Freckles & Doubt

ah, Dear Little Students. This afternoon's gem: cannot log onto the student database, because she's forgotten her login details, therefore massive panic about submitting a curriuclum change form by today's deadline. Is emailing me from her university email, which... uses exactly the same username and password as the student database. I have gently pointed this out.

The advertised deadline for this curriculum process was 4pm today, which means that for the last 45 minutes my email has been dinging quietly at intervals as last-minute submissions hit the database and it alerts me to the need to go and process them. Yay.

I console myself, and hopefully you, with pictorial evidence of Pandora's successful domination of Codsworth.



When I was at school I was very fond of the Professor Branestawm books, by Norman Hunter - about an absent-minded inventor with five pairs of spectacles and a tendency to improbable and frequently histrionic inventions. (I cherish in particular the malfunctioning knitting machine which tried to knit a clockwork train. I've always wanted to try). The books had a rather charming line in offbeat and rather slapstick comedy - the earlier editions had illustrations by Heath Robinson. One mad adventure has the professor inventing a baby-burping machine, which runs predictably amok in the children's ward, until the machine is halted in its rampages by a Matron described as "considerably on the large side", who slips in some vitamin ointment and sits down on it, whereupon the machine "gave an agonised squeal, and went flat". I have had, shall we say, those particular phrases revolving gently around my cerebellum since the first time I caught Pandora smugly posed as above. She is also, alas, somewhat on the large size. Perhaps it's fortunate that Codsworth is actually already flat.

Hooray, working at home today! Clearly it's time for a celebratory wol. We haven't had one in weeks, so let's have two.

1. Courtesy of Confluency and a diverse trail of re-tweets, How to draw an owl. Amusingly cynical, and a lovely drawing.
   
   
2. Edward Lear. I teach nonsense poetry to my second-year class, largely to their bemused bafflement, but I persevere on the grounds that everyone needs a Jumblie sooner or later, and besides, you can slide Saussure and signification in under the guise of nonsense theory. Recent interesting class discussions have revolved around "The Owl and the Pussycat", and oh my god I had to type that four times before it was anything other than "The Wol and the Pussycat", which is a drastically anachronistic mixing of kiddielit paradigms.
   
   I love this piece of poetry - it has a gentle, whimsical, dreamy rhythm which I remember from my parents reciting it to me, and which I rediscovered with huge joy when I could barely read. But, leaving aside all the weirdness of inter-species marriage between predators, have you ever noticed how strangely subversive the gender roles are in the story? Particularly given the stereotypes of Victorian sexual identity - dominant male, submissive female - it's quite iconoclastic that the owl and the cat are never definitively gendered, and their roles and depictions shift all over the show.
   
   The owl's initial role seems masculine, the troubador who sings courtly-style love-songs to the cat while accompanying itself on "a small guitar"; the cat is "beautiful". But if you look at the first drawing:
   
   
   
   - the cat is quite dominantly in control of the boat, and that tail is oddly phallic. In the next verse the owl is "elegant" and its singing "charmingly sweet", both of which represent feminine qualities in the average Victorian register, so the genders have flipped. The artwork echoes the flip: in the second picture the cat remains dominant, taller and sterner-looking and with big masculine chest, although oddly it's the shorter owl with its head bowed which offers the ring, reversing the usual marriage ceremony roles:
   
   
   
   In the third the roles are reversed again, taller/dominant "male" owl and slightly submissive-looking "female" cat:
   
   
   
   The final, haunting image of unity - "hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon" - is thus peculiarly subversive of Victorian gender identities, power relationships and sexual orientations. These creatures could be anything. The point is that they're happy together. Hooray for Edward Lear and queer theory wols!

Children's fantasy has a very specific flavour to it: it's fundamentally innocent, prone to sharp edges and clear-cut dilemmas even when it's thoughtful and slightly gritty. Narnia and Hogwarts and even Earthsea are very deliberately unreal worlds even if some of the issues faced by their protagonists are not. This is possibly one of the reasons why so many adults who read fantasy also read children's fantasy, out of nostalgia for a milieu which is simple and innocent even in the middle of battle, injury and death. When done well, this is enormously consoling and surprisingly relevant, giving us things like The Dark is Rising and A Wizard of Earthsea. When it's done badly, it's trite and twee and really rather dreadful, giving us things like the more hamfisted bits of Narnia and Harry Potter. Regardless of whether it's done well or badly, it's not real, and that's why we have Lev Grossman. ( Review to follow. Please imagine this said in the weird mechanical voice of the speaking clock lady. )

This was in some ways an angry, despairing and rather bitter book: I admire it tremendously and think it did good and necessary and extremely intelligent things, but I can't really say I enjoyed it. I'll read it again, someday, when I've summoned the gumption all over again. But I'm very glad it exists. Somebody had to do it, and they did it well.

I do enjoy going to movies with friends, honest I do, but there's a completely separate and idiosyncratic pleasure in going to movies by myself. Sunday mornings are my favourite time: if I'm lucky I'll be the only person in the theatre, and can dangle my feet over the chairs in front of me and comment on the action at the top of my voice without anyone throwing popcorn. I can also sit in the back row, which is my preferred movie space, and which cuts neatly through the necessary compromise of movie-watching with friends (jo&stv are my favourite people in the multiverse with whom to do almost anything, but they like to be in the front third of the theatre where I like to be in the back third, and we usually compromise on pleasing no-one somewhere in the middle).

This morning I was the only person in the theatre for the first 20 minutes of the film and could heckle the previews with demands for Iron Man, alas without effect. Then I was rather weirdly (I don't understand people who miss the start of films) joined by a couple with a small child, who sat down in front and allowed the wretched infant to kick the back of the chairs loudly and with a slightly tragic lack of rhythm at random intervals throughout. Insofar as the film was Burton's Alice in Wonderland, there were moments when I almost sympathised. ( Not madly spoilery musings follow. )

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the live-action film version of Where The Wild Things Are (trailer here, I'd be interest to know what you Sendak-fan witterers think). Possible pros: it's live-action rather than CGI, it's not being directed by Stephen Spielberg, the trailer features my favourite Arcade Fire song, it's Spike Jonze. Possible cons: they're making a film of a beloved book, which by all the rules is doomed; I'm not sure it'll survive independently of Maurice Sendak's incredible artwork; the Wild Things talk; it's Spike Jonze. I shall content myself with the mantra Alan Moore occasionally mouths (post James Cain) but never quite got behind: Even If The Film Turns Out Crap The Book's Still On My Shelf.

In other news, Elizabeth Bear's cat talks in alliterative skaldic verse. Apparently. And, appropos of nothing, tonight I initiate jo&stv into the mysteries of lasagne-construction. They have to swear an oath, and get the tattoo, and everything. Also, we're going to watch Wanted.

Last Night I Dreamed: a confused journey to Mars, which was unexpectedly terraformed and growing forests and vast fields of vegetables. I think Venus may have been as well, only the fields were all on raised platforms held up by giant pillars, so the excessive moisture could drain out of the soil. Much of the dream was taken up with preventing atmospheric sabotage, and with the whinging of the spaceships full of farm workers who didn't like the long commute.

I know the PA system in my local supermarket is bad (even when they're not trying to talk over their current, premature soundtrack of bad R&B covers of syrupy Christmas carols), but I'd swear that this morning the manager said "Manfred, calling Manfred, please will all available chicken sexers come to Receiving". I... I think my brain is stunned.

I also wish to record for posterity the indecent amount of pleasure I'm finding in tracking down weird and wacky kids' books for my three-year-old niece. This morning: I STINK!, which is a pleasingly rumbustious soliloquy from a garbage truck.

I got nuttin' today. Bar, that is, an endless stream of student queries, and Sid, Rampant. The sod. So I shall fall back on ranting about religion. And sex.

Nicked off BoingBoing: Philip Pullman celebrates the futility of banning books, and incidentally swipes with pinpoint accuracy at the inherent problem with religion:

Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.

And, in sharp contradistinction: when fashion has reached the point where the ridiculous things it makes its models wear, also make its models fall over, surely it has logically eaten itself? The point is presumably to present clothes that only look good on anorexic catwalk strutters and thus engender hopeless desire and self-loathing in the rest of us - but if they don't even function on the models, what the hell's the point? The bit that got my goat was the comment that extreme heels are "an empowering assertion of your own femininity". Empowering bollocks. No-one's empowered who's teetering ridiculously on their pins, destroying their body and looking like some unnatural child's-toy anti-Weeble - stick-thin, wobbling and definitely falling down.

To finish up Retro Kiddielit, a return to my perennial love affair with the Victorians. George Macdonald is an unlikely figure for my literary adoration: a Scottish Calvinist minister, he writes amazing children's fantasy so steeped in fairy tale, folklore and a profound and sensitive awareness of symbol that by and large their Christian message doesn't descend to allegory. He was a huge influence on Tolkien and Lewis; his adult fairy tales, Phantastes and Lilith are compelling, mystical and frequently extremely sexy. The Princess and Curdie is a sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, which is probably better-known, the story of the princess who saves her kingdom from the threat of the grotesque goblins in the mines, with the help of her beautiful, enigmatic great-great-great grandmother and the miner's lad Curdie. The Princess and Curdie is altogether weirder and more despairing, an investigation into political morality which explores corruption through incredibly powerful animal images. I was both horrified and fascinated for many years by my childhood reading of the book, and by the shuddersome image of shaking hands with a man only to find that, instead of a hand, you are grasping the belly of a snake or the hoof of a pig. I loved the Uglies, though.

Generally, I'm happy to say, the complete non-profile of this blog means that I don't get a lot of spam - I think I deleted one comment about four months ago. But apparently the combination of recent keywords - certainly Sarah Palin, but possibly also divvils, imbecility, spitting and "hideous occultic deformity" - seems to have drawn the political spambots out of hiding. Resulting in the following comment to yesterday's post:

has mccain thrown the election?
John McCain, to the chagrin of his party, threw a gutterball when he selected that ridiculous creature from Alaska as his running mate. The Senator from Arizona who - for better or worse - can't tell a Baptist from a snake-handler, doesn't know what he has on his hands. Mayor Palin belongs to the "Dominionist" movement, a cult whose "support" for Israel is highly suspect (the Jews must be gathered in Israel for the Coming of Christ, who will then "perfect" them as Christians). We'd likewise be interested in her position vis-a-vis the infamous 13th forgery known as "Revelation 2:9." McCain's obvious ignorance of these matters has alienated a sizable portion of both the Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities. He had a clear opportunity to nominate the young congressman from Richmond, Eric Cantor, but chose instead to align himself with the sketchy Governor from Alaska, a lady who once tried to ban the teen classic "I Capture the Castle" from her local library. McCain's choice wasn't simply an insult to Jews, but to thoughtful Gentiles as well. Let's hope that he realizes his error before it's too late.
Cordially,
Matthew Anger

We gloss for a moment over the misguided aim of the spambot, choosing to target a South African Gentile blogger whose focus subjects include sf, fantasy, Cape-Town-fondling and whinging about academia, and whose sole mention of Sarah Palin has been to make sly digs in passing at her choice of spectacles. Inappropriateness aside, the register fascinates me. The spambot is clearly two things: (a) not a supporter of Sarah Palin, and (b) Jewish. Beyond that, it's all a bit foggy.

The Jewish Spam-Bot (henceforth JSB) is considerably more literate than a lot of spam, but I'm amused by the disconnect between the restrained "cordiality" of the tone and the frothing paranoia of the content. Most terrifyingly, the American Presidential race is apparently entirely about religion, as Baptists, Jews and snake-handlers jostle in happy profusion. (This probably wouldn't be as amusing if I hadn't just watched that X-Files episode about snake-handling and divvils). The JSB is off on its own mission, striking wasp-like at issues I cannot see as central - it's certainly not an Obama-happy Democratic McCain-hater, and there's a curious lack of McCain-hatred in the anti-Palin frothing. McCain clearly doesn't have a position on the Jew question, and is thus by-the-way, and the 'bot is refreshingly uninterested in whether he did or didn't deliberately shoot his presidential chances in the foot with a moose gun.

And as for "the infamous 13th forgery known as Revelation 2:9", a quick Google mostly leaves me stunned at the gnashing facility with which a broad spectrum of fundamentalists can read "some Jews are not true Jews" as "all Jews are Satan." You do that in an essay, I scribble annoyed green remarks about misreading, stretching, READING properly, SUPPORT your statements, "this makes no sense" and, oh, yes, CONTEXT!

There's no hope for it, all that politics and snake-handling calls for a unicorn chaser. I'm a bit surprised to find myself identifying this book as a happy childhood reading memory, since Elizabeth Goudge has more than a slight tendency towards the realm of the syrupy, the uplifting and the twee; also, she comes perilously close all to often to the Christian allegory which pissed me off in Narnia; fortunately it isn't as prevalent in Little White Horse as it is in the weird Heaven/Zodiac elements of The Valley of Song. The Little White Horse is a novel I still read occasionally; it's an enchanting setting, a sequestered Victorian mini-kingdom peopled by loveable eccentrics, animals with delightful personalities, tragic love stories, ancient enmities, sumptuous food and drink, and suitably dark but redeemable villains. The heroine is full of personality and enterprise, and the whole thing is told with pleasingly witty and occasionally off-the-wall detail. (The tragic love story hinges on salmon-pink geraniums). The titular little white horse is used perfectly as a distant, enchanting icon, an almost-attainable ideal wrapped about with lovely constellations of moon and sun imagery. This is something to read when the world is simply too complicatedly dark, and you want some innocent pleasure. I promise, it's only occasionally twee.

Today's subject line courtesy of more than usually surrealist spam. It only works as an acrostic if the formatting hasn't scrambled it, which it had, but I'm also amused by the random disconnect between the nature of the product and the choice of words.

I am currently locked in an epic battle with my contact lenses, or more accurately an advancing wave of contact lenses, bayonets fixed, all different. I wish to place on record here my jealousy of those of you who have (a) perfect vision, or (b) the ability to wear contact lenses all day without feeling the need to claw your own eyes out, screaming and scratching and convinced they are packing bayonets, after the four-hour mark. In the last seven or eight years my eyes have apparently developed interesting bumps inside the eyelids, and a tendency to under-produce tears, which means they tolerate lenses for a few hours before becoming bored, wriggly and fractious. (Great, my eyes are four-year-olds). This also means that in the last two weeks I've cycled through three different brands of trial lens, some of which are only mildly uncomfortable while others are screamingly annoying. My eyes really don't like wearing toric lenses, it seems, which is a bugger as the toric lenses correct the astigmatism and are necessary to prevent eye-strain headaches. It all seems tragically doomed.

I am somewhat amazed at the strength of my own disinclination to give up the whole thing as a bad job and embrace my inner Sarah Palin. It seems that I don't actually construct my ideal self as bespectacled. I'm actually wishing I had both the money and the courage to have the eye surgery. Sigh.

Today's September Retro Kiddielit entry, as promised to pumeza, is Eleanor Farjeon. I've always loved Farjeon's sweet, wistful and slightly oddball writing, in particular her two novel-length fairy tales, The Glass Slipper, which is a sort of innocent pantomime Cinderella, and The Silver Curlew, an utterly charming version of "Rumplestiltskin" with a spoiled-brat king who I adore. But the classic Farjeon stories are found in her Martin Pippin collections, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (available here) and Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field. These are Scheherazade-style excuses for tale-telling, frame tales in which the eccentric wandering minstrel Martin tells stories to an audience of girls or children. The frame scenarios are lovely, if a bit syrupy at times, but the stories themselves are wonderful. Farjeon has a very strong sense of English folklore and landscape; her tales are full of English place-names, plants, scenery, people and children's games. They have an incredibly strong folkloric backbone, with the correct and satisfying use of repetition, pattern, symbol and timelessness, but they're never obvious. The mood and tone of the tales are often slightly dark, and the narrative lateral and eccentric, apt to twist in directions you don't expect without ever losing its folkloric character. Apple Orchard is all love stories, befitting the milkmaids to whom they're told, and often surprisingly sexy; Daisy Field, with its audience of children, has more varied themes. My favourites include the Gothic darkness and symbols of "Open Wilkins" and the beautifully deconstructed courtly love scenario of "Proud Rosalind". My grandparents had copies of both Martin Pippin books, and the stories have always fascinated me, not least because I grew up with and into them; they were memorable and satisfying when I was a child, but they've offered more depth and interest with each reading as I became more able to access their considerable sophistication.

Last Night I Dreamed: I was a secret agent of some sort (extremely high heels were involved), in a very fast car with a nifty ability to drive along the underside of elevated freeways, thereby avoiding traffic. Later I was a medieval bride arriving at my potential husband's thatched cottage home, only to be utterly rejected by his mother, who stole my silver and sapphire ring before turning me out the house while said potential husband stood feebly by and let it happen.

Wow. In the Department of the Randomly Surreal, I've just taken a phone call to my office landline in which the annoying MTN voice lady announced that I had an SMS. This was followed by a throaty male baritone which observed, in perfectly level tones and without noticeable word breaks, "MY MOM HAD STROLL WE HAD TO SEE HER IN." What is this, the new spam?

The last few days, for some reason, are making me fully grok the significance of the Georgette Heyer phrase "an irritation of the nerves." My nerves are irritated. Things fret me when they shouldn't, which is possibly why the usual EL non-communication is getting to me. On the other hand, twenty minutes browsing the Can Haz Cheeseburger archive were very soothing. I'm not a huge fan of LOLcats, only about one in twenty is truly amusing, but cute kitties are good for the soul.

My mother's youngest sister used to live in Cape Town, and was a notable figure in my childhood for the perfectly lovely books she used to send us. Literate aunts are extremely important, as I frequently tell my niece. Anyway, my favourite among the books that she sent was Anne Fine's The Summer House Loon, which is unusual in the annals of my childhood kiddielit memories in that it isn't actually fantasy. It's a sort of social and emotional comedy, I suppose, seen through the eyes of the barely-teenaged Ione, who both observes and manipulates the interactions between her blind professor father, his beautiful typist, and Ned, the dopey, hippy, shambling, entirely endearing grad student who's in love with the typist. I think I had a crush on Ned when I was a kid, actually, he's a wonderful combination of intelligent, funny and helpless. The story ambles gently and wittily between relationship angst, academic rivalry, early Sardinian trade routes, impromptu party-arranging, teenaged manipulativeness and first experiences of drunkenness; it's sharply well-observed and pleasantly inconsequential. I think its huge strength, though, is the way it immerses you in Ione's adolescent world, in its classic combination of narcissism and fascinated observation of grown-up motivations and concerns. I also suspect that this book is at least partially responsible for my attraction to the world of academia.