Linking Up With Kelly Link

Kelly Link. Now there’s a post-analog name for a fiction writer. I just finished reading her latest collection of stories, Pretty Monsters, and was not disappointed.

Ms. Link does not write fiction so much as she lets it slide around her characters’ skulls before rolling them out in cleverly designed droll packages. At times this approach left me scratching my head, but at other times it left me chuckling with admiration. Her art defies categorization, like all great art, so I’m convinced she’s onto something with some serious conceptual crunch.

Pretty Monsters is a collection of longish stories that’s reputedly her first collection targeted at the lucrative Young Adult Fiction market. It’s easy to see why her editors picked that genre. All the tales here feature at least one satisfyingly quirky adolescent mind, and the way she uses adolescent dialogue is spot on. And does so in refreshing, non-stereotypical fashion filtered through the ironic lens of a fully adult writer:

“Let me save you from the biggest mistake of your life,” Madeline said. Her voice took on a thrilling intensity, as if she was about to impart the secrets of the universe to Clementine… “Cabell Meadows is not hot. Cabell Meadows is at least six years older than you and he still doesn’t know that tube socks are not a good look with Birkenstocks. Cabell Meadows voluntarily came to a high-school biology class to talk about how he spent his spring break shooting bears in the butt with tranquilizer darts. Cabell Meadows is an epic, epic loser.”

If there’s any thing I’ve noticed about teenagers it’s that they have a virtually limitless urge to turn things on their heads, while simultaneously trying to fit in with their peers. They can be amazingly clever, creating their own realities as they struggle to fit in with the adult world. “Pretty Monsters,” the story for which the collection is named, not only has social relations crafted by this zany experimentalism, the structure of the story itself feels cobbled together by it. The end of this story is both wacky and chilling, and while part of me was disappointed that it wasn’t more conventional, another part was all, “Yeah! Well played!”

Edgy, angsty teen humor is not Link’s only forte, either. She can spin a beguiling fantasy or two as well, as evidenced by a couple of fine stories in this collection, “The Wizards of Perfil,” and my favorite, “The Constable of Abal.” Both stories construct an interesting alternate reality, but by the end my expectations and assumptions about this reality got tweaked ingeniously. (Although, I’m proud to say, I saw the ending of “The Wizards of Perfil” a mile away. That didn’t keep me from enjoying the story.)

Another story, a kind of new millennium twist on Borges, features kids whose lives are taken over by a TV show about a world that is entirely contained by a magical library—The Free People’s World-Tree Library—and a character named Fox, who either dies or doesn’t die. As is typical in her tales, the plot is propelled by tantalizing clues about what’s happening, but with characters who bravely carry on despite growing suspicions that their version of reality is doomed. You might call it post-modern, you might call it metafiction, but this is no boring Thomas Pyncheon novel. I call it fascinating.

Will the Real Witches Please Stand Up?

While the Undead have been staples in pop fiction for some time now, are there more controversial paranormal people than witches? At one time nearly unanimously regarded as evil eaters of children and seducers of virtuous men, or ugly crones who could make themselves appear beautiful with a spell, witches over last forty years have gained respectability. Neo-paganists now celebrate witches as having powers to heal; Feminists celebrate them as affirming female power in the face of male hierarchical oppression. And a growing number of adults regard witches now as positive role models for children.

Of course, the old fears haven’t vanished completely, just as women in many cultures are still vilified and made into targets by those looking for someone to blame. Some religious zealots still see witches in children’s lit as promoters of moral turpitude among the young, even witches who exemplify Christian values with their actions. Nevertheless, the liberal post-modern trope on witches as women with supernatural powers gained through association with themselves and not men has gained a solid foothold in literary circles.

Recently I read two children’s books with two radically different sets of witches. One presents witches as horrible people whose greatest desire is to “squelch” children. The other presents witches as supernatural powers who can travel across the universe and not only love children but guide them in their challenging quest to find their father and defeat evil.

The two books, if you haven’t guessed yet, are Roald Dahl’s The Witches and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

The differences between these idiosyncratic stories are as great as the differences between their witches. Dahl’s book, geared to young middlegraders, is all tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, sort-of-black humor. L’Engle’s book has humor, but mostly it’s a very serious adventure for older middlegraders, full of flights of fancy, liberal and spiritual philosophizing, and dystopian visions. When Dahl’s book succeeds it’s because of the humor, whereas when L’Engle’s book works in spite of it.

The Witches is typical Dahl, yet feels like a complete anomaly in today’s world. Presenting witches as unrelentingly evil makes the story feel like it written in the 1950s, not the 1980s when it was published. The evil Grand High Witch talks in a stereotypical German accent, at least that’s what I gathered from the irritating way her words are spelled in the manuscript. Believe me, it gets old real fast. If you don’t buy into the witches as evil, the story stops dead in its tracks; I only finished it because I had to for this review. The story does have some redeeming parts: I found the relationship between the young boy protagonist and his cigar-smoking grandmother somewhat endearing, and I applaud the fact that (SPOILER ALERT!) once the lad gets turned into a mouse he never gets turned back again. But overall, I have to ask: Mr. Dahl, what were you thinking?

A Wrinkle In Time is also an anomaly, a curiously complex case of kids battling evil, a dusting of dubious sci-fi blather about “tesseracts” (though it’s a cool word, I must admit), and sorrowful soul-searching by a young female protagonist who must save her family, with a pinch of romantic promise. Evil in this case is not a craven coven but a Giant Brain named the IT, whose function is make everyone follow its exact rhythm and become so normal that individuality is completely lost—sort of a proto-Borg, if you’re a Star Trek fan. The scenes on the planet Camazotz, where the IT holds court and everyone has been turned into a meaningless cog, are both the darkest and most powerful scenes in the story, containing within them nightmarish echoes of Orwell.

The sociopolitical tone of A Wrinkle seem very much a product of its time. In 1962, when it was published, America had come out of the harrowing Red-baiting witch hunts of the fifties, and computers at that time were regarded by liberals as huge, monstrous machines (fed by coded cards, not hard drives) bent on destroying human individuality; in the words of Jefferson Airplane, “life can be hard when you’re just holes in the card of some electronic hand.” And did L’Engle have any idea that IT would eventually come to stand for Information Technology? If so, how prophetic!

The witches in Wrinkle are the exact opposite of those in Dahl: idiosyncratic, funny, good-hearted, and fighters of evil. At times, though, they grated a bit on me. Maybe they, too, should have found that their hearts, like that of Anakin Skywalker, held the potential for evil. But maybe that would have scared the kiddies a bit too much.

Hanging With Horses

Over Spring Break my partner and I got away for a few days up in the Gold Country. We stayed in a funky trailer house on a ranch run by a wonderful woman named Mary Macbeth (no Shakespeare jokes, please!), who lives by herself and cares for at least a dozen horses, a couple of ponies, maybe eight dogs, and at least one cat.

Yours Truly standing in front of the entrance to Mary’s animal cemetery

The first day we arrived, her posse of dogs spotted us and camped right outside our door. Whenever we ventured out, they would paw and lean against us like long lost doggy buddies. Later we found out that one of them was rescued from a shelter, and was still learning Boundary Issues. Other than that, though, he was a great dog. This was a great place to be a dog, too: they had the run of the place, and were fearless around horses. Of course horses are not nearly as adept at scratching behind the ears as people, so perhaps that explains our popularity with them.

Right off I went to a small stable near our trailer and introduced myself to three horses and a pony. They all let me pat their heads except for a spectacular-looking, pitch-black gelding named Handsome, who bared his teeth at me. Turns out he was a former show horse, and he didn’t want just anyone touching him, thank you.

At one time, Mary’s ranch put on horse shows featuring dressage, jumping, etc. She herself was an expert rider and on several occasions in the past had completed the Tevis Cup—one horse, one rider, 24 hours, 100 miles. Now that she’s no longer doing shows on her property, a number of the dressage circles, bandstands, judges’ stands, and short tracks have fallen into disrepair. But I could still visualize how vibrant the place must have looked back then, full of horses and riders and enthusiastic spectators.

Mary was kind enough to not only let me and my partner ride, but to show us how groom our horse, then mount and direct him. Grooming, I discovered, was a great way to introduce me to Hans, who clearly appreciated me combing and brushing dust and loose hairs from his brown coat. When I first mounted him it only took me a minute to feel comfortable in the saddle, and he was very patient as Mary gave me the reins and showed me the ropes. And then we were off—the first time I’d ridden a horse in nearly 60 years!

We went at an easy amble on trails past trees and brush, occasionally coming upon an abandoned riding ring or wooden jump. Hans followed my directions to a T, like magic. Finally we made our way back to the corral where earlier Mary had rounded up about half a dozen high-spirited horses who’d somehow escaped. While my partner’s horse continued on in front of me, for some reason Hans came to an abrupt stop, even though I hadn’t said “Whoa!” or pulled back on the reins. I clucked and thumped my feet against his flanks; still no response. I was just about to call out to Mary for help when all of a sudden Hans took off at a lively trot—straight for the corral where his fellow equines had gathered to watch.

This so startled me that I did nothing at all. Good thing Hans must have realized he had to take it easy on me, and he stopped short of the corral. It occurred to me that Hans, the model of good horsemanship, just had to show those other horses that he still had some spirit left in him, too.

Coming Attractions: a Review

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman

In the end you die. What’s next?

Having spent a considerable amount of time lately thinking about death and its aftermath, both in real life (my father’s recent passing) and in my fictional one (a good portion of my Work In Progress takes place in the ancient Underworld of Greek mythology), I fell upon this short, imaginative exercise and devoured it for what it was worth. I had high hopes at the beginning—a blurb from Phil Pullman on the cover excited me, and the concept intrigued me: a neurobiologist riffs 40 ways on possible afterlives, borrowing from religious concepts when necessary, but always looking for a clever twist or philosophical perspective to take.

The style reminded me somewhat of Borges, but not quite with that writer’s diamond-like ability to craft engaging prose. In content I was reminded of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in that both are thought experiments that often rely on whimsy and irony to create a smorgasbord of visions. Unlike Invisible Cities, Sum lacks a narrative frame; the author and the narrator are the same, and Sum lacks characters. I definitely think Sum would work better with some characters.

I found myself anticipating something more delicious, especially after a few of the afterlives presented near the beginning tweaked my imagination in a nice way. Alas, as the book progressed I found the afterlives not nearly as interesting, and at the end they either made little or no sense, or the author was trying too hard to seem clever. Part of the problem, I realized, is that the author, as a scientist, took an essentially dispassionate view of death. This is properly post-modern and deconstructionist, I suppose, but in my experience dying is traumatic and, for the survivors, baffling and fraught with emotion. For me, the afterlife is more about living without a person who died—how my life after has changed forever.

Sum, for all its conceptual intrigue, never connected with me on that gut, emotional level. That’s not to say it’s poorly written, or not worth reading. It’s short, making it a quick read. The author is not full of himself, and he doesn’t baffle us with weird POVs or other tricks. He could have given us more had he taken his thoughts further, perhaps down dark paths he’d rather avoid altogether.

You Want a Precocious 11-Year-old Girl Protagonist? Consider Calpurnia Tate

When author Jacqueline Kelly starts The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate with a quote from Darwin’s Origin of Species, and her MC describes the Texas predawn as “a smudge of indigo along the eastern sky,” we know right off that this purported middle grade novel* is either for grownups with a literary bent, or that rare breed of preadolescent who has memorized vast sections of Webster’s Dictionary—from 1899. The ideal reader will care not a whit for story arc or plot, for this novel has precious little of either. This reader will, however, demand a sharply inquisitive female mind who is about a century ahead of her time, who has little patience for domestic chores but a sense of humor about her family, and the diction of a Ph.D. candidate in Literature. Future Kardashians can look elsewhere.

(Kelly tries to get around the sophistication of her protagonist by presenting the story as told by a future self reminiscing about her childhood. That’s fine…but the narrator does yoyo between that of an adult and that of a pre-teen girl. Now I can’t say what a pre-teen girl’s voice from 1899 Texas would be like—presumably, more formal language was employed, yo. To her credit, Kelly makes Calpurnia charming and witty enough to make accepting this gap more palatable.)

That’s not to say this somewhat lengthy (338 pp.) historical novel is a complete bore. Her charming relationship with her natural grandfather makes for fun reading, and her poor clueless brothers (six of them, though I sometimes confused them with the family cats, since some of both are named after American figures like Jim Bowie or Jesse James) bring a few chuckles here and there. Her astute observations on romance are funny because it’s perfectly obvious that she herself is still too young to be smitten. And the world that Kelly creates, while it effectively dodges the issue of racism (the family lives on a former plantation), is well-researched and convincing.

That said, I could have easily stopped reading about halfway through and gotten about as much from the book as I did after reading the entire thing. Since there is absolutely ZERO danger to anyone, the only real tension in the story concerns whether “Callie Vee” will throw off the bonds of her social fetters and blaze a trail for future female naturalists. I won’t tell you whether she does this or not, because, frankly, I still don’t know after reading the book.

In sum, this is a feel-good book that a properly educated, um, child might well curl up with on chilly evenings in order to…take a snooze, I guess. You know, given our culture’s penchant for extreme violence in literature these days, maybe that ain’t such a bad thing.

*Those who dole out awards for books like these apparently consider this novel to be Young Adult. I find that hard to believe, unless the Adult is a very young 46-year-old.

Farewell, Dad

My father, Sanford H. (Sam) Webster, died last night at the age of 95. He’d been battling prostrate cancer for the last four months. This picture shows me with him, from a couple of years ago.

R.I.P., Dad.

Books on the Art of Fiction, Part 1

Note: Like most aspiring novelists, I occasionally read books that purport to improve one’s fiction writing. Here’s a look at the first in a series of three such manuals I’ve at least through, if not read cover to cover: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King

Self-help manuals for fiction writers are tricky. By its nature, fiction is an elusive beast; one person’s idiosyncratic masterpiece can easily be someone else’s dollop of dross. Thus I tend to look askance at “experts” who claim that they have some inner key to fiction writing success, that by following their rules and guidelines all writers will improve their chances of finding the holy grail of getting published. Even (I kid you not)
successful writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If only it were that simple.

The writers of this manual seem to sense that this one-size-fits-all approach has its limits, especially when it pertains to voice, the most elusive fiction beast of all. Yet with other elements of fiction they can’t help declaring themselves imparters of undeniable truth, even when this truth seems a bit petty.

For example, in the chapter on Dialogue Mechanics, they insist that one should place the speaker’s name first in speaker attribution. Thus, “Dave said” is preferred over “said Dave.” Using “said Dave,” they claim, is “less professional,” and has “a slightly old-fashioned, first-grade-reader flavor.”

Well, excuse me. Said the reviewer.

(Try this: which sounds better: “How much do I owe?” Owen said. OR “How much do I owe?” said Owen. Hmmm?)

Throughout the book, they use the smarmy “Anyone who does this will look like a hack or an amateur” admonition to any writer not savvy enough to follow their advice. Of course they do backtrack on this from time to time, even telling the reader that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to successful writing. Complicating the matter is that much successful published fiction—Twilight, anyone?—routinely breaks these rules. So using the publishing carrot to get people to write well doesn’t hold much water, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, it is possible to write well and get published. It’s also possible to write with a style that breaks the mold, exposing the writer to all kinds of pompous declarations by arbiters of prose—until the thing is a best-seller and the arbiters have to bite their tongues.

This manual is not for that writer. For the rest of us, well, perhaps I’ve been a bit hard on messieurs Browne and King. They do present guidelines that are, generally speaking, useful to the vast majority of fiction hacks—er, writers. One could do worse than to peruse the volume and at least consider applying some of their concepts to one’s own writing.

Even if you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald.