I *must* be better ...
Feb. 14th, 2003 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyMy insomnia's back in town.
Consequently feel like pure pounded shit this morning, but at least I can take comfort (?) in knowing that some of that is the four hours of sleep. Bleah.
Whiled away the hours of wakefulness by working on the new story (*bouncebouncebounce*) and finishing this, my umpteenth rereading of Gaudy Night. In pursuance of which, I had yet another thought about where and why A Civil Campaign went off the rails.
I know, I know, you'd think I was obsessed or something--or had some hate-on for Lois McMaster Bujold. Which, I want to reiterate, I don't. I think she's a fabulous writer, and I'm going to keep buying her books in hardcover as soon as they come out (a sure sign of reader-love). But this thing I noticed last night turned out to be extremely important to me-as-a-writer as well as me-as-a-reader, so I thought I'd stick it up. But (and yes, this would be the third hand) since I feel sheepishly certain that there must be people reading this who would rather poke their own eyeballs out with a tongue depressor that read more wittering from me on this subject (plus, you know, the whole spoiler thing), I'm going to tuck it neatly back behind a cut tag. Enter at your own risk.
The romance plots of both GN and ACC hinge on an apology offered to the heroine by the hero. I was reading Peter's apology (which, incidentally comes on pp. 464-7 of 469 rather than pp. 212-4 of 405) and was struck by something which I think is rather important.
Peter says to Harriet, "... I was so terrified of losing you before I could grasp you that I babbled out all my greed and fear as though, God help me, you had nothing to think of but me and my windy self-importance" (Sayers 464). This is an acknowledgment that Harriet legitimately had things on her mind other than the series hero. Harriet, in other words, has her own existence.
There are other important things at work here, too. It may take Peter five years, but he figures out why he has to apologize and what he has to apologize for without any help from the benevolent puppeteers Cordelia and Aral have become. And Peter's apology is genuinely that. An apology. He makes no effort to camouflage it with humor ("... the horrible version in rhyme ..." (Bujold 212)) or flashy metaphors ("... the idiot conspirator blew up his secret ammo dump" (Bujold 213)) and it is completely unsparing. Miles's apology is an accurate representation of what he has in fact done. Peter's has the kind of subjective over-vehemence that is what happens when you do something that truly makes you ashamed. He calls himself "a damned arrogant fool" (Sayers 464), accuses himself of "vanity," "blundering," "blind, childish impatience" "greed and fear," "windy self-importance" (464). Peter doesn't flatter Harriet while he's apologizing, nor offer any justifications for himself. Explanations, yes, but nothing like, "... it made me crazy to watch you constrained in tiny steps, when you could be outrunning time" (Bujold 213).
Peter and Harriet, because they are not getting warped into a Heyerian world even as they speak, also have to deal with the issue of sex (as all of Gaudy Night has been dealing with sex), but that's a side bar. My point was the apology and these two key points about it.
1. Ekaterin, even more than Harriet, has other things more important than Miles to occupy her mind (Nikki, for one). She should exist separately from Miles, and if he hasn't seen that yet, it's not an apology he's offering.
2. Peter is able to take the imaginative leap and see for himself what he's done that's deserving of apology. The fact that Miles doesn't have to do that, again, devalues the apology. Moreover, Peter makes his apology without artifice. He doesn't draw attention to it as an action ("This is the eleventh draft of this letter" (Bujold 212)) and he doesn't tangle it up with declarations of love or pride or anything else.
#2 is merely a characterological thing, another attempt to put my finger on why, for me, the romance in ACC falls flat. But #1 is vital for anyone trying to combine a love interest with a continuing character while not actually writing a romance novel. (In romance novels, the rules are different; but, then again, the romance novels with which I am familiar are all stand-alones.) The love interest has to have their own agenda, their own problems, their own perspective. They can't just be dropped into the story to make out with the hero(ine); their story arc cannot be resolved purely by the hero(ine)'s True Love. Author and protagonist must both acknowledge the love interest's autonomy, their right to BE a separate person--and CONTINUE to be a separate person (as Ekaterin sadly does not in Diplomatic Immunity). If nothing else, Gaudy Night, by making Harriet the protagonist of a novel in which Peter is largely off-stage, enforces our sense of Harriet as her own person rather than merely Peter's Intended. Harriet and Peter get a good go at Happily Ever After in Busman's Honeymoon (even more in "The Haunted Policeman" and "Talboys"--if you want to count the latter in canon), but they're still having to negotiate their relationship, and they do not escape without hurting each other again.
Bujold, I think, has gotten either over-invested in Miles or under-invested in the world around him. Miles's own tendency to solipsism is increasingly being reinforced by the author's focus on him, the ways in which the other characters are dancing to the music Miles wants. Miles gets what he wants--and it's easier to write that way. I want a return to the old school Vorkosigan books, in which the universe existed in order to get in Miles's way. And, dammit, I want Ekaterin to demand a separation. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go read The Curse of Chalion again.
---
WORKS CITED
Bujold, Lois McMaster. A Civil Campaign. New York: Baen Books, 1999.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
Consequently feel like pure pounded shit this morning, but at least I can take comfort (?) in knowing that some of that is the four hours of sleep. Bleah.
Whiled away the hours of wakefulness by working on the new story (*bouncebouncebounce*) and finishing this, my umpteenth rereading of Gaudy Night. In pursuance of which, I had yet another thought about where and why A Civil Campaign went off the rails.
I know, I know, you'd think I was obsessed or something--or had some hate-on for Lois McMaster Bujold. Which, I want to reiterate, I don't. I think she's a fabulous writer, and I'm going to keep buying her books in hardcover as soon as they come out (a sure sign of reader-love). But this thing I noticed last night turned out to be extremely important to me-as-a-writer as well as me-as-a-reader, so I thought I'd stick it up. But (and yes, this would be the third hand) since I feel sheepishly certain that there must be people reading this who would rather poke their own eyeballs out with a tongue depressor that read more wittering from me on this subject (plus, you know, the whole spoiler thing), I'm going to tuck it neatly back behind a cut tag. Enter at your own risk.
The romance plots of both GN and ACC hinge on an apology offered to the heroine by the hero. I was reading Peter's apology (which, incidentally comes on pp. 464-7 of 469 rather than pp. 212-4 of 405) and was struck by something which I think is rather important.
Peter says to Harriet, "... I was so terrified of losing you before I could grasp you that I babbled out all my greed and fear as though, God help me, you had nothing to think of but me and my windy self-importance" (Sayers 464). This is an acknowledgment that Harriet legitimately had things on her mind other than the series hero. Harriet, in other words, has her own existence.
There are other important things at work here, too. It may take Peter five years, but he figures out why he has to apologize and what he has to apologize for without any help from the benevolent puppeteers Cordelia and Aral have become. And Peter's apology is genuinely that. An apology. He makes no effort to camouflage it with humor ("... the horrible version in rhyme ..." (Bujold 212)) or flashy metaphors ("... the idiot conspirator blew up his secret ammo dump" (Bujold 213)) and it is completely unsparing. Miles's apology is an accurate representation of what he has in fact done. Peter's has the kind of subjective over-vehemence that is what happens when you do something that truly makes you ashamed. He calls himself "a damned arrogant fool" (Sayers 464), accuses himself of "vanity," "blundering," "blind, childish impatience" "greed and fear," "windy self-importance" (464). Peter doesn't flatter Harriet while he's apologizing, nor offer any justifications for himself. Explanations, yes, but nothing like, "... it made me crazy to watch you constrained in tiny steps, when you could be outrunning time" (Bujold 213).
Peter and Harriet, because they are not getting warped into a Heyerian world even as they speak, also have to deal with the issue of sex (as all of Gaudy Night has been dealing with sex), but that's a side bar. My point was the apology and these two key points about it.
1. Ekaterin, even more than Harriet, has other things more important than Miles to occupy her mind (Nikki, for one). She should exist separately from Miles, and if he hasn't seen that yet, it's not an apology he's offering.
2. Peter is able to take the imaginative leap and see for himself what he's done that's deserving of apology. The fact that Miles doesn't have to do that, again, devalues the apology. Moreover, Peter makes his apology without artifice. He doesn't draw attention to it as an action ("This is the eleventh draft of this letter" (Bujold 212)) and he doesn't tangle it up with declarations of love or pride or anything else.
#2 is merely a characterological thing, another attempt to put my finger on why, for me, the romance in ACC falls flat. But #1 is vital for anyone trying to combine a love interest with a continuing character while not actually writing a romance novel. (In romance novels, the rules are different; but, then again, the romance novels with which I am familiar are all stand-alones.) The love interest has to have their own agenda, their own problems, their own perspective. They can't just be dropped into the story to make out with the hero(ine); their story arc cannot be resolved purely by the hero(ine)'s True Love. Author and protagonist must both acknowledge the love interest's autonomy, their right to BE a separate person--and CONTINUE to be a separate person (as Ekaterin sadly does not in Diplomatic Immunity). If nothing else, Gaudy Night, by making Harriet the protagonist of a novel in which Peter is largely off-stage, enforces our sense of Harriet as her own person rather than merely Peter's Intended. Harriet and Peter get a good go at Happily Ever After in Busman's Honeymoon (even more in "The Haunted Policeman" and "Talboys"--if you want to count the latter in canon), but they're still having to negotiate their relationship, and they do not escape without hurting each other again.
Bujold, I think, has gotten either over-invested in Miles or under-invested in the world around him. Miles's own tendency to solipsism is increasingly being reinforced by the author's focus on him, the ways in which the other characters are dancing to the music Miles wants. Miles gets what he wants--and it's easier to write that way. I want a return to the old school Vorkosigan books, in which the universe existed in order to get in Miles's way. And, dammit, I want Ekaterin to demand a separation. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go read The Curse of Chalion again.
---
WORKS CITED
Bujold, Lois McMaster. A Civil Campaign. New York: Baen Books, 1999.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 10:03 am (UTC)Anyway. Where was I? Not blindly admiring of all things Milesian and Bujoldian, I guess.)
Oh, right, I actually do have a difficulty with GAUDY NIGHT. I mean, I love it to pieces, really I do. But the fact remains that however much Harriet's book it is, it's Peter who gets to come in with his balance and wisdom and actually solve the mystery. Harriet's blinded by her preoccupations; but he is not blinded by his with her. He can still see the truth. This bothers me more than anything in ACC. I know Bujold acknowledges all these writers as influences, but I think mapping Miles to Peter does them both a disservice. And Ekaterin is not Harriet. I'd actually rather have Miles's apology than Peter's, myself. I don't say it's perfect, but it does contain, like the rattle of the rattlesnake, a clear statement of his limits. Peter's remorse is so histrionic. Right in character, yes, and not insincere, but it makes me roll my eyes to this very day.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 10:52 am (UTC)And I do see your point about Gaudy Night, although it isn't something that bugs me. Yes, Peter is still the Great Detective; for me, his clear-headed appraisal of the situation makes sense, because he is an outsider, with no investment in Shrewsbury College or any of the tangled questions of female sexuality, female autonomy that are driving poor Harriet to distraction. And it's the one thing about Peter that Sayers never undercuts; he really is as good a detective as he thinks he is. Harriet is a good detective story writer, but unlike the nauseatingly tiresome authors of cozies, who assume that any talent can be parlayed into superior detective skill, Sayers doesn't let Harriet's writing ability make her a great detective. It's touchingly naive of the Warden and the SCR to put such faith in Harriet, and she herself admits at several points that this is not her metier. Which perhaps is just me rationalizing away a major flaw in the book, but still. For me, it makes sense.
Anyway, I find Miles's apology every bit as histrionic and annoying as you find Peter's, so apparently it's a matter of taste, and we needn't descend into a vulgar slanging match. *g* I will admit, furthermore, that the comparison between GN and ACC isn't entirely a fair one--this discussion started out, several posts ago, as an attempt to get at why ACC, for me, seems to be two different books, roughly spliced together in the middle (genre theory stuff), and has turned into a kind of ongoing grumble about Ekaterin's relegation to Love Interest, Second Class, and the unfair burden of being Perfect loaded on her back. (Also, me trying to work some things out on my own behalf, using Bujold and Sayers as my stalking horses, about romance and genre conventions and narratives. So there's baggage.)
I agree with you about Diplomatic Immunity. I wanted very badly to love it, and I just didn't. Yes, twice as long, yes, Ekaterin's PoV. *weeps softly into teacup*
I feel guilty about putting the boot into the Vorkosigan books so repeatedly, because I do like them, and Miles, and I'm really not as mean-spirited as this sniping makes me sound. But it's this Thing that I'm trying to work out, and ACC keeps coming back up as the example where I can worry at it and turn it upside down and shake it and figure out what all the gears do. In penance, I should probably write up just why it is that I think Memory is one of the best SF novels of the 1990s.
And I just realized that I want Amber Benson (Tara from Buffy) to play Ekaterin. Huh.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 02:53 pm (UTC)I haven't read DI yet; I'm glad I decided not to get it in hardcover. Whereas after our discussion I reread ACC, and felt very happy with it, despite my political objections.
My problem with Peter sweeping in and saving the day is that it supports the reading of gender as a woman's issue.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 03:02 pm (UTC)You aren't bothered by ACC; I'm not bothered by GN. It seems fair. *g*
no subject
Date: 2003-02-14 03:51 pm (UTC)Don't let me disturb the progress of your ruminations. I certainly know about mediating one's cogitations through literature. 8-)
As for Bujold, I often find myself being much more ruthless with work I largely approve of and love than with work I dislike. I think it's only natural.
I'd certainly be interested in your remarks about MEMORY, which I do love passionately.
Pamela
scatterbrained
Date: 2003-02-14 06:03 pm (UTC)Lord Peter does suffer from the burden of being Perfect, and that comes through as clearly in his apology as in everything else. Harriet is such a fully realized character herself that she always looks a bit harsh to me next to his high gloss.
It takes her three books of uphill struggle to gain that centered maturity she has by the end of _GN_; in the meantime she's been angry, self-doubting and sometimes
frankly bitchy. Meanwhile Peter has kept his own issues tucked neatly away like a gentleman's pocket handkerchief. He can call himself hard names all he likes, but really, what is he castigating himself for? A serious misjudgement and five years of near-saintly behavior.
Miles' apology is full of his blind spots, the arrogance and the grandstanding and the other things you point out, and of course it wouldn't have happened at all without Cordelia and Aral and their Clue Bat.
Lord Peter is the ideal romantic hero; Miles is someone you might actually wind up knowing, or (god forbid) marrying. Ekaterin just needs a big stick :) ("Miles, are you trying to one-up my dead?")
Point. I had a point somewhere. Ah! What your post actually reminded me of was Rowan, the Durona doctor from Mirror Dance. Miles does some heavy-handed fishing to see if she's interested in the end. She says: Barrayar sounds hellish, and frankly you drive me up the wall. His response: Darn it, she's underestimating herself, she could be the one.
I _dearly_ wanted to smack him. But has he matured between _MD_ and _ACC_, in this particular respect? (I was intending to say yes and now I've changed my mind. Rats. Thoughts?)
Re: scatterbrained
Date: 2003-02-14 08:16 pm (UTC)I like your comparison between Rowan and Ekaterin, because it highlights something that I hadn't thought of, but which is now quite clear to me. No one in Miles's circle ever says, Miles needs to grow up before he can be a decent husband. They always say, It's going to take the right woman to handle Miles. And, yes, this would be the thing that bugs me about Miles and Ekaterin, that I am fully on Peter's side when he says he objects to being tactfully managed, and that is EXACTLY what Ekaterin as Miles's wife is required and expected to do. And what she's already doing at the end of ACC with the little maneuvering about the date and size of the wedding. Yes, Miles's childlike impetuosity is part of his charm, but it's also something he needs to grow out of. Really. And being given the Perfect Wife is not going to teach him that. Peter has to learn how not to be Perfect (again, at the end of BH), and that is something I dearly want to see Miles and Ekaterin negotiating.