[January 11th, Weird Wednesday] "Foreweird" by Michael Moorcock and "Introduction" by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

I would like to start the first analysis [or something close to an analysis] of “The Weird” with a side note. Today I've spotted that Through A Forest of Ideas received traffic from Tor.com. After some googling kung fu, I discovered that Tor.com have linked “Weird Wednesday” under their Of Interest section on the site. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic about the development for numerous reasons. It's all rather personal, but mainly, I'm happy to have come up with an idea that is met with interest. Thank you Tor.com. 

Now, with this out of the way, I'll proceed with my thoughts on “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and the “Introduction” by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. For the purposes of the analysis, I have switched the texts as the VanderMeers deliver a clearer and conciser definition of the weird tale without an actual textbook definition of the genre being presented. That is where the weird tale's charm lies. No man, no reader or scholar can name something that has no name to begin with. 

After I completed both introductory texts, I felt rather than understood that the 'weird' is much like a literary version of the primordial goo of life. It's full of potency. No measurement can weigh, count or calculate the dimensions of the weird. It constantly evolves. It searches for new ways to adapt to its cultural habitat, which in itself is a complex, growing system. The weird is more than the sum of its parts though it's not as simple as to be compared to ordinary synergy. Sometimes it can be best understood as the tropes it's not as the VanderMeers explain before assuming roles of evolutionists and tracking its historical roots in stories from beyond generations. 

I'm still fascinated after having reread the historical breakdown of the development and countless 'weird sightings' in world literature over the decades. Here is where I reach the conclusion that you can't understand the weird as you might [think you] understand a scientific phenomenon. The best you can do is observe it in the context of a specific era and the literary traditions that dominate it. It is here where “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock makes much more sense to me. Moorcock adopts a different approach to the presentation of the weird to the readers. 

His writing flows from paragraph to paragraph, acquires the quality of a river's delta. Every sentence swerves and takes you into a new direction. Moorcock switches from his understanding of the weird tale to cardinal misconceptions, the stigmata behind the lack of rationalism, the weird tale's multifaceted nature and how shapeless it can be. 

The weird tale's main 'fault', according to Moorcock, is its inability to fit in a package, stay still and allow itself to be marketed to the masses. And yes, I have not heard about the 'weird' before, because it hasn't popped on the mainstream's radar. Thinking about both texts, I think that the answer as to why the 'weird' can't be defined [though I'm of the opinion that connoisseurs of the weird tale do not see it as an outstanding issue] is because the weird leaves more questions asked than answered. Moorcock states such is 'a superior kind of fiction' and I agree with him, because presenting readers with all the answers acts as a prerequisite for lazy reading. Now, engaging the reader to solve mysteries in an environment, where the rational is excluded from the equation, begets creativity; encourages to take the dark, unexplored route; keep the primordial goo healthy and expanding; allow for later works and writers to take charge and evolve as well. 

Here I'd like to detour and share my experience with the 'absence of rationalism' in animation, both in the West and in the East. The examples are children's TV shows, which I think are inherent carriers of the idea that you don't need rationalization. I think the weird tale has found a host that succeeded in entering the mainstream as children are much more adept at accepting the weird, the strange and the fantastic without prejudice and demands for explanations, at least as far as my experience and memory of being a child are concerned. Ample examples are “Totally Spice”, a French cartoon series, and “Sailor Moon”, a Japanese anime and the most famous representative of the magic girl genre. 

“Sailor Moon” featured a trio of the Sailor Starlights [bear with me on this one], who perplexed me. If you're aware of magic girls, then you know that from a normal, human state, a female character undergoes a magical transformation, which is signified by a change of outfit. The Sailor Starlights, in their depowered states were male pop stars before transforming into powerful female warriors. The curious thing about this magical gender switch is that it's not explained. 

There's no evidence to support any theory as to whether the character truly change their gender or are just dressing as male. I'm mentioning “Totally Spice” because the premise is about a teen version of Charlie's Angels look-alikes with outrageous James Bond gadgets and a penchant for fighting super villains. I am also referring to this series, because of the sudden body transmogrifications. 

One episode paid a strange homage to Franz Kafka's “The Metamorphosis”, while another sees humans mutate into human-vegetable hybrids [perhaps a subconscious tribute to “The Vegetable Man”]. There is no science to explain why these mutations have occurred other than the drop of the words 'chemicals' and 'machine'. What do I intend with all of this? Nothing in particular, other than to illustrate that the 'weird' is alive and well in different mediums, perhaps even connected to its literary sibling. 

Anyway, let's conclude. Although a grand statement, I do believe the 'weird' [based on the historical background provided by the VanderMeers and Moorcock] to be one of the strongest forces to keep the wheel in speculative fiction turning.

[January 4th] Announcing "Weird Wednesday"

 It’s the first Wednesday in the year and the first Wednesday of my “Weird Wednesday” feature dedicated to the analysis of “The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories” edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Initially, I decided to launch this feature with the rather longish discourse I have for “The Other Side” by Alfred Kubin, but then held back on the idea as I think that this compendium deserves a fair and true beginning.

Inspired by this notion to do a proper analysis and ensure that there is a certain amount of the grandeur and drama I enjoy [so much] to this feature, I will start at the very beginning. First, I want to announce the rules of the game [it’s a game, because nothing planned to run for the span of a year is allowed to be too serious] and the goals I am after.

Rules:

1. “The Weird Wednesday” will run every Wednesday from January 4^th until December 27^th with each post being dedicated to a single work. I have done the math and know that I have around 52 weeks to work with and over 100 short stories to work with. One of the solutions to this predicament is multiple posts per Wednesday. I will have to see whether another strategy won’t be more interesting for the readers.

2. Each analysis will be based on some research on the author, the work itself and the links it shares with previous works. I’m saying some, because I’m far from assuming that I will have the necessary time and investigation skills to reach to a groundbreaking conclusions about any given work. Context matters, true, but so does sleeping at some point.

3. There will be a proper schedule for each month as well as update posts and a page on this blog, where all links from previous reviews will be gathered. I plan on linking an icon of the book to the feed for the category in my blog for the sake of easy navigation.  

Goals:

1. I’ve abandoned all delusions that I command the English language. Don’t misunderstand, I do think I’m doing an admirable attempt to do it justice, but it’s still mostly an attempt. I wish to level up as they say, improve how I express myself and how I carry myself with my words.  

2. I avoid reviewing anthologies without internally connecting each work with a different one. With “The Weird” and it’s thousand pages, hundred stories and decades of genre history, it’s neither physically possible nor appropriate to do. I intend to experience the evolution of this genre chronologically, through the stories and through my reflections.

Hopes:

1. I hope that I finish this within the year of 2012. On paper, this feature might look easy to do and stick to, but life is unpredictable. There will be setbacks. I will get in my way. Others will get in my way. The hope is to make it through the year with a successful conclusion and what I hope to be a better grasp over the English language.

2. I hope I create a dialogue the way I have always failed to do on Temple Library Reviews. I hope to lead discussions about the different points in the stories that I present in this space and learn more than I have on my own.

The Schedule:

Here is the initial schedule for the rest of January. Since this is exam month at the moment, I will have to limit myself with one work per week.  

[January 11^th] Thoughts on “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and “Introduction” by Anne and Jeff VanderMeer

[January 18^th] “The Other Side” by Alfred Kubin

[January 25^th] “The Screaming Skull” by F. Marion Crawford

Last [far from least] I wish to thank Maureen Kincaid Speller, who inspired me by reviewing the compendium story by story. Check her analyses on The Paper Knife.   

       

[December 26th] Post-Christmas Plan

With Christmas behind me [thank god], I can unlock my bunker’s hatch and see the sun [or an approximation of the sun; the weather is far from grand, but you get my point] without any of the unnecessary, forced cheer. While I do like the idea of Christmas and what it theoretically represents as a holiday, Christmas festivities have morphed into a vehicle for maintaining the appearance of satisfied, joyous family union to the point you really have to go down the rabbit hole of self-delusion to squeeze out the promised Christmas spirit. Unless of course, you are a member of a family, which has not been warped by this reality into a squinting cynic, and you really do have a jolly good time at every Christmas. Congratulations, you’re a better person than me or a character in a Christmas movie [yeah, I’m snarky when it comes to Christmas].

Anyway, I’m done talking about Christmas. I’m already looking towards the passing of 2011. It’s passing excites me and I’m scheming what to do with the whole of 2012, when that tiny New Year’s moment elapses, when December 31^st shifts into January 1^st. Unlike most people, I don’t view New Year’s Eve as an excuse to consume alcohol with reckless wanton, though I see it too often among my peers, which I’m sure is common, since New Year’s Ever has been the biggest party in the calendar since I’m old enough to remember, but to me New Year’s the time to shed a skin you don’t need, leave yourself pink, fresh, with nerve endings naked and virginal, but heeding the lessons of past years. It’s a restart button on a simply calendar level and I love it.

After I’ve read “Booklife” by Jeff VanderMeer, I think that I’ve been on the right track to get some general ideas on how I want the year to pass, but I’ve been missing the strategic element to bind my goals from year to year in a Master Plan, which will ensure that I reach my overall goals for a minimal amount of time. I’ve come to understand that knowing what you want is a lot different from knowing how to get what you want. So without further ado, I have drafted a five year plan and the achievements I want to have to my name. With that in mind, I’ve found a course of action to support these plans. It sounds all very general, but this is my warm-up post to a week of publicly stating what I will cut down on and what I will emphasize on come next year, because I believe that stating these goals to a broad audience creates a pact. If I’m to keep these goals to myself, I’m much more likelier to cheat [yeah, I’m a douche like that], but stating my intentions on the web will keep in line.

In general, I envision my 2012 to have more reading, writing and exercise and less TV, 9gag and unhealthy foods. It’s a scary perspective, hard to reinvent my personality type, but I don’t see myself lasting longer, if I don’t lead a healthier lifestyle, for the sake of my body and mind.

Do you guys make plans?  

[December 11th] From Reactive to Proactive Reading or How I changed My Reading Patterns

I'm sexy and I'm reading

In my preparation for the Weird Wednesday feature, whose launch date remains as January 4^th 2012, I have encountered something about my reading I have not paid much attention to and I assume is private due to the nature of my language situation. I know enough English to write, read and express myself on an above average level among my peers, who have had the same educational profile and have not studied English at university level. Reading books has never been challenging, apart from those written in an intentionally modified English [“The Color Purple”] or older books [“The Vampyre”]. Being a native benefits the reading experience in such cases, but otherwise I’m doing fine with literature.

Or so I would think. Until recently, I’ve been ignoring a trend in my reading, exemplifying an interest in quantity of reading rather than quality. Back in my school years, when I studied in a private group every weekend on top of my school studies, my teacher used to make us read everything and anything. Newspaper articles, magazine articles, book passage, passages from a more scientific text, from and outside our textbooks. Eventually we moved to books and we had to read a book over the summer, mark down all the new words and add those to our own vocabulary, so that when the time came to talk about the books, a barrier has been lifted and I understood more about the book. This continued during high school, where I studied typical US/UK classics such as The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Ayre. While I enjoyed all these books, I can’t say the same about the reading, notes with new words, bringing out the dictionary, spending afternoons writing the new words and pronouncing them and then returning to the text. This killed the joy in reading and at the time I had grown to be an avid, if a bit slow a reader.

You have to understand that for a teenager, studying causes an allergic reaction, which brings out chronic postponing of any kind of academic activities. At the time, I felt like studying will never end for me and I tried to avoid anything to do with studying. So when I graduated and took up reviewing, I took to reading for pleasure, which is to say that I only read. Never tried to engage with the text in another way. If there was something that I didn’t understand then I would use the context and go on with the story. Sometimes this helped me get through some books easier with minor communication breakdowns between me and the text. Other times I had lucked out and did need a dictionary to help me along the way. “A Book of Tongues” is a perfect example of how the prose acted against me, no matter how much I loved reading this twisted tale. This time around I did try to get out some of the words, translate, then assemble all the fragments of understanding and confusion into a coherent narrative, but seeing as how I fell behind on my schedule and diminished chances of reading more books, writing more of the self-serving reviews I did back then, fighting to come ahead the bloggers who read more and faster, I rushed the process and never returned to it.

It’s complicated to explain what I mean by ‘passive’ or ‘reactive’ reading, but it deals with a preoccupancy with number of books read, the act of having read something, stating that you have completed a novel everyone else has, modeling choices of books based on trends in the blogging circles [where the ‘new shiny’ rules, not that I have anything against it]. It’s easier to blame external forces for this behavior, but that’s not quite true, because I made all decisions when it came to my own reviews and blogging. Subsequently, I took stories with dragons and magic to be simple stories about magic and dragons without thinking further. A friend of mine once told me that SFF literature is the most potent of all kinds of genres, because it has layers upon layers to utilize and comment upon our own reality, better than other genres have. I’m quite proud to say that the man is a psychologist, erudite and has serious, always active views on everything.

Yesterday, as I started to read The Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer I faced a rather winding and ornate foreword by Michael Moorcock. I had difficulties catching on to some of his thoughts and felt lost in the general purpose of the text. The language barrier rose high as it had back during my school years and I had a choice. Read it once and try to decipher it on my own in the privacy of the back of my mind or surrender, grab the dictionary and return to where I began all those years before in reading in English.

I grabbed the dictionary. Read the “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and the introduction by the VanderMeers, sat down with a journal for my thoughts, a notebook for the words that I did not know and Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English and studied. Contrary to what I expected, studying this time around brought immense pleasure. For obvious reasons, doing anything because you so choose is pleasing in itself as opposed to forced practice from any educational institution. But there is more than that. The fact that I chose to return to this text and re-read with the new words in my mind stimulated my thought process, pushed me to add something from myself into my opening post for the Weird Wednesday feature based on the words of Moorcock and the VanderMeers rather than summarize as I usually happen to do. I think that this is what pro-active reading is all about, opening to the text and working on how the words can influence me. Needless to say, this process for me has to be more conscious and I can’t say for certain if anyone can relate to me. Language is not a tough barrier to remove. You think you know it, but then it surprises you.  

In short, I’m leveling up, which is quite due, seeing as I’m in my twenties already and time is not waiting for anyone.

I think I went overboard with this post and I doubt anyone has hung long enough to make any comments, but I’d like to hear from you about your adventures in reading. How has your act of reading changed given any given circumstances?

[December 10th] The Books That Have Not Been Read

 One of the activities I’ve been failing at in 2011 is keeping my reading active and diverse. I’ll probably touch on the subject in my year end posts, but I have read around twenty books and I am not too proud of that fact. A rather slow and disorganized year, which has a lot to do with real life, personal rebellion and the passive nature of the act of reading. The result are titles, which I’ve been accumulating over the months. Promises I have made to authors to read and mention their books, not for the sake of hits or promotion [although writers need the word of mouth to remain alive and well in the public’s memory], but because I trust my judgment that I’ll enjoy these books and that in one way or another they will contribute to my development.  

Dear readers, meet my books. Dear books, don't cry. You shall be read. 

Long Fiction:

1] Empire State ~ Adam Christopher

2] Shotgun Gravy ~ Chuck Wendig

3] Kultus ~ Richard Ford

4] Wolfsangel ~ M.D. Lachlan

5] I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like ~ Justin Isis

6] Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God ~ Lavie Tidhar

7] Osama ~ Lavie Tidhar

8] Alchemy of Stone ~ Ekaterina Sedia

9] Unseen World ~ Sean Cummings

10] Funeral Parlor ~ Sean Cummings

11] Serial Killers Incorporated ~ Andy Remic

12] High Society ~ Paolo Chikiamco [graphic novel]

13] Harmonica and Gig ~ R.J. Astruc

14] The Book Thief ~ Markus Zusak

15] The Color Purple ~ Alice Walker

16] The Time Traveler’s Wife ~ Nancy Niffenegger

17] Regicide ~ Nicholas Royal

18] Infernal Devices ~ K.W. Jeter

19] Morlock Night ~ K.W. Jeter

Short Fiction:

1] Like Twin Stars ~ edited Cecilia Tan & Kelly Clark

2] Hellebore and Rue ~ edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff

3] Irregular Creatures ~ Chuck Wendig

4] Subversion ~ edited by Bart Leib

5] Alternative Alamat ~ edited by Paolo Chikiamco

6] The Weird ~ edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

7] ODD? ~ edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

8] Sourdough ~ Angela Slatter

9] Evolve Two ~ edited by Nancy Kilpatrick

10] The Grinding House ~ Kaaron Warren

Non-fiction:

1] Jurisdiction ‘in optima forma’ or why Orthodox Slavs had no witch hunts ~ Maria Schnitter

2] Charms and magic ~ Iveta Pirtova

3] Prayer Magic ~ Maria Schnitter

4] Bulgarian Folk Magic ~ Ivanichka Georgieva

5] Historical Roots of the Magical Fairy Tale ~ V.Ya.Prop

6] The History of Sexuality ~ Michel Foucault

7] Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex ~ Alice Dreger

8] Intersex ~ Catherine Harper

9] Almost Perfect ~ Brian Katcher  

10] Time of Death, Decomposition and Identification ~ an Atlas by CRC Press

11] The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture ~ edited by Kam Loule

12] Handbook of Japanese Mythology ~ Michael Ashkenazi

13] Revenge of the Penmonkey ~ Chuck Wendig

14] Confessions of a Penmonkey ~ Chuck Wendig

15] 250 Things You Should Know About Writing ~ Chuck Wendig

You have the word guys. Tell me what you plan on reading? How far behind are you on your reading and do you actively plan to read?

[December 7th] The Nature of Best-Of Lists and Having Your Voice Out There

 Books you consider to be the "best" should blow your mind, then implode and restructure your skull and brain in ways you have not anticipated, but you like. Great books hung and haunt your memory, perception and creativity. 

I'm participating in the proud tradition of Smugglivius hosted over the Book Smugglers' blog. It's a month long event with bloggers and authors sharing their very best picks from books and media for the past year, which is epic scale as far as The Best-Of lists and events are concerned. 

The concept of ranking books is ludicrous to me. I can't quantify joy. Joy cannot be measured and even if it could be, every book would be a source of different joy, unless you are reading in a very niche, niche subgenre [detective stories about the supernatural death of Lincoln with flying monkeys involved in some constant way throughout every novel]. It's why I don't quite like these lists, which seem to centre around a set of criteria as to how best rank certain books. 

  

When I ran Temple Library Reviews, I paid more attention to these best-of lists, because I sensed a certain trend among reviewers as to what rose to popularity in certain circles, which is more or less obvious given our nature to create a sort of mini societies, where ideas and recommendations are exchanged. I myself don't believe in the ranking itself; the system that determines, which is number one and why and why book "X" should switch position with book "Y". Should book "Z" even be on the list or is book "W" a better fit? 

I'm not sure whether or not these thoughts cross reviewers' minds during "Best-Of" seasonal preparations, but creating a list is not something someone with a love for their blog will consider lightly. Perhaps it's the cynic in me at the time, who whispered about the potential insincerity of others and the more marketing oriented motifs others had [more or less provoked by my too unhealthy drive for competing with others]. Perhaps there are bloggers, who pick books in order to secure more ARCs and review copies from hot new publishers. I'm not ruling that out. 

This year I'm freed from prejudices. I don't have a review site, I don't have a territory like I though I did, I can talk about books and review books without the numbers game shuffling in the back of my head [what I can say, it's one of my many failings] and see the good in the "Best-Of" lists as emphasis on books  enjoyed, words that have left an imprint and stories that have caused spiritual alterations. They are about managing to squeeze in your voice and try to persuade someone to discover and share your love for any given book on the list, because favourite books are no JUST the writer's intellectual property, they belong to the reader as well.

[December 3rd] The Weird in its Cephalopod Beauty

After rave reviews, heightened publicity covering and Weird Fiction Review, a website launched with regular material provided, all in the name of the weird movement in literature, I ordered my copy of the VanderMeers' latest monstrosity bound by ink and paper The Weird.

I've been captivated by the dedication the VanderMeers have placed in their promotion of different, peculiar fiction [often with a mad glint its glassy eye and a smile that carries the charm of an inter-dimensional morgue chamber] that is yet to claw its way to the spotlight [or maybe it has, but people are too afraid to admit it]. "The Weird" will be my indoctrination into this cult so openly led by two prophets of the tasteful bizarre. Inspired by the in-depth coverage provided by Maureen Kincaid Speller over at her blog Paper Knife, I'm tasking myself with the idea to read and place my thoughts on each of the more than hundred stories on this blog come 2012.

This will be one of the directions I'll be heading in for Through a Forest of Ideas next year. "The Weird" and all subsequent release of non-fiction connected to this anthology is of great interest to me and my writing.      

[November 24th] On Writing Longhand and the Importance of Words

I’ve not spoken about writing in a long time, because I consider the craft of writing as a rather personal experience. My main understanding is that every story is different and every writer is unique in his/her thoughts, inspirations and techniques are strictly individual. From where I’m standing, I’d rather not dish out advise. There are plenty of websites, which provide you with countless posts on the technical aspects of writing. Magical Words serves advice like a petite French restaurant; compact portions sculpted to beauty. Chuck Wendig overtakes the table as an Italian seven course meal, calorie rich and dripping sauce.

In that metaphor, what am I? I’m just a story in the kitchen and I’m fine to be one. Recently, I had to switch from writing on the keyboard to writing longhand, because my day job demands me typing. The implications are two-fold. First, my fingers are already tired from hitting away at the keys and second, my brain associates this time of writing as a chore*. Writing as an act and a process, sitting down and typing words, grew to be tedious and my ideas, no matter how bright and shiny and witty suffered, when it came to give them shape. 

Write or Die is an excellent software, if your brain has already swollen with the pregnancy of a story, which your fingers desperately want to deliver, but not when your story has its own umbilical cord tied around its neck. I needed c-section and writing longhand functioned as such**. Yes, now everything is a thousand times slower. Yes, I have to actually make more time to write the same amount of words I crank out for an hour. But. The big But. I place the right words, I add texture to my story I can’t do when facing the white screen or race with my fingers, because everyone types faster than they write. Sometimes it’s all about the physical presence of the notebook that helps me get my idea out. 

I’m feeling a bit guilty that I’m choosing impracticality over efficiency, which doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational. This sense of guilt is stupid, because it implies that you’re racing against something or someone. Is writing a race? Well, kinda. It’s a race against death. Everything is racing with death. Everything knows that it’ll lose a race with the big, underlined and bolded THE END; it’s more of a matter of how much gets done. This brings me down to the devil: quantity and boy do we know about quantity. Word counts, word meters and the month of the word count tracking NaNoWriMo***. 

Quantity is a fixation. In “Booklife” Jeff VanderMeer pins this quest for wordcount as a goal that is hollow, pardon, I’m paraphrasing from memory. VanderMeer spends some time to the importance of the right words and his points are excellent. While I understand how setting a goal, which has to do with getting a set number of words down, helps track progress, this is a ‘surface’ progress. First drafts become our arenas to suck and fail, but I feel as though advice to allow yourself to fail during first drafts is misinterpreted as ‘suck, but just get it out, doesn’t matter how much you do suck’. In my mind, this conspiracy theory emerges, where this predominant attitude about sucking has joined this fetish for metric measurements in a craft, which is not meant to welcome math****. 

The right words matter even in a first draft, because later on, during revisions, you’ll find that you have a solid first draft that needs little modifications on a linguistic level. That the prose actually helps you find the right direction for the story and relatively ease your journey in the land of Edits. Sometimes you can suck too much to know how to fix a story. And all the time you saved dashing through your first draft [and more] will go into your editing. 

What do you do when crafting first drafts? Do you stop to think or go where the hands take you? 

----

*I’d like to take the opportunity to distance away from my brain as we never have seen eye to eye on a various subjects. 

** I disturbed myself with this metaphor, so I will stop with it. 

*** Dudes, I’m far from criticizing NaNo for anything else. I still believe in its key value, to tech persistence and consistency when writing. 

**** I hate math, so there you go.