Reading Wednesday

[troisoiseaux]

Recently read

Went on an Agatha Christie binge, with The Pale Horse (1961), The Moving Finger (1942), and Towards Zero (1944). Interestingly, despite the very different premises and the almost 20-year gap between their publishing dates, I caught a number of similarities between The Pale Horse and the The Moving Finger.

The most obvious connection was that a Rev. and Mrs. Dane Calthrop showed up in both novels. In both cases, the vicar's personality boiled down to a penchant for overlong Latin quotations; the Mrs. Dane Calthrops of The Pale Horse and The Moving Finger differed slightly in terms of characterization (one gave "sound but unorthodox advice", and the other made a point to never give any advice at all) but served a similar narrative purpose.

Both novels also touch on the topic of the "village witch" - actually a grumpy old woman who cultivated a Reputation so people would leave her alone but also send her free stuff, to get on her good side - supposedly able to "ill-wish" someone so they "waste away and die of natural causes." This was proposed hypothetically in The Moving Finger - actually a passing argument as to why the so-called village witch in question wouldn't have committed the murder(s) - but it was a major focus of the plot in The Pale Horse.

Finally - and this is admittedly a more tenuous connection, but given the other similarities it stuck out - both novels feature a character with similar physical descriptions. The part that stuck out to me was the "prominent Adam's apple," because that seems like such a weirdly specific thing to describe?

The Pale Horse also contained a passing reference to one of Christie's Tommy & Tuppence novels; a character mentions having encountered an elderly woman in a nursing home who spoke, apparently senilely, about a child buried behind a fireplace, which is of course what sets off the Beresfords' investigation-of-the-book in By the Pricking of My Thumbs. So that's an interesting data point for my Agatha Christie Extended Universe theory! Ariadne Oliver and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford apparently exist in the same 'verse, and since Ariadne Oliver and Hercule Poirot definitely exist in the same 'verse, I guess the Beresfords and Poirot also exist in the same universe? (Of course, maybe T&T don't exist in this universe and the mystery of the child behind the fireplace never gets solved. :/)

Read Intimations, a new, very short, very good collection of essays by Zadie Smith, reflecting on the hell year that is 2020. The proceeds are donated to the Equal Justice Initiative and the COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund for New York— it's $4.99 for an e-book and I think it's $10 for a physical copy?

Finished The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman. I have basically no thoughts on it whatsoever, but the ending was cuckoo bananas: Quentin stops Fillory's apocalypse by turning into a dragon, killing its twin gods, and temporarily becoming a god himself, only to give up his godly powers, because Quentin Gives Up is pretty much the theme of this series. I'm pretty sure this still wouldn't have made any sense whatsoever even if I had actually read the last few chapters rather than skimming them because I'd lost interest.

Also, I don't blame Alice for being mad that Quentin "rescued" her from being a niffin. Like, she seemed to be enjoying her afterlife as a disembodied magical energy spirit that can apparently go anywhere - down to the crust of the earth, up past the known reaches of space, through mirrors - so to then be spontaneously re-embodied by her whiney ex, who saw her as more of an ideal than a person when she was alive and only got more "she was the only one who understood me!!" about her in the seven years since she died? I'd be pissed off, too!

...okay, I guess I had two (2) thoughts.

Currently reading

Given my recent Arthurian kick, I'm re-reading The Once & Future King by T.H. White.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

I’ve seen speculation that the white-haired old lady who suddenly starts babbling about the child buried behind the fireplace might have been based on someone Christie actually encountered, because she’s so specific and shows up more than once, and Christie did sometimes use RL stuff as grist for the mill.

[troisoiseaux]

That theory is amazing and/or terrifying.

[kore]

OMG, someone needs to write that fic.

[sovay]

the white-haired old lady who suddenly starts babbling about the child buried behind the fireplace might have been based on someone Christie actually encountered

Also that is a weird enough thing to have happen to a person that if it does happen to you, what else are you going to do with it?

[oursin]

My Arthurian recommendation, if you haven't read it, and with the proviso that it can be really difficult to get hold of, is Naomi Mitchison's To the Chapel Perilous.

[troisoiseaux]

This is definitely on my list, but I've never come across a library that has it and although I could hypothetically buy a second-hand copy online, I've never seen it available for less than $30 :(

[oursin]

Yes - I bought it some considerable while ago when it was very briefly back in print from some obscure publisher: I think there may be rights issues, because otherwise I would have thought it was a prime candidate for Kennedy and Boyd's Mitchison Library reprints. Maddening.

[sovay]

My Arthurian recommendation, if you haven't read it, and with the proviso that it can be really difficult to get hold of, is Naomi Mitchison's To the Chapel Perilous.

+1. I used to own a copy. I lent it to someone. I have never seen it again. I still miss it.

[kore]

Intimations was SO GOOD, but it's getting some bad reviews, which just baffles me. I love her writing so much.

I SO WANTED a different POV for most of the Magicians series -- there were such great women! Julia! Alice! Plum! Jane! -- and yet we were stuck inside Quentin's head and then Quentin becomes A GOD and GIVES IT UP and omfg by then I was sick of Quentin. That speech of Alice's is so great and heartbreaking. The actress killed it in the show, which in a lot of ways supplied the other POVs I wanted, altho it was even more crackfic-like and the last couple of seasons were pretty bad.

[troisoiseaux]

Quentin becomes A GOD and GIVES IT UP

I wouldn't have been so annoyed by this specifically if it hadn't been the umpteenth time that Quentin gave up magic/access to Fillory/etc.?? Like, dude, at least stay in Fillory instead of leaving again and being all "*stares tragically off into the middle distance* I used to be a king" about it.

All the female characters are wildly more interesting than Quentin, although to be honest, I found Janet's narrative voice kind of grating in her POV chapter(s). I'm also fond of Elliot and his character growth.

[kore]

Oh yeah, Janet is VERY grating, altho she won my heart with that long monologue about her time in the desert -- which the actress for the show apparently auditioned with! they made her different in the show, much more likeable and heroic (I was fine with it, LOL, esp since the actress was gorgeous). I really liked the part where she was a witness to Fillory's end, too. And one nice thing abt the show is that now when I read about Eliot I can picture Hale Applebaum, who was just about perfect. Butyeah, nearly everyone in the book is insufferable, maybe with the exception of Alice, who has that opaqueness that makes me think she might be some kind of version of a girl the male author was in love with IRL.

I was WAY more interested in Julia and her demi-goddess?-hood than Quentin being Lord King Creator God who of course was the only one who could destroy AND save Fillory. Bleah.

[troisoiseaux]

who has that opaqueness that makes me think she might be some kind of version of a girl the male author was in love with IRL

Honestly, my entire experience of reading this series was haunted by whatever the opposite of "death of the author" is. Aggressive presence of the author, working some stuff out.

I did like - although I guess like isn't the right word - the part where Quentin's dad died and he's convinced that maybe his dad was a secret magician because that couldn't be it, his dad couldn't have been just some emotionally distant, boring, normal guy, and it turns out... it is. There's no mystery there, no secret panel behind his filing cabinet. It was one of the more emotionally genuine scenes in the series.

I also liked the other Chatwin brother's memoir. It made me sad for the Chatwin brother who became the villain of the first book. :(

[kore]

Honestly, my entire experience of reading this series was haunted by whatever the opposite of "death of the author" is. Aggressive presence of the author, working some stuff out.

LOL, YES

It's almost like white guys are rewarded with lots of money and publicity for working out their issues therapeutically in book series while when women do that, it's a Bad Thing! hah.

Oh yeah, the memoir by the brother was great -- that was really well-written, and so sad. I kept getting all these hints that Grossman really COULD inhabit people OTHER THAN Quentin! ....and yet, there we were, still stuck in Quentin for nearly the whole freaking series.

[moon_custafer]

I have not read either this series or Philip Pullman, but from my friends’ comments on both I’m definitely getting the impression that hatred of children’s-fantasy tropes is not in itself a good reason to write fantasy books?

[kore]

Grossman actually said his series was supposed to be a "deconstruction" of Harry Potter (I....thought Harry Potter deconstructed itself, really, but whatever) and "Wouldn't it be awful for the guy whose life peaked in high school? What would you do after that?" like he thought Harry Potter was some magical jock whose life ended after the Final Year Quidditch Championship Season. I don't even know.

I do like some aspects of the books, but I find the show adapted from them a whole lot better, and a lot of the fic is great.

[troisoiseaux]

Grossman actually said his series was supposed to be a "deconstruction" of Harry Potter

I also get the sense he has some opinions about the Narnia series, although other than "needs to be edgier," I'm not... wholly sure what those opinions are.

[kore]

OMFG if I said what I thought about him using an expy of C.S. Lewis (or "the guy who wrote Narnia" anyway, he doesn't go into CSL's religion at all) as a character who MOLESTS THE ORIGINAL KIDS who travel to Fillory whose stories he basically steals....Comcast would come to my house, disconnect my cable modem, and toss it out the window. UNFORTUNATELY, while the show mostly improved on his dumb plotting, that was one thing they not only kept but doubled down on.

[sovay]

So that's an interesting data point for my Agatha Christie Extended Universe theory!

I like the idea of an Agatha Christie Extended Universe. I don't think it actually occurred to me that her people wouldn't exist all in the same universe, since it's supposed to be ours, except that then you would expect them to meet canonically, all being detectives and such.

[troisoiseaux]

The theory started because, according to a passing reference in The Body in the Library, Agatha Christie canonically exists in the same world as Miss Marple?? Which raises the question of whether Miss Marple - and therefore Agatha Christie - exist in the same universe as Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver, and if so, what kind of detective novels are that universe's Christie famous for writing?!

[sovay]

Which raises the question of whether Miss Marple - and therefore Agatha Christie - exist in the same universe as Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver, and if so, what kind of detective novels are that universe's Christie famous for writing?!

Okay, that went a lot more meta a lot faster than I was expecting.

[kore]

Someone TOTALLY needs to write a Don Quijote Part II style fanfic where Marple and Poirot find the books she's been writing about them.

[evelyn_b]

Man, I like Zadie Smith and I LOVE (my almost-neighbors) the EJI, so thank you for calling my attention to this book and its beneficiaries!

The Once & Future King is one of my favorite books of all time; I've been thinking about rereading it myself.

[troisoiseaux]

I've actually never read anything else by Zadie Smith, although I've heard Of her. I'll have to check out her longer works.

The Once & Future King is definitely one of my all-time favorites, too!

[kore]

I really love her essay collections -- I haven't finished any of her novels yet. /o\

[moon_custafer]

I’ve started reading By the Pricking of My Thumbs, because I don’t think I did back when I was reading a lot of Christie. Tuppence strikes me as having a similar personality to Ariadne Oliver, which makes sense as I think they’re both considered to be partial self-portraits.

[troisoiseaux]

Tuppence strikes me as having a similar personality to Ariadne Oliver

I've somehow never noticed this?? But now that you point it out, yeah, I can see it. Obviously I knew Ariadne Oliver was Christie's self-insert, but I had no idea that Tuppence was also a semi-self-portrait!

[moon_custafer]

Well, what I'd heard was that Tommy was an idealized version of her first husband, so...
I think Tuppence is considered to be a self-insert on her own merits, though. She does share Christie's experiences as a VAD nurse.

Another thing I noticed, early in BtPoMT-- when Tuppence is finally able to pin down her memory of the railway journey where she saw the house, all the details come rushing back, including the print of cornflowers on the dress she was wearing at the time. In a couple of other Christie novels, characters talking about the vividness of some early childhood memories will often use the example of being still able to picture the wallpaper from their nursery, and usually they describe it as alternating bunches of poppies and cornflowers. This is based on Christie’s own childhood nursery, according to her memoirs. Reading the line about the dress, I wondered if for her cornflowers consequently had a symbolic association with visual memory in general.

[troisoiseaux]

Well, what I'd heard was that Tommy was an idealized version of her first husband, so...

Huh. There's a lot to unpack there.

This is based on Christie’s own childhood nursery, according to her memoirs.

I really need to read her autobiography! I read the free first sample chapter of it online and had an "ah ha!" moment about two pages in— apparently her mother had an unhappy experience as an adopted child, which could explain why several of her books have plots that revolve around the concept that Adoption Makes People Unhappy.

That's such a cool detail about the cornflowers! I'd be curious to see if that comes up in Elephants Can Remember, since that one talked a lot about memory (although she mostly focused on the fallibility of it.)

[moon_custafer]

In recent years I’ve seen a lot of speculation that Christie had ADHD—I don’t know what the evidence is supposed to be though I wouldn’t be surprised – certainly some of her characters (frex Lady Angkatell in The Hollow) seem to, and they’re described vividly and often from the inside out, as it were. But from her memoirs, her older brother *definitely* did, and I think perhaps her mother as well. Christie was apparently considered “the slow one” in her family, and it wasn’t until she grew up and began meeting more people that she realized this was an extremely relative term.