[Books] Rouse, Turner

[thefourthvine]

Book I Have an Issue With: At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, by Wade Rouse

I love essays, particularly funny ones. Find me a book of them and I will happily hand over $12 for the privilege of reading it. And this one starts off really well, because there's a raccoon attack. Raccoons to the head are funny. It's a basic rule of writing, right up there next to "show, don't tell." The premise is promising, too: Rouse moved from the city (more on this later) to rural Michigan (with his long-suffering boyfriend Gary) so that he could pursue a career in writing. Fish out of water! Raccoon attacks! Seriously, how could this be bad?

Well. It isn't entirely bad. But it isn't good, either. For one thing, when he's not wearing a live raccoon as an exceptionally angry hat, Rouse isn't actually funny, and that's a book killer. In this kind of memoir, you're basically sharing the brain of the writer. He has to show you all his random warts and neuroses or there's nothing for him to write about, but he has to be able to make you laugh with him (or at him - that also works) or, well, you're just spending your time with some random jerk's warts and neuroses, and you could do the same thing by getting stuck on an elevator with a guy from Marketing. Every other flaw this book has (sliding focus, sudden random religious tangent in the middle, shrieking intolerance, race issues, playing gay stereotypes up to the point where I expect him to start typing with a lisp) would be forgivable, or at least mostly tolerable, if Rouse could make you laugh. But he can't, or at least he couldn't make me laugh. He couldn't even make me smile, except in the first chapter, and a guy can't get attacked by a raccoon every day.

But my second issue is the one I will always remember about this book. See, okay - you know how sometimes you'll make an assumption early on, and it will be so ingrained that you'll never question it, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, until finally something leaps up and forces you to? And then you can feel your skull being rearranged, all, "The Fiddler on the Roof ISN'T set in 1970s Canada! Which probably means Canadians aren't vicious anti-semites, and I should probably stop worrying that these Quebecois are going to kill me!" (Yes, I was very young when I made the assumption, but it lasted for years. I still sometimes have to take a deep breath before I out myself as a Jew to someone from Saskatchewan.) I had a minor case of this in this book. See, I read the title and made the obvious assumption. And then, several chapters in, I discovered that the city in question is St. Louis. Which. Um. I live in Los Angeles (or, okay, near it, but that's pretty much what everyone who lives here does). It's a pretty big city. But it isn't the city. The only city in the United States that gets a definite article is New York City. Chicago is a city. Houston is a city. New York City is the city. And St. Louis, which is the fifty-second largest city in the U.S., ranked just below Wichita, with a population of 350k, most definitely is not. When I realized that the city of the title was St. Louis, that was my laugh-out-loud moment for this book.

(Note: Yes, I am aware that this is not universally true of everyone in the United States. In rural areas, as I understand it, the city is whichever one you drive to for shopping. But everywhere I've ever lived, New York City has been the city, and it would never occur to me that anyone who wrote that in a book title would mean anything else.)

Poll #2279 The City

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 243

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When you say "the city," what do you mean?

View Answers

New York City.
52 (21.5%)

The nearest city, whichever one that is.
113 (46.7%)

A city in my actual country, because I'm not from the U.S.
31 (12.8%)

Beszel or Ul Qoma.
10 (4.1%)

Something else.
36 (14.9%)

Because we're curious and it's a definite article question, when someone says "the industry," what do you think she means?

View Answers

The entertainment industry, and I live in or near Los Angeles.
18 (8.1%)

The entertainment industry, and I don't live in or near Los Angeles.
107 (48.2%)

Some other industry, which I will tell you in the comments.
60 (27.0%)

I do not believe in definite articles, and strike down all who say them to me.
37 (16.7%)

Books I Love: The Thief Series (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia), by Megan Whalen Turner

Now. I am hoping that most of you have already read this series and are eagerly, even desperately, awaiting the next installment (due March 23, so if you haven't read these, now is the perfect time to start). But I have this sneaking fear that some of you have not, and obviously it is my personal duty to correct that. This series is incredible, with amazing characters and world-building and plot and action and one of the weirdest romances I personally have ever encountered in fiction. (For serious, this is a romance - you know, when I see romantic relationships in fiction, I generally try to recast them with my fannish favorites, but it is hard for me to think of even a single popular fannish pairing that might fit with this romance. Okay. I can think of one. But that's it.) But, actually, that's not what I want to talk about when it comes to these books.

Here are two additional reasons, besides awesomeness and the ability to make your heart sing, that you should read these:

1. Stepping it up a notch. If you've ever written or wanted to write a series, in fan fiction or original fiction, you should read The Thief and The Queen of Attolia. This is one of the few times when the second book of a series is an order of magnitude better than the first (and the first is really damn good). And the thing is, it's that way for a reason.
   
   The author took some serious risks when she started The Queen of Attolia; she didn't let her characters or her situations stay static. She looked at what she'd done and said, hey, that was good, but how can I move from that? How can I get these characters to where I need them to go? And then she took the steps she needed to take, and let me tell you, those were some drastic steps. But they work, and they take the series from amazing to sublime.
   
   Megan Whalen Turner could have rested on her laurels. She totally did not. This is how you write a series, people. (Or you can take a different road and make your sequels into an endless series of bondage scenes and holidays, which I call the Whips and Presents Method. Not my favorite, but it works for some people. You can also just keep writing the same story with the same plot and characters, changing the proper names as necessary to fulfill your contracts; I think of this as the Grimes Method, and it also works for some. But I'd rather you went the Turner route.)
   
   
2. The Queen of Attolia. The character, I mean. When I was a kid, I read everything. (No, really, everything, including many things I should not have. My mother used to take me to a specialty children's bookstore, hand me over to an innocent employee who had no idea how difficult her life was about to become, and say, "If you can find something she hasn't read, I'll buy it." She spent the next few hours sipping coffee somewhere, and I spent the next few hours saying, "I've read it.") I especially loved books that had fantasy elements. But I was bothered by the fact that they were always about either a) people randomly selected by fate for greatness or b) people born to be great. I knew I would never find an amulet that granted half wishes or a sand fairy, and I knew I wasn't the secret ruler of the desert tribe or the last Old One.
   
   So I wanted to read a book about a person who became great, who had no special abilities or special item but still used her ordinary abilities to achieve an amazing goal. I looked and looked for that person and never found her. And then I did: Attolia. Turner doesn't spare her at all - Attolia is definitely the person achieving her goal has made her into. She's not kind. She's not fun. You would not want to play croquet with her, and you would not want to turn your back on her. But she is great, and she's great because she decided to be. She fought for it and keeps on fighting for it, using all her intelligence and all her determination, because that's all she's ever had to fight with. I love that. And I love that there is one person in the books who loves it, too.

Poll #2280 Greatness

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 164

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Which would you rather have?

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Greatness by birth, which usually comes with lots of followers.
7 (4.3%)

Greatness through effort, which often comes with an iron fist.
40 (24.4%)

Greatness through fate, which generally comes with great accessories.
35 (21.3%)

No greatness at all. It's wearying.
82 (50.0%)

Comments

[stellar_dust]

To me "the industry" means whichever industry the person talking to me is involved in. Like if I'm talking to my engineer friends I assume they mean the defense industry, but if Jon Stewart says it I assume Hollywood. Etc.

[melannen]

Yes, this.

And the same thing with "the city": it depends on context. When I have lived in a place where there is one nearest city, then anyone using it in a way that assumes a local context ("we're going in to the city tonight for drinks,") I assume it's the local city. If they don't use any context, I assume New York.

Most of the places I've been local, though, don't really have one nearest city, they have several vaguely equidistant ones, and when I'm here, I assume "the city" is New York.


(If they write "the City" with caps, I assume London's financial district. And then 90% of the time smack myself in the head and realize that can't possibly be it.)

[pocketmouse]

I read 'the city' as a general statement, capitalized only because it was in a title. I read it the same way one would read 'the country,' or 'the ocean' or 'the river.'

And I put 'the industry' as the entertainment industry, because it was out of the blue, and because I work in a related field. 'Industry' without the definite article means things like labor unions and steelworkers.

[thefourthvine]

This makes sense. Just, in the first few chapters, he talks about "moving from the city," and I needed a city to put in my head, so of course it was New York.

Industry by itself is, yup, labor unions and steelworkers and so on.

[scrollgirl]

I live in a city (Mississauga), right next to an even bigger city (Toronto). You don't say "the city" and mean Toronto. If you lived in cottage country, you wouldn't say "the city" either, because which city?

If I were reading a novel that had established the setting as, like, rural Kansas and then a character said, "I'm gonna drive into the city for a doctor's appointment," then yeah, I would assume Wichita or Topeka or something like that, not NYC.

If someone randomly said, "the city", I'd probably assume NYC. I'd still want confirmation, I think? But I can't think of any other city that merits the article. And it's not even that NYC is such a huge deal for me personally, like it's some kind of Mecca, except that media has made it so. Media has taught me that the city is New York City. (Ditto the entertainment industry telling me that it is the industry.)

I would have to imagine it'd be different for non-North Americans, though. I mean, I doubt a kid from Beijing gives two damns about NYC as "the" city.

[thefourthvine]

You don't say "the city" and mean Toronto.

Do you mean Mississauga, then? *curious*

Media has taught me that the city is New York City. (Ditto the entertainment industry telling me that it is the industry.)

Exactly, for both cases. Just, the NYC message was communicated to me indirectly, whereas the entertainment industry message was communicated to me fairly directly.

[fox]

On "the city", it actually depends on context. When there is no context, I mean New York (and I do not require the word "City" on that name, by the way; when I mean the state of New York, I usually specify "New York State" or "upstate" or some other region or whatever); but if there is context, I mean whatever the nearest or largest city is in that context. Around here, for instance, if I say "the quickest way to get to National Airport is to go down through the city", I mean Washington, DC, which I only call "the District" when I am contrasting it with Maryland or Virginia in some matter of politics or local custom (ex. "In Arlington County, the parallel parking spaces come two at a time with a little cushion in between them, which is so much better than the way they do it in the District" - though "the city" would be acceptable in this sentence as well).

[thefourthvine]

When there is no context, I mean New York

Yup. I mean, I don't actually use the phrase much, since there is not much call for it in my speech - if you said "the city" to someone in Los Angeles and meant somewhere local, you'd get a blank stare and a followup of, "Which city>?" - but if I read it or hear it and there's no reference, I assume NYC.

"In Arlington County, the parallel parking spaces come two at a time with a little cushion in between them, which is so much better than the way they do it in the District"

I realize this was not the actual point of your comment, but - THEY DO? Fascinating! Do they actually mark the parallel parking spaces on the street?

[yasaman]

I live in the Bay Area, so "the city" means San Francisco. I will concede, however, that New York City is the Ur City of All Cities, and pretty much functions as the Platonic ideal of a city in my head.

Also, I am impressed by how you talk about the Attolia series without spoiling it. When reccing them to a friend, I had to struggle not to spoil anything, and forbade her from even looking at the back covers. I mostly ended up saying The Thief is awesome and clever YA, and then Queen of Attolia has a SHIT JUST GOT REAL moment, and things improve exponentially.

[thefourthvine]

And I did not even know, until I posted this, that San Francisco was so very much the city! LJ: always educational.

Also, I am impressed by how you talk about the Attolia series without spoiling it.

Thank you! It was not easy, and I'm delighted that someone noticed that I made the effort.

I mostly ended up saying The Thief is awesome and clever YA, and then Queen of Attolia has a SHIT JUST GOT REAL moment, and things improve exponentially.

That is the best summary in the WORLD. I support this description.

[meigui]

...in context, I kind of want to think of "the city" in a social psych context (where it's in opposition to "the countryside"), except if he'd actually meant it that way specifically, then it would have been "In the City, Tons of People Would Hear Me Scream but Probably Do Nothing About It; At Least in the Country, the One or Two People Who Did Hear Me Might Actually Be Bothered to Help."

[thefourthvine]

Yup. Or, In the City, Maybe Someone Would Hear Me Scream, Maybe Not; It Would Depend on How Much Ambient Noise There Was and If They Had Their Earplugs In.

[petra]

I live close enough to NYC that people occasionally call it The City and confuse me by doing so, because there are many metropolitan areas between here and there also referred to as "the city" by people who intend to go there for mundane, non-NYC-requiring purposes.

The town where I grew up was approximately equidistant from two metropolitan areas, one of ~150K and one of ~20K. Half the town referred to the latter as "the city" because they were closer to it, thereby a) missing the point of what qualifies as a city and b) confusing those of us who expected actual city-like features when we went to one.

[thefourthvine]

I live close enough to NYC that people occasionally call it The City and confuse me by doing so, because there are many metropolitan areas between here and there also referred to as "the city" by people who intend to go there for mundane, non-NYC-requiring purposes.

I can see how that would be a problem. I live so far away that I really only get it in fiction, and then I can usually tell by context that NYC is the city in question.

Half the town referred to the latter as "the city" because they were closer to it, thereby a) missing the point of what qualifies as a city and b) confusing those of us who expected actual city-like features when we went to one.

*blink blink blink*

Were the half that called the 20k place the city not allowed to go to the other one?

[anoel]

LA is totally the city for me although I may be biased because I love it so much. But usually if I do refer to it that way, it would just be going to "the city" and it's whatever's closest. I just don't put NYC on that kind of a pedestal although I do love it.

I had never heard of "the industry" being said til I started living around CA/watching shows set there so that's what I always thought and don't assume it's something else unless the context says otherwise.

[thefourthvine]

Wow. It is really unusual to hear people say they love Los Angeles. I am happy you like it!

I had never heard of "the industry" being said til I started living around CA/watching shows set there so that's what I always thought and don't assume it's something else unless the context says otherwise.

I am not even sure when I started thinking of "the industry" as meaning the entertainment industry. Although I am betting it was sometime after I moved here. They totally indoctrinate you in this city!

[mllesays]

I live in Atlanta, and most of my friends live in the burbs right outside, but none of us would say, "I'm going into the city for drinks." They'd be much more likely to say, "I'm going downtown for drinks," or insert some other neighborhood name. (It's kind of telling, what neighborhood one goes out to at night, so saying you're going to Buckhead is totally different than saying you're going to East Atlanta.) Anyway, point is, "the city" means NYC to me and probably most of my friends as well.

I wonder if Britons would think London when someone said "the city."

As far as "the industry" goes, I work in a related field, so I immediately think entertainment.

[juliet]

As a Brit who lives in London, I wouldn't refer to London as "the city", because hey, I'm here already, so it would sound weird. If I mean "going into central London" I say "going into town" (& did even when I lived further out as a kid). (This is in origin quite an oldfashioned usage, I think, but I do still hear it from other people I know so I didn't *just* pick it up from my dad.)

If I hear "the city" in conversation, I would as a rule translate it automatically to "the City". Which is of course the financial district (the Square Mile) if referring to a geographical area & "the financial industry" (which is located more in Docklands (see icon!) than in the City itself these days) if used more metaphorically.

I would be surprised if Mancunians & other non-London city-dwellers referred to London as "the city", because there is a bit too much baggage there about London-centric-ness :)

[musesfool]

Well, I live in New York City, so it's always just been "the city" to me (and even though I grew up in Queens, which is part of the city, we always said "the city" in reference to Manhattan, so...).

And yeah, even though I don't work in the entertainment industry, with no context and no other qualifier, that's what I'd think. Otherwise, you'd say, "The financial industry" or "the non-profit sector" or whatever. However, without the article, 'industry' is manufacturing/steel-working/rust belt stuff.

OH! ALSO! I ♥ The Thief series SO MUCH OMG. Everything you said here is true, and I'm amazed you managed to do it without spoiling anything. I got a fantastic story for yuletide about Gen and Irene. It made me very happy.

[missmaverick]

I am not ashamed to say that
a) when someone says 'the city', I think of Boston
and
b) when someone says 'the industry', I immediately assume they mean adult films. Or they're a stripper.

[aethel]

Massachusetts, represent!

[sinensis]

actualfax funny essays by a gay man: Don't Get Too Comfortable, by David Rakoff. Just on the off chance you haven't read it (because I will not be at all surprised if you already have.) The one about Fashion Week and runway shows made me cry with laughter.

[torachan]

I think it depends on context. I took "the city" in the title to be a generic division between the country (where is is now) and the city (where he was/wishes he were), not that he was talking about a particular city.

Also I am really curious what made you think Fiddler on the Roof was about 1970s Canada? XD

[etben]

(For serious, this is a romance - you know, when I see romantic relationships in fiction, I generally try to recast them with my fannish favorites, but it is hard for me to think of even a single popular fannish pairing that might fit with this romance. Okay. I can think of one. But that's it.)

So I have to ask: which fannish pairing? Because I love those books so very VERY much.

also, CLEARLY "the city" means Beszel/Ul Qoma.

[rydra_wong]

Beszel/Ul Qoma

OTP!

[umbo]

I think of "The Industry," which was a short running and yet brilliant Canadian comedy about the entertainment industry which was called "Made in Canada" when it aired on PBS. I miss that show.

[ell]

For me, The City is NYC and always will be. But then again, I grew up on Lawn Guyland. So for me, phrases like, "We're taking the train into the city tonight, there's this band playing at CBGB's" actual had literal meaning. (NB - I was never cool enough or quite old enough to actually have done that, but in theory, I could have and still been home in time to get to my first class.

The industry for me is much more generic. I tend to default to porn or engineering. Really, I need to combine those two into one perfect profession.

[ell]

and now that I live in a suburb of DC, DC is *never referred to as the city by anyone. It's the District. Just another data point.

[stranger]

"The City" could be any big city the speaker considers important, though the uber-big city is definitely New York, or in times past, Paris. The problem is, that I live near L.A. and it's *not* a city, nor a "the city," despite being big and housing more people than most U.N. nations and The Industry (that one's definitely right) and a few other industries, since L.A. actually does surpass The Industry and does other things too, in a way that Las Vegas never gets to surpass the Strip. L.A. is a wide populated place with a lot of interesting characteristics, and it has a city center, and all its component cities have city centers, and it's not "a city" except in population terms. And neighboring towns have city-ish town centers, which are pretty much the same things. And none of it is city like New York or London or Paris are central cities of their respective nations. (This bugs me for definitional reasons, because denotations doesn't match connotation and I need to rewrite the dictionary, which in a real sense would be rewriting the social contract, and I'm not up to that.) Just, there's a difference, somehow.

But.

Nobody gets to say L.A. is not *as much of a city* as other contenders (including New York for many purposes), because that's a fight L.A. won about the time The Industry got big enough to rock the world economies, during the previous Big Depression, but it wasn't generally acknowledged and we got decades of sniggering about the "Big Orange" and we're still sore.

[sylleptic]

I think I would read "the city" as an abstract general term (Platonic city) in the title context you gave, but would use it to refer to the nearest city in regular speech. Though I have definitely heard it used to mean NYC by people who were *in another city* at the time....

Not quite what you asked, but "industry" (no article) means the computer industry to me, unless it's clearly being used in a very general way. I'm not sure how I take "the industry," though it's probably context-dependent, leaning toward entertainment industry.

an amulet that granted half wishes
Edward Eager? Half Magic? I loved those books!

I also love Megan Whalen Turner's stuff, though I have a sort of weird history with her books. I read The Queen of Attolia first, not initially realizing it was the second in a series, so I was pretty confused. And I found it fairly depressing, so I didn't go looking for the previous book. Oops. Much later, in the course of reading through my school library, I found The Thief and loved it, not recognizing it as related to the other book at all. I went looking for *its* sequels, and finally put two and two together. I liked the second book much better on the reread (it probably helped that I was a few years older), and adored the third, so now I'm totally converted. But I still have bad associations with The Queen of Attolia, so it was really interesting to hear why it's your favorite. Is it March 23 yet? Pretty please?

P.S. Hi, I'm a lurker. *waves*

[msilverstar]

In the Bay Area, a local columnist named Herb Caen made something of a crusade to refer to San Francisco as The City. This despite the fact that San Jose has more people and has for decades.

And of course, we say the Bay Area a though there aren't any other bays with areas!

[scrollgirl]

I'm not even from your country, and *I* call it the Bay Area! (I do have relatives in SF, though.)

[ariadne83]

I think in any given country "the city" is usually the city that's generally agreed to be the biggest & most notorious, and all other cites are referred to by their name. The equivalent of your St. Louis moment in New-Zealand-reference would be if someone said "the city" in relation to, say, Palmerston North. In which case ahahahahahaha no.

[starlady]

I just finished rereading the Turner books in preparation for A Conspiracy of Kings (side note: OMG WHY IS IT NOT 23 MARCH YET!?) and I was really, really struck by the romance between Eugenides and Attolia this time around--The Queen of Attolia has to be one of the darkest YA books I've ever read, and their relationship is fascinating, particularly since Turner doesn't beg the trauma Attolia's actions inflict on them both.

[octette]

99% of the time, when i am talking to someone and we refer to "the industry" we are talking about the publishing industry, which is mostly ny-based. (the other 1% of the time i am talking to my two or three friends who work in the music industry and they are referring to the music industry, which doesn't really seem to have an organized center except for the internet.)

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

I'm really surprised that someone not from New York (or are you from New York, originally?) would assume "the city" is NYC. NYC was "the city" when I lived in NY and CT, but generally it's whatever city makes sense in context, usually whichever's closest. And even now my friends from New York usually specify NYC when they ask me when I'm coming to visit and such; it'd stick out to me if they just asked, "So when are you coming to the city again?"

"The industry" means nothing to me without context. And I'd need a lot of context; even at my current job, if someone said "the industry" I'd need context to know if they meant the health care industry, energy industry, communications industry, whatever. If someone said that and I had to guess with zero context, I'd probably go with fashion? No idea why, as I know no one who works in the fashion industry. Might be a side effect of working a block from Bryant Park, I guess.

[feanna]

To me "the city" can be used in different ways. (I'm German btw)
It can be: I'm going into the city, as somewhere more central than I'm now (possibly for shopping etc.) can be used even if you're geographically actually inside the sity already or if you life somewhere outside it.

But there's also "the city" and "the country" and in this conext he moved to "the country" and isn't in "the city" anymore. And in that context "the city" is code for any urban area and "the country" stands for any rural area. (And that is what I as a foreigner got out of that title.)


As for the industry thing. Hm, in context I'd probably get the movie industry thing, but not without it, I don't think.
Other than that industry for me still carries the connotation of industries that actually produce stuff you can touch (like in industrial revolution) but this connection is maybe stronger in German than in English? Anything other than that strongly depends upon context.

[twtd]

eagerly, even desperately, awaiting the next installment... If that translates into vibrating with excitement and shooting contemptuous looks in the direction of all of the YA authors that I known have already gotten ARCs of it, then yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Irene is one of my most favorite characters ever and I adore what MWT has done with her over the course of the three books. I love that MWT seems to be completely fearless about where she'll take her characters and what she'll do with them and I can't wait to see what happens in the next book (even as I'm cringing in fear simply because I know that it's truly possible for her to do something deeply unpleasant to them as well).