Listening to "Terrible Ones"

I want to take the opportunity to give an appreciative shout out (disguised as a critical response) to Tim Pratt's short story "The Terrible Ones," which I just listened to via Podcastle, a fantasy fiction podcast website (check it out).  As with many new platforms for receiving entertainment, I am running just behind the podcast bandwagon, having failed to jump on it and trying to to inhale any dust.  This was actually my first short story download (moment of embarrassment here).  I can, however, fully recommend the experience with the enthusiasm of the newly-converted.  Partly, I had the advantage of having an introduction to the medium via a story that was awesome.

"The Terrible Ones," is a fantasy story that brings elements of Greek mythology--specifically those preserved in the fragments of Greek drama that are left to us--into a modern-day setting.  It takes the ancient ideas of betrayal and retribution, divine intervention and punishment, and transposes them, creating a story that is original and entertaining--satisfying in its use of mythic tropes, yet fresh and surprising in its outcome.

Speaking as someone who is rather painfully familiar with many of the story's elements, both its prosaic (I lived several years in the day-to-day world of the performance artist, which is the setting for much of the narrative action) and its mythic ones (some children are raised by wolves, others by tiger mothers, me, I was raised by Classicists and had experiences like being read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter at age six)--I can say that Pratt really knows his stuff, and gets the details right.  Add to that a fresh narrative voice and a well-plotted story line, and you have a great listening experience.  If the other stories on Podcastle are up to this level, I am definitely going to keep downloading.

Full Disclosure: Tim Pratt is also a personal acquaintance and former coworker, so I'm not a totally impartial critic.  That doesn't mean I'm wrong, though.

Geeking out (just a bit)

Woah, posting twice in one day...actually, this isn't so much a proper post as an anecdote to my--possibly overly erudite--posting this morning and also a proof that I am wasting too much time online.

That said, this is totally and completely awesome!! XKCD strikes again...

Oh, Marianne

I just finished reading Citizens, by Simon Schama, subtitled a chronicle of the French Revolution.  What a story!  After getting through it, I can’t believe I got as much out of all my undergraduate modern history courses as I did without having studied the French Rev in more than a passing and tangential way.  So many of the topics I was engrossed by—the rise of anti-colonial nationalism, the Russian revolution and what came after, the totalitarian states of the twentieth century…. I could recognize the roots of so much of that in what I was reading about the events of 1789-94.

This is not to say that I am giving up my previously-held conviction (a belief instilled in my and my classmates by the ghost of Edward Said, who I am fully convinced still paces the halls at Columbia, leaking ectoplasm and causing the lights to flicker when people mention the canon) that it is fundamentally wrong to see modern history as based on a central narrative driven by a progression of key events in Western history…perish the thought!  But, (and, as my 7^th grade teacher would say, “this is a big but—”) there were so many things—the rapid transformation from revolutionary chaos to police state; the attempt to completely remake society on the basis of a new set of ideals; the desire to claim for as the revolution’s heritage an “authentic” idea of the national past; the movement towards a systematized, “scientific” method of eliminating the people deemed dangerous to the new order as quickly as possible—in which I saw amazingly-prescient echoes of so much that I had studied from the last two hundred years.

It also helped that Schama is a very engaging writer.  He was clearly writing the book to appeal to a wider audience than just his peers of the academy.  For one thing, he translated all quotes—a sure sign that this is not a book meant only for grad students to be able to regurgitate during exams.  Although part of me was sorry not to be able to get more of a taste of the historical figures whose words he made use of (since I think some of them would be quite entertaining to read in their own right), I really enjoyed Schama’s relaxed writing style, which walked the line between conversational and informational.  His confessed aim was to make the book a “narrative” of events, and I definitely had to stifles feelings of, “Wait! The story can’t be over yet—” when he tied off his account with the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. He really made the characters of the time come alive.

Of course, it helped his case that there were some truly larger-than-life characters adding their influence to those events.  Not just Robespierre, who Schama painted as an almost evangelical figure, wanting to cleanse French society using the dual principles of terror and virtue, but the rake-Bishop Tallyrand, the self-aggrandizingly heroic Lafayette, the fatally waffling Louis XVI, the ice princess Charlotte Corday, the fatally world-weary Malesherbes.  I think my favorite was actually Danton.  Not that he was really any less of a violent rabble-rouser than any other member of the revolutionary government in its various iterations, but you have got to respect someone whose final words on the steps of the guillotine were, “be sure to show my head to the crowd afterwards.  It is well worth the effort.” The man had cajones.

I'm Bringing Quirky Back

Surgeon Generals Warning: what follows is a rant.  Bear with me.

When she walks, she swings her arms, 

instead of her hips

When she talks, she moves her mouth, 

instead of her lips

My latest lesson plan for my students (English conversation reinforcement at a French lycée), revolved around introducing them to some examples of American teenage culture that might not have made it to Cosne sur Loire yet.  I found an article purporting to "explain" hipsters, and printed it off for them, hoping that hilarity would ensue.  Mostly what ensued was confusion, since the appeal of vintage shopping is not one that translates well--at least not in this provincial town.  After several attempts at giving the lesson (I'm fortunate that I have many students at the same level, because my classes definitely take multiple reps to iron out all the problems), I was able to successfully segue the discussion from comprehending the article to talking about fashion and conformity more generally (this is not the rant, by the way; I was actually pretty happy with this discussion).

The rant is this:  Who am I to be leading teenagers in discussions of pressures to conform?  I am, as anybody who knows me can tell you, not the most confident of people at navigating the messy landscape known as adult social interaction, particular when it happens between genders.  I am just as liable as anyone to try to conform to what's hot/cool/smart/funny/normal when I am in a social situation.

This is a strategy that is clearly not working out too well for me.

However, it has recently struck me that there are plenty of messages--coming right out of popular music, no less--there for girls who do not fit in, girls who are, plainly, just a little weird.   Whether it's Cake singing about the girl with a mind like a diamond, or even (please bear with me), Rob Thomas singing about the girl who can only sleep when it's raining, fitting in does not seem to be what's desired here.

So, I think its time to embrace quirkiness.  Stop worrying about being the cool one, the one with her act together, and start acting more like the girl who wears high heels when she exercises, or the one who looks so sad when she smiles.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Back in Europe, but not yet in France

...and, I'm back!  Despite the gap in my blogging, I did not disappear into the howling void of delayed airline transit for my entire vacation, although I was definitely afraid at certain points that that was going to happen.  I was supposed to get back to California on the 19th of December, and I did not actually make it home until the morning of the 25th, after numerous delays, bad weather, striking airport workers, missed connections, expensive emergency hotel stays, and more hours waiting in Charles de Gaulle airport than I like to think about.  It was enough to shake my belief in the efficacy of air travel as a modern means of transportation, and it made me want to celebrate Christmas in June so I wouldn't have to travel at the same time as everybody else in the western world.  Nevertheless, when I finally got home, I had a lovely time--far too short, as it seemed to me when I left two days ago.

The journey back to the old world was not nearly as traumatic as one home, although it had its drawbacks (the worst airplane food I have ever eaten, and a seat neighbor who spoke almost no English, drank 10 whiskeys over the course of a 9-hour flight, and passed out on me so that I had to go and get a stewardess to yell at him in Polish...)  Once I arrived, though, things started looking up.  I had made plans to visit an Austrian college friend for the last weekend of here winter break, and so I flew in to Vienna, where we are spending three days together before I go back to France and work and she goes back to her home town of Graz.

I was more or less drunk from sleep deprivation when I arrived yesterday (its hard to sleep when you have to keep pushing an inter Pole off your shoulder), but I had an amazing 12 hours of sleep at our hotel last night, and started the morning off feeling like the proverbial daisy.  Vienna really is a great city to be a tourist.  I had not thought much about what it would be like there, besides the fact that it would be great to see Katrin, so I hadn't spent a lot of time looking forward to doing anything particular.  It turns out, that there is a lot to look forward to. 

We started off the day by going to watch a morning training session at the Spanish Riding School.  This is the traditional home of the Lipizzaner Stallions, whom I had read a book about and loved as a child, but had almost forgotten that they were even an attraction in Vienna.  It was only last night, when we came into the central square of the Hofburg (the giant complex of imperial palaces and houses of state that is at the center of the city), when I saw the statue of the Emperor sitting on his horse and remembered vividly the scene in Marguerite Henry's book White Stallion of Vienna when the boy Hans climbs up to sit behind him in the middle of the night and resolves to become a riding master at the Spanische Hofreitschule, that I felt the thrill of recognition and excitement you get when you see something you loved as a child reappear in your life.  Fortunately, although there were no performances this weekend (and they probably would have been too expensive for me if they were), we were able to visit the horses exercise period, which is open to the public.  The training is done to music, and it takes place in the same gallery where they perform, and where they were once watched by the emperor (indeed, the school is also at the Hofburg).  It felt like part of a tradition from another era.  It was also beautiful--the cues the riders give their horses are almost invisible, and the horses go from pace to pace like dancers.  It was like watching ballet for me, with none of the bitterness of remembered experience.  The only thing that would have improved it would have been if they did any of the airs above the ground (which I was secretly hoping to see), but I suppose I will have to come back and see a show for that.

After the riding school, we went to the other side of the same building, to see the museum of the imperial silver collection, the imperial apartments, and the museum commemorating the Empress Elizabeth, who was the wife of the Emperor Franz Joseph and, apparently, both a great beauty and a real piece of work.  The entire experience was one of overwhelming luxury--great to see, but one is glad that the state is no longer paying to showcase its power and glory in the bodies and lifestyles of a privileged royal family.  Some of their excesses were slightly mind-blowing: a 140-person gold-plated state dinner set, for example, or the fact that Sisi used to wash her ankle-length hair in a mixture of egg yolk and cognac... You understand why people became communists.

After all that, we were in need of sustenance.  Fortunately, Vienna is a city where they do right by coffee breaks.  We ended up at the cafe of the Hotel Sacher, where I tried the "Original Sacher Torte," a cake that was invented in 1832, whose success predates the hotel, and whose recipe is a closely guarded secret.  The original is kept in a safe under lock and key, according to the informative menu.  Having tried it, I can see how it has stayed popular for 180 years.