Bradbury Challenge Days 9-10
Dec. 24th, 2025 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado1Plus, before I get into this, I wanted to say that A. David stopped by the house yesterday with a wrapped gift for me and Rich, which turned out to be his Christmas mixtape! It's a DVD full of pirated Christmas terror (terrifyingly bad Christmas specials and Christmas-iana, I mean) with a hand-illustrated cover and a cheeky warning on the back.
He also brought in some unexpected packages from the front porch. And then he had to zip off to work, so we didn't chat at all XD But the packages were a fun surprise. One was a Gargoyles trade paperback that I didn't order, don't know why it was sent to me -- I assume something went wrong at the Gargoyles comics Kickstarter and I got sent a free extra as a mistake. The other was a huge box from Madelgard, full of wrapped presents and a birthday card that cracked me up (my favorite part was where she pasted an Andy Warhol Christmas tree painting, and then a picture of Warhol himself, with a speech bubble addressed to my very long nonsensical email address).
The gifts she sent me were so on-point and hilarious -- an erotic Mr. Burns-themed zine called 742 Evergreen Ter., a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror mystery figure (Mr. Burns and Homer sharing the same body), and a hardback copy of "Desperate Passage" about the Donner Party, one of my favorite historical tragedies and something I love to read about during the winter. She didn't even know that, she just correctly assessed my vibes.
Rich and I ended the night by rewatching It, Chapter 2, which was oodles of fun.
Bradbury Challenge Day 9 (Dec. 23)
Essay: The Subscribers' Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Charles Grosvenor
This is from 'The T.E. Lawrence Puzzle," a collection of essays. It goes over the visual element of Lawrence's original limited run of Seven Pillars, which was stuffed with art pieces he preferred to call "decorations" rather than "illustrations." I think he was right to insist on that, based on what I've read here -- the art pieces really don't directly portray any of the events in the book. They're more like abstractions based on the themes of the book. He recruited young, unproven artists who fit the same generation as Lawrence, the war generation -- people likewise changed by trauma and interested in the rapid technological development of the 1920s. Many of the artists were vorticists, a sort of modernist/machinist movement similar to the Italian futurists; I had NO IDEA that was true, because the only illustrations I've seen from the subscribers' edition are romantic portraits and silly cartoons by Kennington.
I also learned that most of those silly cartoons actually came from letters Kennington sent to Lawrence; he didn't intend for them to end up in the book, and even though Kennington was art director, he didn't get much say. Lawrence had a frenetic taste for art, a self-deprecating sense of humor, and he wanted those comic pieces to be included; worse, he wanted them to seem ill-fitting, poorly-placed, unlike the meticulous care he took to incorporate other artworks into the text. He felt that a proper placement would ruin their comic power.
Grosvenor ends his essay with an assessment of Seven Pillars' artistic imperfections, and posits that those imperfections are one of the reasons the book as a whole is such an interesting, personal confessional for Lawrence -- like some part of him wanted his lack of artistic talent (of which he was too aware, maybe unfairly so) on full display.
There's some excellent moments in here drawing parallels between the artwork and Lawrence's state of mind. "The Torture," a graphic piece illustrating Lawrence's rape in Deraa, is excised from the book completely, leaving that chapter without illustration and with a ton of haunting blank space where readers have become conditioned to expect art. Lawrence's sense of himself as a Christ-figure is teased out and made fun of in various pieces, with a darkness that indicates readers are meant to question and dislike it. And I enjoyed this quote:
"Lawrence's state of mind in relation to much post-war art can best be explained, perhaps, by his own comments on some of the illustrations i n Seven Pillars of Wisdom. As we turned over its pages he would explain their meanings, but of some of the stranger wood-cuts at the end s of chapters he would say, 'I don't know what they mean, they're mad; the war was mad.'" (From Herbert Baker's section in T.E. Lawrence by His Friends.)
Poem: The Finish by Gu Cheng
Gu Cheng was an excellent Chinese poet who ended his life in a murder-suicide, attacking his wife with an ax and then hanging himself from a nearby tree. "The Finish" starts with a captivating line: "Then the avalanche / stopped." It's a mysterious little poem with a mix of nature imagery and hints toward man-made boats and the horrors of war.
Short story: Boys by Carol Emschwiller
From The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1, a mixture of essays and short stories on gender and sex in sci-fi. Tiptree, like Gu Cheng, was involved in a murder-suicide at the end of her life. She was a very accomplished person -- and a very depressed one -- who reached the rank of Major in the US Army, then joined the CIA as an intelligence author, and became the best "male" sci-fi writer of her generation. She wrote under a penname and kept her AGAB completely secret, even from writer-friends she developed close relationships to; she identified as a lesbian as well, but married a man named Ting, and when the two of them got older and started having health issues, they entered a suicide pact which Tiptree eventually completed. There is some controversy over whether Ting really wanted to die, or if this was a case of caregiver murder.
Carol Emshwiller's story is excellent -- it's a fun dystopian tale set in a world where men are at war for reasons they don't remember, and society is segregated by gender. The opposing armies live high in the mountains; the women and children live in the valleys between them. Now and then, the men descend on those valleys either for copulation or to steal healthy young boys and rear them up in the army. The boys, supposedly, long to be kidnapped -- at least, the narrator is sure they do, because he did when he was a boy. He used to play close to the wilderness in hopes that he'd be taken, and when his mother fought to get him back (twice!) he was frightened of her and longed to stay in his barracks and continue learning how to shoot.
Now, he's a colonel, and when he leads his men to the valleys to steal more boys, he finds the women have erected a wall around their village. The men didn't come armed for a fight, so the colonel shifts his plans and says this will be a copulation day. Only, when they scale the walls, they find the village empty. The women aren't there waiting to be raped; they're manning the balustrades with rifles in hand. Over the next several days, the colonel enters a dialogue with Una, the leader of the women, who has also been the colonel's lover for 20+ years, ever since their first copulation day. Una threatens that the women will start killing all baby boys if this nonsense doesn't stop; in fact, many of the women have been doing exactly that for quite a while, which is why the colonel has noticed a lack of suitable boy soldiers in recent years.
Repeatedly, the colonel is surprised and confused by how capable the women are at battle; and repeatedly, he shows certain "womanly" traits himself -- a love for his and Una's son, also a soldier; fear and uselessness in battle; sentimental love for Una, a longing to hide here in the village forever and never go back to war. He's also got his own private doubts about the war; he'd like to someday know what they're fighting for, and he hopes that when he's promoted to general, the secret will be revealed to him. But he also worries that no one really knows.
Day 10 (Dec. 24)
Essay: Everything But the Signature Is Me by James Tiptree Jr.
Well, it caught my eye, and I'd just read a story from the anthology, so...
This essay is cribbed together from a series of letters Tiptree sent to a friend after being outed. It gives his/her life story thus far, her reasons for writing under a male name, how she got into sci-fi writing. There's an ominous part early on where she describes her shotgun -- apropos nothing -- and then quickly assures readers that, although she used to duck-hunt, she'll never kill again.
Short story: The Tenants by Paula Martinac (from "Voyages Out 1)
A very short lesbian story told from the POV of a straight landlady. Her sister lives upstairs, but when the sister dies, the narrator searches for nice long-term tenants to fill the rooms. She lands on two lovely young blonde girls, "friends," and grows attached to them -- especially to Susan, "a real pistol." The voice is excellent, abrasive and uneducated and caring. When Susan and Christine eventually break up, the narrator overcomes her natural liking for Susan in order to tell her off -- because she knows Susan's the firecracker, and if either of them is to blame, it's her. The narrator never seems to fully realize they're lesbians, and it's very cute.
Poem: "How I Came To Meet the Fates" by Stanley Moss. From Harvard Review 52.
I should know better than to read poetry that gets published in literary journals ... it always feels overworked, self-conscious, un-musical, and so opaque as to be meaningless. It's like horseshoe theory: you've got popular amateur poetry that goes viral on Tumblr but sucks ass, and then you've got the opposite side -- Harvard Review-type poetry that tries so hard but still also sucks ass. In the middle there's measured, subtle, skillfully-wrought poetry, and that's what I like.
This one is, predictably, about a guy meeting the Fates while in Greece one day and asking them how he'll die. He gets an obscure answer, French-kisses each of them, and continues about his day.
He also brought in some unexpected packages from the front porch. And then he had to zip off to work, so we didn't chat at all XD But the packages were a fun surprise. One was a Gargoyles trade paperback that I didn't order, don't know why it was sent to me -- I assume something went wrong at the Gargoyles comics Kickstarter and I got sent a free extra as a mistake. The other was a huge box from Madelgard, full of wrapped presents and a birthday card that cracked me up (my favorite part was where she pasted an Andy Warhol Christmas tree painting, and then a picture of Warhol himself, with a speech bubble addressed to my very long nonsensical email address).
The gifts she sent me were so on-point and hilarious -- an erotic Mr. Burns-themed zine called 742 Evergreen Ter., a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror mystery figure (Mr. Burns and Homer sharing the same body), and a hardback copy of "Desperate Passage" about the Donner Party, one of my favorite historical tragedies and something I love to read about during the winter. She didn't even know that, she just correctly assessed my vibes.
Rich and I ended the night by rewatching It, Chapter 2, which was oodles of fun.
Bradbury Challenge Day 9 (Dec. 23)
Essay: The Subscribers' Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Charles Grosvenor
This is from 'The T.E. Lawrence Puzzle," a collection of essays. It goes over the visual element of Lawrence's original limited run of Seven Pillars, which was stuffed with art pieces he preferred to call "decorations" rather than "illustrations." I think he was right to insist on that, based on what I've read here -- the art pieces really don't directly portray any of the events in the book. They're more like abstractions based on the themes of the book. He recruited young, unproven artists who fit the same generation as Lawrence, the war generation -- people likewise changed by trauma and interested in the rapid technological development of the 1920s. Many of the artists were vorticists, a sort of modernist/machinist movement similar to the Italian futurists; I had NO IDEA that was true, because the only illustrations I've seen from the subscribers' edition are romantic portraits and silly cartoons by Kennington.
I also learned that most of those silly cartoons actually came from letters Kennington sent to Lawrence; he didn't intend for them to end up in the book, and even though Kennington was art director, he didn't get much say. Lawrence had a frenetic taste for art, a self-deprecating sense of humor, and he wanted those comic pieces to be included; worse, he wanted them to seem ill-fitting, poorly-placed, unlike the meticulous care he took to incorporate other artworks into the text. He felt that a proper placement would ruin their comic power.
Grosvenor ends his essay with an assessment of Seven Pillars' artistic imperfections, and posits that those imperfections are one of the reasons the book as a whole is such an interesting, personal confessional for Lawrence -- like some part of him wanted his lack of artistic talent (of which he was too aware, maybe unfairly so) on full display.
There's some excellent moments in here drawing parallels between the artwork and Lawrence's state of mind. "The Torture," a graphic piece illustrating Lawrence's rape in Deraa, is excised from the book completely, leaving that chapter without illustration and with a ton of haunting blank space where readers have become conditioned to expect art. Lawrence's sense of himself as a Christ-figure is teased out and made fun of in various pieces, with a darkness that indicates readers are meant to question and dislike it. And I enjoyed this quote:
"Lawrence's state of mind in relation to much post-war art can best be explained, perhaps, by his own comments on some of the illustrations i n Seven Pillars of Wisdom. As we turned over its pages he would explain their meanings, but of some of the stranger wood-cuts at the end s of chapters he would say, 'I don't know what they mean, they're mad; the war was mad.'" (From Herbert Baker's section in T.E. Lawrence by His Friends.)
Poem: The Finish by Gu Cheng
Gu Cheng was an excellent Chinese poet who ended his life in a murder-suicide, attacking his wife with an ax and then hanging himself from a nearby tree. "The Finish" starts with a captivating line: "Then the avalanche / stopped." It's a mysterious little poem with a mix of nature imagery and hints toward man-made boats and the horrors of war.
Short story: Boys by Carol Emschwiller
From The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1, a mixture of essays and short stories on gender and sex in sci-fi. Tiptree, like Gu Cheng, was involved in a murder-suicide at the end of her life. She was a very accomplished person -- and a very depressed one -- who reached the rank of Major in the US Army, then joined the CIA as an intelligence author, and became the best "male" sci-fi writer of her generation. She wrote under a penname and kept her AGAB completely secret, even from writer-friends she developed close relationships to; she identified as a lesbian as well, but married a man named Ting, and when the two of them got older and started having health issues, they entered a suicide pact which Tiptree eventually completed. There is some controversy over whether Ting really wanted to die, or if this was a case of caregiver murder.
Carol Emshwiller's story is excellent -- it's a fun dystopian tale set in a world where men are at war for reasons they don't remember, and society is segregated by gender. The opposing armies live high in the mountains; the women and children live in the valleys between them. Now and then, the men descend on those valleys either for copulation or to steal healthy young boys and rear them up in the army. The boys, supposedly, long to be kidnapped -- at least, the narrator is sure they do, because he did when he was a boy. He used to play close to the wilderness in hopes that he'd be taken, and when his mother fought to get him back (twice!) he was frightened of her and longed to stay in his barracks and continue learning how to shoot.
Now, he's a colonel, and when he leads his men to the valleys to steal more boys, he finds the women have erected a wall around their village. The men didn't come armed for a fight, so the colonel shifts his plans and says this will be a copulation day. Only, when they scale the walls, they find the village empty. The women aren't there waiting to be raped; they're manning the balustrades with rifles in hand. Over the next several days, the colonel enters a dialogue with Una, the leader of the women, who has also been the colonel's lover for 20+ years, ever since their first copulation day. Una threatens that the women will start killing all baby boys if this nonsense doesn't stop; in fact, many of the women have been doing exactly that for quite a while, which is why the colonel has noticed a lack of suitable boy soldiers in recent years.
Repeatedly, the colonel is surprised and confused by how capable the women are at battle; and repeatedly, he shows certain "womanly" traits himself -- a love for his and Una's son, also a soldier; fear and uselessness in battle; sentimental love for Una, a longing to hide here in the village forever and never go back to war. He's also got his own private doubts about the war; he'd like to someday know what they're fighting for, and he hopes that when he's promoted to general, the secret will be revealed to him. But he also worries that no one really knows.
Day 10 (Dec. 24)
Essay: Everything But the Signature Is Me by James Tiptree Jr.
Well, it caught my eye, and I'd just read a story from the anthology, so...
This essay is cribbed together from a series of letters Tiptree sent to a friend after being outed. It gives his/her life story thus far, her reasons for writing under a male name, how she got into sci-fi writing. There's an ominous part early on where she describes her shotgun -- apropos nothing -- and then quickly assures readers that, although she used to duck-hunt, she'll never kill again.
Short story: The Tenants by Paula Martinac (from "Voyages Out 1)
A very short lesbian story told from the POV of a straight landlady. Her sister lives upstairs, but when the sister dies, the narrator searches for nice long-term tenants to fill the rooms. She lands on two lovely young blonde girls, "friends," and grows attached to them -- especially to Susan, "a real pistol." The voice is excellent, abrasive and uneducated and caring. When Susan and Christine eventually break up, the narrator overcomes her natural liking for Susan in order to tell her off -- because she knows Susan's the firecracker, and if either of them is to blame, it's her. The narrator never seems to fully realize they're lesbians, and it's very cute.
Poem: "How I Came To Meet the Fates" by Stanley Moss. From Harvard Review 52.
I should know better than to read poetry that gets published in literary journals ... it always feels overworked, self-conscious, un-musical, and so opaque as to be meaningless. It's like horseshoe theory: you've got popular amateur poetry that goes viral on Tumblr but sucks ass, and then you've got the opposite side -- Harvard Review-type poetry that tries so hard but still also sucks ass. In the middle there's measured, subtle, skillfully-wrought poetry, and that's what I like.
This one is, predictably, about a guy meeting the Fates while in Greece one day and asking them how he'll die. He gets an obscure answer, French-kisses each of them, and continues about his day.
