skygiants | (no subject)

While 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

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 that Witch Week was meant as a kind of allegory about the problem of racism in schools. I love Witch Week passionately and it is a much, much better book if you DON'T KNOW THAT, and I am trying very hard to forget it as fast as I can.

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.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/329001.html

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hafl

I'm just finishing the Scarlet Pimpernel books (and realising that they're similar to Fantomas books in a way (a mastermind criminal, who is also a master of disguise, and a man of law struggling to catch him, even though he is always thwarted)) and I was thinking about reading more DWJ, so which one would you recommend me to start with?

I've read Witch Week, Magicians of Caprona, Lives of Christopher Chant and Howl's Moving Castle a while back and enjoyed them all, but I've forgotten them almost completely. I'll reread them at some point, but I was thinking about trying some other of her books.

From:

ceitfianna

I've been eying this book on my iBooks though it will have to wait until I get through a few more. It sounds like it all worked and I'm now getting back into Power of Three. I do like it but it hasn't caught me quite as much as some of her other books.

From:

hebethen

I liked Witch Week quite a lot, so it's fortunate that I have no idea what that means. Don't explain to me! (Although that's something to keep in mind if someone else has qualms @_@) Uh, but do explain "and Psyche"? As in Polly's determination to find out what's going on?

From:

skygiants

Oh, gosh. ALL OF THEM! No, that isn't a good answer. Ummmmm, I think The Homeward Bounders and Archer's Goon are both good stand-alones and good places to start! Dalemark should really be read as a quartet; Hexwood and Fire and Hemlock are both fascinating but are Advanced DWJ due to being SUPER WEIRD and I would not necessarily recommend them as beginning DWJ books.

From:

troisroyaumes

The Thomas Lynne being Cupid connection didn't occur to me before either, but wow, that...makes a lot of sense!

I want to read this now, despite the somewhat saddening bits you mention.

From:

skygiants

I'm glad you're enjoying it, anyway! I think you'll find the essays interesting.

From:

skygiants

I WILL NOT. I don't want to think about it, because it doesn't work!

But yeah -- what she's referring to is the whole Cupid and Psyche myth, in which the heroine is enjoined not to look into her lover's secret, and she does, and she loses him, and has to seek to get him back. So DWJ is quite consciously playing with that, along with like TWELVE OTHER myths.

From:

skygiants

In most part it is really, really fascinating! I had all these bits I saved and meant to quote here, but then my library e-copy expired and I lost my bookmarks. :(

From:

ceitfianna

Oh, that adds an interesting dimension to that book which hasn't won me over yet, but I might reread.

From:

sylleptic

Is it a DWJ short story that has a writer protagonist breaking her writer's block by transcribing her exhausted coffee-inhaling state as the experience of a junior officer on a spaceship? And then she ends up being wildly successful writing a bunch of SF novels with protagonists who are always drinking some thinly-disguised form of coffee. But then the novels come to life somehow, I think?

From:

jinian

protagonists who are always drinking some thinly-disguised form of coffee

So, every SF novel ever, then?

From:

sophia_sol

Oh my god I REMEMBER THIS STORY. I have no idea if it's DWJ or not but I have been wanting to reread it for years to remind myself what actually HAPPENS in it besides the xofiy/khyfee/coffee/etc!

From:

hebethen

YESSS. And then suddenly matriarchy revolution shipjacking conspiracies with artificial intelligence in. I recall being somewhat puzzled by this.

From:

sylleptic

Yes indeed!

From:

sylleptic

It's such a vivid book memory! Unfortunately not in ways that are useful for finding it. But I looked around and I'm pretty sure it's "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy", a DWJ short in Believing is Seeing and Unexpected Magic. Tonight has been a night of tracking down things I read as a kid and wish I could find again -- thank goodness for Google!

From:

sylleptic

Oh, wow, yes. I had forgotten what a sharp left turn it takes. I mean, I mostly remembered "something something coffee! something something typos! something something" so I guess that's not surprising. I definitely want to reread now.

From:

rymenhild

I always, and I mean since high school, read Witch Week as an allegory for hidden otherness -- queerness, I guess, including but not limited to the sexual orientation variety.

From:

esmenet

Chipping in here to say that yes, that's most definitely it! I remember the whole 'adn' thing quite clearly.

From:

hafl

Thanks. I think I'll start with Homeward Bounders and then move on to ALL OF THEM (Thesis? What thesis?)

From:

hebethen

See, that I could understand! I would also march on the capital demanding my compensatory superpower(s), because secret-powers-as-queerness is overdone and a bad analogy, but it's one I understand.

From:

skygiants

I am glad everyone else remembered this story, because dang, I did not AT ALL. Clearly I need to reread the short stories again!

From:

skygiants

Yeah, and that makes WAY MORE SENSE. But it's also -- like, there's two endings to that book, and that works with the first ending (almost everyone secretly has some hidden otherness about them) but not with the second ending (and now we fix it so everyone loses their secret hidden thing and it's all normal like it was supposed to be!)

And, like, I have some problems with that ending anyway, but if you read the book as an allegory it's an ending that ACTIVELY MAKES ME ANGRY and I don't want to be angry. :(

From:

skygiants

An excellent plan! NO THESIS CAN STAND IN THE WAY OF DIANA WYNNE JONES (she said, trying not to look at her accusatory open thesis document)

From:

jinian

Oh okay, good point, I am no longer able to not be annoyed. :(

From:

sophia_sol

wow yes you're right, that's definitely it -- so EVIDENTLY at some point in my past I read a collection of DWJ short stories, and I DO NOT REMEMBER HAVING DONE SO. This is a little disconcerting.

Okay, so, tracking it down again and rereading it is definitely on my to-do list.

From:

sophia_sol

OH NO now I'm angry tooooooo :(

I'd always found the ending of the book unsatisfying -- it's why, of the DWJ books I own, it's the one I've reread the least despite loving everything else about the book -- but now I'm just endless :((((((