Middle of the week...

[lizwilliams]

The talk on Gothic fiction was very well received, though it is unnerving to find that your audience contains one of the country's leading historians, who knows more about this than I am ever likely to. However, that's the sort of thing that makes you raise your own standards and that's never a bad thing.

I am avoiding reading any lit crit on the subject, but trying to work out some issues for myself. I want to have a look at some other people's theories after I've formulated some of my own. But one question was raised: is the Gothic reactionary, or subversive? So much vampire fiction contains an aristocratic protagonist - are they leeches on the proletariat, or are we supposed to succumb to their superior glamour? At the moment I am swinging wildly in both directions on the issue.

In other news, my editor has now finished her first pass at BLOODMIND and, thanks God, is very pleased with it: she thinks it could go straight out with no harm done, but there are some minor points that need a look. I'm going to go over the whole thing now that there's some distance between myself and the mss.

I have spent the entire morning making incense. We now have a very fragrant house.

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

But one question was raised: is the Gothic reactionary, or subversive?

Or is a bourgeois construct. And baby, it's always and.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. On a case by case basis, sure. But I like some degree of overall coherency. Call it the Tory in me... ;-)

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

are they leeches on the proletariat, or are we supposed to succumb to their superior glamour?

Does it have to be either or, universally? Each author is different, each book is different, if not each character in a book, so why do they all have to conform with some externally imposed theory?

I suspect my inability to see why is a reason I will never be a literary theorist or critic...

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

See above....I think you can draw general trends, without imposing a theory on every work.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

So much vampire fiction contains an aristocratic protagonist - are they leeches on the proletariat, or are we supposed to succumb to their superior glamour? At the moment I am swinging wildly in both directions on the iss

both, surely. That's the point of glamour. You sit there and giggle while the leeches suck your blood.

(I think Pratchett had some things to say about cats along those lines)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

And some things about elves...

[hoosier-red.livejournal.com]

Man, this is going to sound so prosaic, but...

What kind of incense?

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

>What kind of incense?

We had orders for 8 different sorts - we make our own, so I have been grinding frankincense, copal, dragon's blood etc and adding various herbs. I enjoy the process - it fulfils all those apothecary fantasies one might have been having - but it makes me sneeze.