Post-Con
Next week: interviewing Kevin Herane in Beverly MA!
Last week was Readercon and this week I’ve been finding my footing. I often come away from cons feeling like I wish someone had been taking notes, and this time it turns out someone was: Kate Nepveu’s blog has great quick transcriptions of many panels, including my interview of Amal, who was one of this year’s Guests of Honor! Kate has many other panel notes, including of two conversations that I really enjoyed—the Classics with Undeservedly Bad Reputations panel and a panel on The Works of Naomi Mitchison. (When you follow the link, Dad, you’ll have to click the little triangle next to “notes” to expand the notes section.)
We returned from a jaunt to Los Angeles two weeks ago, and ran right into the 90+ heat/humidity wet blanket combo that’s laid on top of the northeast recently. It took me a week to screw my courage to the sticking place and go out for a run—anything above 70 degrees feels awful to me if there’s any humidity and it was 75 degrees and 85 percent at sunrise—but once I actually got out there, it felt great to have done—facing a little bit of my own resistance. But: it feels good to have the morning temperatures back down to the mid-60s.
Last night I finished Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers, which my friend Rachel has been strenuously recommending I read for… years? An embarrassing span. Like Roland the Gunslinger, I’m slow, but I get there eventually. What a trip—and a novel that makes more than any other the case that Whimsey is a Lymond precursor, an argument Rachel advanced on reading Game of Kings but which never quite clicked to me until reading the Harlequin scenes here. Also: I don’t know the first thing about cricket—like Raphael (turtle, 1990) I have some intuition that you have to know what a crumpet is to play cricket & maybe it’s sort of like double baseball somehow?—so: what a writing trick to keep me on the edge of my seat through a triumphant high-stakes game of friendly intra-office cricket!
Also—if you, like me, are a sucker for that moment in a story where a hero who’s been trying to keep the extent of his true power under wraps throws off the cloak and represents (Rock Lee in the Gara fight, many many early episodes of Kenshin, many Lymond adventures, “I am not left-handed either,” etc. etc.)—the moment when Peter Whimsey stops playing cricket as Mr. Bredon, the mediocre ad-man persona he’s adopted, and starts playing cricket as Lord Peter Whimsey—it does the thing.
The book’s a formal departure for Sayers—the narrative voice more expansive, more socially invested, more modernist. There were moments when I found myself thinking of the business & scenester elements of The Recognitions, not just because of the core matter of advertising, but because of a use of catalogue of event and impression. There’s a brief section about what Peter Whimsey learns working at a London advertising agency, that reminds me of the famous Infinite Jest section “Things You Learn in Boston AA”—a similar rhythm and technique. I wonder if Wallace read Sayers?
That’s the shape of it anyway. Parenting, writing, reading, keeping my eyes on the sky. Take care of yourselves.
If you’re in the greater Boston area next Tuesday (July 23) at 7pm, I’ll be in Beverly MA at Copper Dog Books, interviewing the wonderful Kevin Hearne about A Curse of Krakens, the final volume in his epic fantasy trilogy. Event link here. Come by!