Tad Williams

My big problem with Stephenie Meyer's writing is how weird it is – I don't mean the subject matter, with which she has done some very interesting and even innovative things, so much as how febrile imaginings take the place of actual plot and suspense; and narrative tension to move the story forward; and endings in which there are shocks and surprises, and actual twists and turns, rather than mere simplistic resolution (they were there at the right time! or, everyone agreed!)

I loved the imagining of the vampire condition. The big surprise of the pregnancy – the surprise to the reader, that is – the birth sequence (terrific) and the transformation from human to vampire (terrific) – all of that was gripping. But there are great longeurs in this novel, as there were in the first (I skipped the middle novels), and it seems to me Ms Meyer has had great success before she was required to develop as a writer.

Or maybe it is so, that she has developed as a writer to a fine degree in some areas, and to a poor degree in others. It's quite intriguing.

Maybe the point is that ultimately it's a romance novel, and the heroine is there to be adored, and the reader is to be supplied with an escapist fantasy of being desired to the point of insanity, and fought over. I really enjoyed this in places, though I sped-read most of it. I admire the work as an achievement. But ultimately I'm just kind of puzzled.

There’s an interview in Poets & Writers with wonder-agent Molly Friedrich, and I just love her passion, and how she puts words to what’s in my heart also:

What is extraordinary about this business is that we get to be more interesting than we would otherwise be. Because of our work. That's really important. In other words, we do go to dinner parties, and we do meet interesting people, and reading remains and will always remain a great common currency. It's fantastic to work in the world of ideas, and great plots, and the great insights that are given to us by writers. I don't ever want to be far away from that. And I won't be. I refuse. I feel deeply privileged to be in this business.

Yup – ain’t that the truth.

Here comes another Mike Heath poem. I’ve decided I like this one even more than the last one. I guess I’m identifying with this, too. I had a quandary about the 2nd to last line, I was thinking, shouldn’t it be “Having flipped” - ? But when I thought about it, I liked the ambivalence, as in, to flip, or be flipped – you’re on top of it – no you ain’t, you just been screwed again. Ha!

Not To Be Didactic, But

I am bohemian queer generalist
Eternal optimistic dupe of the peepshow
Musical archeologist and C-list plank spanker for hire
Invisible witness to the endless street parade of male beauty
Binge drinker needy modern arrogant doormat
In summation an irredeemable putz
And less and more besides
At the best of worst of times
Times five

Taxiing to middle age
Even now not poor enough to rebel
And not rich enough to rule

Oh well
Better a crying wolf
Than a dead dog

Thus does the moving finger
Having been flipped
Bugger right off

Anybody in the Tadworld seen this wonderful site http://io9.com/5035837/10-comics-creators-we-wish-would-make-movies-instead-of-frank-miller yet? I imagine so, you're usually faster than me... Anyway, way cool site. (They don't like Frank Miller right now, BTW.)

Tad's just come back from basketball too banged up and hot to think. We're deep into work again – just finished the copy-edit read-thru for Ordinary Farm and am going through the garage (coff coff) for new content for the site, O my. And Tad's hard at work on Shadowrise again. We saw the interior illos for Odfarm this week – beautiful!

I lost my copy of Sacred Grounds, Mike Heath's latest volume of poetry. It was passed around between me and Tad and then the house ate it. But I kicked the foundation till the house burped it up, and so here is my favorite one – Mike's a beat poet and I just loved this.

Poem For PJ Proby

Right place right time
Black velvet baby child
of Elvis and JB
of Barnum and Mary Shelly

It was only the knees of mah pants that split really

Let people talk or not
What do you care
Cohn at your left hand
Bangs at your right

Ahm the killer in chinchilla

And when you get to the gates
With carrier bags of J&B
Special Brew and orange
Leering at the pearly funky angels
Will you tell them as well

Ah am an artist and should be exempt from shit

And will St Pete smile and say
I agree
and concur
Good sir
and bid him fond eternity within

The vacation, part deux. In the San Juan Islands we go whale-watching, specifically, orca-watching. I am fascinated by the foaming and hissing of the boat’s wake, the drumming sounds that come off it through the hull, the smack of the boat hitting a wave. I learn for the first time that orcas are in fact dolphins, not whales per se. There’s someone on the boat complaining loudly about the 100-yards distance we must keep by law (his issue is he thought he could go way closer to them – probably wanted to pet them too, I think waspishly to myself), but when we are as close in as we can be, they are an amazing sight – a patriarch, a young male and a baby, all hunting together, and there comes a point where they come in close and the boat falls still and the people fall silent. For two long minutes there is only the sound of the orcas’ blow, which is a deep snorting followed by the spattering of water as it lands on the surface of the ocean.

Some adventures come our way, driving in WA state, around Mount St Helens. There are a few events ‘tis best to pass lightly by: but as we come down through the Cascades there, we get to see magnificent views of Mount Adams, which thrill (and calm) us all. And finally we descend to the Columbia Gorge, and the town of White Salmon.

It’s a very pretty place but it isn’t well sign-posted, and we can’t find the river crossing that will take us into Oregon, so we stop and ask directions then pull away again, and half a block later we are stopped for speeding.

I basically think we’re the victims of cops in a small town, perhaps getting their quota numbers up, or thinking that it’s all revenue for the town anyway. Because I can’t quite believe their claims that Tad was doing 42 in a 30 zone. Still and all, it’s ticket # 2 for the trip. This one isn’t so funny. Tad’s furious and argues with the cops. He tells them he’s going to challenge this.

We dive into a historic inn in Hood River where the gardens and rooms are gorgeous, just like the Cosmo’s. (For me. Tad has wine and cheers up when I photo him and the kids against the backdrop of a pretty serious and quite huge still-life.)

The day afterwards, we drive through north-east Oregon, heading for Fossil (from which you can tell what the main attraction is. Or maybe not, because the surprise there is the astonishing local museum they have – little bits of personal history, quilts guns bedpans fossils, a sequined dress for the belle of the ball, towns rising and dying, photos 100 years apart next to each other, people’s accounts of their emigration tales, and all over the place too there’s embroidery Indian artifacts bottles awards, 120-year-old baby shoes, all these fragments of the old West, lots and lots and lots just stuffed into two big rooms. Magic!)

And the landscapes after Fossil leave me and Tad ecstatic. (Not so much the kids – Girl kept saying, When are we leaving Texas? Though, having seen There Will Be Blood, I have to ask anyone who can tell me – Is Texas beautiful?) There are canyons and deserts and rock formations and deep, mojo gorges. There are painted rocks (well, cliffs and buttes more like, with astonishing, layered colorations) and views that go on for hundreds of miles. There are towns where the houses and barns are original to the settlers, and where time is timeless, because the place’s history is right there on the surface, and so along with the heat and light and dust there lies over everything a sense of time having stopped. It doesn’t move. Time out of time.

It’s the best. It’s what we came on our trip for. The kids have a Simpsons orgy in the back seats, and Tad and I smile at each other, and hold hands, and bliss out.