Stories Misbehaving, or some thoughts on "Once Upon a Time"

Some thoughts on “Once Upon a Time”

So I was really excited. No. I mean, REALLY, really excited. TWO shows (Grimm on NBC and Once Upon a Time on ABC) debuting this fall, that promised to make fairy tales the core of their storytelling. I’ve since given up on Grimm. It has some really major story problems (not to mention the fact that there are literally No Women, unless they are tied up in a basement. Seriously, NBC? Why can’t his fiancée be an ally? You can’t just say “She’s a Doctor! There ya go gals.”) It seems almost like NBC is concerned that its core audience is Too Cool For Fantasy (“Don’t worry guys! See? It’s just a cop show! Nothing to worry about!”) so its ripped the story’s teeth out.

So I was maybe a little more happy than I would have normally been with the pilot of “Once Upon a Time”. Colorful, wild and look! Girls! Women! Kind of… being people. Amazing. But then the Disney Movie references.  Then, Jennifer Morrison’s performance which is lackluster to say the least. Then, something about the story was just…wrong. Kat Howard did a great review of both these shows here and here (She likes Grimm more than I do), but something she said in her Once review resonated with why the show wasn’t resonating with me.

“I think that, if I were someone who hadn’t thought about fairy tales since I had read them as a kid or seen the last Disney movie, that I would love Once Upon a Time. But as someone who has steeped myself in them, there’s nothing new for me here.”

And this was my problem as well. There was nothing new, nothing…interesting about the retellings. Like Howard, I have steeped myself in fairy tales my entire life. I have reveled in terrific retellings, including many Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow anthologies, and right now I’m reading Margo Lanagan’s “Tender Morsels” and opiate dream of Snow White and Rose Red. So I was disappointed, and let the last four episodes languish on the DVR.

Then, reading Theodora Goss’s blog post On Enchantment she reminded me that what really attracts me to these kinds of stories is the sense of wonder, the wondrous. And I was having a bad writing day, and didn’t have to be at the Athenaeum until 3, and so I released the episodes from their languishment in the DVR and watched them. And what I realized was this:

Once I stopped being irritated that It Wasn’t What I Wanted, once I stopped being pissed off at the thing for Not Behaving As I Wanted It To, I just watched it. For what it is. And no, it’s not a brilliant retelling of a fairy tale. But it’s a compelling drama, with fantastical elements that play to my love of the wondrous, the enchanted. I *like* that Jiminy Cricket is the Child Psychologist. I *like* that it shows we are not always the people we would like to be. I especially like what they’re doing with Rumpelstiltskin. And couldn’t help but relate those storylines with my own. (“I’m sorry Sallie Mae. I should NOT have told the King I could spin straw into gold, it’s true. But don’t you think my firstborn child is a BIT much?”)

So it was good to be reminded, that just because a piece of work (book, movie, television show) isn’t what I wanted it to be, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. Sometimes, we just have to let it BE what it IS, and enjoy THAT, not the misplaced fantasy of what we WISHED it would be.

Friday

Well, readers, the week did seem to get away from me, so the blog post I have in mind is barely even started. But in the interest of Friday Fun (and because I promised myself that I would post weekly) I'm giving you the video below:

It's a little like Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room: or the Vibrator Play". Except with the possiblity of fewer story problems. (As in, it actually may have one).

Have a great weekend and stay out of the path of Irene!

WHY GENRE MATTERS

DISCLAIMER: These are certainly not the only reason, and I am certainly aware that this is not news to anyone. It’s just something I’m thinking about.

Firstly, I love an underdog

Romance and SF/F literature are some of the most widely read and widely criticized kind of books around.

And I love sticking up for them (both of them actually, but I read more SF/F, so that’s what I’m talking about today.)

If you only knew how often I have seen perfectly good grown-up SF/F books put in the Young Adult Section. And I’m not talking about books that *might* be seen both ways, like Terry Pratchett. I mean “Anansi Boys”.

 Because of course Grown Ups couldn’t possibly be interested in that. Smart adults don’t read Heinlein. Or Scalzi. Or anything with elves or broadswords. No, no. Intelligent adults read … well, Intelligent Adult Books. Which, in my experience consist largely of People Having Problems, Getting Divorced and Being Sad, and sitting at the Thanksgiving Table Not Telling Their Dad How They REALLY Feel. For 300+ pages these people do this. They wear blue jeans and drive cars and talk on cell phones and look for parking. These are all things I can see every day looking out the window of the bus. Not what I want to see when I’m reading.

I need not Not Be Here when I read. I want to NOT see my own fat ass handed back to me in a mirror. I want to see something else, something Other. This is how I connect to the world.

This is why Genre Matters. It matters because

 Another reason why I love it – and this one is personal – is that I’m not supposed to. Not as someone with an MFA in Fiction Writing and Literature.  Not someone who was brought up as a writer in the Culture of Workshop. I remember, with great shame, how twenty years ago I was really nice about the guy who brought in a chapter of his epic fantasy novel to workshop. I know of several Creative Writing Professors who say in their syllabus that they will accept “No genre fiction of any kind” to their workshop. This is powerful hoodoo to overcome. So the under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight aspect of SF/F novels lasted longer than it should have.

So my love for it is tinged in the relief I feel at being able to let it loose, after holding my breath about it for so long. It is the love of the long-term convent girl for clove cigarettes and rock and roll. This may account for my occasional bouts of Evangelicism. I’m sure Gentle Reader will forgive.

But what matters, especially about SF/F, is this: I truly believe that a story set in a built world can say more about our own world than a Realistic Story.

 There’s this thing I always remembered from a Film Studies Class about black and white movies. You see, in a color movie, you see someone having a drink at the bar and your mind registers: Scotch. Vodka. You see the color. You identify the drink, whether consciously or not. The drink the character is holding becomes a specific drink (Gin and tonic, whiskey sour, Appletini), all of which have specific connotations (especially the Appletini). But when characters in a black and white movie have a drink at the bar, because it can never get specific, it remains forever a kind of “Ideal Cocktail” with all those Platonic Connotations, instead of the specific ones.

Stay with me.

If I read a contemporary novel that addresses, say the problems of intimacy and commitment between men and women, it’s very…specific. We see them have problems, and we those problems resolved, or left unresolved depending on what kind of novel we’re reading. On the other hand, we have Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth Series, and the Plight of the Confessors. In this world, Confessors – women charged with keeping law and justice, who can at will, and with physical touch, turn you into their slave – are doomed never to marry, as their sexual encounters cause the men in question to be “Confessed” or turned into a mindless slave. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a more pointed example of problems of intimacy and connection between genders. I’ll quote my (long suffering) Husband on this one. “Yup! That’s it. That’s what we’re really afraid of. That one night in the sack with the right girl? We lose fucking minds.”

This matters.

This only happens in Fantasy, in built worlds. Okay, maybe not only in Fantasy, but it sure is efficient. And elegant.   And it is genre fiction, the fantasy and the horror and the worlds beyond the all-too-often dreadful one that I inhabit every day that calls to the Monster in me.

Jonathan Franzen does not call to the outsider in me. (Yes the suburbs are a nightmare. Sorry your life is a disappointment.  Can you please grow some wings or pick up a battleaxe or turn into a flying monkey or something so I can identify with you?)

Maybe it’s that these alterna-world fiction call to the outsider in all of us. I know it calls to the monster in me.

It can be seen as a kind of weakness, like I’m too scared to look things in the eye. (But anyone who thinks that should read China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. Look into the eye of that dystopia, asshole and then tell me who’s weak?)  But I think it’s different. I don’t just want to escape. I want to transcend. And I think, at its best, this is what good fiction – Fantasy or Not – can do for us. There is a moment, I believe, where escapism becomes transcendence.

All the things.

What did I do today?

ALL OF THE THINGS!!!! (Thanks to Allie Bosh and her AWESOME BLOG of awesomeness for the picture. See the link. See her blog. Allie Bosh Wins the Internet)

 

And now I am so *tired*. And I just looked at my stupid planner. And tomorrow? You guessed it.

 All of the things. All over again.

But I can do it. Because I am awesome.

 I AM DOING IT RIGHT NOW LOOK HERE AT EXTRA BLOG POST FOR NO REASON BUT BECAUSE I'M TIRED AND DOING THINGS AND READING WAY TOO MUCH HYPERBOLE AND HALF TONIGHT.

Regular human-type blog post coming on Friday.

Know why?

BECAUSE I AM DOING ALL THE THINGS!!!

On Appetite

On Fat and Appetite

I was at my local public library branch of a Thursday evening, which is part of my general routine. The (long suffering) Husband goes out to DnD, and we walk out together and I go to the library. I was making my way toward the folklore section and encountered a patron from my own library. For the purposes of this blog post, I feel that she should remain anonymous, so the only identifying characteristics I will give her are the ones most important to this story. She is, frankly, one of my favorite patrons. She is old enough to be my mother. She is very intelligent, a wide reader, and one of the most elegant women I’ve ever met.

And this is what she said to me. (I paraphrase) “Now that we find ourselves outside your library, we meet as friends not just patron and library clerk. So let me ask you something….why don’t you think about losing some weight?”

I feel that I must interject at this point. I am, what is known as “A Big Girl”. I have always been a Big Girl. I’m not ready for my own special on Discovery Health or anything, but it is very rare for me that I am not the Fattest Girl in the Room.

She continued, “It’s just that you’re so intelligent…so well-read ….”

I interrupted her. “Thank you so much, Patron X. I appreciate the concern. I know it is kindly meant.”

And it was. Really, it was. This woman was definitely not trying to make me feel small. (Funny, that. Being told I am Too Big actually made me feel Small.)

But she went on. To tell me about the dieticians at the hospital, and things you could do to lose weight. I repeated my line. “Thank you so much, Patron X. I know it’s kindly meant.”

And still she did not stop. Finally, without meaning to, tears sprang to my eyes and I held up my hand. “Thank you, Patron X. But people have been talking to me about this since I was eleven years old –“

And I didn’t have to finish. She backed off. Immediately. And probably went away concerned that she had upset me.

She did.

But it was kindly meant. It is always, always kindly meant.

But you see it is exactly what is meant that concerns me. Maybe she meant that since I am so intelligent and well-read, that it is somehow distasteful that I not also be beautiful. Perhaps as such an elegant woman herself, she in fact found it illogical or perhaps even immoral that I am not beautiful.

I am not, as it happens, beautiful. But neither was Scarlet O’Hara, according to Margaret Mitchell. (Vivien Leigh is another story.)  But, much like Scarlet, I do have sometimes at my command a force of charisma that can make you think that I am. But still, I felt somehow offensive to her, something broken, something to be fixed with a couple hours on the treadmill and some low-fat salad dressing.

And when I told her I’d been talking about this since I was eleven years old, I was telling the truth. Some of my earliest memories are of adults in my life (well-meaning, kindly adults) talking to me with concern about my weight. Every bite of food that went into my mouth was scrutinized, every packet of sugar in my tea, every drop of salad dressing. “Do you really need that?” was the constant refrain.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about all the weight gained and lost, about all the grapefruits consumed and the years spent swimming in shame.

And then several years ago I made a very serious decision. I would no longer have such a strained relationship with my food. I would just eat it. And I could continue to love it if I wanted to.

I’m not talking about eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream watching reruns of House. That’s actually the opposite of what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Appetite.

I’m talking about loving real food. Sauces enriched with egg yolk, biscuits hand made with real butter, pasta with olive oil and cheese. Crisp brown roast chicken, with little potatoes cooked in the rendered off fat in the pan. Fish crusted with nuts and seared smoky in the pan. Homemade macaroni and cheese. I put half and half in my coffee. I enjoy a little chocolate or a little pastry almost every day.

Is it because I hate myself? Because I had a troubled childhood? Or because it fills some kind of a void inside me?

No. It is because I have appetite. Not just have an appetite for food. I have an appetite for paintings and performances. For the fur on a cat’s belly. The shape of a dog’s snoot. For books and movies and bright colored frocks and gloves and hats on a regular day. I have an appetite for sex and conversation and color and languages. For Stephen Sondheim and Shakespeare and old black and white movies where everyone smokes. I have an appetite for success and meaningful work and making things grow.

I will not be ashamed of my appetite. In any form it may take.

I think there are many people with weight problems that stem from psychological problems. Many people use food as a crutch, as an addiction, as a way to fill a void. But I reject the widely held idea that every overweight person is somehow damaged, and if they could get over their trauma, they would be able to stick to their diet. Sorry. I mean, their “lifestyle change”.  This lifestyle is one without any of the great things I mentioned above. Or if they are not completely absent, they are so changed (fat-free cheese, biscuits made of whole wheat flour and yogurt, etc) they are unrecognizable. Or else they are so rarified, because they are “bad” they become fetishized. I reject this. I reject this completely.

I refuse to reject my own appetite.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I had ever truly inhabited a thin body. If I had a memory of being gamine and rangy, a memory of being truly beautiful, then maybe I would feel like there was something lost to be found regained. But that is not my story. In many ways, I am grateful.

I have, what I like to call, a kind of reverse body-dysmorphic disorder. These poor women (usually women, anyway) with eating disorders,  look at their frail 70 pound bodies in the mirror and see only a fat person. I, however, walk around in the world…well, like I’m cute. Like I’m normal. Like I may not be really beautiful, but that’s not really that important.

Until, that is, someone approaches me with a suggestion on how I might be happier, if only I would lose some weight. However kindly meant it was, I only hear one thing.  “You are not enough. Make you like me. How dare you be that way? What is wrong with you?”

And I did feel small, but for only a little while. When I remembered my appetite.

Regarding Getting There

Gentle Readers,

I know I've been away for some time. But rest assured, I have been working hard at all sorts of good things.

One of the things I've been doing while away, is, like all of us, getting older. This past Sunday, with a quiet pop, I turned 40. And today, inspired by Sugar’s “Tiny, Beautiful Things” column I am writing what I would say to myself in my twenties.

First. You are fat. But nobody cares but you. Sometimes, it’s like what they say about smoking in Dead Again, “In this life there are people who are smokers and people who are non-smokers. You just have to find out who you are and be that”. You are a smoker. And you are fat. This does not mean that you are not beautiful or desirable or worthy of love. However, it might be a good idea to lay off the processed foods, and go in for good cheese and egg yolks instead.

That guy you met at Target? The one without a fancy education, without artistic ambitions or hipster tendencies? That one. That’s the one. This is the man who will show you what love really looks like when the lights come on.

Work a little harder. Try a little more. Stop feeling so superior to your menial jobs at the temp agency, the health food store.  It is not some tragic act in your Artist’s Bildungsroman. It just *is*. You are not too good for this. No one is.

You will not go all the way crazy and not be able to get back. Know that when you are lost in that maze, the story is your red thread. Remember that your Crazy is King Shahryar. You are Scheherazade. Just keep the stories coming, and you’ll stay alive.

I know you have a fancy education. I know you have an MFA. I know that every adult in your life since memory began has given you the signal that you are somehow special, meant for something, talented, gifted. Come closer now, because this is important. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU GET ANYTHING. You will not get anything because you are special and talented. The desert is littered with the bleached bones of special and talented writers with fancy educations. Please. Please. I beg you. Learn to work. Learn to really, really work. Because by the time you get here, you will be sick with all the time you wasted being sick.

 I know you’re working on an experimental novel, but I can tell you that it goes nowhere because you gave it nowhere to go. Remember why you got into this in the first place. Remember your library books. Remember Nancy Drew and Poe and Horror Comics. Because I can tell you, I know what you’re writing now. And you will be very surprised.

But then, I know that you won’t hear any of this. Even if I showed up in the Tardis with the Doctor himself and told you. You just have to find your own way here. And you will. And it was all worth it.

Breaking News, or All the Tea in Holland Park

Readers, the world is changed.

My world is changed.

It is official. Contracts have been signed. I have an agent. A lovely, skilled and competent agent.

Now I know as well as the next person that this does not mean the book has sold, and even if it does that I might not languish on the mid-list, no matter how capable my agent nor how well-written the book. But to have someone...someone with NO vested interest in my emotional well-being (like friends or family) to say that they really, really Love The Book? That they will Do Work to help it, that they believe in it enough to take it on in this way? To partner with it, with me?  That alone makes me think that I have not been up the wrong tree all this time. I have not been wasting my time. And that alone is worth All the Tea in Holland Park.

And it feels, finally … wow. This is really hard to put into words. I spent most of the day yesterday with my brains coming out of face. I walked out the door to meet Walter for coffee right after the call  and I left with no keys and no bus pass. I had to put a five dollar bill in the RIPTA bus. My body went in and out of shock as we sat at the Wayland Square Starbucks and I drank an Iced Americano and ate a Cake Pop. (delicious) And I did what I always do. What I can only do.

I narrated. I told the story. Over and over again. To Walter. To Amy Budd. To Allan. And in telling the story it became more and more real (as things often do with me). Then when the story stopped, I felt the swell of adrenaline again.

Restless and fitful, I wanted to see people last night. But after a cup of tea and some chicken nuggets, I ended up passing out on the sofa in front of the Good Parts of Sherlock Holmes. (Yes, the Guy Ritchie. Don't judge me.)

And this morning I get up, read in bed a little while and continue to be restless and fitful. I have all this excess energy, or headspace, or something – all that had been going to Querying, Worrying, Waiting for an email, the phone to ring, all that energy going to despair that it Would Never Happen and now….well, it looks like I’ve got a free morning.

And I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I think I may soak in the tub.

This will pass, I’m sure. And my overwhelming feeling now is one of wanting to Get To Work.

Let's get to work, shall we?

But first, a tub.