(no subject)

[flemmings]

I was going to do that self-indulgent 'if you had me in your power and could make me write anything you wanted what would it be' meme, so possibly it's a good thing my right shoulder suddenly went sproing this morning as I was innocently drinking coffee and reading volume whatever of Kurotsubaki in Second Cup. So I now can't type comfortably at all. This is good from the pov of dignity anyway, and expanding one's skills- I type with one hand mostly and it usually isn't the left one.

Pulled out another dry brittle volume from behind the front-line manga to see how it reads. The King In Yellow, and it reads very well, aside from 'MZB you brazen unblushing bare-faced thief!!!' twitchings. (Yes, yes, Hastur and Cassilda in Darkover is an injoke. Cassie Claire said the same thing about her uncredited borrowings, but no one bought it from *her.*)

Well, and one overwhelming cannot-suspend-disbelief thingy.

The King in Yellow is a play. A pseudo-Jacobean play, by the sound of it. Reading about the unspeakable horror and depthless despair engendered by a play makes me go Bwahahaha. If it had been a poem or a tale or a novel or a medieval chanson or just about anything else I'd buy the conceit of its withering effect on the souls of its readers. But not a play. Plays are at best the top half of the iceberg. You don't see them working properly unless you see them staged. And sorry, plays don't usually provide detailed descriptions of the places they take place to harrow the souls of readers thereafter. So no, sorry. Seeing the Pallid Mask might give you wanhope fantods, but reading dialogue about it just... won't.

And anyway, barely a page into the thing and I'm told that practically the first wonderful thing the new enlightened government of this AU America did, was deny European Jews admittance to the US. This in Chambers' view vastly improved the country. (The country that had established religious tolerance, yet.) That's going to bring me up with a short sharp shock alright. On account of America did restrict the immigration of European Jews-- the ones trying to escape Hitler. Once again, the horrors of reality trump anything a full-fed late Victorian could dream up.

Comments

[incandescens]

Though James Blish's short story relating to The King In Yellow, _More Light_, is quite interesting if you run across a copy of it.

The Flow, part whichever

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I google More Light. Read the wikipedia entry on Carcosa and then look at the other cites. "And find the story More Light," someone is saying. "The only place I know it's been reprinted is in the anthology Alchemy and Academe." Mh? I unearthed an (unread) anthology of alchemical stories from the basement last winter, it's sitting not three feet away from me on top of Chambers' Encyclopedia, could it be...? Yes it could. Things wash up in this study and hang around forever until someone mentions them online, like rushthatspeaks and Voyage to Arcturus. This never happens with the stuff in the bedroom, you note.

Re: The Flow, part whichever

[incandescens]

That is . . . truly impressive.

(My copy of the story is in The Hastur Cycle, a collection of stories related to the Hastur figure in Cthulhu-related fiction, which also includes The Yellow Sign and The Repairer of Reputations. Do let me know if Alchemy and Academe has other good stuff in it.)

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

LOL! The funny thing is that I'd never ask for a story if I thought you'd actually try to write it! On the other hand, having gotten myself the 2nd art book for 百鬼夜行抄 for M's-day ... I have to say that Ritsu in full color plates is a sensually sensual figure. (or maybe it's just her backgrounds) If only she didn't write him as oblivious!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Sensually sensual and oblivious melts nicely into certain yaoi tropes that I'd so like to do, of the passive ravished innocence variety, with a nice framing structure to keep the unsavoury action distant. A story he reads in a book, a fever dream, an out of body experience; something like that. And like his suffering with The Thing In His Eye- that Ima doesn't go into detail about: is it physical? emotional? spiritual? She doesn't say- it's something that he simply endures until it's over and deals with the aftereffects until they're gone, without overt repining anywhere along the way.

Or maybe those sensual pictures of him in the illustrations are pictures of his soul, and no matter how oblivious his waking mind may be, his innate soul knows better.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Indeed! I agree with you on all points. I love the idea that his innate soul knows better.

Have you seen the art book? If not, shall I lend it to you?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I've probably seen the illos in it from her covers and frontispieces. The first set- the boxed one that shiny_monkey sent me- was all drawn from the books IIRC.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think it is all covers and other illos previously published, but seeing them together like that is what made me realize the sensual aspect of the whole thing.