Uncle Silas

When Miss Maud Ruthyn, heiress, is orphaned, she’s sent to live with her creepy old uncle until she reaches her majority. Said uncle is suspected of once murdering a man to whom he owed gambling debts. Oh, and if Maud were to die somehow before becoming an adult, Uncle Silas would get everything. Her father arranged it that way in his will to prove to the world that Silas isn’t a murderer. Maud gets the delightful experience of being the pork chop dangled in front of the starving wolf.

Deliciously gothicky, but there’s still plenty wrong with this novel by J. Sheridan le Fanu (better known for his short stories). For one thing, scary it ain’t. “And … there was a bloodstain … on the floor!” is about as intense as it gets. Did the Victorians scare easier than we do, or did the authors just hold themselves back? It’s a depressing prospect to think that we live in a scarier world than in 1899, but compared to Chernobyl, Silas’s murderous history is pretty tame.

Ah, Maud Ruthyn. How I love to hate her. Throughout the book she vacillates between a fainting flower petal and an imperious little brat who knows she’s better than the menials because of her education and good breeding. I know she would have made for an acceptable heroine in the 19th century, but cultural relativism can only be carried so far. I’m still allowed to be upset when she’s denigrating her own gender (The weaker sex? The weaker sex? I do beg your pardon?), failing to play an active role in the ending, or eerily echoing Robinson Crusoe:

‘I want your hand, cousin,’ she said, at the same time taking it by the wrist, and administering with it a sudden slap on her plump cheek, which made the room ring, and my fingers tingle; and before I had recovered from my surprise, she had vanished.

And if you were expecting a twist at the end, which would be reasonable to do in such a suspenseful novel, you will be disappointed. Le Fanu tells you over and over that a certain event is going to happen. And then it happens.

Now that I’ve told you everything that’s wrong with the book, I strongly urge you to go read it. If you’re the sort of person who read Frankenstein for fun, not for English class, you will love it. The point of Uncle Silas is the mood, not its illiberal characters or preposterous plot. The haunted house of Bartram-Haugh abounds with creaky rooms, opium addiction, gypsy prophecies, and … Swedenborgians. Le Fanu is a master of suspense. Just as soon as you’re dying to know what happens next, he slows the story down. He draws out each excruciating moment as the massive conspiracy surrounding Maud closes in on her. I read the last five chapters all at a gulp (nearly making myself late for work) and finished gasping for air. It was only about an hour later that I realized nothing particularly cool happened. Le Fanu just writes it so well. Definitely recommended for any fan of the Gothic style.

9 Movie Trailer

Golems! Post-apocalyptic awesomeness! Tim Burton! I think I'm going to swoon now.

9 The Movie





Okay, some time has passed since I started this post and I'm somewhat more capable of coherent thought. Seriously, though, I'm going to see this movie as soon as I am able and you can rely on it that I will review it.

A Visual Tour of Berkeley Part 3

The UC has some pretty interesting architecture up there. I think it's because it's built on a hill.

Characters and Viewpoint

I’ve been reading a book on craft by Orson Scott Card lately* where he suggests, to make readers hate the villain, to make the villain really, really smart.

This isn’t true in every culture, but certainly the American audience resents any character who is smarter and better educated than other people. … We’re afraid of and resent people who know more than we do, and when they act as if they think it makes them superior to us, we hate them.

That’s sad. Card is probably right, and probably the technique works, but is it right to do it? Tapping into the worst part of people’s natures to make them feel something about a character? He also suggests making bad guys insane to make us hate them.

These are a couple of prejudices that it’s more or less still socially acceptable to have – I certainly couldn’t get away with having a scheming Shylock as my antagonist. But it’s not just that. I also take issue with his lukewarm acceptance of sympathetic, morally ambiguous villains.

When you separate sympathy from moral decisions – exactly what a judge and jury must try to do in a trial – you can’t be sure that your audience will reach the ‘right’ conclusions; you can’t be sure that they’ll agree with you.

What, am I going to hurt my readers’ brains?

Maybe this is why I didn’t like Seventh Son much.

I’d be interested to see what other amateur writers think. How do you build character? Do you add attributes to characters just to make them more evil/heroic, and does it work for you?








* Characters and Viewpoint, in the Elements of Fiction Writing series.

Robot Toilets!

San Francisco's answer to the public restroom. These pod-shaped toilets dot the city every few blocks; they come with a page-long set of operating instructions and power doors that slide back when you push a button. When you are done, an electronic readout tells you it's going through a "55-second cleansing cycle," which I can only assume involves zapping the inside with ozone or something, because one can't observe it directly.

I keep expecting Dr. Who to come bursting out of one of these things and go save the world.

Mondegreen

Sarah McLachlan's song, Building A Mystery, has a pair of lines that go:

You strut your rasta wear
And your suicide poem
And a cross from a faith that died
Before Jesus came

I had long interpreted these lyrics to be, in fact, about x-treme yoga:

You spread your ass to where
In a suicide pose
Across from a faith that died
Before Jesus came

Now, Kiss This Guy confirms that I'm not going crazy. (At least not for that reason.) This site keeps a database on all the mondegreens on all the popular songs people have ever heard. Other people think McLachlan is singing about extreme yoga, too, and in fact, one user has proposed an even better interpretation of the lines:

You strap your ass to a suicide machine.

Unexplained Mediumship Fragment

This is a plotbunny orphan; it doesn't have any story to go with it.

Most of us have this traumatic incident in our childhoods where we realize we're different. Mine was at my dad's funeral. I was five years old, tired of the velveteen dress they'd put me in and wanting to go home, and I stood up and said, "Why is everybody so sad? You can still talk to him!" That earned me a quick trip to the child psychologist, who decided it was my way of coping. At least Dad understood.