You Can’t Step Into the Same Book Twice

By Lisabet Sarai

All the members of the Grip could, I’m sure, tell you about books that changed who they are. We all know the power of the word. That’s part of what draws us together. Recently, though, I came to understood the ways in which we also change the books we read.

As birthday gifts, back in November, I gave my brother two of my all-time favorite novels: Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin and Little, Big by John Crowley. Both date from the early eighties. I’ve been hauling my paperback copies around with me since then, including half-way across the world to Asia. The bindings are brittle; pages are falling out. I was heartened to discover that both are still in print, in new editions.

After I sent them off, I decided I should re-read them, to refresh my memory. My kid brother’s pretty intense. When I sent him The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, he insisted on spending an hour and a half on the phone (long distance, from the U.S.) discussing it. This time I wanted to be prepared.

I believe this was the third time I’d read Winter’s Tale. The last was in the late nineties. It’s a long book (800 pages) and deliciously complex—something of a commitment. I had vivid recollections of various scenes and characters, but a lot of the details had faded.

Before I continue, I need to tell you something about this book. Winter’s Tale is an urban fantasy, but not in the sense that term is used now. It’s an epic imagining that centers on New York City. Indeed, the city is as much a character as Peter Lake, the master burglar and mechanic who returns from the dead after a hundred years, or Beverly Penn, the brilliant, beautiful, dying young woman whom he loves, or Pearly Soames, brutal and dandified gang leader who chases Peter Lake for a century, or Athansor, a massive white horse who can fly. The book begins just before the turn of the twentieth century and ends just after the millenium. The city has its roots in the past and its eyes on the future, creating a tension that provides much of the book’s energy.

I’ve never read anything like it. Hence, it’s rather difficult to describe. It chronicles the interlocking lives of its many remarkable characters, but it’s really, I believe, a book about time. Time appears to change everything, yet at some fundamental level is an illusion. Just behind modern New York City, you glimpse the ghosts of New York from earlier eras. If you could only focus your attention, you could make those ghosts solid and bring the past to life.

Winter’s Tale is in no sense erotica, yet it is exquisitely sensual. It does have one love scene, which I’ll quote just to give you a feeling for the wildly poetic language.

She had not counted on affection. It startled her. He kissed her temples, her cheeks and her hair, and stroked her shoulders as tenderly as if she had been a cat. She closed her eyes and cried, much satisfied by the tears as they forced their way past a dark curtain and rolled down her face.

Beverly Penn, who had the courage of someone who is often confronted by that which is gravely important, had not expected that someone else would be that way too. Peter Lake seemed to love her in exactly the way that she loved everything that she knew she would lose. He kissed her, and stroked her, and spoke to her. How surprised she was at what he said. He told her about the city, as if it were a live creature, pale and pink, that had a groin and blood and lips. He told her about spring in Prince Street, about the narrow alleys full of flowers, protected by trees, quiet and dark. He told her about the colors in coats and clothes and on the stage and in all kinds of lights, and that their random movements made them come alive. “Prince Street,” he said, “is alive. The buildings are as ruddy as flesh. I’ve seen them breathe. I swear it.” He surprised even himself.

This might not be the best passage to quote, but it may give you a sense for the rhythm in Helprin’s prose, a bit like verse.

In any case—I found in re-reading that for me, at least, the book hadn’t lost its magic. And yet, it was a different book, because of what I’d experienced since the last reading.

First, since that last reading, I had the opportunity to actually live in New York City for nine months. In other readings I’d taken the geography of the tale as realistic, but now I know it’s an imagined map superimposed on so-called reality. There is no “Printing House Square”, anymore than there is a village hidden in hills upriver called Lake of the Coheeries. At the same time, I’ve now seen first hand the constellations in the vault of Grand Central Station, so eloquently described in the novel. (Peter Lake hides out in a room just above the star-embroidered ceiling.) During my time in the city, I took a train every week day from Grand Central to the suburbs where I was working. No matter how much I was rushing, I always found time to gaze at the stars.

I understand in a much deeper sense now the way past and present entwine in New York. The book may be a fantasy, but it captures this essential reality, the core idea the drives the story forward.

The second change is the specter of 9/11, haunting me and casting its shadow over the novel. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment should you decide to read the book, but let me just say that it ends with a disaster that almost destroys the city. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the chaos and terror that followed the fall of the Twin Towers, the legions of New Yorkers trudging on foot over the bridges, the stench of burning that hung in the air for weeks afterward. 9/11 occurred before my stay in the city, but as it happened, I had a job interview in lower Manhattan less than a month after the attacks. I vividly remember the smell, charred and chemical, stinging your nostrils and making your lungs ache—like someone had left a pot on the stove too long, until the BakeLite handle scorched and the metal buckled.

In this last reading, the book darkened. The wonder and beauty have been tempered by the pain of irrecoverable loss. This didn’t spoil the book for me. However, I have a fresh appreciation of the costs of time, and of human folly.

A Snapshot of My Bookshelf

By Lisabet Sarai

A couple of months ago, we decided to revamp the Grip format a bit. We were all feeling pressured and burnt out, but nobody wanted to abandon the blog completely. So we switched to an every-other-weekday posting format, with occasional guests, devoting two weeks to each topic. Furthermore, we created a topic schedule that stretches 'way into 2013, so we all could know what we were supposed to write about, far in advance.

As we were discussing these changes, someone – maybe Kathleen – proposed that we occasionally spend a two-week period talking about what we were reading. Sounded like a great idea. This week is the first time we've tried this, and as usual, I'm the guinea pig.

I'm really not sure how to approach this. I write quite a few reviews, and I really don't feel like doing that here. After pondering this for a while, I decided to be extremely literal and give you a snapshot of what's currently on my physical and virtual book shelves.

As I suspect is true of my fellow Grippers, I tend to read several books at the same time. That way, I can select the title that most appeals to me on a certain evening. (Except when I'm traveling, I do almost all my pleasure reading in bed, before going to sleep.) Lately, I seem to have at least one digital title (often erotica) and one or two print books in progress.

At this moment (which is actually about two weeks before this post will appear), I'm a few stories into This is the Way the World Ends, a collection of apocalyptic erotica edited by Catherine Leary. This book was published by the now-defunct Freaky Fountain Press, and probably isn't available any more. I feel rather guilty, since I received this anthology for possible review more than a year ago and I'm just getting to it now. If I had reviewed it back then, might I have saved the publisher? Probably not. I did, after all, read and review Bad Romance, another Freaky Fountain title, while the publisher was still alive. It didn't help, even though I thought the book was one of the most original and intense erotica collections I'd ever read.

Actually, what triggered my decision to finally tackle This is the Way... was a discussion over at the ERWA blog about taking risks in writing erotic fiction. Like Republica Press (which has also closed its doors), Freaky Fountain was established to provide a home for erotica that didn't follow the popular rules: erotic with dark endings, violent themes, or forbidden content like non-consensual sex or incest. It's funny, because my own fiction only occasionally includes those elements, but I deeply appreciate authors who can incorporate them into a story and realize their erotic potential.

Anyway, so far This is the Way... is looking promising. The best story so far is also the most disturbing, a tale entitled “Slave King Fuck Star” by John Burks. Aliens have landed on earth and turned all its inhabitants into slaves. Mickey has the good luck to have been chosen to distribute water to the emaciated humans laboring in the Indrodi's mines. He's a petty little man who uses his power – the power of life and death – to degrade and control his fellow slaves in a way that is thoroughly despicable and yet somehow arousing. The surprise ending hits you like a fist in the gut.

Sometimes I wonder what it says about me, that I could enjoy a story like this. I make jokes about being perverted, but perhaps I really am, in some deep and horrible way. I know this story's more than just sensationalism, though. There's truth here. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of Mickeys, guarding prisons and running orphanages, people who use cruelty to make themselves feel as though they matter. And they'll probably still be around at the end of the world.

I'm also about half way through The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, in print. Almost all the print books that I read I buy second hand. I live overseas, where most English-language books are imported and hence very expensive. However, I purchased this volume brand new, as an anniversary present for my husband (knowing full well that I'd get to read it too, of course!) I hadn't heard anything about it, but a quick perusal of the blurb and a shuffle through its pages convinced me that both my husband and I would enjoy it.

The Night Circus is a dark fantasy set in the Victorian/Edwardian period. The book centers on the competition between two young magicians, groomed by their mentors since childhood to confront one another in a battle where only one can triumph. This contest takes place against the background of Le Cirque de Rêves, a mysterious circus that opens from dusk to dawn, offering its visitors pure sensation and glimpses of truth. Within the black-and-white striped tents of the night circus lie beauties and terrors that touch the soul, changing you forever.

I'm trying to read this book slowly, rationing myself to one or two chapters per night. I want to savor the images and the emotions, and that won't happen if I barrel through it the way I do most books.

This novel is gorgeously imaginative, yet I'm struck by the elegant simplicity of its language. Here's a sample passage, just to illustrate.

Outside, though it was not there before, is another raised platform, much like the one the contortionist stood on. But the figure on this platform does not move. Bailey almost thinks it is a statue, dressed in a white gown with matching fur that cascades beyond the platform to the ground. Her hair and skin, even her eyelashes, are an icy white.

But she moves. Very, very slowly. So slowly that Bailey cannot pinpoint exact motions, only slight changes. Soft flakes of iridescent snow float to the ground, falling from her like leaves from a tree.

Bailey walks around, looking at her from every angle. Her eyes follow him, though the snow-flecked lashes do not blink.

There is a small silver plaque on the platform, partially obscured by the cascading gown.

It reads IN MEMORIAM, but it does not specify who it is for.

I find it astonishing that Ms. Morgenstern manages to build her intricate, sensual world with such simple words. That in itself is a kind of magic.

Finally, for comic relief, I'm snacking on Scott Adams' The Dilbert Principle, which I picked up for two bucks at a library book sale. It's a really old book (1997), but aside from the references to pagers and PDAs, it still seems pretty relevant. I spent years in a cubicle myself, and there's an eerie truth to lots of Adams' jokes. When I'm too tired to really pay attention to what I'm reading, I'll sample a few pages of Dilbert's brainy oblivion or Dogbert's evil schemes and go to sleep chuckling.

I leave in two days for a trip back to America. I'll be sitting in a plane for twenty-odd hours. Needless to say, I've prepared myself. The cheap little tablet I'm using these days as an ereader is chock full of erotica and erotic romance. We've visited one of the local used bookstores and stocked up on T.C. Boyle, China Melville, Anita Shreve and other, less known authors. I'm not a huge fan of long plane journeys. But I am looking forward to the opportunity to catch up on my reading!