Books March 2014
On Such A Full Sea – Chang-Rae Lee (2014)
Lit-author does dystopian SF about a future USA where Chinese migrants toil for privileged Charters and the young Chinese immigrant woman who begins to change this system. There are some brilliant flashes in the story, most dealing with social commentary and group/individual dynamics, but there’s a collapse at the end and that’s disappointing. Maybe it was meant to be post-modern or something like we can’t have nice things because nice things are a genre convention. When I described the novel’s ending to my wife she said it sounded “very 70s” and, yeah, that’s kind of it. The story spirals inward towards a conflict and then spirals outward without resolving anything, and all the tension simply dissipates. Then again I could be completely wrong and it was all some subtle commentary on The Hunger Games or something I didn’t get.
The Man With Six Senses – Muriel Jaeger (1927) 
I blathered about this book here. Short version, a fun book, possibly funnier now than when it was originally written. I hope to track down more of these “Radium Age” reprints at some point.
The Big Clock – Kenneth Fearing (1946)
One of those noir thriller novels with a crazy convoluted plot that seems more a means to get the most jaded, cynical commentary as possible out of the characters. Magazine Editor starts an affair with his boss’s mistress. Boss kills mistress. Editor witnesses it, but isn’t seen by boss. The boss simply knows there was a witness, so he sets his publishing company the task of finding the witness (so the person can be killed). And who does he put in charge of the search? The Magazine Editor, of course.
Definitely a fun, fast read. It’s ugly in places and cynical in a hard-boiled way but certainly worth tracking down.
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong – Lady Hyegyong (trans. Jahyun Kim Haboush) (1996)
You can read all about Lady Hyegyong’s sad life here. Sad, fascinating stuff. Even now a few weeks after finishing the book I’m still thinking about it. If your library has a copy, take it out.
Baneblade – Guy Haley (2013)
For a novel about a three-story tall tank battling space orks in a grimdark future, this novel was much better than it needed to be. Also as a media tie-in novel it fits in with my fascination for fan fiction.
The Long Winded Lady – Maeve Brennan (1997)
Of all the books in this post this is the one that I most recommend. This book collects close to thirty years of Brennan’s New Yorker material. They’re like prose sketches of New York life made from lunch counters, bus stops, and restaurant windows. Brennan casts herself as the supreme observer, and these pieces are all close to amazing, by turns sad, perceptive, bitter, insightful, and comic. You won’t know what you’ll find until you start reading one. Like I said, of all these books this is the one I recommend the most.
“The Man With Six Senses” – Muriel Jaeger
A Radium Age reprint first published in 1927 by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, The Man With Six Senses was one of the first science fiction novels to explore ESP. It’s an enjoyable read, the characters frail and human enough to be recognizable, and as a mixed-up mutant story it predates Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John by about a decade.
The narrator, Ralph Standring, is an Edwardian gentleman whose hopes of marrying Hilda, his childhood sweetheart, are complicated when she becomes involved with Michael, the titular man with six senses. It’s a tragic story one where you feel as if you’re eavesdropping on a three-sided conversation where all the participants are equally misguided. But it’s also drily funny in places. The years since the book’s first publication have not been kind to the world’s Ralph Standrings. While I suspect that Jaeger meant for him to be somewhat satirical, he becomes an out and out caricature at times. Not everyone enjoys spending time with a snob, worse one that’s a whiny “nice guy”, but Ralph’s part of the story and he’ll tell it the way he’ll tell it. That he’s our POV character makes you want to reach into the narrative and slap him. The fact that he’s so superior makes his sense of threat from Michael more acute, and when he finally realizes that Michael is indeed what he claims, Ralph’s reaction is utterly believable. That Hilda and Michael are presented through his eyes makes him somewhat unreliable as a narrator. But that’s part of the book’s charm. Its characters aren’t much more than what they are. They’re not stand ins for any particular philosophy. They’re complicated, misguided, and frail.
I don’t know how much attention these HiLo Books are getting. Granted some are likely available free online at places like Project Gutenberg. I bought this one on a whim, since I’d never heard of either book or author before. Folks that like a good helping of realism in their speculative fiction should track it down. It might surprise you.
Where Do You Buy Your Squid?
“Hey guy, look in the back. I’ve got some primo molluscs swimming around back there.”
Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong
This is a fascinating book.
Lady Hyegyong was an 18th century Crown Princess in Korea’s Cho’son dynasty. Her husband was the “infamous” Prince Sado.
What’s known about Prince Sado is that he was put to death by his parents the King and Queen. Since no one could harm a royal person, Sado was ordered to climb into a rice chest, where he was locked until he suffocated after eight days. The reason given was because Sado was “mad” and considered a risk to the dynasty. In the 19th century there were rumors Sado was not “mad” but the victim of a conspiracy, and his father unjustly killed him. Lady Hyegyong, by now an old woman, decided to counter these rumors and set the record straight. That the late King, Sado’s father, had all mention of the incident removed from castle records, makes Lady Hyegyong’s account the definitive one. And like I said it’s a fascinating book. Lady Hyegyong gives a first hand account of what happened and details Sado’s “madness”.
But that’s not all that’s in this book. There are four memoirs here. In all of them Lady Hyegyong shows herself to be a perceptive judge of character and court life.
The first details Lady Hyegyong’s life from her childhood through her marriage at age nine to Prince Sado, her removal from her family home and her residency in the Royal Palace. From there she speaks briefly of Sado’s tragic life, the aftermath of his death, and her ultimate resolve to keep living and raise their son (who also happened to be the heir to the throne).
The second and third memoirs deal with her family members and their involvement in court intrigues. I recommend skipping these two, and going straight to the last.
The last memoir is a character study of Prince Sado, his illness, and his relationship with his father. It’s highly detailed as if Lady Hyegyong is trying to find the source and cause of Sado’s madness. Was it because he was separated from his parents at an early age, that his father failed to provide him with decent overseers, or something more sinister – such as the proximity of his palace to the ruined palace once belonging to a Queen who poisoned her competitors in the court? What is certain is that Sado’s episodes were often violent and he killed and/or raped many servants. The first Lady Hyegyong witnessed was the death of a eunuch and she speaks of his being the first severed head she had ever seen. Later Sado beat one of his consorts to death, and nearly knocked out one of Lady Hyegyong’s eyes after hitting her in the head with a chess board. These and other instances were what caused the royal family to fear Sado and led them to giving the order that he should be sealed in the rice chest.
Likely not much bigger than this. Seriously
As a modern reader it’s impossible not to try and diagnose Sado’s “madness”. That he was neurologically atypical is likely. Possibly he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia or a bipolar disorder. He also exhibited several phobias and obsessive compulsive disorders (Lady Hyegyong talks about a clothing phobia that would require a steady stream of fresh cloth, since Sado would destroy any clothes he found fault with), along with a murderous rage. Yet, Lady Hyegyeong is clear in stating that these were episodic and when he wasn’t in one of these phases Prince Sado could be a kind and gentle man, and often Sado comes across not as a monster but a victim. He suffers, even if he is a murderer.
Then there’s the weird stuff – the things that would make a good horror story. It’s like there’s a ghost story waiting right behind the actual tragedy.
Prince Sado was obsessed with Taoist magic, in particular one book of rites known as the Jade Spine Scriptures. He believed the God of Thunder was angry with him and was terrified by thunder storms (that one occurred on the 8th day after he was locked in the chest doesn’t go unnoticed by Lady Hyegyong). Often he would leave the palace dressed as a commoner and no one knew what he did during these times. And when he died, his father had his associates, a group including several shamans and a Buddhist nun, put to death.
It’s one thing to read about Caligula or some other ancient ruler known for being “mad”. It’s another to have a near modern account of a neurologically atypical ruler, one where the individual is painted so vividly that it’s like looking at an evolving portrait of their life. Lady Hyegyong provides that level of detail in her account, and as a book The Memoirs make for compelling reading. Maybe your library has a copy.
Prince Sado
Weird Rubbish?
Sarah Rees Brennan has a longish post on having been a fan fiction writer.
When someone is traditionally published after writing fanfiction, they get treated like trash, both by people who think fanfiction is weird rubbish and by people who themselves like to write and read fanfiction.
You can read it here. I post it for my own edification mostly, since my fascination for fan fiction remains ongoing.
Hot Temple
Local tteokbokki chain.
Yesterweird 