Ambiguity

I love art that invites the viewer/reader to make up their own mind. For example, in Le Samuorai, when Valerie (the nightclub pianist) definitively declares Jef Costello is not the killer. He says, “Thank you, madame,” and she replies, “It’s the least I can do.”

This, especially in light of the ending, can be read several ways. One’s interpretation says a lot about one’s outlook and ethics. The interpretation I like the best is that Jef could have killed her during the initial hit, because she was the only one who got a clear look at him. He didn’t, and she recognizes that. Of course, you could say that Valerie, as a person of color, understands that even if she does testify, Jef could very well be set free, and she’s already seen him kill once.

But, watching and rewatching that exchange, I don’t think that’s in the actress’s mind, or the director’s. I think Valerie is saying, “You could have killed me, but you didn’t. Now I am paying that debt to you, we’re even, and you won’t come after me.” And Costello, being honorable, would not, and indirectly agrees with his thanks.

Often, in my own books, I try to leave that space around certain decisions by certain characters, so the reader can mull it over. Unfortunately, many publishers dislike any ambiguity unless it’s from the pen of a Literary White Male. “But readers won’t GET IT!” is the most common plaint I hear.

Oh, they will. But I as an artist have to give them the chance to do so. I’d rather do that than insult their intelligence.

Fidgets

I took yesterday mostly off. It ended with knitting and watching the last half of L’Eclisse, which is a pleasant way to spend an evening. Good Lord but Alain Delon was pretty, back in the day. It makes me want to watch Le Samourai again.

I didn’t even have to make dinner–the Princess brought home a take-n-bake pizza. “It’s your day off,” she said. “Copyedits were hard.” (The pizza was delicious, too.)

This morning is strangely sunny, one of those weird weather spots. I can’t settle to a single thing, though, so I blame both the Godzilla ridge and Mercury being in retrograde. I know the latter doesn’t matter, but any excuse for this itchy feeling is welcome. I’m sure once I get out the door and halfway through a run, I’ll settle somewhat.

Both dogs have been particularly needy this morning. They didn’t care that I needed caffeine in order to prop my eyelids up; no, they wanted pets, and since I have two dogs, that took care of my full hand complement. Honestly, I stopped at two children for just this reason–never have more Truly Important Things than you can carry (or keep hold of) in a disaster. That, and I knew I couldn’t give more than two children high-quality parenting. Knowing one’s limits is a necessary art.

The next thing on my docket is a thorough, hard revise of Season 3 of Roadtrip Z. For those asking, there will be four seasons, and after the fourth is done and released there will be a compilation. I may just release the compilation in ebook, since it’s going to be a beast, size-wise, and I’m not sure the price point for putting it in print will be sustainable. As usual, Patreon folks get the ebooks for free, up to and including the compilation.

So that’s the big overarching thing I’ll be focusing on, as well as Beast of Wonder and the finishing touches on the NaNo book’s zero draft. Enough work to take me into the new year, indeed. It will feel good, I’m sure, once I get my run out of the way this morning and the fidgets worked out.

Onward to Tuesday, I guess.

Egg-Carton Treatment

The thing I find most interesting about this is the amount of resources allotted to shepherding a relatively small number of white supremacists to “safety”.

The main group was escorted several blocks to the Farragut West Metro station, which was then temporarily closed to allow the neo-Nazis and white supremacists time to escape. Spencer, meanwhile, was hustled into a waiting SUV. (ThinkProgress)

Can you imagine the same egg-carton treatment given to, say, a small number of BLM protestors? Or a tiny group of Planned Parenthood supporters? I mean, I can imagine the police allowing, say, an SUV driven by a racist misogynist to plow into a group of either and inflict a casualty. But the white glove treatment for either? Clearing a whole Metro station? Something other than pepper spray, truncheons, and zip ties?

I can’t see that at all.

Up for Air

Finished the copyedits. It took four passes, one of which was a page-by-page compare-collate with the actual final draft. By the end, unwashed, glaring, exhausted, and ready to kill the next person who tossed a semicolon where it didn’t belong, I sent the entire package off.

That was my weekend. I know some people have weekends that are actually relaxing, but mine are for catching up, especially since salaried publishing folks (not the writers, never the writers, give them a salary and they might be able to pay their bills, forsooth!) tend to clear things off their desks on Friday, dumping them into freelancer laps. Which wasn’t how the CEs landed on me, but I’ve gotten in the habit of the weekend being just like the work-week.

I did manage to get some housework done, and of course, Odd Trundles got his bath. Have you ever seen umpty-scrump pounds of bulldog practicing Gandhi-like passive resistance in the face of warm water and soap? It’s as amusing (and as hard on the lumbar spine) as you’d imagine. I have to carry Odd from his hiding place to the bathtub, scrub every crusted inch of him–oh, the crusts? Well, bulldogs are yeasty, and I can only wash him once a week or he gets skin problems. So, there’s a daily session with a sponge and a warm washcloth to get creases and folds cleaned out, as well as baby wipes (and, let’s be honest, hemorrhoid wipes) to deal with the more delicate valleys. Things have gotten way better since we switched to a sulfur shampoo, but still, every morning there’s various secretions to be worked free of his surprisingly sensitive skin.

I’ve talked several people out of getting bulldogs just by detailing Odd’s vet bills and the daily routine that keeps him clean and unscabrous.

Anyway, today is for rest and renewal, coming up for air. Knitting. Finishing my meander through Antonioni’s trilogy. An easy run with Miss B at my side. Looking through the projects I have left on my docket and arranging them. I’m not supposed to work today, I’m supposed to rest so I can be more efficient and energetic tomorrow.

But I’m sure I’ll steal a few minutes to write on Beast of Wonder. Or something else. If I go without writing for a day I’m uneasy; two days and I’m uncomfortable; any more and the urge becomes actual physical pain, fingertip to hair-end to toes. I have never understood writing as a hobby; for me, it’s an outright need.

In any case, today is for being gentle with myself. And, possibly, for dancing around the office a bit. Needs and projects are good, yes. But dancing is another matter entirely.

Happy Monday, my friends.

On Little Men

I’ve been reading Victor Serge’s From Lenin to Stalin the past couple days. The hagiography of Lenin is desperate–Serge really wanted to believe the revolution had been betrayed instead of Stalin being its natural consequence–but his portrait of Stalin is one of the better ones. It’s interesting to read as a historical document, especially his assertion that Lenin’s would-be assassin Fanny Kaplan was still alive at the time of publication. (Note: She wasn’t, she’d been shot almost immediately in 1918.) Lenin was a masterful liar and manipulator, dedicated to Marxism no less than to the myth of his own inerrancy, and the only thing that saved him from becoming Stalin was his relatively early death.

What’s also interesting is the absolute predictability of abusive, fascist shitheels. They all operate off the same playbook. The revolution that survives long enough eats its young and becomes tomorrow’s dictatorship. Those who survive the revolution and profit from the exhaustion afterward aren’t the bravest, the brightest, or the best–they’re the most violent, the ones most capable of pulling levers in committees, the ones who can terrify a group into submission to their whims, the already-advantaged. All this led me to a realization.

I am struck, over and over again, by the type of the Little Man.

The Little Man is a bigot, soaked in toxic patriarchy and raised to believe he is superior but prey to a gnawing sense that his benefit on an uneven playing field means he is secretly weak. (It’s true, but telling him so carries a high risk of being brutalized or shot.) He is the absolute autocrat of his home–or tries to be, and any resistance to his rule is met with overwhelming violence, at first emotionally but then, inevitably, physically. On a larger scale, resistance to his primacy is met with discrimination and violence against women, different skin colors or cultures, or anyone not prepared to ritually lick his boots. If he is rich, his sense of grievance is doubled by the gnawing suspicion of weakness, and if he became rich by trumpeting that sense of grievance, it becomes the hill he will, if at all possible, force others to die upon.

I grew up under the heel of a Little Man. There is practically no difference between his regime and Stalin’s, it’s only a matter of degree. The domestic tyrant’s only variance from the nation’s dictator is scale.

Resistance to the Little Man’s rule is at once treated as trifling and overwhelmingly dangerous. Stalin’s regime at once believed that “Trotskyism” was weak, ineffective, stupid–and so overwhelmingly powerful that only mass arrests and shootings held any chance of eradicating it. The domestic tyrant belittles his victims, calling them weak and stupid, but at the same time malicious and crafty enough to bring down all order within the house. The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming–the victims are at once all-powerful and powerless, a threat to be met with overwhelming force and mere insects easily crushed. He must be at once infallible as a ruler and endangered by the machinations of the weak. For example, let’s not forget Lenin saw the NEP as merely a temporary stopgap, and planned to go back to shooting peasants and confiscating grain as soon as politically feasible; his sole concern was making his backtracking seem like something he’d endorsed all along and making sure the violence would be, too. Or that Stalin’s bugbear Trotsky was everywhere and nowhere at once, the original 1984 Goldstein. Or the current administration’s harping on “Muslim terrorists.”

The Little Man desires, wants, needs to be a god. He will have nothing around him but cringing servility, but when faced with an external authority he becomes the servile cringer. He abuses his spouse, his children, his mistress with seeming impunity, but also threatens them to keep their mouths shut. Sunshine on his private peccadilloes is feared above all else. A totalitarian state, seemingly all-powerful, menaces its citizens with divide-and-conquer and the threat of nine grams of lead–but sunshine on its inner workings lights the fuse of resistance. The Little Man craves legitimacy, and will beat, murder, rape, and rob until he has a facsimile of it.

Above all, the Little Man requires that his victims not only submit physically but emotionally, spiritually, invisibly. It wasn’t enough for the tyrant I grew up under that I was physically incapable of fleeing, that I stopped outward resistance after a protracted beating. He wished, he required, that I make my debasement complete by thanking him for his abuse, flattering his vanity, telling him he was right. The ritual–first physical abuse, then mental and emotional debasement–was set in stone, and refusing to submit to the latter half inevitably brought more physical abuse. The tyrant, domestic or national, wishes to be told he is the best, the biggest, the smartest, the bravest, the alpha and the omega. He wishes hosannas of praise to temporarily drown out consciousness of his final impotence, to temporarily salve the consciousness of playing a game rigged for his benefit and hence meaningless.

God, to the Little Man, is merely the Little Man in charge, made in his image, given lip service. Freedom, to the Little Man, is merely his own to force compliance on others. Justice, to the Little Man, is the deck stacked in his favor and the victims adoring and thanking him. The Little Man is a workplace harasser, a domestic batterer, a domestic terrorist, a fascist functionary, a totalitarian dictator. Again, the only difference between all those species is of degrees, the size of their victim pool. A group of Little Men will smile and scrape at their leader until the time seems right for knives in the dark, then the next Little Man will take his place.

Oh, I grew up with a Little Man. I dated several of them. I married one, and divorced him posthaste. I’ve worked for them, I’ve seen them in power, I’ve had to deal with them every moment of my life. I know their games, their inadequacies, their vanities. I was forced to learn all about them to survive. It’s faint comfort to be able to predict them.

I’ll leave further, obvious comparison to current events and regimes to your own imagination, dear Reader. I’m tired, and there’s a run to get in and work to do. Reading history makes me cynical, and leaves me with only one thought.

May all the gods save us from Little Men.

That Old Publishing Pendulum

All I want to do is knit and watch Antonioni movies today. I’ve been on an Italian kick lately, a bunch of Fellini crawling in through my eyeholes and scratching a deep dream-urge or two in my visual cortex. Antonioni is a natural next step, but I’ve got work to do. I managed to catch up on NaNo wordcount, and those copyedits aren’t getting any fresher.

*time passes*

I wandered away to do some website setup, was balked several times, and finally threw my hands up in despair. I’ve a run to get in this morning too, though as soon as I step out the door I’m sure a torrential downpour will appear. The only question is whether or not to take Miss B with me. On the one hand, it will tire her out. On the other hand, a soaked and enthusiastic dog climbing all over me all day.

Choices, choices. What I’m really doing is resisting finishing Reader’s Shadow.

Part of my foot-dragging is the fact that any book with a teenage girl as a protagonist is viewed as “girly YA” unless it’s written by a Franzenesque white dude. (Then it’s regarded as “Serious” and “Literary.”) Which drives me to a type of jaw-clenched irritation bordering on actual vexation. It’s not that I dislike YA as a genre, or that I don’t want to write those stories. The trouble lies with the marketing and packaging. I had to push back so, so hard against pressure from publishers to water and dumb down teenage characters, the entire experience left an awful lingering taste. Kids swear, kids think about adult subjects, kids are far smarter than our society can admit. The pathological worship of pliable female youth in our culture is a mess of malignancy, and like all cancers, it does its best to eat up anything around it. Getting sucked into that black hole, having to fight against its pull, is difficult and draining on a daily basis. When you add having to fight for your work, for characters you believe in, it can wear you down to threadbare right quickly.

That’s a big reason why I don’t want to “publish YA.” It’s not the fans or the stories, both of which I love. It’s the uphill battle against marketing committees who want me to dumb down, water down, filter, bullshit the story. Even a whiff of that bullshit will turn readers off; their noses are extremely sensitive. After tearing one’s heart and guts out to write a novel, having to go into battle daily against the drip-drip-drip of “couldn’t you just change this one little thing? then this other little thing? oh, and this tiny thing? oh, and this?” can drive one to a cyanide well.

“You can’t have them drink. You can’t have them swear. What will the Bible Belt mothers think? If even one of those biddies complains we get scared. You can’t have teenagers acting like teenagers! We’ll lose sales!”

There are dedicated, fantastic people working in YA. But the pressure from bean-counters and marketing–even if those bean-counters and marketing folks are dedicated and personally quite winning–wears away at the edges until, if you’re not careful, you end up with pablum reeking of aforesaid bullshit. It’s more of an institutional culture than an individual failing, and it dragged at my keel until I sank. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was writing YA under terrific pressure in my personal life as well. (It was painful, let’s just leave it at that.)

So, writing teenage protagonists right now reminds me of all that. My faithful agent, to her credit, keeps trying with the YAs I write just for her, but my unwillingness to blunt any of the sharp edges means it’s a matter of finding exactly the right editor at exactly the right house, and that takes time. She believes in the books; I’m endlessly grateful for that.

But I doubt I’ll ever do trad publishing with YAs again. Or even self-pub, with the current one I’m working on and Harmony, which is out on sub now. “The problem is,” I remarked to said faithful agent, “they’re not ‘young adult.’ They’re books that just happen to have teenage protagonists, that’s all. ‘Young adult’ has become a somewhat ossified designation.”

She insists they have a very teenage voice–either a testament to skill or a mark of how I manage to vanish so the characters’ broadcast comes through–and wants to see them out in the world. I can’t fault her for that. I’m the biggest obstacle to getting them out, because I’m so gun-shy. I’m also extremely conscious it’s a luxury, to be able to wait, to hold out, to have the time to do so. I’m grateful for it.

Nothing in publishing lasts forever. The pendulum will swing again, I’m sure.

But in the meantime, I wait, and write these things for my darling agent, and tear my heart out for characters who won’t see the light of day until the swinging starts.

It’s enough.