Recently Completed #2

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

So, what have I been reading recently? And not posting about? Bad littlerdog.

And Chaos Died by Joanna Russ and Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith. Also, a reread of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Unfortunately, I think I've read P&P too many times and it's starting to lose its soothing quality. This time round I only saw flaws. Maybe I should rest it for a year or two, which'll mean I'll need to find another comfort novel. Bah. It's been my standby for calming down and ceasing to freak out for a long time now. There's times when the psyche just needs a happy ending.

What to say about the other two? It's hard.

I want to say, Novel on Yellow Paper is not a novel. Nor, indeed, was my copy (published by Virago) on yellow paper. But that comes dangerously close to saying 'this is art' but 'this is not art' merely because one meets your expectations and the other does not. Instead I'll say, it's not structured like a conventional novel. That's probably closer to the problem I had with it. That and the anti-Semitism and racism, which are no doubt products of its time, but with so many similarities between the first-person narrator, Pompey, and Smith herself, it's hard to separate the expressed views from the author. But maybe someone who self-presents as so nice yet rambunctious needs at least one flaw.

It's more of a ramble than a novel, really. Not suitable, as Pompey herself says, for feet-on-the-ground people, who presumably are people who like novels to work like novels rather than like a random smattering of thoughts. But there are some wonderful thoughts here, racism and other prejudices aside, and some marvellous writing. It's almost like a dip-in book masquerading as a novel. I loved it and hated it at the same time.

In another respect, it works as a historical document. First published in 1936, it recounts a visit Pompey made to Germany, and what she found there.

"So I rang up some Jew-friends of mine that lived out Charlottenburg way, and went to see them. This was before the Hitler campaign, or leastways it was just getting on the way, so that these Jew-friends had already had the black Hakenkreuz* scrawled up on their gatepost. But at any rate they were sound enough, with a weather eye out for self-preservation and not a sign of neurosis there." pp99

What else can I say? Read it, but be prepared to be offended, baffled, and entertained. GNDN--goes nowhere, does nothing.

The Russ book was also baffling. I think I understand the basic premise: the central character, Jai Vedh, and another man known as the Captain are marooned on an alien planet after their spaceship explodes. The planet is inhabited by humanoid telepaths who gradually introduce Vedh to his own telepathic capacity. Vedh and one of the aliens, a woman named Evne, then travel to Earth, and...well. Stuff happens. I think everyone on Earth is killed a la 2001 but one of the aspects of this novel that is most infuriating is that you're never sure what's real. The telepaths are able to manipulate Vedh's mind and this makes him unreliable in the extreme. For all we know, he never left the alien planet. Or never arrived on it. Or never was.

Too often when I read Russ's work I'm left wondering what it means. I know it means something. With a lesser writer I'd shrug and assume there was no deeper meaning there to find, but with Russ I can't. I read the book and sit and think about it but I'm baffled. What does it mean that Vedh identifies as gay yet his sexual relationships are with women? Have the telepaths changed him, or deluded him? Is any of it happening? Then I ask my friends, and they don't know either. It is a great bafflement.

Halp.

*The Hakenkreuz is better known to English-speakers as the swastika.

Currently Reading #28

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

Two books on the go at the moment, at least theoretically. The Romans, from the non-fiction challenge, and the book I bought after seeing it on drasecretcampus's FB page: England Swings SF, edited by Judith Merril.

I'm two stories into the Merril book. The first one, 'The Island' by Roger Jones, I didn't enjoy all that much. It has a decent premise: three men on a small island who are carrying out actions they don't understand for reasons they don't know. There's enough detail cleverly inserted to enable the reader to make a good guess at what's going on, but the writing itself is stilted and formal, with too much telling. I can see it making a decent tv play.

With the second story, 'Ne Deja Vu Pas' by Josephine Saxton, I was left with a feeling I've often had before: Why is this not a classic of the genre? It's a marvellous little story about what happens when you transgress the borders of spacetime. Sometimes you have to shake your head over the vagaries of fame. It's all you can do.