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Inhabiting Character

by | Nov 8, 2021 | Character Building

Harriet Walter as Brutus, Mark Rylance as Olivia, and Peter Hamilton Dyer as Friar Laurence

Harriet Walter as Brutus (Julius Caesar), Mark Rylance as Olivia (Twelfth Night), Peter Hamilton Dyer as Friar Lawrence (Romeo and Juliet)

“Two things strike me in Mantel’s take: That the immediate is a kind of intimacy. That the writer is an actor, working their way through a tale.”

Characterization—creating characters—is a regular topic in how-to resources for writers. A recent article on the Masterclass website (Aug 2021) notes that relatable characters are what connects a reader to a story, describing them as an “essential element of fiction writing, and a hook into the narrative arc of a story.” [1] The article instructs one to “follow these character development tips when you sit down to write” and then lists eight familiar elements: establish motivation/goals, create a voice, do a slow reveal, create conflict, provide backstory, make the personality believable, provide a physical picture, and develop secondary characters.

These are good practical tips, but how does one do the preliminary deeper thinking, the emotional work, that grounds the character, that lets them become solid to me, the writer, and ideally to the reader? For me it requires inhabiting the character, becoming an indweller.

In discussing her recent collaboration with actor Ben Miles to write a stage script for the third book of her Tudor trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel commented, “For me, writing is a very condensed and lonely form of acting. Everything has to be played out inside my head.” [2] It gets more immediate for Mantel too. She says “I’ve been all of the characters for 15 years. I’ve been in and out of all those bodies and minds.”

Two things strike me in Mantel’s take:

  • That the immediate is a kind of intimacy (“in and out of all those bodies and minds” )
  • That the writer is an actor, working their way through a tale.

Writing (and acting) go beyond backstory, though backstory informs it. It has to do with listening, really listening, to the characters, to the words (if one is playing a theater role), to the words of the others in the space, whether that space is the book one is writing or a play in which one is performing.

 

The Importance of Listening

In a 2010 BBC News interview, actor Alan Rickman commented on the importance of listening as an actor: “You only speak because you wish to respond to something  you’ve heard . . . . All I want to see from an actor to me is the intensity and accuracy of their listening.” [3]

In 2002 actor Peter Hamilton Dyer provided some rehearsal notes re: the character of Feste, whom he played in a well-regarded production of Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. This production saw successive changes in the cast. At the time Hamilton Dyer wrote these notes, only five actors from the previous go-round had stayed on. Anyone who has been through this knows—and if not, it’s easy to imagine—that adjustments need to be made. Different actors, different interpretations, different directorial notions.

Hamilton Dyer wrote, “This has been very refreshing . . . as we are making new discoveries about the characters.” And how that was done, in one instance, is a wonderfully vivid example of the need to listen and be intensely aware of/tuned into not only one’s fellow actors but the other characters (including one’s own):

“. . . [We] did a useful exercise to help us understand the relationships between the characters. We all stood in a circle, in character, and threw a tennis ball from one character to the next. The way in which you pass the ball to someone else depends on both the nature of your character and your relationship with the recipient. So, if you had very little respect for them, you might throw the ball very hard at them, or perhaps put the ball on the ground for them to come and fetch from you. . . . This exercise was really helpful in helping us understand how the characters interact with each other before we approach the text.” [4]

In the novel I am currently working on (an academic mystery), I am in Mantel’s position: “Everything has to be played out inside my head.” Unlike Rickman, Hamilton Dyer, and Mantel, I don’t have fellow actors on my stage. I am writing and playing all the parts.

 

Side Stories

I’ve worked out a couple of ways to get at this needed intimacy and listening, however. One is what I refer to as side stories. In a sense I am writing fanfiction (fanfic) for my own novel. The Urban Dictionary defines fanfiction as “when someone takes either the story or characters (or both) of a certain piece of work, whether it be a novel, tv show, movie, etc., and creates their own story based on it.” [5]

Initially the side stories were to hear, literally hear in some cases, the voices of my characters. For instance, I know that one, my so-called maps librarian, an academic with three advanced degrees, is low-voiced and self-defensively brusque, with a dry, wry sense of humor, but also cordial and lighter in speech tones when trusting. But to know that is not the same as hearing it. So I wrote scenes between her and other characters to see and hear how she speaks.

In one conversation she is pushed hard and she pushes back, not always rationally to my surprised amusement, and with a physical voice that is neutrally flat. In another, moved to reveal a deep grief, she lets a work colleague see her cry and reluctantly lets them hold her as she does, and her crying includes squeaks! My alpha reader—she reads everything and simply reacts—said that she could finally hear this person, whereas before she only saw her described.

My other approach to intimacy with my characters is the tried and true method of reading my text aloud. But I take it a step further. When there’s no one around (though if there is I can usually manage to do it in my head), I talk to aloud to them and enact how they might speak back. It’s a version of what some writers may call letting their characters take over. I don’t do that. I only set up a what if and then go improv, talking back and forth and watching what I come up with. Then I shift to another what if scenario and do it again.

This approach helped me find the audio vocal quality of two key characters: a non-binary person whose voice I now hear as a humorously melodious tenor (whereas initially I envisioned them as a somewhat flat-in-tone alto); and an English professor who I knew had an American West drawl but who I now know theatrically drags that drawl out a bit when looking to keep people at arm’s-length while, alternately, letting his voice fall into an unexpectedly sensuous tonality when reading poetry aloud in class or when speaking personally to someone important to him.

Whether my eventual readers hear any of this is, of course, an unknown. But I am encouraged in both of my approaches by two other experienced Shakespearean actors: Harriet Walter and Mark Rylance. Both have long performed The Bard, but now, later in life, both have had the opportunity for new takes on characters.

For Walter the parts were familiar but never allowed to be played by a woman: Brutus (Julius Caesar), Henry IV (play of same name), and Prospero (The Tempest). For Rylance it was the chance to return to a role he’d made profound and dear—Olivia in Twelfth Night—only to find there was more to be discovered.

 

Inhabiting

The notion of intimacy, of inhabiting, is vivid in both of their descriptions. Walter found herself silencing her personal speaking and interaction styles by listening to the characters, some of whom she might have  played opposite to earlier on. She inhabits by finding something within these male roles: “For these three roles, I discovered that power comes from stillness, from not giving anything away. All the things that I tend to do as Harriet – hand gestures, speaking a good deal – all that, gone.” [6]

Rylance found a similar minimalism in occupying the woman Olivia. A double viewing of Kabuki actor Tamasaburo in an old Japanese drama, once from the cheap seats and the next in row three, gave him an insight into how Olivia might be played effectively with “powerful reserve.” [7] Playing her at The Globe, where the audience is such a vibrant part of the performance (something Hamilton Dyer has commented on as well) and where listening to the audience as participant is key, gave Rylance additional notions as to how he might add nuance. A later, tragic experience (the unexpected death of Rylance’s stepdaughter Nataasha) turned Rylance inward, to a listening to Olivia herself. He commented, upon returning to rehearsals with long-time colleagues,

“These characters, when you play them again, it’s really like meeting an old friend. And there Olivia was kind of saying to me, ‘Now you know what I feel.’” [7]

There is nothing original to this notion, that one must listen and inhabit. All fiction writers are, perforce, actors. Like Mantel, they play things out inside their heads. But for myself and my characters, I’ll leave some last words to Rylance, words that have honed my awareness and enlivened my own sense of  immediacy for words and creating:

“Backstage,” he says, “I always have one ear to the house, judging the energy of the audience from their response to other scenes, enjoying the innovations and discoveries of my fellow actors, and privately harnessing the aspects of myself, the thoughts and actions, that are appropriate for my character.” [8]

 

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Nov 8 ). Inhabiting Character. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/11/08/inhabiting-character/

 

IMAGE CREDITS

Harriet Walter as Brutus in Julius Caesar, Donmar Warehouse, 2012. Photo by Helen Maybanks.

Peter Hamilton Dyer as Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, 2021. Photo by Jane Hobson.

Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2012. Photo from the Opus Arte Globe On Screen DVD case cover.

 

SOURCES

[1] MasterClass. (26 Aug 2021) How to develop fictional characters: 8 tips for character development. MasterClass.

[2] Lawson, Mark. (9 Sept 2021). Hilary Mantel on staging The Mirror and the Light: ‘I should have been doing this all my life’. The Guardian.

[3] Rickman, Alan. (2010). Alan Rickman on importance of listening when acting. BBC HARDtalk. BBC News. YouTube video. Video posted on 14 Jan 2016. Runtime: 02:46. (Quotations in text above can be found at timestamps 01:57 and 02:13. A transcript is also provided.)

[4] Hamilton Dyer, Peter. (2002). Adopt an actor: Feste played by Peter Hamilton Dyer. The Shakespeare Globe Library and Archive. Record no: GB 3316 SGT/ED/LRN/2/15/5. Rehearsal notes & classroom activities (4 PDFs). (Quoted text is from “Rehearsal Notes 1.”)

[5] Urban Dictionary. Fanfiction. (7 Aug 2006). Entry written by Mistaki.

[6] McGlone, Jackie. (10 Aug 2017). Harriet Walter on Brutus and other heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s roles for women. The Herald.

[7] Brantley, Ben. (14 Aug 2016). How Mark Rylance became Olivia onstage. The New York Times.

[8] Rylance, Mark. (12 Nov 2016). Mark Rylance: Backstage, I always have one ear to the house. The Guardian.

Ursula Vernon | Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew

by | Oct 25, 2021 | Book Thoughts

Nurk cover, photo of Ursula Vernon, self-drawn portrait of Vernon with some of her characters

“She intrigued me and I wanted to know more
about this person – only to find she is quite the
person, possessing a full range of wit,
talent, curiosity, and humor.“

 

My childhood reading was almost entirely of the magical or historical sort.  The Oz books by L. Frank Baum were a mainstay as was a wonderfully old copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology. Narnia, Middle Earth, Pern, Earthsea . . . all came much later.  For me the universe of imagination was filled with early 20th-century and ancient classic mythologies.  Too young to hear the sly wit and irony within Baum’s writing or see the androgynous, sexualized undertones of Neill’s illustrations, and too unknowing about adult ways to think Zeus’ carrying off of nymphs or Circe’s entrapment of Odysseus and his men to be anything but an adventure story, I was fortunate to grow up truly innocent of heart.

Gustave Doré drawinf of Dante Alighieri in the Gloomy WoodNow, as Dante put it at the beginning of his Divine Comedy, “midway through the course my life”, when the “dark wood” is the complexity of adulthood and the onslaught of 21st century information age, it is less easy to retain one’s innocence or find it in storytelling. Angst, personal and global horrors, war, and violence in all manner of relationships, individual, collective, political, and whatnot, fill our many-formatted screens, our reading matter, and our lives. We bewail the loss of innocence yet so often do nothing to foster its existence.

So I was surprised and delighted to come across artist/writer/illustrator Ursula Vernon. This Wikipedia link refers to her as a creator of web comics and children’s books. I first came upon her as none of these things. I’d read a quote of hers somewhere which impressed me with its casual, tossed-off tone and fiercely tender insight, and which, I am embarrassed to say, I cannot now recall. She intrigued me and I wanted to know more about this person—only to find she is quite the person, possessing a full range of wit, talent, curiosity, and humor.

Vernon describes herself on her deviantART page as a “painter and a children’s book author.” She is very much more than that—human, sarcastic, fierce, whimsical, funny—but this post is not intended as an hagiographic advertisement. You can discover her for yourself via her website (and blog), Red Wombat Studio and Twitter (damn, she can be wickedly funny!).

 

Vernon writes under that surname (children’s books, the stunning webcomic Digger [1] and for adults as T. Kingfisher. The managing editor of M Parker Editing, Michelle Parker, has this insightful take on Vernon:

“The thing I love best about @UrsulaV‘s reworked fairy tales is how she reframes them using incredibly relatable POV characters as the lens, allowing readers to engage w/even the most absurd of stories. She is so good at bringing a deeply human element to the fantastical.” [2]

Here, I just want to natter on a bit about a book she published in 2008. It’s called Nurk. [3] It took me all of an hour to read and left me all hug-myself-happy and charmed. A book that can do that simple thing is a good book indeed. Happy and charmed: a neat little pair of emotions with which to begin any day.

 

1879 illustration of King John's Anger after Signing Magna ChartaI’ve read many children’s books and, as I began this post noting, many notable works of imaginative fiction. And I am a rather angry reader as a rule. That is, it doesn’t take much for a book to lose my interest or respect. As a former English teacher and theater major, and long-time information professional and educator (specializing in text analysis and classification) and an online librarian (specializing in research methods and building critical thinking skills), I cannot help but see the cracks in the scenery, the clunking of labored prose, the behind the scenes machinations of the making of a story.

I’ve been known to throw a book to the wall (violently) when something about it irks me on any one of many levels. It takes a really good writer to get past my wall of critical defenses. (And I am not saying this is the right way to read. I would love to be able to lose myself in any book I pick up, but me being me, it just isn’t possible.)

 

So . . . Nurk.

“Nurk is a quiet homebody of a shrew. But when a mysterious plea for help arrives in the mail, he invokes the spirit of his fearless warrior-shrew grandmother, Surka, and sets off to find the sender.” [from Vernon’s page on Nurk]
Cover of Nurk shows main character rowing a snail shell boatImmediately upon reading the first page, my hackles twitched.  I could hear hobbit and hitchhiker’s guide and all manner of many coy literary allusions. But something Vernon does, and does very well, managed to deflect my inner critic. She has the ability to make it all look and feel quite effortless.

 

Of course, the book seems to say, of course you are going to think of Bilbo Baggins when you read of a tiny little homebody shrew who loves all manner of food and comforts and whose legendary grandmother, the hero Surka, echoes Bilbo’s mother, Belladonna Took, “the ‘remarkable’ ninth child, and eldest daughter, of the Old Took and his wife Adamanta.” Stories about heroes, even those about tiny hobbits or even tinier shrews, should echo each other. That sensibility of the hero as a historic constant is why we love these stories in the first place. 

What Vernon does is reduce the Great Hero Drama to the matter-of-fact, wee universe of shrews, dragonflies, and mushrooms. And does so in a way that rekindles the emotions of what it is to be heroic via very small and simple actions. Nurk, unlike Mr. Baggins, has suffered tragedy, and his existence as a small mammal in a large world of predators makes timidity a logical act of self preservation. Yet within this timid heart is an heroic longing to do something grand. And this grand act begins as the momentous decision to return a mis-delivered letter.

 

I cannot tell much more of the tale without giving it way altogether, so I will let you explore it yourself. But I can say much about Vernon’s writing style, which is simultaneously simplistic in presentation and slightly tilted. Her humor is sly and modern.  On the one hand there is a kind of knowing wink towards the reader about these little funny creatures and their small worries and greater fears, while at the same time there is a genuine affection for them all, even the villainous mole. There is a breezy flow to her storytelling. And although one pretty much knows all will be be well, it’s not a given. What tickled me is that I found I really was in suspense about not just how it would end, but how it all would play out. I haven’t read a “kid’s book” that had me actually caring about “things” since I was, well, a kid! 

The illustrations are a delight as well. Inked in black on a flat white background, the line of her art is strong and easy in appearance. Whimsy abounds while cutesy is avoided (though cute isn’t). The creatures in this world are familiar and, in the case of the dragonflies, also very much not. Vernon’s sense of humor in relation to the representation of animals manifests the absurd blended with the deeply funny, even tender. And all are terrifically and confidently executed. You can get a sense of her overall approach on her Selected Artwork page here.

It must needs be mentioned that while Vernon refers to herself as a children’s book author and illustrator, she is a great deal more. Her genre is not herself. She is, in all the best ways, an Explorer who adventures out into imagined places and reports like a proper anthropologist. 

WikiFUR writes this about her:

“Ursula’s work uses a range of styles, sometimes realistic, sometimes humorous and cute. One of her recurring themes is Gearworld, a world that juxtaposes the organic and the inorganic. Gearworld is a recurring theme in the work of Ursula Vernon. It is typified by eroded concrete, iron, gears, and the melding of organic and inorganic – Steam pipe tree, for instance, or fish that live in glass tubes bolted to the walls. Gearworld is vast and changeable – the normal rules of the world do not apply consistently, or in some cases at all. It is inhabited by a range of peoples, some fantastic, others mundane, all of whom remain to be explored.”

 

In addition to several other books (see her website for more on these), Vernon has done two other things worth mentioning.  First, she and her partner Kevin  host a weekly podcast titled Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap. Each week they review a range of pre-packaged foods and then rate them. Archives and updates to the show are available here.

Second, she posted a very important piece on her blog about the sexual harassment that took place in 2013 at a Con she does not name. Titled “On Con Sexual Harassment – Being An Ally Is Freaky As Hell“, she reported on something that happened and what she tried to do about it and what the folks running the Con did in positive response. Her post set off an extended conversation in many venues. I thank her and laud her for what she did and that she made it all public.

 “Keeping it real” is a corny cliche, but this is just what Vernon does. She reminds me of another Ursula who was noted for her realness and her bravery and deep imagination in writing, in opining, and in world-making: Ursula K. Le Guin. Their respective works are, in many ways, quite different, but in their quality of imagination and excellence of expression and execution, they are very much alike.  

 

 

NOTE: This essay is a modified version of one I originally published on my blog Dante’s Wardrobe.

 

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

 ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as a book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read. 

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Oct 25). Ursula Vernon | Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/10/25/vernon-nurk/


IMAGE CREDITS

Cover of Nurk by Ursula Vernon. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Portrait of Ursula Vernon. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Self-drawn portrait of Ursula Vernon with characters. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Dante Alighieri. In a Gloomy Wood. Artist: Gustave Doré. From the From OldBooks.org.

[King] John’s Anger after Signing Magna Charta. From Charlotte M. Yonge’s Young Folks’ History of ENgland (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1879, pg. 101). Posted at ClipART ETC of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.


SOURCES

[1] Vernon, Ursula. (2003-2011). Digger. Web comic version. Print version from Sofawolf Press.

[2] Parker, M. (aka Chelle). (2021, Nov 16). Twitter post.

[3] Vernon, Ursula. (2008). Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew. Harcourt Children’s Books.

The Beauty of Typewriters

by | Oct 11, 2021 | Writing Technology

Old typewriter keys, vintage typewriter, & neon type keys

” ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’ This panagram—a sentence that uses all of the letters of the English-language alphabet—was typically used in touch-typing practice to test mechanical keyboards.”

Black and white photo of young woman with Underwood typewriter
1964 Royal Empress Typewriter
Oliver 5 Typewriter
Corona 3 typewriter on wooden table. To right is a leatherbound traveler's journal. above right is a vivid purple orchid.
Man types on a Corona 3 typewriter
Top view of IBM Electromatic Typewriter
Rear view of table with two old typewriters. To left hang two sings reading Free Type-In and Write a Letter
Close up of Typewriter Manifesto typed on paper
Typewriters set up on outdoor rummage sale table.
Black family (mother, 2 sons, 1 daughter) standing next to typewriter they have just purchased.
Black and white diagram of QUERTY computer keyboard
FACIT TP1 typewriter cardboard keyboard cover

Once an academic librarian who used 21st-century information technology easily, some ten years ago I found myself part of something called the Typosphere.

A term for bloggers who collect, use, and otherwise obsess over typewriters and other ‘obsolete’ technologies, including, but not limited to, handwriting, pens and ink, paper mail and mail art, knitting and fibre arts, film photography, chip-less combustion engines, and related ephemera. Though typically reclusive, members of the typosphere can sometimes be found lurking around the fringes of rummage sales, swap meets, flea markets, and church fundraisers, hoping to find the one make, model, or color typewriter that will finally complete their collection and bring them true happiness and satisfaction. None have managed this feat yet. [1]
I am an artist and writer who uses all sorts of so-called obsolete technologies such as vintage era dip-pens and ink wells, snail mail paper letters and mail art, old time film cameras, a treadle sewing machine, and mechanical typewriters.
Growing up I typed all of my school papers on the 1930s-era typewriter my Dad used when he was in school: an Underwood desktop model. It was shiny black and elegant. So writerly! In grad school I found my own machine, a Royal Empress; the same brand I learned to type on in a high school business skills class. It was the soft grey color of a U.S. Navy battleship and about as heavy. At some point it no longer worked and I stashed it away, stubbornly holding on to it through several moved, but finally gave it away.

But I missed it and missed the joy of physically making words with a metal machine. Although I’m a writer and not a curator, I briefly became a collector and for several years owned about 25 typewriters.

The oldest was an early 1900s Oliver 3, a machine that looks like it can fly! (The image here is of the very similar Oliver 5.) The newest was an electric Smith Corona SL 470 from the 1980s that had once belonged to my husband’s grandmother. The oddest was a 1930s Corona 3 that was designed to fold in half when not in use. The laptop of its day, its light weight and convenient portability made it the machine of war correspondents and writers. By contrast, the heaviest was a 1940s IBM Electromatic. Family lore is that my Dad sold these when he worked for IBM way back when. We think the one in this image is from his sales inventory.

For a couple of years I enjoyed letting others play with my collection of typewriters. In my alter ego as Professor Remington I hosted type-ins, an event where people bring their typewriters to an entertaining location, such as a library, bookstore, or park and share the fun with passersby. One such event was part of the City of Madison’s (WI) annual Summer Solstice celebration. I set out a range of my machines on some tables along with a copy of the Typewriter Insurgency Manifesto [2] displayed on the platen roll of a non-working desk typewriter. The best part of it was the families and watching the excitement of the parents as they showed their kids the machines they used before computers.

I held another type-in a couple years later, using our neighborhood’s annual group rummage sale as an opportunity to sell some machines, though for me it was more like sending them off to good homes. One young man, who told me he was an aspiring journalist, was happy with the machine used by many journalists, a Facit TP1, the so-called “Prince of Typewriters.” [3] A mother and her three children were so excited about having a “family writing machine.” And as always, the children were fascinated by these mechanical pieces of history.

Typewriters as Agents of Change

According to American typewriter collector (and University of Cincinnati professor of philosophy), Richard Polt, “the concept of the typewriter dates back to at least 1714.” [4] Polt further notes that what seems to have been the first actually working typewriter was made in Italy in 1808.  Christopher Sholes, a “Milwaukee newspaperman, poet, and part-time inventor,” is credited as one of the first inventors of the commercial typewriter, although it was E. Remington & Sons who initially marketed the machines. The introduction of commercial typewriter, like the development of the laptop and tablet computers, revolutionized the worlds of printing, business, and personal and professional writing. [5][6]

And typewriters aren’t just pieces of history, they have made history. The introduction of this new-fangled technology in the late nineteenth-century created a revolution in the traditional man’s world of business and industry. British journalist, Lucy Kellaway noted “The typewriter is almost obsolete in the modern office. But it played a crucial role in women’s arrival in the workplace.” [7] “Typewriting girls” they were referred to, women who assumed the often boring task of mechanically transcribing the ever-increasing stacks of information, reports, administrative documents, and letters. Kellaway observed that

This feminisation of office work happened incredibly fast. Until the late 19th Century there were no women in offices at all. In 1870, there were barely a thousand of them. By 1911 there were 125,000 and by 1961 there were 1.8 million, in 2001 there were 2.5 million female clerks. [8]

Typewriters in Education

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” This sentence about the fox and dog—called a pangram, a sentence that uses all of the letters of the English-language alphabet—was typically used in touch-typing practice to test mechanical keyboards. Typewriter collectors often will type this sentence as a way of checking to see if all the letter keys of a machine they want to buy are functioning. A veteran once told me that his go-to sentence in school was “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” It’s a good sentence, but not one that lets one test one’s alphabet keys!

While most computer keyboards are standardized now, in the past the keys varied, depending on the age and purpose of the machine. The typewriter I learned to type on as a high school junior had the standard American QUERTY keyboard but was missing keys for the number 1 and the exclamation point (!). A lower case “L” was used for the number; while creating the exclamation point took three steps: typing an apostrophe, back-spacing once, and then typing a period. I have a 1929 portable that I bought from a WWII veteran. He told me he had used his GI Bill bonus to pay for an engineering degree and the typewriter he sold to me. It had several keys with fractions on the keyboard as well as a “+” sign.

I learned from a 90-something woman who had made her living as a secretary that the typewriters used in her long ago business skills class all had blank keys. This forced the women (and they were all women then) to learn to touch-type, that is, to type without looking at the keys. The lady proudly told me that she got an A in the course and was able to type 90-100 words per minute throughout her career. The Facit TP1 mentioned above had its original hide-the-hands pasteboard shield when I found it. According to the instruction card the newbie typist was to place this shield as shown in the image at left. I tried this but my hands are fairly large and I was unable to type without knocking the shield off.

Typewriters, Buying & Selling

While I still have a couple of machines that I use to write letters, I no longer collect typewriters and have sold or given most of them away. But am often asked about how one goes about finding or selling typewriters. Here are the links I send along.

Please Note: I no longer buy or sell typewriters. Nor do I appraise them. If you are interested in learning more about these lovely machines and, see the following websites.

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Oct 11). The Beauty of Typewriters. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/10/11/beauty-of-typewriters/

IMAGE CREDITS

Header Image

Woman with an Underwood typewriter, c. 1918. By Theodore C. Marceau. Library of Congress: Information Direct, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10047423

1964 Royal Empress Typewriter #MCE-117931113. From the Collection of James Fifford. The Tyepwriter Database. https://typewriterdatabase.com/1964-royal-empress.9155.typewriter

Oliver Typewriter model No. 5. by Elcobbola at English Wikipedia. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oliver_Typewriter_No._5.JPG

Two images of a 1922 Corona 3 Typewriter. From collection of Steve Parry. https://typewritertraveler.com/corona-3.html. Used by permission.

 

IBM Electromatic typewriter. Photo by Lou Host-Jablonski. Dark Apple Productions. Used by permission.

All type-in and rummage sale type-in photos taken by J.A. Jablonski. The mother in the group shot gave permission for her children’s image to be posted online.

 Black and white diagram of QUERTY computer keyboard. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QWERTY_keyboard_diagram.svg

Facit TP1 cardboard keyboard cover. Photo by J.A. Jablonski.


Sources

[1] Clemens, Mike. (n.d.). What is the Typosphere? (blog post). Welcome to the Typosphere.

[2] Polt, Richard. (n.d.) Typewriter Insurgency Manifesto. Multi-language versions. | Updated version from his The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. Countryman Press, 2015.

[3] Messenger, Robert. (30 October 2011). Facit TP1 portable – The Prince of Typewriters. (blog post). Oz Typewriter.

[4] Polt, Richard. (n.d.). A Brief History of Typewriters. The Classic Typewriter Page.

[5] Olson, J.S. & Kenny, S. (2014). The Industrial Revolution: Key Themes and Documents (Unlocking American History). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, p. 216.

[6] Jacob T. (n.d.). The Invention of Typewriters and Its Effect on 19th Century America. (web article)

[7] [8 ] Kellaway, L. (2013). The Arrival of Women in the Office. [edited transcript]. BBC News Magazine.

Liza Kirwin | More Than Words

by | Sep 27, 2021 | Book Thoughts

More than Words cover, quill pen in ink well, handwritten letter with large drawning at top

Left: More Than Words book cover | Right: Letter of Dorothea Tanning to Joseph Cornell (1948)

“. . . they capture not simply eras but moments and personalities. They are legacies each one, though minute.“

Although the Smithsonian exhibit for More than Words was mounted a while ago, I only recently came across the exhibition book–More Than Words: Illustrated Letters From the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (2015)–as a bookstore remainder. [1] I have a small collection of books about illustrated letters, but this one is by far the best of them.  The descriptive text is eloquent but kept to a minimum; the images are distinctly and vividly printed; the pages are made of a paper that is hefty, smooth, and a delight to handle; and there is an appendix with full transcriptions for each letter (printed on a softer paper in blue ink).
The type of drawings and the quality of their sketching varies. Some are carefully crafted, some are cartoon-like, and some are similar to those seen in the modern urban sketchers movement. Their purposes vary as well. One writer, separated from his fiancee for over a year as he travels to Europe, woos her with almost daily charming missives that contain his illustrations of himself acting out the cultural flavor each new locale. Another author, writing to a potential publisher, coyly includes a well-sketched self portrait as an example of his work.  

Handwritten letter with pen and ink drawing of artist studio

Letter by Paul Bransom to Helen Ireland Hays

 

Postcard with handwriting & 2 drawn images: a costumed monkey emerging from a box & a family group portrait

Robert Frederick Blum to Minnie Gerson, 1883 December 6.

 

The transcriptions in the appendix are jewels. Not all antique (one letter was posted in 1963); they capture not simply eras but moments and personalities. They are legacies each one, though minute. So strongly present is the sense of making: of friendships, of connections, of the letters themselves. 

Letter Writing as a Movement

 

Book cover shows postage stamp of open sensuous mouth licking a postage stampThe final paragraph of the Introduction urgently notes the loss of these material treasures that are “all but disappearing from our culture.” I am less convinced that this is so. The Mail Art movement has been running strong for half a century now. I regularly come across websites dedicated to either mail art or letter writing specifically (see below). And the Maker Movement, the Steampunk movement, and rise of elaborate cosplay events all bespeak a yearning for solid, physical and playful culture that is being energetically acted upon. Twenty-first century letter writers are not so much looking looking back as creating their own legacies of now.

In the 1960s performance and conceptual artist, Ray Johnson, spearheaded the mail art (or correspondence art) movement. According to the Artists’ Pub network site “Mail Art does not refer to the personal correspondence between two individuals but the communication with art about specifically announced projects.” [2]

The long out-of-print book Correspondence Art: Sourcebook for the Network of International Postal Art Activity (1984) is worth tracking down. Published during the height of the mail art movement it’s regarded as a key work. (See the Sources list [3] for complete publication info and a link to detailed information about the book and the movement.)

Epistolary Books

Title page of the second edition of Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740)A delightful cousin of illustrated letters is the so-called epistolary novel. The classic is Pamela by Samuel Richardson (1740).

This from Wikipedia details this format succinctly:

“An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters although, diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic “documents” such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use . . . . The epistolary form can add greater realism to a story, because it mimics the workings of real life. It is thus able to demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator.  An important strategic device in the epistolary novel for creating the impression of authenticity of the letters is the fictional editor.” [4]

Jen Petro-Roy, in their recent article “Writing Epistolary Novels in the Modern Age” (2021) identifying a key aspect of the form that appeals to authors and readers notes that “The form allows for intense emotions while also giving your narrator the option to hold certain details back.” [5]

The format has evolved since the 18th century. The early titles were almost entirely letters. As authors explored the approach the types of communications expanded to include diary and journal entries, newspaper and articles, sections of wills and other legal documents . . . to the modern inclusion of electronic documents such as emails, blog posts, and the like.

The format is not limited to a particular genre. Mystery writer Dorothy Sayers, in her book The Documents in the Case (1930), tells the story via character letters assembled as a kind of dossier. [6]. Speculative SF author Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work, Always Coming Home (1985), is comprised of stories, poems, maps, dictionaries, charts, and songs (some with footnotes and journal entries) that interweave the two main characters’ narratives. The first edition of Always Coming Home was packaged in a box that included a cassette recording, “Music and Poetry of the Kesh,” created by Le Guin and collaborator Todd Barton. [7] The magical realism trilogy Griffin and Sabine (1991) by Nick Bantock took the notion of an epistolary story literally: the tale is told via letters (that the reader must remove from the physical pages) and postcards printed to show front and back. [8]

Note: The Wikipedia article cited above provides an extensive list of epistolary works from the 18th-century to the present.

The mixed media aspect of the format, I confess, utterly fascinates me! I have a speculative SF book that is currently backburnered while I try to sort out if, or when, publishing technology will let me create the book I have in mind–my notion for the storytelling needs printed page, loose documents and foldout elements a la Bantock, and audio (and possible visual) recordings a la Le Guin.

Locating Pen Friends

Over the years I’ve enjoyed real and fictional correspondences. I currently have two real ones running using a Google Drive folder as the mailbox. This is in part due to the problematic postal delivery issues in the U.S. at the moment and, in part, due to impatience. Letters for me are very active communications. Unless I am handwriting or typewriting a letter—and the point of that is the delicious reality of creating a physical thing for my correspondent to hold, read, and, in theory, treasure—I like my letters to be quickly sent and received.

The letters illustrated in the Smithsonian’s exhibition are those written, for the most part, between friends. If you are interested in developing a snail mail correspondence, one’s friends–be they family, writing compatriots, etc.—are the place to start. Another place to try is The Letter Exchange which has been running since 1982. And TravelandLeisure.com posted this article in 2020 (video included): These Websites Connect You With Pen Pals Around the World. Searching on the phrase finding pen friends also helps. As with any match-up site, you’ll want to vet for safety.

NOTE: This essay is an updated version of one I originally published on my artist blog,  Dante’s Wardrobe.

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as a book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Sept 27). Liza Kirwin | More Than Words. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).
https://jajablonski.com/2021/09/27/more-than-words/

IMAGE CREDITS

Cover of More Than Words. From the Bookshop.org info page.

Letter Image: Tanning, Dorothea. Dorothea Tanning to Joseph Cornell, 1948 March 3. Joseph Cornell papers, 1804-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Letter Image: Bransom, Paul. Paul Bransom to Helen Ireland Hays, 1943. Helen Ireland Hays papers concerning Paul Bransom, circa 1903-1983. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Cover of Correspondence Art. From Mail Art Chro no logy (website).

Title page of the second edition of Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). Public Domain image (retrieved from Wikipedia). Version here has been slightly modified with image of torn edge and background color.

 

SOURCES

 

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Kirwin, Liza. (2015). More Than Words: Illustrated Letters From the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Princeton Architectural Press.

[2] Mail Art-Archive at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin. Collection note. Artists’ Pub website. Accessed on 4 October 2021.

[3] Stofflet, Mary & Michael Crane, eds. (1984). Correspondence Art: Sourcebook for the Network of International Postal Art Activity. San Francisco: Contemporary Arts Press. ISBN: 0931818028. https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/288/

[4] Epistolary Novel. Wikipedia post. From version last edited on 6 November 2021.

[5] Petro-Roy, Jen. (Updated Oct 8, 2021). Writing Epistolary Novels in the Modern Age. Web article. The Writer website.

[6] Sayers, Dorothy L. & Robert Eustace. (1930). The Documents in the Case. Brewer and Warren.

[7] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1985). Always Coming Home. 2001 edition via University of California Press.

[8] Bantock, Nick. (1991). Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence. 25th Anniversay Edition (2016). Chronicle Books. | Sabine’s Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin and Sabine Continues. (1992). Chronicle Books. | The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin and Sabine Concludes. (1993). Chronicle Books.

 

R.B. Lemberg | The Four Profound Weaves

by | Aug 30, 2021 | Book Thoughts

RB Lemberg Four Profound Weaves Book

R.B. Lemberg

“I am in the end . . . a creature of the work, of deep storytelling, and of imagination. In Lemberg’s novella, I find all three. “

When I read R.B. Lemberg’s novella, The Four Profound Weaves (2020.) [1] I expected not to like it but I hoped, very much hoped, that I would.

Reader: I did, very much did.

I expect to not like most things I read. I am something of an impatient reader. It is my private idiosyncrasy. It tends to flare more often when I read fiction. Non-fiction, it seems, just annoys me as it is often a matter of sloppy thinking, bad-writing, incorrect information, etc. (though I draw the line at plagiarism). These are not good things, but I tend to cut a non-fiction writer a little slack. The younger ones anyway. Experienced oldsters should know better and deserve every ounce of flack thrown their way.

Poets get all the slack and all the love from me. Poetry is its own universe. I go there, I write there, and I know that the poet’s mind is the mind of an artist who, as Ursula K. Le Guin noted, goes

“into the gap between . . . . They go limping and weeping, ugly and frightened, and they come back with the wings of the redwing hawk, the eyes of the mountain lion.” [2]

Fiction writers, many of them anyway, are artists too. And I try to temper my readerly temper on their behalf. Writing isn’t an easy craft. I know this. So to come upon a story that takes me into it then lets me walk back into myself and back again, well, it’s a rare work that can create that two-way bridge and make it an easy yet challenging walk.

The Quality of Craft

R.B. Lemberg’s The Four Profound Weaves is such a story. I am a long time reader of Ms. Le Guin. Her work is crafted down to the molecules as writing and to the subatomic in terms of story. One feels utterly held by her. Lemberg’s novella holds a comparable easeful regard of its readers while pushing, pushing that deeply reflective quality one hopes to find in works of imagination. There is world building and there is cosmology. Lemberg has managed to do both and, fittingly, woven them together so that each one is visible, yet not, while informing the other.

I will not summarize the story. Other reviewers have done this better than I could (See Foreword Reviews or Publishers Weekly). My intent is to relay my immediate response as a reader. (I wrote my notes for this post an hour after reading the book.)

For me the heart of a fiction work is character. I want to know the persons almost more than I want to know the plot in which they are encased. So I am sensitive to point of view. As a reader I typically balk at first person narration. It is too easy, I think, for the author to channel themselves. Solid, credible first person point of view is hard to master.

Lemberg does master it, twice, their chapters alternating between two trans “elders,” former/current friends, who travel together on a quest to find the aged aunt of one, a legendary weaver. One, Uiziya, seeks to know how to weave a carpet of bones, the other, nen-sasaïr, the so-called nameless man, to learn their new name. By narrative necessity their tales overlap, but who they each are, who they perceive themselves to be, what their respective “mission” is, what they each hope for, is succinctly delineated. They are different people but their cultures overlap, they have awareness of the other cultures. So it could have happened that Lemberg’s “first persons” could have sounded like one person. They do not. And the characters themselves are vividly rendered in voice, movement, beliefs, history, and emotion/psychology. They are real, which is something quite powerful when the story is not simply fiction, but fantasy fiction.

Opening Lines

Another thing that either catches me or doesn’t are the opening lines of the first chapter. Personally, I hate it when literary agents (on Twitter is where I tend to see this) harp on the importance of opening lines. But they are right for the most part. It’s not simply the content of those sentences, though one hopes they set the tone for the story and, if one is lucky, the whole damn story itself.

The opening two sentences of Four Weaves are “I sat alone in my old goatskin tent. Waiting, like I had for the last forty years, for Aunt Benesret to come back.” I laughed, out loud. For in that split second I recalled the opening lines of three other authors I’d read recently and semi-recently, all trying something similar with varying degrees of—to my eye—success. (Disclaimer: I do not presume that my take is anyone else’s but my own.)

“The steerswoman centered her chart on the table and anchored the corners around. A candlestick, a worn leatherbound book, an empty mug, and her own left hand held the curling parchment flat.” 

“Matt said you find things. For a living,” the woman said on the phone.”

“There was a wall. It did not look important.”

The first is from Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman, described as a science fantasy novel. It is the first of a series. Established here: who, something of a setting, an overall tone, and that wonderfully curious phrase, “her own left hand.” [3] The opening description was slightly cliché but that single phrase–her own left hand–caught me. It was a quality of character subtlety that intrigued. Going forward, I read the first three books, I was very much intrigued by the tale but the writing kept tripping me. Description overrode things, the “own left hand” turned out to be a phrase quirk and no more. The story got lost in the telling. I didn’t read book four and book five has yet to be completed.

The second is from Kristen Lepionka’s 2017 mystery novel The Last Place You Look. Typical noir in cadence, snarkish tone, and an anonymous caller. [4] I know I probably shouldn’t, but I laugh at that noir verbal tic. I can’t take it seriously. I didn’t get beyond the first chapter. I couldn’t, and I wanted to. But time is precious and I only read what I want to read.

The last is from Le Guin’s SF novel The Dispossessed. The cadence is the same as Lemberg’s opening two sentences. Setting, tone, context nailed in nine words. [5] I have read most of what Le Guin has written, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I don’t like everything she’s done but I’ve read it. Not simply because she is a master at the craft of writing and an imagineer, world builder, and cosmologist of the highest level. She exudes the power of a soul sorted, explored, and faced with ruthless honesty. I am drawn to her in a way I am drawn to no other author.

Silhouette of exotic flying bird
A Singular Author

Lemberg does that for me and, frankly, I am floored. I came across them only recently and incidentally, someone I follow on Twitter mentioned them. Perhaps they quoted them, I don’t recall but I was curious. I started to follow them and saw mention made and discussions shared about this new work coming out that had a flavor of originality. I am keen for new stories. There was something else, though, a personal grief, which the nature of Twitter meant it was a public grief. I have been touched by the quality of their expressions and efforts in this deeply mournful time. There was grief, but an ineffable connection with life too.

I typically avoid seeking out the personal about an author. I want their stories, I don’t want them. I believe writers, like everyone, are owed their privacy. That I know what I do about Le Guin is mostly due to the scholarly articles I’ve read about her, the personal remarks she makes in her essays and writing instructionals, and Arwen Curry’s splendid documentary, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. I honored Lemberg’s mourning but did not, as a stranger, want to in any way intrude.

I preordered The Four Profound Weaves and, in awaiting its arrival, did something I never do. I avoided all reviews and all commentary as best I could. I don’t mind spoilers, so it wasn’t that. It seemed to me that this book might be the kind of book that gave my angry reader self a needed calming down. I have never before so prepared myself to read like this. And I am grateful that I was not disappointed.

I am in the end, I guess one might say, a creature of the work, of deep storytelling, and of imagination. In Lemberg’s novella, I find all three. They craft their writing. There is cadence to the sentences, the narrative flow, and the plot itself. They know how language works to deepen the culture surrounding people and their doings. Character names sound real. The words used to describe artifacts, cultural behavior, the sociology of the different peoples all ring true. With regard to the journey that is imagination, Lemberg bends their mind (and heart too, one senses) into that gap between and emerges with the wings of the redwing hawk. This tale seems to have been torn from their soul.

The Four Profound Weaves is an unexpected gift. In Lemberg’s Birdverse context, I am an elder (though I do not feel like one). I have not felt as young as I do now, as a child looking forward to sitting at their feet, awaiting future tales. I am grateful to know that their stories are and will continue to be told after I am no more.

NOTE: This essay is a lightly edited version of one I originally published on 2 Sept 2020 on my blog Dante’s Wardrobe.

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as a book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.  

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Aug 30). R.B. Lemberg | The Four Profound Weaves. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/08/30/four-profound-weaves/

IMAGE CREDITS

Cover of The Four Profound Weaves. From Lemberg’s website.

R. B. Lemberg.  Author photo from Lemberg’s Press Kit.

Modified cover image of bird from Audible version of book.

Silhouette of exotic flying bird. From the Tachyon Press page for The Four Profound Weaves.


SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Lemberg, R.B. (2020). The Four Profound Weaves.  Tachyon.

[2] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1985)  Always Coming Home. Harper & Row, pgs: 74-75.
(Bookshop link is to the University of California edition.)

[3] Kirstein, Rosemary. (2019). The Steerswoman. Published by Rosemary Kirstein.

[4] Lepionka, Kristen. (2017). The Last Place You Look. Minotaur.

[5] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1974). The Dispossessed. Avon Books.
(Bookshop link is to the Harper Voyager 1994 edition.)

KJ Charles | The Will Darling Adventures | Pt. 2

by | Aug 16, 2021 | Book Review

Covers of KJ Charles books showing Darling & Kim Secretan facing each other
The Will Darling Adventures by K.J. Charles [1]
Cover Art by Tiferet Design

 

“For all that the Will Darling books are romance, they are not sweetness and light. People have pasts and they hurt as a result.“

KJ Charles reports that writing the final book of The Will Darling Adventures trilogy (Subtle Blood) was especially difficult, describing the experience “like driving [a Land Rover] into a tar pit.” [2] As with many authors writing at that same time, the Covid pandemic laid her low. I, for one, am grateful she persevered. Reading Books 2 and 3 both comforted and kept me reasonably sane in the face of the virus’ impact in my own life.

Series description from Charles’ website:

A m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction. It’s the 1920s and tensions are rising along with hemlines. Soldier-turned-bookseller Will Darling finds himself tangled up in spies and secret formulas, clubs and conspiracies, Bolsheviks, blackmail, and Bright Young Things. And dubious aristocrat Lord Arthur ‘Kim’ Secretan is right in the middle of it all: enigmatic, unreliable, and utterly irresistible.

The Sugared Game

The Sugared Game takes up a few months after the events of Slippery Creatures. Although a standalone story it is decidedly a sequel and needs the previous book to set the context. With the four key characters—Will Darling, Kim Secretan, Maisie Jones, and Phoebe Stephens-Prince—firmly established Charles is able to expand the action both in terms of romance and adventure.

KJ Charles characters Will Darling Kim Secretan Maisie Jones Phoebe Stephens-PrinceThe story opens with Will taking best friend Maisie to the High-Low Club for an evening on the town. The club is glamorous but seedy, clearly a haven for nefarious doings of all sorts. It becomes the focus of the plot and the continuously fractured romance between Will and Kim. While at the club Will meets a one-time military compatriot. Kim, who initially is as unreliable, and irresistible, makes use of Will’s connection, turning the bookseller’s finally neatened world into one more secretive, criminal, and underhanded. 

If Slippery Creatures was something of a romp, The Sugared Game is tougher, occasionally meaner, taking a deeper look at the gents as the taut plots winds into something more twisty and and dangerous for them both. Trust, the lack thereof that is, continues to center the emotional dynamics here.

Kim’s fiancée Phoebe and Will’s best friend Maisie have their own tale as Maisie, with Phoebe’s solid support, tries to establish herself with the fashion design set. Unlike the men, the women have a strong and growing friendship. Staying close to the historical reality of the times, the women struggle more to be taken seriously. Phoebe, a glamorous and wealthy aristocrat is viewed as ornamental; Phoebe’s lower class standing and race are held against her. Only Phobe’s patronage gives her the edge up, capable as Maisie is. Still, the women willingly use societal assumptions as an effective disguise that allows them to skirt those very expectations.

While I personally did not feel as engaged with the story—and that’s on me; the 1920s noir/pulp style just isn’t my thing—I very much liked how Charles’ lets Will and Kim mature, something she gently and effectively explores in a side story she sent her readers via her newsletter (“To Trust Man on His Oath” —see link at the end of this essay.) Will tends to think he has his act together; it’s Kim who has a problem. By the end of the tale, Will learns new things about himself and discovers, too, that Kim can in fact be be trusted

 

Subtle Blood

Book 3, the last of the trilogy, is a wonderfully blazing and hugely satisfying conclusion to the series. NPR’s Maya Rodale pronounced Subtle Blood a “sexy, elegant and romantic murder mystery” and it is every bit that. We leap right back into things with the murder of a man at a gentleman’s club, the suspected killer being the older brother of the charming and devious Lord Arthur “Kim” Secretan.

Kim and his friend and lover, Will Darling, the rough and tumble, capably murderous WWI soldier turned bookseller, set out to exonerate Kim’s brother despite the likelihood that he very much did the deed. At risk are Kim and Will’s practical and romantic futures. There is derring-do, political and social intrigue (historically accurate while providing fierce commentary on our modern time), and lots of energetic as well as tender, on-page sex. The plot is believable and strong though I found myself occasionally feeling a bit rushed.


A challenge in writing a series is how to maintain character consistency while permitting the character to change through the course of the action. Charles struggled with this (she talks about it here). There would be a Twitter comment here and there that suggested Kim’s development was not easy to work out or write out. At first I wasn’t sure if she’d pulled it off.

 


Will comes across as a well-grounded bloke and Kim a flip moneyed man-about-town in Book 1 (Slippery Creatures). In Book 2 (The Sugared Game) Kim needs to flit about to resolve the problem and Will anchors the doings, but neither seem to be entirely facing each other, or rather, seem unprepared to deal with doings outside of the plot, as it were. They haven’t dealt with each other.

“Yet I must thank you for admitting that you are thieves rather pretending that your work is in a respectable profession . . . Rascal thieves, Here’s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o’ the grape, Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth, And so ’scape hanging. . . .”
~ Shakespeare. Timon of Athens, Act 4, Sc. 3

In Subtle Blood the ravens come home to roost. Kim must deal with his rather appalling family and his own need for at least one family member’s approval. Will finds that the pragmatic, just-endure-today approach that let him kill during the war killing without remorse, with pride even, does not work when it comes to love. Kim matures and finds his metier. Will follows but more slowly. And for once, it is Kim who leads here in self understanding and kindness for all that he still struggles with the pain of what he has to do and who he is.

Kim’s one-time fiancée, Phoebe Stephens-Prince, now Lady Waring, and Darling’s long-time good friend, Maisie Jones, who is a Paris designer now, play secondary but pivotal roles in this last tale. They are strong women and, while supportive of the gents, do not shrink from forcing Kim and Will (and, surprisingly, Kim’s father) to deal with the consequences of their actions and, in Will’s case, to grapple with the emotional realities of loving a man beyond one day at a time.

The series ends with Charles’ promised happily ever after (HEA) and, in theory, that’s that. But where Will and Kim end up suggests sequels might be possible. Personally, I’d go for a series with Phoebe & Maisie as the leads. How Charles handles Kim and Phoebe’s broken engagement and Maisie’s reinvented self and identity seemed to me a tad predictable but it does set them up for their own books.

 

For all that the Will Darling books are romance, they are not sweetness and light. People have pasts and they hurt as a result. There are difficult situations, death, and considerable mayhem. Charles considerately posts content warnings on her website here.

Finally, Charles did a rather lovely thing for her readers—wrote supplemental tales to this trilogy. Those signed up for her newsletter received them first, but since then she has posted the side stories on her website.

 

NOTE: This essay is an updated version reviews I originally published on my artist blog, Dante’s Wardrobe.

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Aug 16). KJ Charles |The Will Darling Adventures | Pt. 2.  Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/08/16/kj-charles-will-darling-pt2/

IMAGE CREDITS

Covers of The Will Darling Adventures. From KJ Charles Website.

Silhouette portraits of Will Darling, Kim Secretan, Maisie Jones, and Phoebe Stephens-Prince. From a Twitter book announcement by KJ Charles.

 

SOURCES

 

Disclaimer: As KJ Charles sells/promotes her books via her own website, I do not link to the Bookshop.org listings. See the first link below.

[1] Charles, KJ. (2020, 2021). The Will Darling Adventures. (Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, & Subtle Blood). KJC Books.

[2] Charles, KJ. (2021, May 24). How to Write a Book When You Can’t write a Book. Blog Post. KJ Charles website.

 

KJ Charles | The Will Darling Adventures | Pt. 1

by | Aug 16, 2021 | Book Review

Covers of KJ Charles books showing Darling & Kim Secretan facing each other
The Will Darling Adventures by K.J. Charles
Cover Art by Tiferet Design

 

“The success of Charles’ storytelling is that she draws the reader into the narrative romp and the luxuriating passions while also promising the connection of souls that we also desire.“

It’s been some time since I have found books so entertaining as The Will Darling Adventures trilogy by KJ Charles. [1] Though new to me, she’s been writing for a while now. This title is the first I’ve read of hers and I am looking forward to reading more.

Series description from Charles’ website:

A m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction. It’s the 1920s and tensions are rising along with hemlines. Soldier-turned-bookseller Will Darling finds himself tangled up in spies and secret formulas, clubs and conspiracies, Bolsheviks, blackmail, and Bright Young Things. And dubious aristocrat Lord Arthur ‘Kim’ Secretan is right in the middle of it all: enigmatic, unreliable, and utterly irresistible.

I’d only discovered Charles, who has been writing for no small while, this past year after seeing a sharply written, witty retweet of hers on Twitter. And although I do not typically read in the romance genre, Reader, I followed her immediately and started in with Book 1 of the series.

Slippery Creatures opens things in a mostly certainly lively fashion. The 1963 movie Tom Jones (with Albert Finney in the titular role) came to mind immediately. [2] Specifically, the famous eating scene. Here is Wook Kim’s 2012 summary of it:

KJ Charles magpie logo“Bawdy, boisterous, and full of heart, ‘Tom Jones’ won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director (for Terry Richardson). In the film’s perhaps most famous scene, the raffish but utterly charming Tom (Albert Finney) shares a tavern meal with a Mrs. Waters (who, unbeknownst to Tom, just may be his mother). The dinner begins innocently enough, but their furtive glances soon turn into almost incandescent gazing: even a village fool can see where this is going. It’s a simple two-shot scene, oft parodied, that fleshes out, both literally and figuratively, the sometimes eye-winkingly genteel descriptions in Henry Fielding’s picaresque novel.” [3]

The young Finney, I imagine, would be a lovely Will Darling, the rough and tumble, murderous WWI soldier turned bookseller in Creatures. Opposite him, as the charming and devious Lord Arthur “Kim” Secretan, I’d cast Matthew Goode. In fact, for all that Creatures is set in England in the 1920s after the so-called Great War, I kept harkening back to my grad school days when I seriously considered shifting from my focus on medieval lit to 18th-century stuff. Tom Jones, yes, and the roaring, bawdy William Hogarth, “English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist.” (Wikipedia) Not surprisingly, Tom Jones author Henry Fielding was a friend.

Hogarth engraving of young man in bed with partially clothed woman

Hogarth’s engraving of

The Idle ‘Prentice return’d from Sea & in a Garret with a common Prostitute, 1747

Creatures has that kind of joie de vivre, raucous, broadly adventurous, and terrifically sexy. Here’s the quick intro  from Charles’ website:

Will Darling came back from the Great War with a few scars, a lot of medals, and no idea what to do next. Inheriting his uncle’s chaotic second-hand bookshop is a blessing…until strange visitors start making threats. First a criminal gang, then the War Office, both telling Will to give them the information they want, or else. Will has no idea what that information is, and nobody to turn to, until Kim Secretan—charming, cultured, oddly attractive—steps in to offer help. As Kim and Will try to find answers and outrun trouble, mutual desire grows along with the danger. And then Will discovers the truth about Kim. His identity, his past, his real intentions. Enraged and betrayed, Will never wants to see him again. But Will possesses knowledge that could cost thousands of lives. Enemies are closing in on him from all sides—and Kim is the only man who can help. A 1920s m/m romance trilogy in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction.

It took me a bit to get into Creatures as I am, admittedly, a reader with serious attitude. I almost put it down as a no-go, in part because the character of the bookseller is such a worn trope. I follow Charles on Twitter, though. She is sharp, witty, opinionated, and writes a damn good tweet. So I skipped ahead a chapter or two and, oh wonderful! Creatures indeed resurrects the Golden Age of pulp fiction in that it is action-packed, clever and funny, and moves the reader along right proper. What’s unique and particularly intriguing and frankly, appreciated, is its eroticism, queer specifically.

Charles notes on her Content Warnings web page that all of her “full-length novels contain on-page sex and swearing.” On-page, oh my, yes. (Though the swearing in Creatures escaped me, I have to admit. Then again, the F-word is so frequent in my own natterings that I hardly see it.) The sex is explicit, occasionally quite raw, and matter of fact. It is also historically accurate in that Charles keeps the mindset of her characters in their time period. On that Warnings page she states that her “books are historicals and thus set against a background of Georgian/Victorian/20s British attitudes to sex and gender. I’ve mentioned homophobia where it’s explicit.” 

Will Darling and Kim Secretan cannot be out though Secretan’s proclivities are known to certain colleagues. Secretan has a fiancée–the delightfully solid Phoebe Stephens-Prince–and Darling a good friend, the pragmatic and smart Maisie Jones. So their couplings are intense but always guarded. It adds to the sexual tension that they are so but also brings painfully to mind how even now the LGBTQ community lives, or is forced to live, in society’s substrates.

For all that Creatures is a kind of romp, with the underlying humor of the noir and pulp fiction genres, the storytelling rests profoundly on Charles’ solid historical accuracy. There is a sobering tone: the social and emotional impact of World War I on a generation.
Wounded & gassed World War 1 soldiers march in a line, each with a hand on the man before him

“Gassed”
Imperial War Museum, London, John Singer Sargent, c. March 1919

At one point Darling has been captured and, it seems, likely left to die. As he struggles in darkness and cold, his time in the filthy trenches fills his mind. At another point, describing to Secretan what it was like to kill, the deep flavor of his actions vibrates from the page.
 

Like the current pandemic, Death doesn’t simply hover. It is quite real. Former soldier Darling isn’t simply a victim of war. Killing remains a visceral component of his psychology and behavior. Secretan, whose younger brother served as his war surrogate and died in his place, and who is himself something of what was referred to in 1920s London as a Bright Young Thing, is made melancholy and driven by the loss. Yes, there is sex for these two, but the sex is as much driven by a mortality-wrought aphrodisia as it is their own desires.

Charles describes The Will Darling Adventures series as a romance trilogy. She promises a happy ending, as she does for all her works. Will and Kim are of that mode, but they are also of an older tradition, that of romantic friends. I rather like the Wikipedia description of this:

“A romantic friendship, passionate friendship, or affectionate friendship is a very close but typically non-sexual relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in the contemporary Western societies. It may include for example holding hands, cuddling, hugging, kissing, giving massages, and sharing a bed, without sexual intercourse or other physical sexual expression.”

In Slippery Creatures the emotional tenor of a romantic friendship is just aborning as is the sexual romance. The success of Charles’ storytelling is that she draws the reader into the narrative romp and the luxuriating passions while also promising the connection of souls that we also desire. Quite a feat for a novel with such a breezing style and relative brevity.

See Part 2 of this review here.

 

NOTE: This essay is an updated version reviews I originally published on my artist blog, Dante’s Wardrobe.

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

 ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

 

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Aug 16). KJ Charles |The Will Darling Adventures | Pt. 1. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/08/16/kj-charles-will-darling-pt1/

 

IMAGE CREDITS

Covers of The Will Darling Adventures. From KJ Charles Website.

KJ Charles logo. From KJ Charles Website.

William Hogarth, The Idle ‘Prentice return’d from Sea & in a Garret with a common Prostitute, 1747. Public domain via Wikipedia.

“Gassed”  Imperial War Museum, London, John Singer Sargent, c. March 1919. Via Wikipedia.

 

SOURCES

 

Disclaimer: As KJ Charles sells/promotes her books via her own website, I do not link to the Bookshop.org listings. See the first link below.

[1] Charles, KJ. (2020, 2021). The Will Darling Adventures. (Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, & Subtle Blood). KJC Books.

[2] Tom Jones film info via Wikipedia. Info on the original book (also from Wikipedia), The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding. 

[3]  Kim, Wook. (2012, Jan 5). Top 10 Memorable Movie Eating Scenes. Populist column from Time.com.