Proximal Eye – Page 16 – Mark W Tiedemann

Multitasking

January 31, 2013 4 Comments

How many books do you read at the same time? Once in a while, a book so grabs me that I can’t read anything else till I’ve finished it. (Also, once in a while, I have to read a book that is by its nature a struggle and if I read anything else during the effort I’ll never get through it.) There are days I miss the ability to do multiple things at once—read, listen to the radio, watch television, carry on a conversation. I think we all remember a time when we could do this, but I also wonder if we remember how much we actually got out of it. I know that if there are voices around me now, spoken or sung, reading is impossible. I write to music—instrumental music—but that’s the limit of my cross-discipline multitasking. (I’m writing this to Glen Gould’s performance of Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto. I find myself recognizing passages during the pauses between thoughts,

Bound and Determined

January 28, 2013 5 Comments

A staple of YA science fiction is the story of the Young Person who begins quite normal and average and through circumstance becomes entangled in Epic Events and ends up an Important Person. Yes, it’s a coming-of-age arc because the plot requires maturation. In the best of them (from Heinlein to the present) the protagonist isn’t the only one maturing, but the society/culture of which he or she is a part. The events of the story perforce drag the whole civilization along, sometimes kicking and screaming, to a new level in order to deal with the New Thing that must be dealt with. And of course at the end of the novel or trilogy, rapprochement of some kind is achieved, balance gained, and good things are in the offing as a result of the timely, clever, and ultimately mature intervention of the newly-minted adult at the center of the story. (Of course this is not limited to science fiction, but

Apocalypsis

January 21, 2013 No Comments

China Miéville seems to be going down the list. Fantasy, science fiction, horror, police procedural, Kafkaesque urban surrealism…each novel works some new twist on established forms to produce, if not a definitive work, at least an iconic representation of type. Of course, he’s not just trying to recapitulate what’s been done. He’s not just re-presenting particular types. With each work, he seems to be stretching the boundaries—the limits—of the form until they break, and presumably Something New emerges. (And in some instances, he’s turning forms inside out and demonstrating both their deepest flaws and the possibilities of new attributes. For instance, Perdido Street Station would seem to be an urban fantasy adventure. It is set in some Other City, that could be London if certain mythic veins had emerged as dominant in our history as opposed to what did establish itself as the Known. But fantasy requires at its heart an Organizing Principle around which clashes of good and evil

On Tactics

January 16, 2013 1 Comment

I’ve redone my office. This was a much more arduous task than I originally thought (although I sort of had a premonition, I suppose, because I kept putting it off), but is now in the main done. While the geography doesn’t look that different, the feng shui is markedly changed. I have more pacing room, a necessary component to my writing ability. (I also pace when I’m on the phone, a habit that required first very long cords and then, later, portable handsets.) Part of any convulsion like this is the uncovering of Old Stuff. In this case, papers of various arcane and now-meaningless import. Some of it, though, has been a delight to rediscover. Like an archaeologist with a new potsherd or a bone, I’ve found layers of past interest embedded in corners unexplored since my last major make-over. Cartoons, scribbled notes, lists, fragments of stories, and far too many scraps with phone numbers and no names. Hmm. One

Lincoln

January 10, 2013 2 Comments

Hagiography is destructive to truth. The worshipful retelling of past lives by advocates who wish to see their subjects purely in terms of what they mean to the writer personally, eliding that which is problematic, troublesome, or simply unpleasant, while occasionally producing fun books for the uncritical, puts up barriers to the most essential element of honest biography, namely the recognition of what is human in all of us. While that may seem a bit over-the-top to some, consider what happens to certain authors who dare to write candidly about “heroes” with many followers. Often, they themselves become the focus of intense controversy, much of it negative. How dare they, detractors claim, paint a portrait of Exemplary Figure that goes into the foibles, obsessions, character flaws, bad judgments, prejudices, and petty attributes when the significance of Exemplary Figure ought to exempt him (and sometimes her) from any criticism other than the most theoretical or abstract? (This cuts both ways—many people

Comfort

January 7, 2013 3 Comments

In another thread, the question came up “what is ‘comfort reading’?” It didn’t occur to me that the idea might not be universal, that some reading is done purely for the pleasure and affirmation of a pleasant visit. I recently finished Margaret Maron’s new novel, The Buzzard Table, which is the 18th entry in her Deborah Knott series of mysteries. For those unfamiliar with Maron’s work, she writes a solid murder mystery, in the vein commonly referred to as “Cozies.” Which, I suppose, differentiates them from the harder edged thriller idiom employed by writers like Dennis Lehane or Tess Gerritsen, in which plenty of the details and arcana of death and mayhem are on display along with a much darker examination of the sociopathic or psychopathic criminal mind. Not that the murders in Maron’s work are less gruesome, just that much of the gore is left off-stage or examined with a lighter touch. I scratch my head sometimes at the

Rules of the Road

January 5, 2013 8 Comments

Books have speed limits. Some you can breeze through, a quick run along a sunny straightaway, windows open and wind in your ears. Others demand that you slow down, pay attention, move with care. For the slow-but-dedicated reader, if there is a special plea or prayer upon picking up a new, dense book, it should be “Please don’t waste my time.” I’m one of those readers who feels a compulsion to finish what I start. I seem constitutionally incapable of just putting a book aside part way through and never coming back to it. Oh, I’ve done it! Years later, though, if I stumble across that book, ignored in a box or on the shelf of someone to whom I’ve loaned it, I experience a moment of guilt, a regret that I somehow betrayed it, and that it may take umbrage for having been dallied with and left for another. “So…a restless spirit haunts over every book, till dust or

A Bit of Comfort and Caution

January 4, 2013 1 Comment

This is my new blog. I’ve attached a link to my old one, the Distal Muse, so you can get over here. Why a second blog? Simple. I’d like to put my reviews and literary opinions here, apart from the Muse, which has become more of a hodge podge of commentary over the years. A site dedicated just to my readings and my thoughts on literature might find a welcome audience among those who could care less what my politics are or my opinions on music or film or people in general or things as they are. For now, this is a placemarker. I have work to do in my office and it might be a week or two before I start posting. In the meantime, you can still check out the Distal Muse. I will be back. Try to do this up proper, a real honest-to-goodness lit’rary stopover. So…welcome.

Mark W. Tiedemann

Author. Blogger. Photographer.

The Proximal Eye