(no subject)

[skygiants]

At 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.)

Comments

[ceitfianna]

they don't ever deal in the mundane. This is why I don't think I like Valente's books that much.

I can admire their craft and the ideas but the characters never feel quite real to me. I had that all through Deathless, I was supposed to be sympathetic and I wasn't or Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland. September was interesting but I didn't find her someone I rooted for or even wished to know.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think it's the same thing for me. There's nothing grounding about them that makes you feel connected, it's all up in the clouds. They're very beautiful clouds full of interesting things to see! But it's kind of hard to live there.

[ceitfianna]

Yes or they're the very depths of awful, which can be just as hard to get situated in. Deathless was like that, long ruminations on hunger and decay and the mundane was never really mundane. Or off in dark fairyland with look blood and pain and still not easy to touch.

[skygiants]

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

I mean to read Deathless someday if only to have an opinion on it, but I think I need several months at least to detox from Palimpsest.

[ceitfianna]

That's wise as its a very intense book. My current detox books seem to be mysteries as work and finding an apartment have left me too worn out for reading that requires work.

[kate_nepveu]

Considering that the Kyoto in this book has a Silver Temple covered with actual silver leaf that isn't a big tourist draw (no and uh, no), is it possible that it's actually a subtly different starting world than ours? Very, very, very subtle?

(I haven't read it; Chad noticed the Kyoto thing.)

[skygiants]

Hah! It's definitely possible. I didn't get the sense that this was meant to be a subtly different New York City though so much as someone who sees New York City very, very differently than I do.

(That said, I would be shocked to find out that the choice of a New York locksmith character was not inspired by this locksmith/artist near where I used to work.)

[rymenhild]

My feelings about Palimpsest are that I like the city, but I can't stand the people who go to it. Sei's thing for older men leaves me cold, and I just don't get the train fetish. Oleg is boringly depressed. I approve of Ludovico's Isidore of Seville fixation, but let's be clear, the man is an epic mansplainer and his ex-wife is better off without him. I like November perfectly well, but Casimira/November is creepy and weird, and I can't imagine what November sees in Ludovico, Sei and Oleg.

[skygiants]

Haha yeah, I'm with you on most of this. I liked Oleg at first, despite his totally wrong opinions about New York -- maybe because he was not actually super interested in Palimpsest itself at all, and I found that refreshing after everybody else's obsession -- but then he went completely off the rails and lost me. The person I actually most sympathized with in the book was the girl who was trying to escape the city and lead a real life, and then picks up Oleg, and then is like ". . . you and your issues are not what I wanted to deal with." I think we are supposed to feel sorry for her for not understanding The Magic Of Palimpsest, but man, lady, I FEEL YOU.

(CASIMIRA/NOVEMBER IS SO UNHEALTHY. RUN AWAY NOVEMBER)

[rachelmanija]

I love the concept of this, and every time I read a description, it sounds awesome, and yet I was unable to get even a single chapter into this book. Too much pretty prose, not enough city, maybe.

[skygiants]

"Too much pretty prose, not enough [x]" is something I often feel about Valente books, even the ones I enjoy. I think my lushness tolerance is mis-calibrated for her writing.

[rachelmanija]

Yeah, me too. I can see why others like her writing, but it is not for me.

[hebethen]

"Sexually transmitted city" is an awesome idea.

RE: New York -- your misgivings made me think of this article by s. e. smith: http://meloukhia.net/2012/10/a_strange_sense_of_place.html

[skygiants]

I always enjoy reading people writing about New York City; I like getting flashes of recognition, even if things aren't perfect, and to be honest when they get things wrong I kind of enjoy feeling like a smugly superior know-it-all about it. >.>

But in this case, it was the sense of the city rather than the geography that felt wrong to me -- and that's not an objective thing, that's just someone who sees the city very differently from the way I do.

[opusculasedfera]

they don't ever deal in the mundane is an interesting comment because it is very accurate, and I do generally share your feelings about SYMBOLISM, but what I mostly remember about reading Palimpsest was that the bits with the dream city were interesting, but Valente kept dragging us back to the ostensibly mundane world to watch dull people have boring sex. The sexually transmitted city was a neat idea, but then the sex scenes were just not that great and the people in them were tedious, which rather spoilt it. I want some mundane, but I want to see the mundane of the people living in the dream-logic city doing unexpected things, rather than the mundane of the annoying people, you know?

[skygiants]

I would have liked the mundane of the dream-logic city! I would also have liked the mundane of people doing things in the real world that felt real -- things like doing the dishes or calling in to work or having actual conversations with friends -- but I don't think any of the things that happened in the real world ever qualified for that.

(I will say I admired the mathematical precision with which she went about writing the sex scenes -- everyone got their turn with every gender and combination in a fair and balanced fashion, so . . . that's something!)

[opusculasedfera]

I think I'd sort of given up on the real people doing anything compelling at all quite early on, to be honest.

(I don't remember noticing at the time, but I'm not exactly surprised, they did feel awfully clinical and choreographed for someone who otherwise is all about lushness of prose.)