Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: Buffalo Is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel. Well, look at me. I am turning into a short story reader despite myself.

I expected this to be brilliant and it did not disappoint. It's a rare book of futurism that is both visionary and extremely grounded in the specific experiences of one Métis community. The stories explore alternate realities, artificial realities, the incursion of the spirit world into the human world, and the distant future, all in ways that centre Métis ways of knowing and being. For example, what does it mean for a dead person's spirit when their consciousness is digitally uploaded? How does community influence the traditionally individualist figure of the superhero? What role can augmentation play in restoring language?

Also, you get to see John A. Macdonald get stomped to death by a rougarou, which gets an automatic "fuck yes this is GREAT" from me.

It's also—because Vowel is an educator, a very deliberate learning experience. Many things are left untranslated or deliberately obscure—not as a way of signalling "settler, this book is not for you," but as a way of forcing cognitive dissonance on the reader and forcing the responsibility for learning onto us. I noticed that there were fewer and fewer footnotes as the book went on, almost as if the book is teaching you how to read it as you go.

Highly recommended.

Currently reading: Nothing yet. Stories of the Road Allowance People is up next.

Comments

[greylock]

You don't like short stories?
I love a good collection... where the writer can pull off the form. I do think it's a bit of a skill that has been lost between the death of the pulps and Playboy (of all things).

Many things are left untranslated or deliberately obscure

That doesn't sound like fun to me.

It reminds me of a book (Babel 17 maybe?) where I could tell the references were flying thick and fast... but by the end I just didn't care. Actually, well before the end.

Still, I am glad you enjoyed it.
After all, you can't have Barbara Cartland without James Joyce. Probably. :P

[sabotabby]

I like to get really deep into character and place, and most short stories just don’t seem to have the room for it. They end just as things get interesting.

I love a story where l don’t know anything and the author is inviting me to fill in the blanks. Or go down a rabbit hole. Or just fucking around with style and structure. She does all of these things.

[greylock]

I am more about plot than character. It's why I can enjoy so much pre-60s stuff, I guess.

I can't get my head into characters. It's why my fiction wasn't great, and I sucked playing D&D but enjoyed DMing.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, for me it's all about character. Like my recent short story, the characters just existed as types of people that were vehicles, and I didn't know who they were. I'm just not as keen on that.

[greylock]

.... And never the twain shall meet!

I like character on TV, but the printed word less so.

Weird, huh?

[sabotabby]

Nah, people have their preferences. And modern TV is very prone to Character Study as a thing.

[greylock]

HOW DARE YOU BE REASONABLE!
This means GWAR!

[sabotabby]

I have accepted that the sort of thing I like to read and write is not desirable to the vast majority of people. Kind of. Of course the thing I want is to become ridiculously famous and have people make fanfic and fanart of my work, but I know how unrealistic that is.

(I do like GWAR.)

[greylock]

I have accepted that the sort of thing I like to read and write is not desirable to the vast majority of people

The dream!
What you write and I dream are different tracks. Coke/Pepsi: etc.

Of course the thing I want is to become ridiculously famous and have people make fanfic and fanart

The NIGHTMARE! I wanted to be well read, but have never wanted fame.


I do like GWAR

Rex Manning Party? At mine?

[lapinlunaire]

I have accepted that the sort of thing I like to read and write is not desirable to the vast majority of people

Relatable, but honestly, IDGAF. I don't even care about ever being published, sometimes I don't even write the stories down, I just want to do my own thing and have fun creating what *I* want.

If it makes you feel better, a lot of the writing I find interesting and exciting is by authors like you, people who write something the vast majority of people might not want to read. The vast majority of people have shit taste anyway. Have you seen the kind of crap that often ends up as a bestseller????*

* I'm kind of a hipster snob about literature, idgaf, I've earned degrees I'll never use and paid too much so I might as well indulge xD

[sabotabby]

I am extremely snobby, hahah. Sometimes people make me read some bestseller with cinematic prose and I just go on and on about how much I hate it and then I don't have to read another one for like a year.

[lapinlunaire]

To be fair, I feel like the short story format works very well for horror, where sometimes the story is made better by being ambiguous or ending in a way that feels "wrong". Maybe I love short stories *because* a lot of what I read is horror and weird fiction so it's perfect haha. I feel like longer horror/weird books sometimes don't work because sometimes authors seem to decide this means detailing things too much, or unnecessarily padding, and that's unfortunate.

[sabotabby]

Oh yeah, really good point. And horror tends to not really be about character.

[frandroid]

I'm not reading your spoilers because I have a copy here :)

I remember Vowel's couple teaching episodes on Métis in Space, she was SO GOOD. Also her voice in those episodes was particularly sexy, so huh, hot for teacher...

[greylock]

An unexpected DavidLeeRothasaur appears.

[sabotabby]

Oh, valid. She’s also extremely hot in photos.

[oracne]

That collection sounds GREAT.

[sabotabby]

It's amazing.

[lapinlunaire]

This sounds AWESOME, I'll be adding it to my to-read list for sure.

I love short stories, especially when I'm exhausted and don't have the energy or attention span to read something longer. Plus, some stories really work better that way -- the way I see it, not everything is made better by being a long novel, and sometimes the short story format is just right and it works perfectly. :P

[sabotabby]

They're variable in length, too. Which means that every story is as long as it needs to be.

[lapinlunaire]

Yes, exactly! I feel like whether it works is a case-by-case thing -- nowadays I mostly want to read interesting, well-crafted things, I don't care if it's been handwritten in poop on a roll of toilet paper.

(Ok, yeah, maybe in that case I would care because ew, but you get the point)

[sabotabby]

Chelsea Vowel would never.