a little journal on stories

I love the feeling of tucking into the first few chapters of a hefty book and knowing that we are going to be inseparable for a good long time. Rebecca Kuang is an author that is now on my “I’ll read anything written by her” list. Last summer I was very disturbed by her best seller Yellowface. The (extremely unreliable) narrator is a frustrated writer who has been passed over by publishing. She is destroyed by her jealousy of her wildly successful Chinese classmate who resembles…well, the real-life Kuang, who is in actuality a publishing and academic wunderkind.

Like most lurid tales (see Severance), I really enjoyed summarizing it in serials to Ho, but I don’t think I could read it again. I was surprised to learn that most of Kuang’s books are historical fantasy and not like Yellowface at all. I’m sure comparisons have made between Babel (2022) and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Kuang peppers Babel with footnotes and they both take place in Georgian England. I remember Strange & Norrell being described as Harry Potter for adults and though I don’t think that description fits S&N so well, it does at times for Babel. Hermione Granger would be really happy there!

The “Babblers” are an elite cohort at Oxford who specialize in translation. It’s a book about the love of school and the camaraderie of academic suffering: “They became what they’d aspired to be since their first year–aloof, brilliant, and fatigued to the bone. They were miserable. They slept and ate too little, read too much, and fell completely out of touch with matters outside of Oxford or Babel. They ignored the life of the world; they lived only the life of the mind. They adored it” (170).

The “life of the mind” that the Babblers live for, though, has real power in every corner of the world. Their talents in translation–particularly of those who are native speakers in non-European languages–literally power the magic silver bars that are everywhere. This was my favorite part of Babel–the way its magic works. The students are lectured by Professor Playfair (Kuang has some fun with names): “The basic principles of silver-working are very simple. You inscribe a word or phrase in one language on one side, and a corresponding word or phrase in a different language on the other. Because translation can never be perfect, the necessary distortions–the meanings lost or warped in the journey–are caught, and then manifested by the silver. And that, dear students, is as close to magic as anything within the realm of natural science” (156).

Babel and Strange & Norrell both use magic in a utilitarian way–in Babel it makes ships and carriages go faster. Magic-casting has a similarly academic and theoretical feel. Basically, the magicians in both novels are nerds. In Babel, however, there is no faerie realm, Raven King, or malevolent magic. In Babel, the all powerful force is the British Empire. Magic through silver is a resource the Empire hoards to make itself utterly dominant–and its colonized subjects that are talented enough are taken from their homes to be honed as tools for the Empire.

This is the plight of Robin Swift, the hero of the book. Babel is the only true home he has. Orphaned in Canton, he was taken to England to be trained as a translator. He is encouraged to forget his Cantonese but maintain his Mandarin. His skills are indispensable, but to what end would they be used by Babel? So finally, this is really a novel about the cost of colonization and its self-rationalizations. It’s a novel about the tragedy of “other-ing.” It’s also a novel asking how change happens: its full title is Babel or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.

Back to Strange & Norrell. To me, Babel is nowhere in the same league as that book, but Kuang is not even 30 yet. I hope that doesn’t sound condescending. Like Yellowface, I wouldn’t return to it for loving rereads, but what a ride she takes you on. There were moments of Babel that felt prescient to VERY current times. The end of her author’s note says, “If you find any other inconsistencies, feel free to remind yourself this is a work of fiction.” That made me laugh but it is the un-fictional aspects that are the saddest. Thank you Rebecca Kuang for such a smart, original, ambitious work.

Not a long post here, just an observation that it is really difficult to pull off the creation of an innocent character that feels genuine.

I just reread Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, and her creation of the character Piranesi always amazes me. The book has become a comfort read for me because of him.

I don’t want to give anything away because reading this book for the first time is not to be spoiled. The less you know about it going in, the more you will enjoy its mystery.

Off the top of my head, innocent characters…

-Beth in Little Women: Was this the first innocent’s death that I read in a story? I have cried so many tears over Beth–when she gives Mr. Lawrence the slippers, when Mr. March comes home, and (in the Greta Gerwig film) when she and Jo are at the seaside.

-Mickey 17 in Mickey 17 – such a good hero but also exasperating. I laughed a lot. I covered my eyes a lot.

-Buddy the Elf in Elf and Paddington in Paddington 2– I put these together because they are both movies that have no business being as good as they are. They both hit that sweet spot of goodness where it radiates into goodwill towards all mankind and creatures.

So the bottom line is…you ought to read Piranesi if you haven’t yet!

I recently finished John Hendrix’s graphic novel The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien. Hendrix covers a lot of range (in miniscule font–I needed my reading glasses for this one): biographies of the two men, their intersection at Oxford and friendship, their encouragement of one another to create a new mythology, elaboration on myth/fairy tale/fantasy, and their eventual estrangement. The illustrations of their last interactions put a lump in my throat.

This illustration also caught my eye: a comparison of their published major works from 1940-1947. Of course not pictured is Tolkien’s labors on The Lord of the Rings (published 1954), but it shows how crazy fast Lewis was in getting books out there. (Especially crazy given that there was…you know, a ginormous war going on for most of this time period.) The entire Narnia series was published between 1950-1956–also crazy fast.

It’s a generous stretch to call “Leaf by Niggle” a “major work” as well! It’s a simple short story, heart achingly transparent; Tolkien is Niggle, “a very ordinary and rather silly little man.”

Niggle is a painter but he’s constantly interrupted from focusing on his one desire to paint leaves. His lack of productivity is because “he was sometimes just idle, and did nothing at all,” but also “he was kindhearted, in a way. You know the sort of kind heart: it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything; and even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper and swearing (mostly to himself).”

If you’ve read Tolkien’s letters, you can see it’s a wonder that he ever finished LotR. His attention is constantly carved away by grading papers, dripping taps, answering mail, and worrying about his sons in the war. My goodness. Perhaps writing it was an escape for him? But it seems that it was also an agony of its own kind–his insistence on complete veracity in his world building is legendary. I have a lot of sympathy for the man.

But back to “Leaf by Niggle.” Seeing that picture made me dig it up for a reread. I love this story. Poor Niggle–he wants to make beauty but the interruptions leave him a mess of resentment, irritation, and procrastination. Things take off in unexpected directions when the long journey he has been dreading is thrust on him. (Am I convincing you to read it if you haven’t yet? Haha)

The end of the story is deeply moving and pretty much perfect. It’s a shot of encouragement to all of us Niggles. We are selfish, petty, wasteful, and don’t live up to our grand ambitions. There is never enough time. This really isn’t the end of our story, though. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. . . .” The Lord of the Rings will always be a majestic work, but I’m personally very thankful that Tolkien let “Leaf by Niggle” out into the world.

It’s a P&P bonanza! News popped up in my FB that Netflix has a six part mini series in development. Comments mostly skewed towards indignance–“do we REALLY need another P&P?!? Nothing can compare to — version.” Well, it has been 20 years since the “new” one, so I’m psyched for another retelling, especially in mini series form. I’m not familiar with the actress playing Elizabeth, but Olivia Colman was born to be in P&P. Jack Lowden plays a misanthropic, self-centered try hard in Slow Horses, but I somehow root for him anyway. Boom, he’ll be a great Mr. Darcy. I just trust these actors to not go along with a terrible screenplay (see Netflix’s Persuasion). Hooray, more P&P!

Watching old movies in the theater is just luxurious fun. The “new” 20 year old P&P is such a pleasure from beginning to end. The story is so compressed compared to the mini series, though, so it can feel a little like a best hits album. The exposition skips so rapidly from juicy scene to juicy scene; the deep-seeded pride and prejudice don’t really get to simmer. I was telling Ruth that it cuts out too much of the “prejudice” part–I couldn’t even remember anything about Wickham because his part is so truncated.

Seeing it at the theater, though, I also think the “pride” part is not given its full due. I noticed this time around that Darcy doesn’t really own anything about his past pride when Elizabeth returns his love. His past insufferableness is glossed over entirely, and that’s a shame. “You have bewitched me body and soul” is a great romantic line and all, but how has Darcy really changed from knowing Elizabeth?

I had to find my old copy of P&P (Illustrated Junior Library edition, the first classic that my dad got me) to refresh my memory of Austen’s wise and beautiful story-telling.

I have been a selfish being all my life in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. . . . to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

P&P is satisfying to watch because of its happy ending, but it should also be satisfying because the heroes have fully faced their shameful mistakes and wrongdoings and yet are forgiven and sought after.

The P&P bonanza continues next week when we see the Sunny Hills theater edition! 🙂