Appropriate Reading for January 20

Alternative Liberties book coverIf you’re in the United States and looking for something to do besides watch the political shenanigans going on right now, check out Alternative Liberties from B Cubed Press. Both the Kindle edition  and the print version are now available.

According to the book description, “Alternative Liberties gathers together some of the finest minds in speculative fiction to address the implications of politics in 2025 and beyond.” You can see a complete list of authors in this blog post introducing the book.

Treehouse resident Nancy Jane Moore has a poem in this anthology called “Not Civilized Yet.”

B Cubed is doing an online event featuring readings by a number of the authors on Facebook beginning at 3 PM Pacific Time (4 PM Mountain, 5 PM Central, 6 PM Eastern).

 

From Little England to New York, not forgetting the Wild West

I once wondered what would happen if each time a place was central to a novel what would happen to the place if the mentions carrying charges. If the charges were of fairystuff, then new York and London, more than anywhere else in the English-speaking world, would turn into fairy wonderlands. Japanese anime answered this question for me by making the charges the stuff of detonation and world-changing tragedy. Tokyo has died more times than anywhere else in the Japanese-speaking world.

When I’d explored this notion decades ago, I kept it in mind, and nearly made a map containing all the places that were the heartland of a novel, just to find out more. At that point I entered the public service (this was a long time ago) and there was no time to make maps.

I turned my thoughts to notions that did not need mapping. How much do we centre our narratives around the US and around England? What does this do to our sense of what makes home? How does it affect how we see ourselves? Often it means we see ourselves poorly, because the London and New York publishing industries tend to reinforce the bias from the stories they select for publication. It’s far, far harder for outsiders to get published and have careers without moving to those places and creating networks and being seen. The further one is from a central place, the more difficult it is. In Australia, Sydney, Melbourne (and recently Brisbane) are those central points. People who can travel a lot and create modern networks are less disadvantaged. We know what this does to careers. I’m not sure we have looked deeply enough into what this does for the stories we tell.

Today, I’m thinking about this quite specifically in relation to the US’s story dream of a Wild West and in Australia’s equivalent. In novel terms, my favourite Australian story based in our Wild-West equivalent is Voss. It’s the opposite of anything written by Zane Grey. White won a Nobel Prize and Grey sold more novels than I can count. They are not, to be fair, good comparisons, because they were not simply written at far ends of the world, but they are also at far ends of the literary spectrum. Yet White and Grey are the two writers who always come to mind when I start to think about popular stories that share history. I read them both when I was fifteen and sixteen. I fiercely wanted to understand them. I didn’t want the literary understanding I was being offered at school. I wanted to understand how they tell us who we are and what would happen if we put them in historical perspective.

Both writers demonstrate some of the core stories we associate with European settlement when we’re telling stories that focus on that settlement. Those core stories give me hints on how we shape our own histories to make them distinctive. The publishing tendency to centralise rubs away differences. Publishing tends to limit the range of stories we’re offered and to focus on areas that publishers think will sell. This reinforces a small concept of the past and the reinforces it again and again and again until we think it’s legendary. Those of us who are not in the right region or culture find the legendary passes us by.

When I was twenty-six I accepted that job in Canberra and suddenly the stories of a gunslinging past were staring at me from the roads I walked. Local farmers were descended from famous bushrangers (Australian outlaws). Canberra is on the road from the goldfields to the big smoke. And yet… we didn’t have a big set of Wild West stories. We have some bushranger songs and tales, but they’re not encapsulated in a whole world the way the Wild West stories are. Australia’s writing legacy was through the UK rather than through the US and do, instead of dime novels, we had penny-dreadfuls and their ilk and heirs. We had writers such as Mary Fortune and Fergus Hume and, later, Arthur Upfield. They’re quite different in nature and story style. In many cases, the lives of the writers themselves held elements of that penny-dreadfulness and the books were often set in Melbourne. For Fortune and Hume, the best place to start with with the work of Lucy Sussex. She is also from Melbourne. Melbourne is, these days, a City of Literature, but it still relies on people living there and does not reach out so much to the rest of Australia. Likewise, the earlier Australian popular literature mentions of places do not seem to carry the same charges as novels set in New York or in the Wild West.

For readers, this is a good thing. Each novel can be read by itself and for itself. But from a cultural standpoint, it’s not so good. The pressure remains to write novels set in New York or to tell yet another Wild West science fiction story.

What are we missing with this? I was going to explore this in another post, next week, but I’ve been thinking about it. Would anyone reading this (including Treehouse friends!) like to talk about our histories? We could compare the dates we’re taught as important. We could discuss why the US has the Wild West while Australia has Marvellous Melbourne. We could compare goldrushes and outlaw stories. It could be a great deal of fun. Would anyone like to share a discussion? (Not for next week, for a mutually convenient future time.)

Need Something to Read?

Ambling Along the Aqueduct, the Aqueduct Press blog, is doing its annual series of authors listing their Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024.

You can read Treehouse resident Nancy Jane Moore’s contribution — Past, Present, and Future — here. She discusses three books that define 2024 for her.

But don’t stop there. The rest of the blog posts are chock full of things to read, to listen to, and to watch, some of them well-known, some obscure.

Check it out. You might find your new favorite thing.

The Complexity of the Future

I have started a new practice – ahead of New Year’s Resolutions – of reading a book for a short time in the morning and again in the evening. The morning practice started as a way of calming myself after doing my morning exercises before I check my blood pressure, but it is growing into something more, a way of setting up my day.

The evening practice is intended to give my mind something to chew on while falling asleep so that it’s engaged with something besides worry. (Worry is not helpful for falling asleep.)

At the moment I’m reading Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time in the morning and Ilya Prigogine’s The End of Certainty at night. This was partly chance – Rovelli’s work is in short chapters, perfect for ten minutes of reading at a time and the Prigogine book is from the library and will have to be returned and is also a book that is best read slowly, in short periods.

Both of them are about time and physics – Prigogine won the Nobel for chemistry, but his work was in thermodynamics – and they do fit together well.

I should point out that I am not a physicist nor have I ever wanted to be that or a scientist of any kind. What interests me about both these books is not the science, but the way the science underlies philosophy and the way our world actually works.

Essentially, I am searching – I am always searching – for different ways to get at deep truth.

One of the things I learned in my many years in Aikido is that it is good to take classes from different people because then you get a glimpse of truth from more than one point of view. That is likewise true of reading a variety of people on a variety of subjects.

Part of what I’m looking for these days is how to deal with the polycrisis – or maybe polycrises – we face these days with the right wing extremists getting in the way of addressing climate change, wealth inequality, misogyny, racism, and other deep problems as well as creating new problems by their very existence.

I no longer think ordinary politics is a useful path. I will leave that to the people who still believe that it might work. I will vote and such, but I will not count on anything done through the U.S. political system to solve any of the real problems or to even get the extremists out of our lives.

So then the question becomes, what can we do? Continue reading “The Complexity of the Future”

Melted Brains

These last few days I reacted to all the not-so-good things in my life by writing a story. The trigger was being told about six different interpretations of Dickens’ Christmas Carol in far too close succession. I’m not quite finished the story yet, but I had such a strong reaction to my small reveal that I am sitting back, bewildered.

The tale is set in a world I’ve used before, the same Jewish Australia that provides the setting for The Wizardry of Jewish Women. Judith, one of the protagonists of Wizardry has a boyfriend that people who read my short stories will know. Secret knowledge. Rather important secret knowledge. The story read with that knowledge is quite different to the story read without it. That’s not what my readers were reacting to. I didn’t tell them about Ash, who happens to be the Demon King and to be an outstanding student of Torah.

I still don’t know why these small words elected any excitement at all, I talked about writing “a Jewish Arthurian story, and the narrator is drunk.” The thing is, it being me, it’s not an adventure story. It’s a cosy tale set in the Middle Ages and is full of rabbis and people who think far too highly of themselves. Judith has opinions about everything and most of her knowledge is borrowed. Maimonides and Rashi are both mentioned, far too often and… trust me, this is not the story most people think of when they dream of Jewish Arthurian matters.

There is much Middle Ages in my life again, which is why it intrudes into my fiction. My next novel (the much-delayed one) is partly set in a Middle Ages. Not our Middle Ages, but close to it. It’s not our Middle Ages because I wanted to break away from the standard way we talk about history and bring people to life using… actual history. I always get into such trouble when I do this.

My non-fiction also contains the Middle Ages. Both of them have so much more than the Middle Ages, as does this little story. I think I might be living irony. Or is that sarcasm? We are in the middle of a heat wave in Australia and when the heat melts my brain the difference between irony and sarcasm melts along with it. This means my short story is the product of a melted brain and has a drunken narrator.

Pity my supporters on Patreon, because they will read it sometime in the next week. If they like it, I might consider editing it further and seeing if anyone wants to publish it*.

*I send all my new fiction out to patrons in a private newsletter. For some publishers this still counts as first publication and for others, not. In any case, I never send it out before it’s been given a thorough going-over, based partly on my patrons’ reactions to it. It’s the difference between a good first draft and a story ready to be shown to the world. My patrons get to see who I am as a writer, not just who I am when I have the help of amazing editors. I do not know what they will make of the drunken narrator nor the melted brain.

Monsters and Books

Today I’m dreaming of Jewish monsters. This is the reason: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ranthalix/jewish-monsters-and-magic-trading-cards

I heard about the project because the publisher of The Green Children Help Out is involved in it. There is an increasing number of people who, despite everything that’s going on in the world and all the antisemitism, are enjoying the wild and amazing stories that are part of all the Jewish cultures.

I saw that this weekend at the Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. R Andrea Lobel  was a guest of honour (who has published a story of mine in Other Covenants – sometimes I think the world is a tiny place) and delivered her plenary on Jewish fantasy.

First, she explained something that had me nodding in sad recognition: right now, a lot of Jewish writers are being avoided by publishers, by booksellers, by many people. Jewish writers from all over the world, and Israeli writers regardless of religion or political views. My own income from writing has suffered from this. I’m visible in some places, and in others, it’s as if I never existed… and I’m one of those who have experienced less hate. No book sales, but also no death threats.

Seeing the Jewish monster cards made me smile. Something cool and fun is entering this world despite all the hate. Of course I’ve backed them. I told my friends that they are a combined Chanukah and New Year present for me, myself and I, but the reality is that they are a tool with which I can combat ignorance and hate. I can learn more about Jewish monsters… and also use them to teach writing. I miss teaching, and cards like this would make it enormously fun.

Rabbi Lobel talked about the history of Jewish fantasy (English-language history, for she did not have two hours! The Jewish Fantastic goes back a long, long way.) then she gave examples of some modern writers of Jewish fantasy for the attendees. I think you might be interested in her list. I’ll give it to you as a screenshot.

R A Lobel's list of recent Jewish fantasy writing
Jewish fantastic fiction

The thing is – and this is not a small thing – there are hundreds of works. Not so many in Australia, which is another story, and I am still a bit overwhelmed that I’m on the list along with Jack Dann. This means that 50% of the current Jewish Australian fantasy writers who have published novels and short stories containing Jewish stuff is on this list. I doubt anyone in Australia will even notice. Jewish fantasy writers are not included in Jewish Writers’ festivals in Australia and Jewish writers are currently not very welcome in the literary scene. I notice, however, and it means a great deal. Mostly, it means that I shall not give up on my fiction despite the current problems.

This week’s post is not deep. It’s a small moment of joy in a difficult time.

Mondayitis

Do you ever have a week when you’ve got more to do than you’ll ever fit in and there’s not a lot of time and it’s all the best work, then fun stuff but you don’t feel well and the world world becomes too much so you sit down with a big cup of tea and watch Captain Scarlet? That’s me. Today. I’m not well and I’m busy and it’s all stuff I want to do…

I have until Thursday afternoon to finish the conference presentation. It’s about how I used my ethnohistorical self to devise a perfectly formed lost culture of magic for one of my characters. I get to talk about magic! And history! And my own writing! I’m talking about the cultural contexts of the magic in The Wizardry of Jewish Women. Demons in lemon trees. Home made amulets. That sort of thing. Except that it’s not ‘that sort of thing’ – I created a complex magic system based on the history of magic, specifically, Jewish magic that my character would have inherited. You can trace where her family lived for about 3000 years if you look at the crumbs of magic I left along the path of the novel. I’ve learned a lot more about the history of Jewish magic since then, and could now create more characters with quite different family heritage and give them all equally Jewish magic.

The truth is that I’m not well. I used to simply take time off to get over the illness-hump, because I get them all the time. Right now, though, I’m busy. I’ll be busy until next June. I love being busy, but I’ve not had to handle so much work alongside the illness since pre-COVID. That’s why I’ve been watching Captain Scarlet. I used to learn new ways of dealing with things by taking long walks or by dancing for two hours. I’ve learned that watching certain types of TV gets me that same thinking, the sort that will change my world because it must. What has Captain Scarlet done for me today? I know I shall include a reading in my presentation and that I shall record the reading for Patreon. I shall also give my patrons some of my coolest research photographs this month, which means I don’t have to write the new fiction I have no time for. And I shall write 700 more words tonight and my new book will reach 50,000 words. I have to finish with all the books on my table (about 40) and have them away before I need to use the table for anything but cups of tea, and those 700 words are the first step in this process. They will also free my brain, because I have 3 essays and that paper t write tomorrow.

Another way I deal with illness is by rewards. The days shopping is delivered, I have potential treats, which I cannot open until I have done the essential work. Tomorrow is such a day, and so IO shall write 6,000 words. Captain Scarlet taught me all this, so it must happen… after a cup of tea. One of the difficulties with my illnesses is staying hydrated, so tea comes first, and stretches and the gentle exercise that will get me back the mobility I had until I tried dancing last week.

It will all work, one gentle step at a time. Until I took that time and admitted just how unwell I am this week, I felt as if the world hated me and as if nothing would ever be finished. This is the single biggest reason for admitting things are impossible and for sitting down in front of the television with a big cup of tea. Light watching and big cups of tea help me find the distance I need to handle the otherwise impossible. Wishing life were kinder is not nearly as effective.

More on returning home

Do not return from abroad. Not returning to a messy everyday is now a fixed star in the constellation of my life journeys. Of all my returns, the recent one is physically the most arduous, and also the most difficult to juggle. Yes, my everyday involves the equivalent of juggling while on a high wire with no shoes and no net.

I’ve been home over a week and I’m still juggling. What am I juggling? The theft of my purse (and its ongoing ramifications), the impossible flight home (things went wrong – not too seriously, but I left my flat in Dusseldorf at 10.30 am on Thursday and arrived at my flat in Canberra at 10.30 am on Saturday) and lots of little things that have gone not-quite-right or completely wrong since then. My favourite today was when I needed to speak to my doctor over the phone because they closed down my bus stop while I was away. It’s temporary, but I couldn’t walk to the next stop and still have the capacity to walk at the far end, see the doctor, run messages, and then everything in reverse. If I’d known the bus stop was closed, I would have left much earlier had a halfway chai at my favourite cafe.

Lots of small things add up. The last two weeks were more exhausting than the previous six weeks, which says a lot, given what I spent the previous six weeks doing.

Also, I was not wrong when I posted last week. Western Germany was easier to be openly Jewish than Australia is currently. A major political party supported a pro-Hezbollah rally in Sydney, for example, where Jewish deaths were threatened, but the party claims to not be antisemitic. I already miss talking about politics openly and easily.

My trip to Germany brought together so many things I’ve been thinking about for years. The book is writing itself at the moment. I will reach a stage soon where I will hit the research brick wall, but I have the first set of research materials all ready for when I reach that stage.

This book is on contemporary German views of their own Jewish history prior to 1700 and has become a place where a lot of things I’ve learned over my life come together. When the current Australian Greens metamorphosed into a small case study in the book, I found myself able to handle things a bit less fretfully. I need to understand and I need to help others understand… and I’m very lucky to have the luxury of a few weeks recovery time (because of my health, this time has been budgeted for) where the main thing I do is sort out the messes life produces, rest enough so that my body recovers from it all… and write.

Trier and environs

This week I travel to the Saarland. I’ll be working with friends who are also locals, because my German is pretty bad. This is when we delve into what people know about their local landscapes, foodways, folklore and other things. The Saarland is a special region. I’m visiting it and hopefully also Aachen to try to understand the role Charlemagne and his heirs and then the Holy Roman Empire played in the lives of Jews. When they came, why they came… and what locals understand of any of this. Do they remember the importance of their Jewish neighbours, once upon a  time? I’ve already played with maps and I know just how important this region was. It’s not talked about a lot, but it was so important that France and Germany have fought over it. Most Jewish histories talk about the French side of the border, of Nancy and Metz. The German side is just as important.

I’m worried about just one thing. Very worried. I know I’m going to make Dreyfus jokes and I should not. The Australian Attorney-General is Mark Dreyfus and his father conducted me in a school choir once upon a time and, as an historian of France I’ve read up on the whole Dreyfus Affair and one of my favourite French writers wrote the  ‘J’accuse’ letter, and the whole Dreyfus name comes from that border area, some of which is now in France and some now in Germany… and… I will try so very hard not to make Dreyfus jokes. Those jokes would be wrong in so very many ways. and yet I’m already tempted

The Written Word

In a letter on reading and literature, Pope Francis observes:

Literature is often considered merely a form of entertainment, a “minor art” that need not belong to the education of future priests and their preparation for pastoral ministry. With few exceptions, literature is considered non-essential. I consider it important to insist that such an approach is unhealthy. It can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, who will be deprived of that privileged access which literature grants to the very heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of every individual.

While the Pope is focusing on the education of priests, much of what he says is relevant to everyone.

I have always considered literature to be one of the most important of the arts and of scholarly disciplines. This is not because I’m a writer, though the depths I found in reading are certainly a good part of why I became a writer.

I recall any number of moments from my youth – and from last week – when I read something that made me think about the world differently from the way I had before. A lot of works that have given me this awareness were fiction, but that sort of truth has also come from poetry and essays and some transcendent nonfiction.

It’s usually fiction that hits most deeply, though, and those deep moments do not come only from books deemed “great” by those that get to define the canon.

This is why I dislike it when writers refer to themselves as “professional liars.” Literature – and I use that term broadly – is about telling deeper truth as opposed to reciting facts. (I don’t think journalism should be just about reciting facts either, though it is a different way of using facts to get at the truth.)

Truth is always more than facts. When you try to reduce it to facts you miss the point, though perhaps not as much as you miss the point when you assert blatant lies as “truth.”

I resent the jokes about English majors as well, even though I wasn’t one of them. (I am proud to have an undergraduate degree in Plan II, which was the liberal arts honors program at the University of Texas, and even prouder of the fact that I didn’t, in fact, major in anything.) I took a lot of literature courses; they just weren’t all in the English department.

I think I learned more about literature in classics classes and maybe even in French classes, bad as I was at French, than in English classes. And also just by reading. I have been reading for so long that I do not even remember how I learned to do it, but I know that I could read before I started school.

I spent a summer in Guatemala studying Spanish. After I mastered enough of the language, I began to frequent bookstores. Eventually I read Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in its original Spanish. It was lyrical in a way that the very good translation of it was not, because Spanish is just enough different from English to tell things in a different way.

That book moved me greatly in both English and Spanish. It also remains one of those books that I cannot discuss well in either language. Samuel R. Delany’s Dahlgren affected me much the same way (though only in English). My reaction was not an intellectual one, though I am sure Chip’s writing process was, in fact, methodical and intellectual. Garcia Marquez’s may have been as well.

That someone can use words and language to create a work that hits me in my guts and emotions is always amazing to me, but it does happen.

Stories matter. Literature matters. And they matter on many different levels. Continue reading “The Written Word”