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larryhammerI've been reading Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Victorian verse novel, for a couple weeks now. I've less than 3000 lines to go, and while I seem to have bulled through the worst of the melodrama -- for this being a Victorian novel, there is melodrama -- Barrett Browning's anti-feminism is starting to bug the hell out of me. What's keeping me going is, of all things, the narrative stance: we started with Aurora recounting her childhood and early career as a poet, mixed with reflections from the present. Then half-way through, we reach the present and switch to narration journal-style, written soon after the action (sometimes on the same day) -- this with a couple years to go. I want to know how Barrett Browning pulls this off -- if she does.
Book read before the holiday: Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner. Appealing premise: suppose Buffy got married and retired to the suburbs to become a soccer mom? The opening almost lives up to the promise, but it falls off from there. The best description I can come up with is slight: there's nothing clearly wrong -- it just feels like not much is there. Enough not there, the baddie was obvious. Even Undead and Unappreciated has more to it (and the series has definitely fallen off from Undead and Unwed). Also, I do not like the picture of marital politics. (Though speaking of MaryJanice Davidson serieses, The Royal Pain is actually better than The Royal Treatment -- she doesn't play around much with the alt.hist premise but just runs with the royal/common set-up, which is good because she's better at snark than sci-fi.)
Movie seen during the holiday: Off the Map. Which almost worked. The biggest problem for me was it never decided whose story it was -- the daughter who frames it, her depressed father, or the IRS agent who falls in love with her mother. The eleven-year-old girl was excellently written and acted, though, as was the northern New Mexico landscape.
Thing written after the holiday: A broken sonnet. Meh. It's almost tempting to post it so people can take potshots.
Which brings me back to the poetry of Aurora Leigh, and the author's apparent conviction that the way to heighten emotion is to pile on the poetic elaboration, without changing any other quality of the verse. Gets tedious, especially during the melodramatics. Overwritten, much?
That would be a Yes.
---L.
Book read before the holiday: Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner. Appealing premise: suppose Buffy got married and retired to the suburbs to become a soccer mom? The opening almost lives up to the promise, but it falls off from there. The best description I can come up with is slight: there's nothing clearly wrong -- it just feels like not much is there. Enough not there, the baddie was obvious. Even Undead and Unappreciated has more to it (and the series has definitely fallen off from Undead and Unwed). Also, I do not like the picture of marital politics. (Though speaking of MaryJanice Davidson serieses, The Royal Pain is actually better than The Royal Treatment -- she doesn't play around much with the alt.hist premise but just runs with the royal/common set-up, which is good because she's better at snark than sci-fi.)
Movie seen during the holiday: Off the Map. Which almost worked. The biggest problem for me was it never decided whose story it was -- the daughter who frames it, her depressed father, or the IRS agent who falls in love with her mother. The eleven-year-old girl was excellently written and acted, though, as was the northern New Mexico landscape.
Thing written after the holiday: A broken sonnet. Meh. It's almost tempting to post it so people can take potshots.
Which brings me back to the poetry of Aurora Leigh, and the author's apparent conviction that the way to heighten emotion is to pile on the poetic elaboration, without changing any other quality of the verse. Gets tedious, especially during the melodramatics. Overwritten, much?
That would be a Yes.
---L.
no subject
Date: 30 December 2005 11:30 pm (UTC)I think someone got insulted there, but I can't figure out who.
no subject
Date: 31 December 2005 03:53 am (UTC)---L.