And the Dust is Dayglo

January 9

So Susan and Marissa have been disagreeing about the Weetzie Bat books, and since I read both their journals, and since this whole journally thing can be, at its best, a pretty nifty dialogue of opposing viewpoints, I'll just weigh in with my opinion:

I love the Weetzie Bat books.

I think they're sublimely wonderful. I think they're beautifully written, and written with a beautiful intention. M'ris thinks the characters are "different" in a cookie-cutter-California way, and I guess I can see where she gets that, but to me, the characters are different in their own very particular ways, and I think one of the major subtexts of the books is about owning your individuality, about delving deep into yourself to figure out what your loves and needs and passions are, and doing everything you can to carve a life for yourself from the raw substance of the world and your own need for love and beauty.

Yeah, they're not too tightly plotted, but that doesn't bother me -- I love Jonathan Carroll and Karen Joy Fowler, and they tend to not be tightly plotted. (Sometimes I bitch about books that are plotless, but if so it's because I think they lack other redeeming characteristics)

I think the books are deeply moral, without being moralizing (I was surprised to read M'ris boil down one of the books to an anti-drug tract; I thought it was more a metaphor for excess of any kind being dangerous (though sometimes invigorating and perhaps even necessary) -- that's another theme that comes back again and again in those books, from the dangerous success of the Goat Guys to Witch Baby's obsessiveness in Missing Angel Juan) One thing that astonishes me about these books is how layered they are, and on how many levels they work... and I do think they're beautifully written. But then, I dig Faulkner and Raymond Carver, and I think Tolkien is a tedious windbag (prose-wise), so my tastes in prose are not easily codified.

I think the Weetzie Bat books absolutely overflow with a sense of wonder. Some people write YAs where even the 14-year-olds come off as world-weary and jaded. Which is fine -- that's a definite aspect of youth, something most adolescents do, pretending to a level of sophistication that I wouldn't, personally, want to have (hell, lots of adults have that same affected world-weariness; it's not a malady exclusive to teenagers). But Block's characters aren't like that. They live fiercely. They live wondrously.

I think anyone who wants to write YAs could scarcely do better than to look to Block's books for inspiration, guidance, and reassurance.

But then, they're my kind of books. People like different stuff. S'okay. I remember a conversation I had with M'ris a while back. She gets annoyed at alternate histories where famous people pop up -- you know, Ben Franklin in the Age of Unreason Books, pretty much everybody in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books, stuff like that. And on one hand I see her point -- having those characters pop up is whimsical, it's certainly not rigorous extrapolation. In a true alternate history, it's quite unlikely that the same people would even be born. But I think it's fun. (Kim Stanley Robinson agrees with M'ris, however; he says in a recent Locus interview that he hates it when famous people pop up in alternate histories, because it's so illogical. He's a good writer, and I respect his work, and I see his point... but I still think having historical figures in alternate histories is fun. And that's enough for me)

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Congratulations to Ken Wharton for making the short list for the Philip K. Dick award! Go, Ken! I hope he wins it. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And none of the other nominees have ever given me a free sandwich, so, you know.

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There is a Best New Electronic Crack: American McGee's Alice. It's a gorgeous game. It is a game that makes me wish for the sort of mushrooms that grow only beneath certain cow patties, to enhance my viewing experience. The premise is, essentially, that Wonderland has become horrible and debased under the Red Queen's tyranny... and Alice is back to stop her, armed with various lethal toys. The voices are really well done, the dialogue's funny, the game play's not bad, and the graphics... oh, it's incredibly pretty. And whimsical. And cool. I dig it lots. A thousand thank yous to Heather for buying it for me!

(I had to buy more memory to be able to play the game, since my computer previously had all of 30 MB of RAM, so in addition to having a cool new game, I have a zippy-fast computer. Whee! Whiz-bang!)

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I read The Wood Wife by Windling. I really enjoyed reading the book -- it's the kind of novel I like to swim around in, because I like the characters so much -- but the ending disappointed me a bit. It was pat. Or flat. Or something. Or maybe I'm just bitter because it ended, and I wanted to go on reading it for a while longer...

Now reading Wonder Boys by Chabon, which is quite good, if not the virtuoso performance that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is.

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And in other news, I'm broke. Sigh. The combination of Xmas, and of the extra rent we had to pay this month (having no third housemate with which to split the expenses), have laid waste to my meager savings. I had to scrounge all over the house to find enough change to buy a BART ticket to go work out tonight. Bleah. I'll be solvent again when I get paid, but that's a week away. I can't even afford to go out for coffee. It's a good thing I bought Heather an espresso machine.

But you can help. Buy a chapbook! Feed me!

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Reader Rod Beech from Australia reminds me that I called American Gods by Gaiman one of my top five favorite books ever, and as such, it deserved a mention in the Best of Everything Awards. Quite true, so noted. Put it between Perdido Street Station and Black House, then.

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My boss came back from Australia and gave me a hairclip based on some tribal design (well, the design on the hairclip is based on a trial design, not the hairclip's structural design itself. I presume a suitably qualified hair-care engineer designed that), the proceeds of which went to said tribe. Which is neat. And it looks cool, too.

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Dunno if I mentioned, but I have two reviews upcoming in the February issue of A Certain Magazine, of The Children of Cthulhu (a Lovecraftian antho! Which is another place where my taste diverges from Marissa's, as I think perhaps has been noted in these pages before), and d.g.k. goldberg's Skating on the Edge. And in the current issue I have two reviews, of John Shirley's Demons and Collins's Knuckles and Tales. So, there. That's my commercial for the evening.

Eventually, I think I might be a pretty good reviewer.

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Heather's all abloom with ideas for stories, lately, and I'm feeling similarly short-story-full... I have a contained-nightmare story I want to write (actually, the story I started in Indiana is another sort of contained-nightmare) (the "contained nightmare" is a subgenre in which people are trapped in a relatively small space, sometimes tormented by supernatural forces, sometimes just being human and monstrous; examples include The Drive-In by Lansdale, The Maple Street Experiment by Karen Joy Fowler and, of course, Golding's Lord of the Flies)... and a story about a train hijacking... not to mention Rangergirl, which I got all sorts of neat scene ideas for while working out tonight and listening to Beck sing "Cold Ass Fashion" in my headphones... so I might write some fiction soon. I've only written poetry this year, basically, though I've done three really good ones, two spec-fic and on li-fi.

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Ta.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222