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Apr. 18th, 2022 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIn starting out to write about the third of Kage Baker's Company books, Mendoza in Hollywood, I was surprised to find out that it -- and indeed every other Company novel -- have incredibly in-depth Wikipedia pages, through which I stumbled over Charles de Lint's review in which he explains that the first part of the book is interesting but slow/desultory and the last third is engrossing. This is fun for me because now I get to fight Charles de Lint! I love the first two thirds of Mendoza in Hollywood with all my heart and then the actual plot starts to happen and I become incandescent with rage because my Enemy has arrived.
Like, de Lint is absolutely correct that the first two-thirds of the book have no plot per se. What happens is that depressed cyborg botanist Mendoza arrives at her new posting, which is to collect rare plants in California's Cahuenga Pass in 1862, on the verge of the Great Draught of 1862-65 which is about to kill off cattle-ranching culture in the area and drive a number of species to extinction. While she's there she has a lot of feelings about California biomes and the corrosive impacts of humanity and time on natural ecosystems, and makes a lot of satirical observations about 19th-century society, and also gets to know her colleagues, a funny and interesting collection of cyborgs who all have their own entertaining quirks and hyperfixations and whom, it gradually becomes clear, are all also living through their own personal devastating hellscape of immortality under late-stage capitalism.
It is, for the record, an incredibly self-indulent book. There is one whole chapter that is simply Mendoza describing the experience of watching a silent film with her colleagues and explaining the plot of the movie in great detail and the precise ways in which everyone enthusiastically heckles it, a whole chapter, and it still works for me because of the way the comedy builds to an anti-catharsis and suddenly reveals a profound and destabilizing grief behind it. Each cyborg's individual narrative -- Porfirio and his family, Imarte and the city she lost thousands of years ago, Juan Bautista and his beloved condor Erich von Stroheim -- acts as its own unique reflection of Mendoza's own tragedy, and the thing I love about this in particular is not just that all these stories are so well-drawn but that birds, city, family, all, are clearly just as important in the grand scheme of thing as Mendoza's Big Sweeping Bad Romance. There are so many ways to love and unfortunately all of them leave you open to despair!
At this point in the book, what I always want is for Mendoza, after having taken two hundred pages to learn about her colleagues and really understand both the uniqueness and the universality of her tragedy, to make a profound connection to at least one of them -- ideally Juan Bautista, her closest narrative reflection! -- and take a step forward towards resistance against the Company overall.
Instead, at this point in the book, what I get is the appearance of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, my Enemy, the Worst Victorian Adventurer and genetic double of Mendoza's tragic lost love Nicholas, for whom she will immediately proceed to throw away everything and kick off the main plot towards endgame of the series.
Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax believes passionately in the importance and inherent virtue of Empire, in the same way that Mendoza's last boyfriend Nicholas believed in the importance and inherent virtue of God. I think what Kage Baker thinks is that both of these beliefs are equally and obviously wrong, and cute in how obviously wrong they are. What Kage Baker does not understand is that there is an inherent appeal to a heretic who is willing to die for anti-establishment beliefs, and being asked to accept that a soldier of Empire who is willing to die for the most profoundly establishment beliefs is essentially the Same Guy and just as worthy of narrative investment feels like a profound insult to me, Becca! I am offended on behalf of Mendoza, OG Nicholas, Erich von Stroheim the condor, Porfirio's baby murder nephew, and the whole city of Babylon. There are so many ways to love in this world and all of them are worthy and important, except, unfortunately, this one.
Like, de Lint is absolutely correct that the first two-thirds of the book have no plot per se. What happens is that depressed cyborg botanist Mendoza arrives at her new posting, which is to collect rare plants in California's Cahuenga Pass in 1862, on the verge of the Great Draught of 1862-65 which is about to kill off cattle-ranching culture in the area and drive a number of species to extinction. While she's there she has a lot of feelings about California biomes and the corrosive impacts of humanity and time on natural ecosystems, and makes a lot of satirical observations about 19th-century society, and also gets to know her colleagues, a funny and interesting collection of cyborgs who all have their own entertaining quirks and hyperfixations and whom, it gradually becomes clear, are all also living through their own personal devastating hellscape of immortality under late-stage capitalism.
It is, for the record, an incredibly self-indulent book. There is one whole chapter that is simply Mendoza describing the experience of watching a silent film with her colleagues and explaining the plot of the movie in great detail and the precise ways in which everyone enthusiastically heckles it, a whole chapter, and it still works for me because of the way the comedy builds to an anti-catharsis and suddenly reveals a profound and destabilizing grief behind it. Each cyborg's individual narrative -- Porfirio and his family, Imarte and the city she lost thousands of years ago, Juan Bautista and his beloved condor Erich von Stroheim -- acts as its own unique reflection of Mendoza's own tragedy, and the thing I love about this in particular is not just that all these stories are so well-drawn but that birds, city, family, all, are clearly just as important in the grand scheme of thing as Mendoza's Big Sweeping Bad Romance. There are so many ways to love and unfortunately all of them leave you open to despair!
At this point in the book, what I always want is for Mendoza, after having taken two hundred pages to learn about her colleagues and really understand both the uniqueness and the universality of her tragedy, to make a profound connection to at least one of them -- ideally Juan Bautista, her closest narrative reflection! -- and take a step forward towards resistance against the Company overall.
Instead, at this point in the book, what I get is the appearance of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, my Enemy, the Worst Victorian Adventurer and genetic double of Mendoza's tragic lost love Nicholas, for whom she will immediately proceed to throw away everything and kick off the main plot towards endgame of the series.
Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax believes passionately in the importance and inherent virtue of Empire, in the same way that Mendoza's last boyfriend Nicholas believed in the importance and inherent virtue of God. I think what Kage Baker thinks is that both of these beliefs are equally and obviously wrong, and cute in how obviously wrong they are. What Kage Baker does not understand is that there is an inherent appeal to a heretic who is willing to die for anti-establishment beliefs, and being asked to accept that a soldier of Empire who is willing to die for the most profoundly establishment beliefs is essentially the Same Guy and just as worthy of narrative investment feels like a profound insult to me, Becca! I am offended on behalf of Mendoza, OG Nicholas, Erich von Stroheim the condor, Porfirio's baby murder nephew, and the whole city of Babylon. There are so many ways to love in this world and all of them are worthy and important, except, unfortunately, this one.
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Date: 2022-04-18 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-04-18 07:19 pm (UTC)I should really re-read this book now that I have seen literal orders of magnitude more movies than I had in 2000, when I just sort of bounced into it off Sky Coyote and have almost no feelings about it that I can recall. (They might come flooding back if I picked it up, I don't know. I do have a vivid memory of the cover.)
What Kage Baker does not understand is that there is an inherent appeal to a heretic who is willing to die for anti-establishment beliefs, and being asked to accept that a soldier of Empire who is willing to die for the most profoundly establishment beliefs is essentially the Same Guy and just as worthy of narrative investment feels like a profound insult to me, Becca!
What a fascinating, and tragically series-defining, blind spot about empire.
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Date: 2022-05-01 02:21 am (UTC)TRAGICALLY SERIES-DEFINING IS IT, UNFORTUNATELY. >:((((
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Date: 2022-04-18 09:04 pm (UTC)LOL I think I am the only person who unreservedly loves that chapter for the film stuff and the film stuff alone, because I was struck by that reference to von Stroheim lost films in a Fritz Leiber? Jack Finney? story (I bet Baker was too) and so an ENTIRE chapter of the book ENTIRELY describing classic lost films complete with running commentary JUST FOR ME? YES PLEASE THANK YOU I WILL TAKE ONE THOUSAND COPIES. It's the epitome of what you are told Never To Do by all those how-to-write books, never ever devote giant chunks of the book to your favourite topic! -- and Baker says FUCKIT and just goes full throttle into Old Hollywood. (Did you read her collection of Tor blog posts on classic movies, Ancient Rockets? It's v fun.)
So as you can guess I was bitterly disappointed the ENTIRE book was not Mendoza et al sitting around watching films with commentary, but omfg, the whole Nicholas/Edward/Alec/son/clone/lover thing....no. Just no. That plus the combination of the dumb plotline with all the pokes at "political correctness" just killed the books for me.
This is an interesting article https://www.tor.com/2016/10/04/the-making-of-mendoza-in-hollywood/
Kage had originally intended Mendoza’s story to be a stand alone. Think of the end of Iden; it could have been left there, poignant and solitary. But Sky Coyote had nagged itself into existence before she was quiet done with Iden
YOU DON'T SAY (I guess they offered her a contract with Iden as the first part of a trilogy?)
Mendoza In Hollywood was also originally just the working title. All the Company novels had Mendoza-themed working titles during their gestations. Kage said it was the Asterix model, or the Oz books, or the Bobbsey Twins (all of which she loved); So and So in the Thus and Such. In the Garden of Iden was originally just “Mendoza”; Sky Coyote was “Mendoza in Chumash Country”. The Graveyard Game was Mendoza and the Hardy Boys
I find that kind of charming! It really doesn't fit what the series (UNFORTUNATELY) turned into, tho.
During the writing of this book, Kage fell in love with silent movies. They weren’t intended to be part of MIH, but watching them was her main recreation while she wrote it, so the films were incorporated into the plot
Again, I just love it. Writers could still get away with that over twenty years ago! What publishing house would stand for that today? Probably not a one of them. "Victor, Victor-Marie baby, we love the book, but really, this essay on the sewers has just got to go...."
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Date: 2022-05-01 02:28 am (UTC)ohhhhh boy you know it does make me feel much better to know that Iden was originally intended to be a standalone -- like, I can love the Nicholas who's in Iden as a representative of humanity without worrying about what's in there to foreshadow the future misery of Edward because it simply isn't! Anyway I love reading about this process, the love for the subject matter shines so clearly through Mendoza in Hollywood and that's a large part of what makes most of it work for me.
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Date: 2022-04-19 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 02:34 am (UTC)