romance in the purest sense (in my view) is best found in the historical genre?

3. I've been working my way through a pile of books Laura Vivanco passed me. There was a Nora Roberts trilogy which really just verified for me that she's never going to be a favourite author for me. There were also three pretty old Mills & Boons: all with young heroines/older heroes. One was amusingly called Man In A Box (since the hero was a TV personality, of the David Frost persuasion, one assumes). Another was set in Lebanon and had an 'oil-man' hero (which seems, in 1976, to involve being a stern monkish type). The hero of the third book was the owner of a model agency who (I kid you not) lived with his mother. In all three books, the heroine was a youthful secretary. In the first book, she is pursued relentlessly by the TV personality - he wants to go to bed with her but has no intention of marrying her. In the second, the monkish oil-man seems contemptuous/indifferent to the heroine but in fact wants to marry her. In the third, the hero has been in love with the heroine since she was very young (despite being waist deep in models most of the day) and is secretly 'grooming' her for marriage with him. I found it interesting that in two of the books, the heroes are secretly in love with the heroines but give no indication of interest to the heroines. As for the heroines, they are passive, exercise little choice and behave reactively to the heroes' advances. The heroines' anxiety centres around whether the right man will choose them. It's a different sort of anxiety from those displayed in present day categories, which are often centred around, for example, commitment-phobic heroes.

4. Just now, I am reading Loving Evangeline by Linda Howard (1994), recommended by Janet W. I'm enjoying it a great deal, despite the hero's self-aggrandising internal narrative. These sorts of musings always makes me giggle:

He had wanted to punch Craig in the jaw for daring to touch her, but his own sense of fair play had restrained him. Craig looked to be as strong as young ox, but Robert knew his own capabilities. He could easily have killed the boy without meaning to.

I've just reached the part where Evie has post-coitally told Robert she loves him. This is heading for a grandiose excruciating moment (Robert is secretly investigating/ruining Evie). I am so curious to see if Howard can pull this promise off. This sort of story depends entirely on proportionality to work. Robert's actions are so appalling that he is going to have suffer very very badly to be redeemed by the end...

5. I'm becoming more and more rubbish at commenting on others' blogs. I actually read a lot of stuff but comment on very little (and yes, I know that makes me a bit of hypocrite given my recent self-pitying complaints about comments). Google reader is part of that. The other is that I rarely feel like chipping in to posts about current books, book reviews etc and I often don't have anything to say on opinion pieces. That doesn't mean I don't read those posts or find them interesting - I do. And I use them to build my TBB list - but I don't really feel the need to chime in on them. What I'm interested in having a conversation about is the experience of reading. That's really why I blog. I want to share that experience, both the general aspects of reading and the specific experience of reading specific books. I want to talk about how readers feel when they read a certain book, certain words, a certain scene. I want to talk about how particular tropes work for readers, what they like and what they hate. Selfishly, I wish there was more of this in blogland.

In which I trace the roots of my reading obsessions

Until fairly recently, there was a very healthy market in Britain for girls' comics. In the 50s, my mum read The School Friend. In the early 80s, I devoured Mandy, Bunty, Jinty, Tammy and Debbie.

The format was weekly with both serialised and one-off stories. In addition, there was a 'story library' line. There were longer one-off stories in a pocket sized format. See below an example of one of these: Who is Astra? I can actually remember buying this before a caravan holiday in the north of Scotland and reading it over and over and over. The heroine was a blonde girl and the eponymous Astra was - I think - like a black haired twin who appeared quite mysteriously and sort of tried to take over her life. I think it was the first time I ever came across the word Doppelganger. It was deeply creepy. I would have been about 8 or 9.


Mandy was probably my favourite of these lines and funnily enough, it specialised in a certain brand of passive-aggression that the romance reader is all too familiar with. There was a strip called Angel, in which the eponymous heroine - an older teenager, perhaps 17 or so - looked after waifs and strays in Victorian London. The hook was that she was dying - of something. I'm not sure I ever understood what. But she was using the time she had left for the tiny children. Sigh.

There were lots if stories about cripples too, as I recall. And blind girls. Lots of tragedy. Tragedy was the girls' equivalent of adventure. There were a few exceptions to this rule though. See below an excerpt from Valda, the Mystery Girl. Valda was about a thousand years old - a sort of Amazon, I suppose. She wandered around in a little slip of a dress doing heroic things. When she got tired out, she would begin to look "old and haggard" and would have to get out her Crystal of Life. When the sun penetrated the crystal and light reached her, she was renewed. Cue endless stealing, losing and general fumbling of the crystal.

One of the interesting things about Valda was her total lack of humour. She was very stern. I want to say pious, but actually she was very pagan so, whatever the word is for pagan piety, that was Valda.

I wasn't keen on pony or tennis stories but I loved ballet school ones and anything with an orphanage. Even then, I loved the angst.

Here are a few more entertaining covers. I love this next one - though I don't recall reading it. I love the hook. I can't quite make out every word in the text-box but there's something about ...a life of ceaseless toil.... and then .... it was all in a day's work for ...... Wee Slavey...

Don't you just love it? I also greatly enjoy the fact that the original girlish owner has traced the first two letters of Judy inside the letters - just the sort of thing I'd've done.

I definitely read this next one. I can vividly remember the cover, though not the story.

Similarly this one which falls into the 'lighter' line.

Another favourite was Misty, a comic that didn't run for very long and was quickly subsumed into Tammy (which was itself subsumed into Jinty). Misty had a paranormal/horror edge to it. I vividly recall a story that - I kid you not - had a distinct BDSM edge to it (at one stage the villainess uses the heroine as a footstool!).

There's a website dedicated to Misty where you can actually view entire serials. See this link which has slideshows for a number of stories. I recall the Moonchild (which was basically Carrie for 10 year olds). Paint it Black is quite a good one too. The heroine finds an old paintbox and, when she uses the paints, becomes possessed by its original dead owner who, i turns out, was a governess who ended up being imprisoned by her employers to paint for them - they kept all the money (natch). If you want to find out whether the ghost is malevolent or benevolent, you can look for yourself.

Schlock? Probably, a bit. But I loved these comics. They did something good for me, in the same way that Enid Blyton's St Clares and Malory Towers did something good for me - they showed girls - well, being in stories. In fact, being girls in stories. Which was even better.

Did you read any comics in your childhood? Are there particular stories that stay with you? In particular, what female stories resonated with you?

This post was inspired by the Wonder Woman You Tube vids that CJ linked to in the comments of my last post.

Friday cowboy music

If you grew up in a working class village in central Scotland in the late 70s and 80s - as I did - there's a chance that your dad - like mine - was a bit of a country and western fan. And chances are that, on a Sunday afternoon, John Wayne would be on your TV.

By the 80s, children weren't really playing cowboys and indians anymore. We liked Wonder Woman (me) and The Hulk (my brother) and The Dukes of Hazard (both of us). But cowboys still did it for my dad. He'd grown up in the 50s, a latch key kid, to put it mildly, who earned his own cinema-ticket-money as a milk boy and watched the epic Westerns of the day on the big screen.

To this day, he has this great romance with the whole idea of masculinity and for him, the cowboy pretty much nails everything he thinks a man should be: self-sufficient, physically competent, brave, dry, laconic.

I remember being bored to tears by cowboy films. They were interminable and all the same. I remember the absence of women. Of course, I could come up with a whole pile of examples of women in Westerns now but basically - on the whole - it was 80% men, fighting each other, hiding behind rocks and getting on and off horses. The women were pretty much demure-and-capable-in-gingham or brassy-whores-in-primary-colours.

Maybe that's why I didn't like them? I've never gotten over that prejudice. Western-set romance still doesn't appeal to me.

But maybe a tiny genetic fondness lingers? I have an attachment to my Best Of Dolly Parton album and a few other C&W songs and artists.

Like this Kris Kistoffeson song. I love this. The voice. It's like chocolate. And this line: I ain't sayin' I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin'. Then I stole his song.