Category: Reading

I picked up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction because it had M. Rickert’s new story “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.”  I’ll buy anything with M. Rickert’s name on it.  I wish F&SF had a “Just the Issues with M. Rickert in It” subscription option.  I have every issue with her stories since 2006 (except for one I’ve misplaced somehow).  I have both her collections, Map of Dreams and Holiday, and copies of her stories in Ideomancer and Interfictions 2.  I’ve spoken about my love of her writing here, and other places.  Yes, on my list of Favorite Writers, she is #1.  The very top.

I say all this so that you can have of sense of just how much it really and truly pains me to say: I wasn’t that into “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.”

Most of you know the standard I have for my short-story reading experience: That Aimee Bender quote I use all the time, “I want to be violated by insight.”  The thing is, unless I’m seriously romanticizing my relationship with Rickert’s writing, I can’t think of a single one of her stories that didn’t give me that feeling… before this one.

Make no mistake: in my usual 5* rating system, this one would get a 4, but only because I typically round off.  If I had to be accurate (as much as one can be with a subjective rating), I’d give this a 3.8.  It had every bit of the dark beauty I’ve come to love in Rickert’s stories.  The imagery at the end blew me away.  But I think my damage has to do with Rickert’s use of the third-person omniscient viewpoint. 

I’m grateful that she tries to shy away from old-school “one POV, section break, next POV” and attempt something a little different.  At the sentence level, Rickert really does a skillful job weaving in and out of each character’s thoughts.  But as a whole, it muddied the waters in two different ways for me.  It messed with my sense of time, for one.  And for another, I never knew for which characters to really concern myself by the end of it.

Not counting the corpses (C’mon, that’s not a spoiler.  Look at the title.  You knew there were going to be corpses in it.), the story had a cast of three: The Corpse Painter, the town sheriff, and the sheriff’s wife, and I was in one of their heads at various points of the story.  And while most of the story seemed to be about the relationship between the sheriff and the Corpse Painter, the real punch of the story came in the last scene between the sheriff and his wife.  The more I think about it, I’m wondering if Rickert putting me into the wife’s head was her way of attempting to connect a reader with the wife as an expedient way to set up the payoff at the end, while still maintaining most of the story’s focus on The Corpse Painter and the sheriff?

Who knows?  I’m clearly rambling at this point.  I’m just having trouble pinning down my exact feelings about this story.  To say “disappointed” or “let down” seems far too harsh.  Maybe this is a case where I just need to appreciate the attempt to do something different and be okay with the fact that maybe the clearest way to sum up my feelings is, “I just didn’t dig it.”  After all, Rickert is still my #1 favorite writer, I’ll still buy anything with her name on it, and if there was an “M. Rickert Only” F&SF subscription option, I’d snatch it up in a heartbeat.

A lot of my reading last week, when I’ve gotten to it, has been a lot of non-fiction.  But that’s not why you’re here.   You want to know what fiction I’ve read.  Basically, I let myself get carried away with the remainder of Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière…

“A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” is a cross between the Twilight Zone episode “Long Distance Call” and Etgar Keret’s vision of the underworld in his story “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” the way only Lalumière can do it. Ending seemed a bit too pat for me, IMO. 4 out of 5.

“A Visit to the Optometrist” obviously had an instant familiarity, after having read “The Ethical Treatment of Meat.”  While I didn’t dig the plotline itself, I loved the idea behind it, namely the competing forces at work.  So, 5 out of 5.

“Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey” is the second thing in almost as many weeks to remind me of Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend, the first being the discussion over said anime I had on the Functional Nerds podcast. There was probably a little too much going on in it for me. 4 out of 5.

“Destroyer of Worlds” shows that Lalumière and I definitely have read the same comic books. I have no doubt the pictures in my head and those in his were the same. 4 out of 5.

“This Is the Ice Age” is where Lalumière the best job writing the setting, IMO.  The ending didn’t really work for me, though.  It seemed a bit of a let-down after how well the tension was built.  4 out of 5.

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I’m going to have to add this collection to my list of goodreads reviews I’m behind on, now.

I know I read a few things since the last entry, but I lost track. I have no other excuses–just saying that life happens and is actually continuing to happen.  (Cryptic, I know.  Sorry.)  Still, the only way out is through, and I need to get back on track with things like writing and reading, and talking about what I’m reading.

From the 14th through the 20th, I actually read quite a bit…

I finished up the last bit of Lightspeed Magazine 2:

• “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” by Genevieve Valentine. So far, I’m 2 for 2 in never having read a Valentine story I didn’t like.
• “…For a Single Yesterday” by George R.R. Martin. There’s a certain tier of SF/F writers that I just haven’t managed to read yet. Martin, De Lint, etc. Stories like this erode the consolation I take in the idea that I just can’t read everything.  5 out of 5 for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that if I hadn’t read in advance that the story was first published a mere two years after I was born, I might never have known.

I started Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière.  As of now, I’m actually almost done with it.  I can’t remember when I got through anyone’s short story collection this fast.  All I can say is that, a few personal quibbles aside, Lalumière’s writing definitely lives up to its hype.

• “The Object of Worship.” Never before has the opening story of a collection blown me away like this. Wonderful!  5 out of 5.
• “The Ethical Treatment of Meat” had its ups and downs for me.  4 out of 5, but only because the main conceit of the story started being teased so well and then, in expository dialogue, “Whoomp, there it is!”
• “Hochelaga and Sons” definitely takes a page out of the Kavalier and Clay playbook. But only one. 4 out of 5.
• “The Sea, at Bari” hits some really nice Lovecraftian notes, but is still very much its own story.  5 out of 5.
• “The Darkness at the Heart of the World” seamlessly crams the main character’s entire mortal lifetime in a short-story. I’m astounded, to be honest.  5 out of 5.
• “Spiderkid” does the same thing “Hochelaga” did, but in a completely different way.  4 out of 5.
• “Njabo” is a master-class in how to write non-traditional family situations without hitting the reader over the head with “This is a Non-Traditional Family, Look at Me, Look at Me!!”  5 out of 5, even though I’m unsure if the ending of the story didn’t surprise me because the writing telegraphed it or because I chanced upon this article from io9 the same day I was reading this story.

I bought the TPB of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis a couple of weeks ago. In a sense, it was pretty senseless, since I have all four of the original books that make up The Collected Stories, though I’ve only read three. I hadn’t read Davis’s second collection, 1997’s Almost No Memory. I’m about ten pieces in. I won’t list or review them. Anyone who’s familiar with Davis’s work understands that the distinction between “story” and “prose poem” is so blurred–I just don’t feel qualified to comment on it, except to say that rarely do her pieces fail to resonate with me.

Yes, it’s sad.  I missed a week of posting what I’ve read and how my writing has progressed.  What can I say?  It’s been one busy blur… lots to talk about about, and actually one or two things I can’t just yet.

But, ’til then, back to business.  Here’s what I’ve read over a fortnight.  It wasn’t much…

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was going to get to Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, but it’s hard carrying around and reading a dead tree book while maneuvering through an upstate New York winter.  So I started one of the many ‘zines I purchased for my Nook during the holiday season, namely Apex Magazine #15.

• “Fair Ladies” by Theodora Goss.  A lovely, richly-detailed story.  Not entirely certain how much I bought the trajectory of the main character’s arc, though–at least not through the time gap near the end.  4 out of 5.
• “Four Is Me! With Squeeeeee! (And LOLer)” by Nick Mamatas.  A story about the future told in a data-stream of consciousness.  Exquisite!  5 out of 5.
• “Secret Life” by Jeff Vandermeer.  There’s a reason people tell you not to write office-space-as-metaphor stories.  The one you write will never be as good as this one.  5 out of 5.

Then I loaded up Clarkesworld 50 for the heck of it…

• “On the Banks of the River Lex” by N.K. Jemesin.  In comic book terms, this was sort of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman meets Brian Wood’s DMZ. I feel like I have to give it a 5 out of 5, since the one thing that sticks in my craw about this story isn’t the story’s fault.  It’s just that, sort of like DMZ, the obvious love for NYC comes across as something I, as a reader, could only really understand if I was cool enough to have once lived there.
• “Seeing” by Genevieve Valentine.  I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss her fiction.  It took me awhile to remember that I was reading Clarkesworld and not Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.  In other words: dystopic astronomy and space-travel FTW!  5 out of 5.

From Lightspeed Magazine 2…

• “No Time Like the Present” by Carol Emshwiller.  Since precious few other writers can keep you invested in a story whose plot you’ve figured out all of two pages in, this gets 5 out of 5!

I spent last week with the rest of Karen Joy Fowler’s new collection What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.
[Edited to add: My Working Writer’s Daily Planner says it’s KJF’s birthday today–Happy Birthday!!]

“Familiar Birds.”  It’s funny how I keep coming across these “Back when I was a kid” stories lately.  I liked this one even better than I liked Mark Rigney’s “Portfolio” from LCRW 22.  5 out of 5.

“Private Grave 9.”  A detailed account of a character’s slow almost(?)-descent into… something.  5 out of 5.

“The Marianas Islands.”  It had my favorite passage in the book so far, and one of the more interesting main characters.  The ending was a little too abrupt for me.  4 out of 5.

“Once when I was four or five I asked my grandmother to tell me a secret, some secret things only grown-ups knew.  She thought a moment, then leaned down close to me and whispered.  ‘There are no grown-ups,’ she said.”

“Halfway People.”  Probably has my second-favorite line in the collection, but I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite story overall.  5 out of 5.

“But a story never told is also a danger, particularly to the people in it.”

“Standing Room Only.”  One story with John Wilkes Booth, dancing around his most infamous performance in the Ford Theater?  Okay.  Two?  I don’t know. 3 out of 5.

“What I Didn’t See.”  Loved the ending, but it just took a little too long to get there for me.  3.5 out of 5.

“King Rat.”  This was in the Trampoline anthology, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet.  A nicely solemn riff on the Pied Piper story.  5 out of 5.

For starters, I finally got around to those last two stories in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22:

“Portfolio” by Mark Rigney. In the continuum of “when I was a boy…” stories from Steven Millhauser and Peter S. Beagle’s “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” this one was (thankfully) closer to Beagle. Rigney’s & Beagle’s stories both involved painting. Hmm. 5 out of 5.

“Dearest Cecily” by Kristine Dikeman. The narrative got me over my initial “Oh god, not another story told in letters!” reaction PDQ! 4 out of 5.

Next up was something that caught my eye in my RSS feed. “Taking Flight” by Ben Tanzer at Metazen. I’ve introduced you to Ben before. I dug Ben’s narrative of what future generations from the late 21st century onward will eventually call “the same old story.” 4 out of 5.

The rest are from Karen Joy Fowler’s collection What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.

“Booth’s Ghost.” John Wilkes is in it, but he’s not the main character. Brilliant. 5 out of 5.

“Last Worders.” Nice story with great setting description. The end was a little telegraphed for me, though–maybe not the detail, but the fact of it. 4 out of 5.

“The Dark.” Great story but with too many narrative threads that left me unsure which character or situation to really invest in. 4 out of 5.

“Always.” This one was more my speed–a character I could sympathize with in a situation, while weird, I could still understand. 5 out of 5.

I’ve had my head up my seekrit nonfiction work-in-progress this week, so most of my reading has been devoted to that.  But, I’ve resolved to make room for the fiction.  I tried to make time for the rest of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22, but I ended up two stories shy. 

“Vinegar and Brown Paper” by Becca De La Rosa.  I thought this piece was going to be completely predictable, if quirky, until about halfway through.  I love it whenever a story takes me by surprise.  4 out of 5.

“Self Story” by Carol Emshwiller.  You know why they say writers should never write stories about being a writer?  It’s because you won’t write one as good as this. 5 out of 5.

“Snowdrops” by Alex Dally MacFarlane.  Very nice wintry fairy tale.  5 out of 5.

“The Honeymoon Suite” by Jodi Lynn Villers. Great flash fiction piece!  5 out of 5.

“To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ” by Miriam Allred.  A touch too experimental for me.  3 out of 5.

I’m sure I’ll finish the ‘zine this week.  After that, I dunno… maybe some of Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and a bit of Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See.

Unless otherwise indicated, the fiction I read this week came from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22.

“Love Might Be Too Strong a Word” by Charlie Anders.  This is the best alien interspecies love-story I’ve ever read. Ever. EVER. 5 out of 5.

“Going to France” by Maureen F. McHugh. Great story but I’ll be honest–I didn’t quite get the end. 4 out of 5.

“Getting Closer” by Steven Millhauser. (THE NEW YORKER, January 3, 2011). Sorry, but there’s no way I’ll ever buy that any nine year-old is as contemplative as the one in the story.  2.5 out of 5.

“American Dreamers” by Caleb Wilson.  Very intricate character studies.  Just not enough for me narratively.  3 out of 5.

“Mike’s Place” by David J. Schwartz.  Nice, tight story.  Has a similar atmosphere to one of my favorites, Keret’s “Kneller’s Happy Campers.”  4 out of 5.

“The Camera & the Octopus” by Jeremie McKnight.  A wonderful grown-up bedtime story.  4 out of 5.

“Escape” by Cara Spindler. I was turned off by the structure of the piece initially, but I was glad I stuck with it.  4 out of 5.

“Away” by William Alexander. Very nice story about an almost-stranger in an almost-strange land.  5 out of 5.

One disadvantage of my newfound love of reading on my Nook is that I’m unable to accurately reflect my reading progress on goodreads, which does so by page numbers of print editions. No such tracking exists as of now for ebook editions, so I’m going old school and talk about the short stories I read this past week here on the blog.

The fiction I read this week came from one of the back issues of various ‘zines I purchased over the holiday, in this case, from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 19.

“Tubs” by Ray Vukcevich.  From Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 19.  Vukcevich is a favorite of mine.  Any ‘zine with stories by him and Carol Emshwiller make it a must-have.  If you want a clinic on worldbuilding a quirky world, this story is it.  5 out of 5.

“Grebe’s Gift” by Daniel Rabuzzi.  It might be a little unfair to read and rate any story having read anything by Vuk, a writer I admire for his usual brevity.  Rabuzzi’s story is very rich and textured, if a touch slow for me.  4 out of 5.

“Dropkick” by Dennis Nau.  It took me awhile to warm up to this story.  For a moment I thought it, too, was running a bit long for my taste.  But the payoff was well worth it.  I really loved the characters in this one.  An enthusiastic 5 out of 5.

“You Were Neither Hot Nor Cold, But Lukewarm, and So I Spit You Out” by Cara Spindler & David Erik Nelson.  This one was a re-read from about three or so years ago when I’d read The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.  I’d almost forgotten what it was about until a certain secondary character was introduced.  And then I remembered not feeling ready to be able to grok this story when I first read it.  But I was now, and I loved it.  5 out of 5.

“The Bride” by Kara Kellar Bell.  This story seemed well-written but a bit predictable.  Maybe because I’d read a story recently with a similar theme, but I’m not so sure about that.  3.5 out of 5.

“Lady Perdita Espadrille Tells the Story” by Andrew Fort.  I’ve never been a huge fan of the story-within-a-story, but I did enjoy both stories very much.  I like to think it brought me close to world from which I was far, far removed in the ’80s.  4 out of 5.

“The Slime: A Love Story” by Anna Tambour.  My previous exposure to Tambour’s writing was her story in the Interfictions anthology, “The Shoe is SHOES’ Window.”  And while I recognize a similar quirkiness in “The Slime,” I didn’t seem to enjoy it as much.  3 out of 5.

“Such a Woman, Or, Sixties Rant” by Carol Emshwiller.  But for the length, I thought this was more prose poem than fiction.  And I really like prose poems.  4 out of 5.