Friday 5: Mind Your Peeves and Qs

Image courtesy Gunilla Granfalk on Unsplash.

What’s one of your language-related (that is, something people say or write) pet peeves?

Editors are supposed to have an endless list of these, right? So the stereotype goes. We are the gatekeepers of language and so on and so forth. And I guess we all do, probably. But if you look at the layperson's language pet peeves ("they're/there/their"! "your/you're"!) and the editor's pet peeves, the overlap would probably be quite small.

My personal ones these days are: The New Yorker's bizarre house style guide (coöperation? no thanks) and The New York Times's practice of referring to heads of state with honorific titles instead of, simply, their names.

Not what you were expecting, maybe!


What’s one of your dining-out-related pet peeves?

It's nobody's fault, but somehow the waiter always comes over to check on you just when your mouth is full of food. Or maybe they do this deliberately so as to avoid getting sucked into an actual conversation with someone who wants to nit pick the seasoning of the vegetables.


What’s one of your technology-related pet peeves?

Windows updates.


What’s one of your television-watching pet peeves?

Romance. Any time a show (or book or movie, for that matter) features a close friendship or even working relationship between a man and a woman, romance almost inevitably gets shoehorned in. If not outright romance, then something like Will They Won't They. It chafes for a lot of reasons (lazy way to add tension, heteronormativity, implying that the only possible relationship between men and women is romantic/sexual) but I think this one hits me personally because most of my inner circle are men. (Not for "women are just too much drama!" reasons; it just seems to have happened.) The close friendships I have with women are also way different than how they're portrayed in media (much more random weirdness, much less obsessing over shoes and sex) but at least they're not wholly misrepresented as some kind of waiting room for romance.

This is, incidentally, why I love Elementary so much. Sherlock and Joan are #FriendshipGoals to the extreme. Of course, now that I've said that, I've cursed the show to fall victim to exactly this trap. Sigh.


What’s something you do that you know peeves others?

Swedish has an expression: tidsoptimist. This is someone who lacks a solid grasp of how long it takes to get to places and (the implication is) is usually late.

I've been here for five years and I'm still a tidsoptimist. I still operate by American car-owning convenience and fail to take into account that I'm not leaving whenever I like, but according to public transportation's time table. I'm stricter about this with clients, or with traveling, but socially? All bets are off. I get there when I get there. (Maybe this is why I don't have many Swedish friends?)

Friday 5: Know When to Fold 'Em

What did you last place into a file folder?

Physically? Some hard copies of comments and revisions I got back from a critique group member. I have an accordion file folder for this project (I've been working on it since 2014) and each slot is feedback from a different reader. I should probably go through and clean it out. Some comments are about revisions I've since made, others are on sections that have since been discarded. It's not really worth it to keep that much of a record around.


What do you know how to fold a piece of paper into?

Not much. A paper airplane? And I could probably make a cootie catcher, still.


What’s your laundry-folding procedure like?

I don't fold laundry.


When do you next expect to invite someone into your fold?

Making friends in Sweden is hard. Maybe I haven't met the right Swedes, just, but all of the new friends I've made (if the word "friend" can even be applied) have been other immigrants and expats. I think this moment is coming soon, though; I have quite a few acquaintances on the periphery that I'm ready to befriend.


When have you slept on a foldaway bed?

Probably not since high school. One of my friends had a fold-out couch in her rec room and if I slept over, it was on that bed.

What I Read: The Spider King's Daughter

The June selection for my Facebook book club was The Spider King's Daughter, the debut novel by Chibundo Onuzo. I went in hoping that it would pull me out of the book slump brought on by Radiance, How I Became A North Korean, Gena/Finn, and the middle grade books I previewed for some of my students. The Facebook book club has the best hit/miss ratio out of all three that I'm in, after all.

Onuzo is an engaging writer and I hope she continues down that path. (Her second book, Welcome to Lagos, came out last year. Hurrah!) This was engaging at a time when nothing else I was reading could capture my interest and Onuzo deserves a lot of praise just for that.

My favorite parts of the book all involve spoilers. I will say this: what starts as a meet cute adolescent love story takes on an unexpectedly darker tone. Or maybe I should have been expecting that, considering that the book opens with Abike telling us about how her father had her beloved dog deliberately run over.

Most of the reveals were more or less obvious, but the book doesn't rely on the shock of those reveals for impact. I think, even, Onuzo expects readers to already know the truth from the very beginning. It's how the characters react to these reveals that's engaging and unexpected.

The book switches between Abike and Runner G's perspectives, with Abike's in italics. Reading extended passages in italics is straining, at best, but Onuzo's prose (and the short paragraphs) make it much easier than in other books (James Agee's posthumous A Death in the Family, for example). At the book's climax, when we switch between Abike's and Runner G's perspectives rapidly—at every line, for a short while—this typesetting choice proves very necessary.

The Spider King's Daughter was engaging, it was readable, it was a diverting and fun read. I didn't love it, but I'm glad I read it. It certainly was a bad book combo breaker, and for that I'm grateful.

Friday 5: Vive Le Difference

Image courtesy Brian Chan at Unsplash

What’s a food that tastes completely unlike anything else you can think of?

This one is taking a lot of thought. I mean, lots of things have a relatively distinct taste, right? Even if everything also tastes like chicken.

I imagine surströmming is singular in its taste. (I say that having never tried it. I don't dig on fish.) I also have a hard time with the artificial sweetener Splenda: it leaves a distinctly coppery aftertaste that ruins anything it touches.

What’s a movie that’s completely unlike any movie you can think of?

Russian Ark  is a weird but surprisingly enjoyable artsy look at the history of the St. Petersburg Hermitage that's all one long 90-ish minute shot.

Who’s a musician or band you consider completely unoriginal but whom you still like?

I think it's a given that most popular top 40 bands and artists cleave to the lowest common denominator instead of doing anything groundbreaking, but most of the music on my phone is popular top 40 bops (and obscure international indie bands) because it's good workout music.

Who or what are two people or things you keep mixing up with one another?

To this day I still confuse Silent Hill and Resident Evil (the video games, not the movies). No doubt there are countless celebrities that I mix up as well, because I'm not good at keeping track of famous names and faces.

What’s something you’ll do this weekend that’s different from your normal weekend activity?

Not much, really. I might do a little more enthusiastic cleaning than I would normally. The apartment isn't in an awful state yet, but an ounce of prevention and all of that.

What I Read: Radiance

This was a selection for Feminist Science Fiction Book Club. I picked it up on a whim from SF Bokhandeln when I was out during Kulturnatt because I'm weak (and because it was constantly checked out of the library).

This gif is turning up in a lot of my reviews recently.

If I had to pick one word to describe Radiance, it would be "overindulgent." The structure Valente chooses (or rather, the lack of structure) does nothing to contain this tendency towards overblown wordiness or direct us to an understanding either of events or character.

Take, for example, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Did I only read that in January? Jesus, it feels like ages ago. The political climate really is aging us in dog years.) There is a whole bunch of documentation (rather than narration), but it all works to move the story forward. Could everything in the documentation have been written as narrative? Yes, probably, but the documentation is actually a pretty efficient way to set up the later events of the story. Conversely: every single scrap in there contributes something to the story.

I'll be real: I think I skipped about half of Radiance and yet that did not affect my understanding of what actually happened. Life is too short to keep reading books you don't enjoy; I find skimming to be an acceptable compromise when you want to know what happens but don't want to sift through a bunch of nonsense. I quickly sorted out the bits of Radiance that were most likely to move the plot along, read those, skipped the rest. At least the book is well labeled, which makes for easy skimming.

The other thing that makes Radiance overindulgent is the style. Valente's writing is, as another reviewer put it, "high-octane purple prose." It's overwrought, it's too much, and while I get it's supposed to be an art deco gothic and therefore can be expected to be a bit much, it's a bit much everywhere. Most tedious of all were the screenplays. Take, for example, the first extract from the "White Pages" section of the book (that is, very early on); the following quotes are taken from what's given as the "action" portion of any given screenplay. 

Open on the pristine streets of sunny Moscow, lined with popsicle-carts, jugglers, dazzled tourists. The streetlamps are garlanded with lime-blossoms, sunflowers, carnations. The joyful throng crowds in fierce and thick; the camera follows as they burst into Red Square. The splendid ice-cream towers of the Kremlin beam down benignly. The elderly TSAR NICHOLAS II, his still-lovely wife, and their five children, hale in their glittering sashes, wave down at the cannoneers standing at attention on the firing pad at the 1944 Worlds' Fair. The launch site is festooned with crepe and swinging summer lanterns, framed by banners wishing luck and safe travel in English, Russian, Chinese, German, Spanish, and Arabic.

So far so good, right? But then it continues.

SEVERIN UNCK and her CREW wave jerkily as confetti sticks to their sleek skullcaps and glistening breathing apparatuses. Her smile is immaculate, practiced, the smile of the honest young woman of the hopeful future. Her copper-finned helmet gleams at her feet. SEVERIN wears feminine clothing with visible discomfort and only for this shot, which she intends, in the final edit, to be ironic and wry: She is performing herself, not performing herself in order to tell a story about something else entirely. The curl of her lip betrays, to anyone who knows her, her utter disdain of the bizarre, flare-skirted, swimming-cum-trapeze-artist costume that so titillates the crowd. The wind flutters the black silk around her hips. She tucks a mahogany case—which surely must contain George, her favorite camera—smartly under one arm. All of her crewmen strap canisters of film, a few steamer trunks of food, oxygen tanks, and other minor accouterments to their broad backs. The real meat of the expedition, supplies and matériel meticulously planned, acquired, logged, and collected, was loaded into the cargo bays overnight. What Severin and her crew carry, they carry for the camera, for the film being shot of this film being shot.

It's hard to imagine 90% of this being included in any actual screenplay. Take, for example, The Matrix:

INT.  CHASE HOTEL - NIGHT 

The hotel was abandoned after a fire licked its way across
the polyester carpeting, destroying several rooms as it
spooled soot up the walls and ceiling, leaving patterns of
permanent shadow. 

We FOLLOW four armed POLICE OFFICERS using flashlights as
they creep down the blackened hall and ready themselves on
either side of Room 303. 

The biggest of them violently kicks in the door --
The other cops pour in behind him, guns thrust before
them. 

BIG COP
Police!  Freeze! 

The room is almost devoid of furniture.  There is a fold-
up table and chair with a phone, a modem, and a Powerbook
computer.  The only light in the room is the glow of the
computer. 

Sitting there, her hands still on the keyboard, is
TRINITY; a woman in black leather. 

BIG COP
Hands behind your head!  Now!  Do
it! 

She slowly puts her hands behind her head... 

The Big Cop flicks out his cuffs, the other cops holding a
bead.  They've done this a hundred times, they know
they've got her, until the Big Cop reaches with the cuffs
and Trinity moves -- 

It almost doesn't register, so smooth and fast, inhumanly
fast. 

The eye blinks and Trinity's palm snaps up and his nose
explodes, blood erupting.  Her leg kicks with the force of
a wrecking ball and he flies back, a two-hundred-fifty
pound sack of limp meat and bone that slams into the cop
farthest from her. 

Trinity moves again, BULLETS RAKING the WALLS, flashlights
sweeping with panic as the remaining cops try to stop a
leather-clad ghost. 

A GUN still in the cop's hand is snatched, twisted and
FIRED.  There is a final violent exchange of GUNFIRE and
when it's over, Trinity is the only one standing. 

A flashlight rocks slowly to a stop.

Is Valente deliberately writing something narrative-like in the guise of a screenplay as a means to play with form? Or does she think she's writing a good screenplay? It's impossible to tell! On the one hand, Valente should know the difference, if her biography is any indication; she says straight up in the acknowledgments that her father was a filmmaker. Yet as the book continues, it's clear that Valente really only has one writing mode, or is choosing only one mode for this story, and that is overwrought. It works in some situations (gossip columns, a few personal diaries) and falls flat in others (transcripts of conversations: actual human beings don't talk like that). So many people write breathlessly about Valente's amazing prose in reviews that I can't tell if I don't know what's good anymore, or if people are just confusing wordiness and faux-profundity with good writing. Maybe both?

There's another layer to Radiance, or at least there's supposed to be, about how the narratives of our lives and celebrity lives are constructed and so on and so forth, but it was just really hard to care because the writing and presentation is so distant from what it's conveying that it's impossible to care about any of the characters.

Valente is clearly a competent, if not talented, writer, but in Radiance she gets caught up in her own hype and it feels like no one around her told her no. 

Friday 5: Aloon Again, Naturally

With which Looney Tunes character do you have the most in common?

I didn't care much for Looney Tunes as a kid. The physical humor that's inherent in the genre has never been my cup of tea. I'll cheat and say Shirley the Loon from Tiny Toons.

Who or what are your metaphorical Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote?

I don't think I have a Wile E. Coyote (I hope not!). But we all have a Road Runner, don't we? Mine is a totally stress-free vacation. One day...

What’s up, doc?

That's all, folks!

When did you last hear some opera music?

I listen to a lot of classical music while I edit and translate. That doesn't usually include opera, since I find vocals distracting, but the Fidelio overture came up in my playlist yesterday.

What’s a good life lesson you learned from Looney Tunes?

You can't always get what you want, and often when you do, it's not as good as you hoped it would be.

What I Read: How I Became a North Korean

I've been interested in Korean politics ever since I lived and taught there in 2009/2011/2012. It's an "automatic read" category of literature and books for me, which is why How I Became a North Korean was my first impulse library book in over three years. That made it all the more frustrating when it turned out to be another dud!

The book summary promises a "found family" sort of story, which is one of my favorite tropes. The story doesn't really deliver on that promise, however. The three main characters don't interact all that much and their connection to each other, emotionally as well as story-wise, is tenuous at best. Nor does Lee really find a strong voice for each perspective, meaning that the different parts of the story and the different characters begin to blend together.

There is also the question of how much of a foreign language to include when you're writing, in English, a story where no one speaks English. Some choices were the same as I would make, but some felt a little unnecessary. Of course, Lee is bilingual and I'm not—I really only know "just enough to be dangerous," as the expression goes—so maybe her Korean/English bilingual readers would disagree with me.

Ultimately, the story moves along at a good clip and Lee's writing style is fluid, so it's a quick read. But at the end of it, I felt like I would have rather read an account of all of her research rather than the novel I had just finished.