(no subject)
Mar. 15th, 2013 07:29 pmWhile we're talking about Diana Wynne Jones, I guess it's time to write up Reflections: On the Magic of Writing.
So here's a story: in January, I was hanging out in a Denver bookstore, and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adiva_calandia found Reflections on the shelves. "Becca!" she said. "BECCA! You NEED this!" and handed it to me.
I didn't buy it then. The reason I said was because it was an expensive hardcover, and I knew I could get it out of the library; this was true. The other reason I didn't say at that time was that I was scared. Diana Wynne Jones and her books have meant so, so many things to me, and what if I read her essays and found out something I didn't want to know?
Well, one cannot live in fear. So I did get the book out of the library, and I read it, and for the most part I'm very happy I did. I did find out a few things I didn't want to know, most notably ( spoiler-cut in case I'm not the only one who doesn't want to know! )
Then there were some things I was glad and entertained to know, like DWJ's Thoughts On LOTR, and various hijinks-y stories about books coming true, and the millions of sources that went into Fire and Hemlock. (Did anyone else pick up about Thomas Lynne also being Cupid before reading that essay? "Blind and uses a bow," what a gloriously terrible pun. I mean, she means it as in 'and Psyche,' but the mental image is nonetheless hilarious.)
And then there were things that it hurt a bit to read but I'm glad I did -- like, I've known for years that Diana Wynne Jones often had a hard time writing female protagonists because they re too close, and all you have to do is read Aunt Maria to see her struggles with her own internalized sexism and issues with being a female person. But it doesn't make it less of a home hit to hear her talking about reading Britomart in The Faerie Queene and thinking for the first time that it was all right to be a girl, she could still be a hero, that was possible.
And I forget if it was DWJ herself or one of her sons who pointed out that she writes an awful lot of writer protagonists, and most of them end up somehow sacrificing something significant for it. That hit me home, too.
So here's a story: in January, I was hanging out in a Denver bookstore, and
adiva_calandia found Reflections on the shelves. "Becca!" she said. "BECCA! You NEED this!" and handed it to me.I didn't buy it then. The reason I said was because it was an expensive hardcover, and I knew I could get it out of the library; this was true. The other reason I didn't say at that time was that I was scared. Diana Wynne Jones and her books have meant so, so many things to me, and what if I read her essays and found out something I didn't want to know?
Well, one cannot live in fear. So I did get the book out of the library, and I read it, and for the most part I'm very happy I did. I did find out a few things I didn't want to know, most notably ( spoiler-cut in case I'm not the only one who doesn't want to know! )
Then there were some things I was glad and entertained to know, like DWJ's Thoughts On LOTR, and various hijinks-y stories about books coming true, and the millions of sources that went into Fire and Hemlock. (Did anyone else pick up about Thomas Lynne also being Cupid before reading that essay? "Blind and uses a bow," what a gloriously terrible pun. I mean, she means it as in 'and Psyche,' but the mental image is nonetheless hilarious.)
And then there were things that it hurt a bit to read but I'm glad I did -- like, I've known for years that Diana Wynne Jones often had a hard time writing female protagonists because they re too close, and all you have to do is read Aunt Maria to see her struggles with her own internalized sexism and issues with being a female person. But it doesn't make it less of a home hit to hear her talking about reading Britomart in The Faerie Queene and thinking for the first time that it was all right to be a girl, she could still be a hero, that was possible.
And I forget if it was DWJ herself or one of her sons who pointed out that she writes an awful lot of writer protagonists, and most of them end up somehow sacrificing something significant for it. That hit me home, too.
