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Oct. 31st, 2012 02:20 pmAt Dragon*Con this year I fell a little bit in love with this stained-glass-style artwork -- especally the piece The Map, based on Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest.
Problem: I had not yet read Palimpsest.
FRIENDS: So buy it, and then read Palimpsest!
BECCA: But what if I read Palimpsest and I hate it? WHAT IF IT RUINS EVERYTHING?
FRIENDS: So buy it and don't read Palimpsest.
BECCA: BUT THEN I'LL FEEL LIKE A POSER.
FRIENDS: So then don't buy it.
BECCA: BUT IT'S SO PRETTY.
FRIENDS: So buy it, or don't buy it, but stop standing here agonizing about it, because we would kind of like to do something else with our day eventually . . .
. . . I bought it. Then I read Palimpsest.
I'm going to start out by saying that Palimpsest is the first book I've read of Catherynne M. Valente's that didn't make me think "oh, just like The Orphan's Tales!" I mean, it's like The Orphan's Tales in the way that Valente is the person who wrote The Orphan's Tales, and she is interested in lush and surrealist worldbuilding constructed out of dream-logic and intertextuality. But that doesn't always have to do the same thing and here it very much doesn't.
I don't actually like it the best of Valente's post-Orphan's Tales books, because it's doing things that are less relevant to my interests, but that is more about me than it is about the book.
Palimpsest is a sexually transmitted city -- that is, you sleep with someone who has a bit of the city on them, and then you get a piece of the city and you get to go there in your dreams. You have to sleep with different people with different parts of the city on them to get with different bits, and most people find themselves obsessed enough that they do. We follow four protagonists on their further obsessive adventures:
SEI: a train fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in her dead mother
OLEG: a key fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in his undead sister
LUDOVICO: a book fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in his disappeared wife
NOVEMBER: a bee fetishist whose issues are not really wrapped up in anyone in her life and more in the fact that the most powerful woman in Palimpsest seems really intent on having a vaguely abusive relationship with her
I don't think like a Valente character. People in Palimpsest have a lot of concerns, but they don't ever deal in the mundane. So reading Palimpsest was a lot like reading someone else's dream -- which is how it's designed to be -- but it wasn't ever like I could have been reading my dream, it wasn't like I could have been any of those people. I don't know. It was interesting! I wasn't bored, but I also kind of felt like I needed a Diana Wynne Jones or something afterwards to detox myself down from all the IMPOSSIBLY INTENSE SYMBOLIC AND SURREALISTIC IMAGERY.
Fortunately the poster in my room is going to go up across from a Kate Beaton print so I think I have that covered.
(Also, Oleg lives in an ostensibly real New York City, and Valente gets very poetic about it, but whatever city it is, it's not my New York City.)
Problem: I had not yet read Palimpsest.
FRIENDS: So buy it, and then read Palimpsest!
BECCA: But what if I read Palimpsest and I hate it? WHAT IF IT RUINS EVERYTHING?
FRIENDS: So buy it and don't read Palimpsest.
BECCA: BUT THEN I'LL FEEL LIKE A POSER.
FRIENDS: So then don't buy it.
BECCA: BUT IT'S SO PRETTY.
FRIENDS: So buy it, or don't buy it, but stop standing here agonizing about it, because we would kind of like to do something else with our day eventually . . .
. . . I bought it. Then I read Palimpsest.
I'm going to start out by saying that Palimpsest is the first book I've read of Catherynne M. Valente's that didn't make me think "oh, just like The Orphan's Tales!" I mean, it's like The Orphan's Tales in the way that Valente is the person who wrote The Orphan's Tales, and she is interested in lush and surrealist worldbuilding constructed out of dream-logic and intertextuality. But that doesn't always have to do the same thing and here it very much doesn't.
I don't actually like it the best of Valente's post-Orphan's Tales books, because it's doing things that are less relevant to my interests, but that is more about me than it is about the book.
Palimpsest is a sexually transmitted city -- that is, you sleep with someone who has a bit of the city on them, and then you get a piece of the city and you get to go there in your dreams. You have to sleep with different people with different parts of the city on them to get with different bits, and most people find themselves obsessed enough that they do. We follow four protagonists on their further obsessive adventures:
SEI: a train fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in her dead mother
OLEG: a key fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in his undead sister
LUDOVICO: a book fetishist whose issues are wrapped up in his disappeared wife
NOVEMBER: a bee fetishist whose issues are not really wrapped up in anyone in her life and more in the fact that the most powerful woman in Palimpsest seems really intent on having a vaguely abusive relationship with her
I don't think like a Valente character. People in Palimpsest have a lot of concerns, but they don't ever deal in the mundane. So reading Palimpsest was a lot like reading someone else's dream -- which is how it's designed to be -- but it wasn't ever like I could have been reading my dream, it wasn't like I could have been any of those people. I don't know. It was interesting! I wasn't bored, but I also kind of felt like I needed a Diana Wynne Jones or something afterwards to detox myself down from all the IMPOSSIBLY INTENSE SYMBOLIC AND SURREALISTIC IMAGERY.
Fortunately the poster in my room is going to go up across from a Kate Beaton print so I think I have that covered.
(Also, Oleg lives in an ostensibly real New York City, and Valente gets very poetic about it, but whatever city it is, it's not my New York City.)
