Gwenda

Infirmary Ghosts & Waffle Girls

Books / By /

Tofeelstuff_1

Andrea Seigel has done something not very many writers actually achieve: followed up an incredibly exciting first novel with an incredibly exciting second novel That Is Completely Different. If Like the Red Panda was a coming of age story (or a suicide valentine; pair it with Lynda Barry’s Cruddy), then To Feel Stuff is a ghost story about being alive.

Elodie, beset by malady after malady, lives in the college infirmary at Brown. Dr. Mark Kirschling becomes fixated on her as a phenomenon infinitely more fascinating than your typical case study. Chester, who has always been a golden boy, gets attacked and comes to stay in the infirmary; he and Elodie promptly fall in strange, believable love. The novel gracefully interleaves the viewpoints of the good doctor with those of the lovers. Fittingly, Elodie’s version is the richest, because only she truly understands herself and her place in the world. AND she starts to see ghosts, or maybe not exactly. Maybe she’s inherited her mother’s gift, maybe something different. Elodie’s story feels full of ghosts, of history and of what will never be.

And I can say without reservation that this book features two sequences that are undeniably the best of their type in all of fictionland, in the categories of journey in search of waffles and karaoke-gone-wrong. Which points up one of the things I loved about this book, and that’s its easy unexpectedness. Lots of times when books dabble in the kooky side character who brings her bird into work one day or try and achieve a truly off-kilter protagonist (that isn’t just annoying), it’s painfully obvious that making the oddness of life seem normal AND interesting in a way that also feels real is damn hard. Often, it comes across as trite. In trying to capture a more sideways snapshot of what life’s like, the quirky becomes the banal. But that is definitely not the case here. Here, Seigel makes it work in a way that reads as effortless and honest. An oddways reality bounded on all sides by how far the characters can, or can’t, go, outside those infirmary walls and outside themselves. And whether they are, ultimately, okay with where and who they happen to be.

The book’s distinctly distant yet completely absorbing view of the world, like Elodie’s from her own traitorous body, is unnerving in the best possible way.

Infirmary Ghosts & Waffle Girls Read More »

Wednesday Hangovers

Hangovers / By /

I’m about a bajillion years behind on email, but am slowly catching up.

Wednesday Hangovers Read More »

SERIOUSLY (Updated)

Scientifiction / By /

Alan for PRESIDENT (of SFWA sure, but also, the WORLD).

UPDATED: If you want to see a little taste, tonally at least, of some of the comments David Moles pulled from the private SFWA forums (which are all taken down now, I believe), I’d "suggest" going over to this thread at Asimov’s. Le depressing. No one there is saying that what happened was appropriate, but LOTS of "get over it," "it’s none of our business," "not that big a deal," "those intarweb kids are out of control!" type stuff.

SERIOUSLY (Updated) Read More »

Anniversaries

14 Comments / Nattering / By /

So, two years ago today we drove off to Raleigh and got hitched. (I don’t know what it says about our ability to remember dates that if that blog post didn’t exist, we’d still be looking for our marriage certificate to figure out what day we got married.)

Anyway, we met at a science fiction convention (the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in 2001), as you do. It was in Ft. Lauderdale, so that’s where we met, despite Christopher having recently moved back to Kentucky. Kelly Link introduced us, which is also not that unique a story. Nothing as interesting as Jeff Ford’s story of meeting his wife Lynn:

The Wolfman mask is a shout-out to my wife, Lynn.  Sept. 1st was our 27th wedding anniversary.  Our first date involved a wolfman mask, a bottle of tequilla, climbing a mountain, discovering an abandon shack with a letter in it written in pencil from 1932 that said "Love You Forever" in the salutation.  That was our first date and we’ve lived together ever since. 

For our part, what actually was our first date is still an open topic of debate. There’s one school of thought that says it involves an underground art show, dancing to John Hammond covers of Tom Waits in a sad hotel room someone lived in, packaging up a camera in the middle of the night and phoning Richard Butner (otherwise known as The Best Man and Web Bunny). That school is SO overly optimistic. I might concede that a Shakespeare in the park night a few weeks later was a real date, but honestly? I think it was when we went out to a fancy dinner at a chichi Pacific Rim-influenced restaurant where C knew the chef, drank martinis, and agreed that we liked each other; then I turned the wrong way down a one-way street on the way to a movie theater where we watched the Most Depressing French movie ever. THAT was definitely our first date.

Anniversaries Read More »

Yeah (updated)

53 Comments / Scientifiction / By /

David Moles is my hero.

Some are perhaps rightfully upset that he busted the password-protection wall of SFWA, but it’s nothing many others haven’t wanted to do for days. Charges of "copyright infringement" are ridiculous. I’m no lawyer (thank god), but if a comment on a private bulletin board can be considered "intellectual property," I fear for the people closely guarding such real estate. It made me think of a relevant quote from Thomas Jefferson:

It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

Someone NEEDED to expose the truly venomous ideas some have been peddling, for however long it lasted. I think it’s graceful that David offered (and made good) on taking them down when asked.

Some SWFAns used to being behind closed doors seem much more concerned about their reactions being made public than they were about the very public incident.

Anyway, are they right to have barred him from the newsgroup? Sure. It’s policy. And he knew that when he did this. Good on you, Moles*.

p.s. For irony, definition of, see this comment at PNH’s, where it is revealed that at this year’s Hugos Connie Willis set the new record for fiction Hugos, beating out Mr. Mud. (If this isn’t true, please let me know.)

p.p.s. I agree with Jackie M.; keep your SWFA memberships if you can, folks, you’re needed there.

UPDATE: See Colleen’s excellent post from the perspective of an outsider who’s an SF fan:

Frankly, I don’t care why Ellison did it and other than hoping he privately apologizes to Willis (who might not want to hear it), I don’t care what he does from now on. But you can not call yourself a professional organization and then have this happen and not act on it. This was not a roast – it was not a meeting of comedians and beyond that, it was not a gathering where it was even possibly suggested that a man might grab a woman’s breast in jest. So it should not have happened. And when it does, then you need to take steps to set things right.

Folks were dressed up and hoping to win a great award for their work – it was a big big night for them. Why dirty it with this kind of joke and then, after it happens, why not apologize for it? Why not strive to bring some level of maturity and responbility and professionalism back to the evening?

I don’t care what every sci fi writer on the planet thinks about this. What I want to know is how can you possibly expect us, the fans, to care about who wins these awards if they are given out in an atmosphere that I would not allow at my neighborhood block party?

Go read the whole thing. (As a side note, she’s addressing World Con and the WSFS, not SFWA, which is appropriate– although it’d be nice if SFWA wasn’t just being the bastion of infighting about whether it was "okay" or not, when it clearly wasn’t.)

*ikins (note: inside joke)

Yeah (updated) Read More »

Nothing Like Einstein

3 Comments / Books / By /

James Morrow reviews Tim Powers’ latest in BookWorld, and he starts things off talking about one of my favorite short stories:

In 1990, Karen Joy Fowler published "Lieserl," a piquant and moving tribute to Albert Einstein’s daughter, a woman largely neglected by history and, sad to say, the great scientist himself. As the story unfolds, the young Einstein, ensconced in a space-time bubble, receives a series of letters from his first wife, Mileva Maric, recounting Lieserl’s birth, preschool years, adolescence and death. In the final scene, a quiet indictment of Einstein’s passive parenting, the scientist imagines sketching a valentine and then writing his daughter’s name within its borders: "He loved Lieserl. He cut the word in half, down the S with the stroke of his nail. The two halves of the heart opened and closed, beating against each other, faster and faster, like wings, until they split apart and vanished from his mind."

"Lieserl" is a tough act to follow, but in Three Days to Never Tim Powers has done so with brio, bravado and a salutary measure of lunacy.

Anyone read it yet? (Mr. McLaren?) Sounds like one for the TBR.

Nothing Like Einstein Read More »

Good Weekend Reading

Scientifiction / By /

The new issue of Ideomancer is up and it features short stories from some of the most kick-ass of the Kick-Ass Writers With Cervixes Brigade, genre division. I’m talking here about Hannah Wolf Bowen, Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, and Haddayr Copley-Woods (who is so good that one of the best readings I’ve ever seen featured three other people reading one of her stories when she wasn’t even there!). You’d be a fool and a loser to pass up that line-up.

p.s. TwoThree of these ladies will have stories in the next issue of Say… which really will be out between now and Thanksgiving. Life has skewed the schedule, but it is not a dead market and this next issue is going to be all sorts of awesome. Promise.

Good Weekend Reading Read More »

Scroll to Top