Reading, Watching, Doing

This is a place for me to hold forth on matters both serious and silly. You are invited to participate. 

Forgive me readers, it has been 6 years, 2 months and 6 days since I last three-thinged. Disgraceful, is it not? For my sins I must say half a dozen ‘Hail Atwoods’ and abstain from eating chocolate cake until at least Sunday teatime. And it jolly well serves me right!

I’m not going to attempt to summarise everything I’ve read, watched and done since 2018, though I will on this occasion include a snapshot of a Moomin table lamp decoration from our wedding bash last September. Fond memories and all that. Thenceforth, this feature has been officially rebooted with minor changes and will peer no further into the past than 1^st January 2025.

One final point before I get started: Much as I relish a lovely long list under a bold heading, I’m mostly going to adopt the mix and mingle method from here on in. It makes sense as practically every topic I cover would fit perfectly well into all three categories. Righty-ho! Let’s get this chicken airborne. 

Reading, Watching, Doing: An Amalgamation 

As ever, I’ve been reading all manner of books, essays, articles and short stories. Some merit a mention, others most definitely don’t.

On my nightstand I typically like to keep a slow book simmering, which I then dip-into nonchronologically over an indefinite period. In other words, I take a readerly meander each night before dozing off with specs still perched on my nose. At present, I am randomly perusing No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (she of Gertrude and Alice, Wild Girls: Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks and various other biographies of prominent lesbians), an engaging history of “four women [living in Paris between the wars] who broke the rules,” and “fostered the birth of the Modernist movement.” More on this in future TTs.

While on link truffling duties for Winding Up the Week, I often disappear down a rabbit hole only to emerge in a badger’s set (or a puffin’s burrow) – that is to say, not at all where I expected to be but, nonetheless, a welcome diversion. It is on such forays I’ve blundered into features such as these which, while sometimes unsuitable (for any number of reasons) for my Saturday digest, are worth touching on because I find them funny, fascinating, poignant, pertinent, quite possibly infuriating, or a chaotic combination of all five.

Just a small taste this time but, for instance, there’s Agnes Callard’s article, Where the Wild Things Aren’t in issue #9 of Asterisk wherein, she discusses telling “our children that weirdness is a blessing in disguise.” This, she feels, is “our fantasy, not theirs.” She riffs on how “heavily didactic and moralistic” children’s literature of the past holds little or no interest for kids today (they “would not know what to make of it”). Nowadays novels lean towards “odd and exceptional and moody and alienated children” whose protagonists have a tendency, as she puts it, to being “nonconformist, disobedient to authority figures, a misfit or loner who lives in a world of their own.” While the young were once encouraged to be virtuous (or at the very least “ordinary”), they are now “invited to be weird.” Are we “finding ever more fine-grained ways to squash” people rather than liberate them? “Given the collapse of individualism,” she observes, “why celebrate weirdness?” A very good question!

A Moomin table lamp at our wedding

Now for Neil Gaiman… What a very sad state of affairs it is when one of our most celebrated living fantasy authors is accused by eight separate women of non-consensual sexual acts and coercion. He has denied this, of course, but we have reached a stage where he and his ex-wife, Amanda Palmer are being sued for rape and human trafficking. So, once again, we are compelled to ask ourselves if it is wise ever to raise ‘inspirational’ people aloft as models of behaviour and morality (be they literary idols or otherwise). If you originally wanted to read this lengthy Vulture exposé but were prevented from doing so by the paywall, here is an archival copy of the article. I will, however, caution you that personally I found it deeply depressing, frequently distressing and not a little stomach-churning. Nevertheless, I will leave you with a link to Lila Shapiro’s There Is No Safe Word: How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. You can make up your own minds.

A new day dawns over the Marina

I’ve no desire to end on a low, so I will tell you what fun Mrs Jotter and I had attending one of The North Wales Burlesque and Cabaret Festival shows last month, celebrating the troupe’s tenth anniversary. It was the perfect way to lift us out of our post festive doldrums, featuring as it did performers with names like Lili Del Fflur, Foxee Stole and Carnal Rot. It was a bit naughty in a Carry On film sort of way, but ideally mood enhancing on a wet and windy evening.

I should also like to share with you my discovery of a delicious veggie version of stir fry crispy ‘duck’, which I’ve become partial to this winter. When we (not infrequently) nip to our ‘local’ for a bite to eat and a cold-weather snifter-lifter, I often order the ‘Hoi-Sin vegetarian ‘duck’ and stir-fried vegetables with basmati and wild rice. It’s heartening to find a tasty no-meat-or-fish alternative to the usual V-marked ‘pub grub’ items on the menu. Incidentally, it is also suitable for vegans. A definite win-win for both duck and diner.

Why not let me know what you’ve been doing with your days, or better still, compile your own Three Things-type post.

Categories: Three Things

Tags: Agnes Callard, Bryher, Children's Fiction, Diana Souhami, Gertrude Stein, Kidlit, Lesbian Biography, LGB Non-Fiction, Modernism, Moomins, Natalie Barney, Neil Gaiman, Sylvia Beach, Weird Fiction