Paper Fruit

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I figured I’d post a spoiler-heavy review of this forgotten book:

The Girls of Banshee Castle, by Rosa Mullholland

I picked this book up from a vintage bookseller on a whim. It’s inscribed as such:

Wishing Laura a Very Merry Xmas, Aunt Edith, 1909

It is definitely a book an Aunt Edith would give you for Christmas. On one hand, it’s sort of Austen for Tots… you know, all the recognizable bits from classic Austen novels but with all the sexual subtext, arch commentary, and interesting stuff removed. It’s basically about Nice Girls Acting Nicely for 300+ pages. But it falls flat, because the author’s imagination of what makes a Nice Girl is actually terrible, including unexamined laziness, oddly-placed racism and absurd classism. But it was kind of a wild ride…

Patricia, Dympna, and Finola, three realistically-named sisters, are the daughters of the  last Lord Tyrconnell. The Tyrconnells are historically profligate Irish noblemen who have spent the family fortune on parties and hunts and whatever, and left these unfortunate girls with so little they’ve spent their whole life in poverty, just barely scraping by with only their nursemaid to look after them. “Granny” does what she can, however, such as taking Dympna to learn painting in Italy, and assuring Patricia is able to study the pianoforte in France. With such a barren, terrible existence, you can imagine the trials endured by these brave, unfortunate lasses.

Whilst living in London they hear that the girls’ last living relation has passed away, leaving their absentee brother the bulk of what remains, but for them, little beyond a few pounds to live on, and a mysterious, run-down castle in Ireland. They decide to save on rent by going to live in the castle, of course, and there their adventures begin.

Luckily for the lasses, Ireland is full of semi-mystical, half-wild, but still highly deferential poor folk who believe in fairies and bog-witches and whatever, but still know to tip their fucking hats to the quality. Perhaps most jaw-dropping of these side characters is “Lanty,” some local boy that comes to the castle eager to serve them. He is a quaint country lad full of notions, and at one point when the girls are staying over with some rustic country Irish because of a storm, he runs out into the lightning to tell their nurse where they are. He is wiling because:

“Why thin, many’s the time I go out in it just for the fun of it. I do be always longin’ to see the fairies caravandherin’ about in the lightnin’, for they do go off o’ their heads in it intirely, and it’s the greatest luck in the world to the mortial that catches them at it. People do say that wherever the lightnin’ shafts down into the ground there does grow gold-mines, and the fairies mark the places, and if ye seen them at it ye could be richer than Creosote!”

In case you can’t read it, the caption is “Give us the baby, for it’s wake ye are for want of a cup o’ tay”

All the poor Irish are written like this.

Anyways, for about a thousand pages the girls alternate between working nicely together to make Banshee Castle a sweet dwelling for all (how sweet!) and paying calls on their impoverished neighbors, who, without a hint of resentment, stuff the quality ladies full of “potaties” and tea and other hard-earned foodstuffs.

Then there’s some biz where next to Banshee Castle some rich Americans who are of Irish descent have settled in to their estate, “Alabama,” to like, distribute largesse via a true Rich White Person Novel Scheme. Basically they’ve bought some godforsaken windblown island and built a town from scratch there, in order to terrorize their transplanted tenants to the tune of “we’ll rent you fishing boats and whatever at a good rate so you can live in not-as-abject poverty, but if you get drunk, carouse, or act in any way not like Worthy Poor, we’ll kick you off the island.” Patricia, who is the most affected by this move to the obscure country, makes sure to fall in love with the young man of the family with the quickness, of course.

Oh, I should note that after Patricia returns from Alabama to relate all this, the sisters have the following exchange:

“Have they a banjo?” asked Fin. “Americans always play the banjo, don’t they?”

“You don’t suppose they are niggers,” said Dympna.

“How can I tell? I haven’t seen them yet,” said Finola. “There are lots of free negroes now, going about the world, are there not, Granny?”

Dympna is the novel’s sweetheart Mary Sue, by the way. Such a nice girl, don’t you think?

Well. As all this is happening, Finola just does her thing, being an Extra Young Sister in the fashion of Margaret Dashwood, and Dympna, the middle child, tries to get her rotten poetry published in awful magazines of the day. As I mentioned, Dympna is more or less the focus of the novel; Ms. Mullholland clearly loves her best, and lavishes upon her writerly schemes, romantic nations, and “lively” personality. Dympna like… I dunno, dresses as a maid to fool some guests, ha ha, and gets to make herself a studio out of the perhaps-haunted tower where some former Lady Tyrconnell whose tragic tale I have already forgotten once also painted and wrote awful poetry. (The locals believe she still walks these moors, etc.)

The novel finally takes a turn for the slightly more interesting when it turns out that the actual Lord Tyrconnell, the Girls’ brother Hugh, has been found in America, and is coming to Banshee Castle to meet them. Some things about him are mysterious, of course. Anyways, he arrives, and is handsome and kind, and lives with them for months. He particularly enjoys Dympna’s company, not at all creepily, and spends hours with her in her tower, listening to her read her wretched poems and compose terrible stories based on the locals’ folk tales.

But when Christmastime comes, Hugh decides to put on a play, and invites over the Americans. Mansfield Park-style, it is a play that actually represents the characters’ relationships, and he plays some sort of mysterious stranger who claims to be someone he is not, for Reasons. Dympna is appalled by this element, and tells Hugh she could never forgive someone who pretended to be someone he wasn’t, for any reason, so of course that is what is actually happening. As revealed dramatically later in the novel, Hugh turns out to be not their brother at all, but their distant cousin who pretended to be their brother because of Reasons that make little sense except inside of novels like this.

He has also fallen in love with Dympna, and before leaving in disgrace, asks the 16 year old girl to be his wife:

Dympna sobbed and sobbed, and shook her head.

“What is the good of loving me when you are not my brother any longer?” she said. “Why need you have told? We could have gone on being happy. If our brother is dead, and you took our brother’s place, why need you have ever undeceived us?”

“Things could not have continued so for ever, Dympna, even if there had never been anything wrong in the deception.’

“Why; if it is true that you loved us?”

“Because I have been hoping for some time past that you would one day consent to be my wife,” said Hugh.

“Wife!” echoed Dympna with a start, and looking up with a bewildered glance in his face. “Have I not often told you that I should never marry, that I would always stick to my brother Hugh. And now I no longer have a brother.”

She declines, rather understandably creeped out, as apparently for months now he’s been hanging in her room with her, letching on her whilst pretending to be her loving brother. She and the rest of the family turn him out for being a dishonest cad, and he leaves, a defeated wretch.

So yeah, she declines, but years later—after she’s matured into a woman, barf—she decides she was harsh on him for being a creep and a liar. Hugh is rich, after all, so she marries him. A happy ending for young Dympna. And all the Girls of Banshee Castle, who deserve it, I’m sure. THE END!

Woof! So yeah, this book was incredibly idiotic. The worst part was how these girls were presented as worthy poor, helped to greatness by worthy poorer, but really they are all just loathsome creations of a mind untouched by reality. They  just demand butter and folktales of working class people who live in peat huts and can’t read and whatever, and go back to their nice house and lament their poverty while taking it in stride, putting on a brave face, whatever. Never do they  feel the need to work beyond painting and possibly light gardening, so others provide for them. Ughhhh.

Sorry, Laura. Your Christmas present kind of sucked.

Years ago at this point, Jesse Bullington and I co-wrote a column called Films of High Adventure that ran on a semi-regular basis. For those of you who never read it, but are for some reason reading now, the deal was basically this: I never really watched most of the big-budget cheesy fantasy/action/scifi/whatever movies that came out back when I was a wee Tanz, only developing a love of such things in later life. Jesse, who’s watched like every movie ever, plus used to manage a video store, made suggestions and watched them along with me. Then we’d write up some Stalter and Waldorf-style commentary.  Anyways, we had to drop the column due to being pretty busy, but when a friend said she wanted a “full report” on Masters of the Universe (she kindly let me borrow her DVD—see below) I figured this would be a fun way of providing her with such. Here’s our old intro:

The Film: Masters of the Universe (1987)

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS??? A Golan-Globus production (The American Ninja Series), because of course it is. Direction by Gary Goddard, who never made another feature length movie but went on to direct numerous theme park attractions, including Star Trek: The Experience and Jurassic Park: The Ride. Written by David Odell, whose experience in writing dialogue for lifeless puppets in The Dark Crystal and The Muppet Show served him well when it came time to work with Dolph Lundgren. Shameless Star Wars rip-off soundtrack by Bill Conti. Acting, such as it is, by Dolph (chemical engineering Masters grad, Olympian at the 96’ Summer Games, and recipient of a Fullbright scholarship to study at MIT … and star of the first, fifth, and sixth Universal Soldier movies), Frank Langella (the world’s sexiest Dracula, at least until Gary Oldman came along), Meg Foster (They Live, Hera from Hercules and Xena), Billy Barty (Frequent Films of High Adventure alum; see our columns on Legend and Willow), Robert Duncan McNeill (uh, a leading role on Star Trek: Voyager? Molly adds: That… that was Tom Paris? WTF?!), James Tolkan (“hey, it’s the bald principal from Back to the Future!”), Chelsea Field (Dust Devil, The Birds II: Land’s End, and wife of Scott Bakula), and Courtney Cox (something called Cougar Town? Ouch). Aside from a bunch of extras, there are maybe five other people in the whole movie with speaking lines—one of said extras won a contest toymaker Mattel held to be featured in the film, and this lucky lad, Richard Szponder, got to play the stirring role of “Pigboy.”

Quote: “Where are your friends now? Tell me about the loneliness of good, He-Man—is it equal to the loneliness of evil?”

Alternate quote: “You mean this used to be an animal…?”

First viewing by Jesse: Right after the video release arrived at the local Uni-Mart gas station from which we rented most of our movies when I was a kid. So probably a few years after it actually came out, which would put me at maybe seven or eight years old.

First viewing by Molly: A few weeks ago. Jesse and I had wanted to do Masters of the Universe for Films of High Adventure back when we were doing the column regularly, but the local video store doesn’t have a copy. Go figure! Anywho, somehow this became a topic of conversation at StarFest, a local Denver con, whilst hanging out with Stephen Graham Jones and Carrie Vaughn, both of whom were appalled I’d never seen it before (specifically because of the Teela-thinks-meat-is-gross moment I quoted above … they know me). Carrie very generously volunteered to loan me her personal copy, much to my husband John’s extreme pleasure, so we watched it on his birthday weekend.

Most recent viewing by both: A few weeks ago

Impact on Jesse’s childhood development: Moderately high, but for all the wrong reasons—this turkey was the first time I remember experiencing deep, palpable disappointment from a film. I was young, stupid, and loved all things He-man, so a live-action movie couldn’t possibly let me down, could it? Turns out, it could and it did. I remember that right up until the end I kept expecting Battlecat to show up, or for Dolph to don a pink tunic and turn into Prince Adam, or even just have Teela pop her collar and/or take off her pants. Not even one maniacal Skeletor cackle? Weaaaak.

Impact on Molly’s childhood development: None. I totally played with He-Man toys (still have a scar from where one pinched me badly), loved the show. Loved She-Ra too, of course. I wasn’t aware there was a feature film until I think John told me about it.

Random youtube clip that hasn’t been taken down for copyright infringement:

Jesse’s thoughts prior to re-watching: Weaaaak. I would estimate that between my first childhood viewings and the modern day, I’ve watched previous Films of High Adventure entries Conan the Barbarian, The Beastmaster, and Yor: The Hunter from the Future a dozen times each, easy. Masters of the Universe I never rewatched, not even when it came on tv—some wounds never heal. I unsuccessfully petitioned that instead of watching it, we instead screen some episodes of the (total classic) cartoon, or even just watch the ten-hour version of this:

Did Molly listen? No she did not.

Molly’s thoughts prior to watching: I was super-stoked, no lie. I … kind of love He-Man. I spent some quality time revisiting the cartoon a year or so ago, and while I had to stop watching due to how much Orko is crammed into every 22 minutes (what is up with that? NO ONE EVER LIKED ORKO), some of the earlier episodes are really quite good. “The Creeping Horak” in particular was kind of … cosmically horrible, if I may? Also: Teela! Also also: Skeletor and Evil-Lynn’s kinky, weird-ass relationship. Also also also: Skeletor and He-Man’s kinky, weird-ass relationship. Okay … so the obvious fight between those two over who is the leather-daddy and who is the leather-boy is pretty much the best thing about watching the show as an adult.

So obviously when I heard there was no Orko in the film, plus Teela was a vegetarian, kind of, and also Frank Langella was playing Skeletor, despite everyone in the world save John, Steven, and Carrie telling me the film sucked, there was no turning back.

Jesse’s thoughts post-viewing: It’s pretty much as stinky as I remembered, though as grown-up I’m (somewhat) more able to articulate my displeasure then I was as a tot. I’m also better equipped to parse just why it’s so bad, which doesn’t really redeem the film, but does make me even more depressed about the fan-fucking-tastic He-Man movie that never was. So, yay for adulthood?

As a kid, I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t on Eternia for most of the film, where all the cool monsters were, why did the costumes suck, etc. Looking back on the project, it seems likely a one-two punch of frugality and copyright law. A movie that largely takes place on California backlots with stupid American teenagers running around is easier on the investors than a movie set on an alien planet populated by freaky creatures. Apparently for the film they secured the rights to the toyline, but not to the cartoon series, so it was probably also easier to just invent new characters and storylines then to, you know, adapt the source material that everyone loved. Like I said, understanding why it burns you like an eyeful of Skeletor’s crazyjuice doesn’t do much to mitigate the pain, but whatever.

Yet for all that, watching it with little hope of actually liking it did let me appreciate some of the subtle nuances I never appreciated as a kid. For example, Evil-Lyn, Teela, and Man-at-Arms were perfectly cast, even if there costumes were lacking. And Skeletor’s gold lamé Godmode outfit at the end does answer the age old question of, “What if the What if comic series had an issue titled “What if … Galactus Ran Studio 54?”

Frank Langella was certainly game, and contrary to the above image, kinda took Skeletor in a slightly less-campy direction. That said, I generally prefer my Skeletor like I prefer my friendly neighborhood street musicians: coked to the gills, shuddering with deranged laughter, and just plain weird. But Langella’s take on the villain has more, uh, gravitas, and points for trying, I guess. By the Sorceress’ ridiculous bird suit, did I really type that? I did. That’s what happens when you look for a silver lining on this brown cloud.

Here’s the thing: He-man, being a toyline that grew into a narrative instead of the other way around, is totally fucking insane. Everyone in the show is either howling mad or balls-dumb, and the plot follows suit. It’s just a bazonkers storyline, and it needs to be in order to provide the joy one feels when Prince Adam explains his backstory:

What kind of powers does He-man possess? Oh, that’s right, fabulous secret powers, with that allusion to the world’s dumbest origin story delivered with an animated smirk that Dolph Lundgren could only dream of pulling off. Rather than embracing the random craziness of the toyline and the cartoon, however, the filmmakers decided to make things comparatively coherent, which results in a cinematic disaster that is nowhere near as campy as it needs to be. Which is saying something, considering that camp is about all that the movie has going for it. Alas, I say, alas and alack.

Molly’s thoughts post-viewing: Everyone lies! Well, everyone except my husband, Stephen Graham Jones, and Carrie Vaughn, I guess. Masters of the Universe is totally good. It’s as if Warlock and Beastmaster had a moviekid, and that kid was a Mattel tie-in film ripping off Star Wars. What’s not to like about that?

I mean, there is certainly enough about MotU to incur frequent skeptical head-tilts, especially in re: the plot, the quizzical lack of Prince Adam, Battle Cat, or SNNNNAKE MOUNTAIN! (sorry, but you gotta always scream it like Skeletor), the whole conceit that 80s teenagers would assume any old piece of equipment with lights on it was a “Japanese synthesizer,” the ending, Billy Barty playing an Orko substitute somehow just as annoying as Orko … but I dunno. Even with all that, it was awesome. Sure, the writing is leaden, Dolph is terrible, and it makes no sense overall, but it’s great in a super-80s kind of way. I mean, come on! That scene where Teela shoots stuff and turns around, grinning like it’s Christmas on Eternia and she just got a new jumpsuit, saying “Woman at arms!”? Has there ever been a fluffier “Take that, patriarchy!” moment in 80s cinema? I challenge you to think of one.

Additionally, while they abandoned most if not all of the stuff I love about He-Man (what can I say, I can’t get enough of that one recycled animation of He-Man throwing a big rock at stuff, and there is ZERO big-rock-throwing action in MotU!), they kept the central weirdness of the love triangle between Evil-Lyn, He-Man, and Skeletor, and they should be commended for that. I mean, even calling it a love triangle is too simple. While Wikipedia, source of all unbiased knowledge, lists Evil-Lyn as Skeletor’s “significant other” there is so much more to those two than that, right? They’re certainly a couple, but more of a “She makes him tea and listens to his feelings and also on slow Saturday nights she lets him read her his bromance fanfics about how on “Alternate Eternia,” Skeletor and He-Man are on the same side and also sometimes are girls and sometimes they also invite over Prince Adam, that goody two-shoes, to have adventures” kind of couple than … anything else. AND FOR ONCE THIS ISN’T JUST ME, OKAY? The movie pretty much proves it, right? I mean, what exactly are Evil-Lyn and Skeletor doing in that scene where he’s staring at her while she kneels in front of him? Furthermore, why else would He-Man shout at Skeletor that it’s always been about the two of them, while getting laser-whipped, or whatever? Uh huh.

Totally. Good.

High Points: That one moment when Skeletor is being weird to Evil-Lyn, staring right in her eyes but not making out with her; when Dolph finally belts out I HAVE THE POWER whilst getting whipped by a laser-whip, much to Skeletor’s obvious titillation … when the cop stays in Eternia because duh, and also, pretty much everything. (So sez Molly: Jesse will save his points for the next section)

Low points: Billy Barty as not-Orko, being goddamn Orko. The whole “instead of making a He-man movie, why don’t we just make another bland, broke-ass ‘warriors from another time and place comes to earth’ picture” thing. Everyone except Dolph wearing entirely too many pants.

Final Verdict: Molly gives it two thumbs up. Jesse remains solidly a Skeletor-sized “hater.”

Next Time: Only the gods know…

I continue to be overwhelmed and amazed by the enjoyment people are getting out of my humble work(s) of fiction about incestuous flaky fops. As of now, A Pretty Mouth still has a five-star rating on Amazon, I’m gearing up to do a Q&A in February over at The Next Best Book Blog (which should soo be putting up my recipe for an Infernal!, my Calipash Twins-themed cocktail), and just a day or so I noticed that A Pretty Mouth had made a best-of list—to be specific, Black Heart Magazine’s Best of 2012.

Gabino Iglesias, their poetry editor, was kind enough to say about my book:

Fun, unique, sexy, Lovecratian literature of the highest caliber. I wanted to paint my walls with some of the lines in this book. It’s simultaneously classic and new and the prose is undeniably authoritative. This is the kind of book that weak writers read and decide to stop writing because they’ll never be this damn good.

Wowza. Seriously. And the fact that I’m on the list with Stephen Graham Jones, Tom Piccirilli, and several other amazing writers makes my inclusion even more pleasing. Pleasing being an understatement. See, that’s the kind of “undeniably authoritative” prose that gets me this kind of praise!

Thanks again, Mr. Iglesias! And if you, dear reader, would like to own your very own copy of A Pretty Mouth, well… 

Been a while since I did a publicity roundup for A Pretty Mouth! Things have been going great with the novel so far, and while (regrettably) I still haven’t been able to pin down when an ebook will be available for purchase I’ve heard my publisher is “working on it” for those of you waiting on a digital copy. I’ll make a big announcement when it happens as I know many people (other than myself) have expressed an interest in seeing the book in a digital format.

Anyways! Amazon has a few new reviews, bringing my book up to eight (five-star!) reviews:

A delightful romp through the macabre and depraved, made all the more appealing by the author’s obvious enthusiasm and gleeful verve. … She has a fantastic tone that is equal parts horror and wonder, and she managed to capture my particular favorite flavor of corrupt degeneracy with flair and titillation. Spot on!

and

A PRETTY MOUTH is a book of sensual prose, telling dark, sexy stories. Yes, a mix of sex and horror. Not so much violence, but the creepy edge of horror. … there’s something exciting about the discovery as well as something deliciously disturbing about it. I recommend it highly.

Also, Innsmouth Free Press was kind enough to review my collection!

Tanzer’s greatest asset is the sheer glee of her stories. She seems to be in it for the fun of it. And, because she is having fun, it is difficult not to have fun with her. … Ultimately, Tanzer takes a leap and I admire any writer who does. There is too much safe stuff on bookshelves. Tanzer’s wild collection, though, is not afraid to crash. Tanzer has a swagger of her own which shows in these stories and that, more than anything, is the drawing point for the book.

Finally, a colleague and friend of mine, John Glover, wrote me an early Christmas present in the form of a review/mythology for my person:

 The legend says that Molly Tanzer was born on a starless night in the middle of a battlefield, and that when the sun rose, the ground was carpeted with detached limbs and excavated fundaments. In the middle of this lay a babe, swaddled in black satin, attended by leather-masked beasts with hands of stone and iron. As the sun flew high, reedy pipes wailed and the emissaries of a cult that had long awaited her arrival rode thither out of the east, and strange patterns formed in the dust in the sky.

Hell yes! He goes on to talk more about the collection:

Having said it already in more flowery format, I’ll now say simply that Molly Tanzer is the real deal. A Pretty Mouth is a weighty and strange collection, and one that promises to repay more than one reading. From adroit turns of phrase to morally complex characters to simply good stories, this book has much to offer.

I remain amazed by the response to my collection of weird dirty stories. It’s thrilling to have written something people seem to like, and doubly thrilling that people are taking it in the spirit in which it was intended.

All this, along with the lovely response I’ve received from my live chat with the Lovecraft eZine people? I may faint, bring me my smelling salts!

I suppose what I might be getting at is that you could do worse than pick up my collection for the nerd/weirdo in your life for whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year… ahem.

Oh! And don’t forget, my Folly of the World giveaway contest is still going on! You have a few more days—weekend days if you catch my drift—to come up with an appropriate cocktail and try to win a copy of Jesse Bullington’s latest opus. Get thee to a liquor store! I’m working on mine, though I shan’t be formally entering the contest (I have a copy; I just like making the world a little more bubbly whenever I can), so you have no excuse. So far I’ve mixed Jesse two entries, though I shall not reveal which two. Both were good, though one was so strong Jesse described it, after a sip, as “putting hair on the inside of his chest.” A few new entries have made this an interesting race for the taste so you might should think long and hard before submitting. Or just mix a bunch of shit together on a lark and take your chances. There’s worse ways to spend an afternoon!

Don’t forget about The Folly of the World cocktail contest that’s going on right now! Two Three entries so far, one of which is poisonous, so if you folks want more books by Jesse it would behoove you to submit something…

Last night on the Lovecraft eZine Chat so graciously hosted by Mike Davis, I, perhaps not unexpectedly, got talking about my passion for 18th century lit, specifically women’s novels which reference slavery/the slave trade, a topic which took up most of my classes for my Master’s. Somewhat more unexpectedly, a viewer wrote in to ask what might be some interesting titles fitting that description that interested readers could check out! Holy moly, how awesome! 18th century novels are a passion of mine, and I think they’re under-read, so I was over the moon.

That said, rather than rattle off a bunch of titles for people to scribble down, I promised to post a list of some of my favorites that deal with Caribbean slavery, the middle passage, women’s interest in abolition/amelioration, etc. So, here is that list! It’s just a starting point, dear listeners and readers, thus once you plow through these, hit me up and I’ll dig up some even more obscure titles. And ones that do waaaaay more than that lone shout-out in Mansfield Park to the slave trade that always gets all the attention. Whee!

don’t you just love how this is EVERY COVER of EVERY BOOK written by a woman before 1900?

Belinda, Maria Edgeworth. 1801. Technically 19th century but whatever. Also features an eyebrow-raising parody of Mary Wollstonecraft, so that’s entertaining.

A Description of Millenium Hall [sic] and The History of Sir George Ellison. Sarah Scott. Love these books. So cray. Sarah Scott was really interesting so make sure to read the critical introductions, class!

The Adventures of David Simple. Sarah Fielding. This is long and weird but there’s a whole Jamaica connection, though one a bit less direct than the three above titles.

The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. Frances Sherridan. This is probably my fave 18th c. novel, transatlantic connection or no! Glad to see it’s in print again. My copy is hideous and full of errors due to being a scan from some old microfiche. The things I do for love…

The History of Mary Prince. Mary Prince. Not a novel, but a fascinating account of the life of a liberated Jamaican slave in her own words (allegedly; again, the critical introduction is really interesting).

Oroonoko. Aphra Behn. A classic. “Long” 18th c. rather than the regular kind, but highly influential on later works about slavery.

Oh, and because I talked about it for way too long:

Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Trevor Burnard. One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, but highly informative about the conditions of 18th century Jamaican slavery.

This list might not have the best, or most representative books written during the (long) 18th century, but they are on the topic as asked! Hope they’re enjoyed. I babbled about a similar topic back when Historical Lovecraft debuted a million billion years ago, so you can check that out, too, if you like. Cheers, and thanks for the question! Super-fun to look up all these gems and think about the horror of humanity once again. It had been too long!

No, that’s not a typo.

So everyone who has encountered me likely knows about my penchant for the 1985 Jeffrey Combs-starring Stuart Gordon film Re-Animator. Herbert West is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters—I adore the film version and have great affection for Lovecraft’s original “Herbert West – Reanimator”—but today I want to talk about a different Dr. Herbert West. I want to talk about … Reaninator.

Dr. West, I presume?

I’ll be guest-lecturing on Lovecraft and the idea of fanfic/riffing/artistic use of his ideas/something for a class on Japanese Literature at CU this week (terrifying!). Whilst putting together my Re-Animator “case study” I learned about an anime called Demonbane (2006). The first episode is entitled “I am Providence.” Obviously I had to check it out, right?

I guess at one point Demonbane was one of those PC hentai games, then became a Playstation racing game (??) and then was serialized as a manga and an anime. Whatever; the important thing is that Demonbane has a bunch of weird riffing on Lovecraft (beyond just the titles of the episodes). For example, Our “Hero” Kuro Daijuuji lives in Arkham and was once a secret sorcery student at Miskatonic University. Also, through a sequence of events too insane to describe, in the first episode of the show he encounters Al Azif, the Necronomicon. She (yep, duh) looks like this:

INDEED! “Al,” as Daijuuji calls her, binds herself to him by kind of making out with him during a fight, because of course she does. Afterwards he can transform into Super Sayian Kuro Daijuuji and use a giant robot to fight cultists and stuff. It’s not all that important, really. Oh, and if you think Al Azif looks intriguing, you should definitely watch the show! The Pnakotic Manuscripts are also a subservient hot chick in a silly dress that seems designed purely to show flashes of panties! You know, I should really message Nate Pedersen about this. I haven’t seen a single reference yet to eldritch undies in The Starry Wisdom Library, but I guess it’s true that I haven’t read all the entries yet.

I’ve only watched the first four episodes so far, and it’s pretty much just fanservice and terrible CGI mechas battling each other for incomprehensible purposes. That said, the … let’s say 30% of Demonbane that isn’t fanservice and terrible CGI mechas is kind of cool. The main reason is that one of the minor villains is Dr. Herbert West.

As you saw above, this version of Herbert West is slightly different from other imaginings. I guess he is “Reaninator” as opposed to “Re-Animator” or “Reanimator,” but omg still. Yes, that is an electric guitar in his hand; he noodles on it constantly while talking immense amounts of shit, and the case also fires bazooka grenade things. That hot pantsless elf-eared girl by his side is his pet robot assassin. Her name is Elsa, she (in the grand tradition of EVERY ANIME) has a crush on Our Hero, and ends all of her sentences with “-robo” (included that detail just in case anyone wanted to quibble with my allegation that this show was essentially fanservice).

So yeah! Dr. West! Making robots! And guns? And not reanimating the dead, not at all, not once in four episodes! That said, he’s still Herbert fucking West. The source of Elsa’s crush on Daijuuji? He saves her during their first battle by snatching her out of the way of a missile, and she blushingly tells him that she’s never been held by a man before. Oh, Herbert. You would make a pantsless big-boobied gynoid elf-robot and then only use her for purposes of combat, wouldn’t you? Sure sure, long nights in the lab, not much time for yourself … whatever. We both know, and it’s okay, okay?

Anyways, the show is pretty amazingly terrible. If you want to go down the rabbit-hole, it’s on Youtube. Here’s Episode 3: Reaninator, but Dr. West does show up in the first episode. I’ll keep going with it, because despite my aversion to hokey nyuk-nyuk fantasy, I kind of love irreverent treatments of Lovecraft (as anyone who’s read my Lovecraftiana already knows). Have fun, don’t watch it at work probably, and enjoy!

I’ve been really boring of late (just of late?), mostly because a story has been obsessing me and I’m keeping my head down until I finish it. Also I’m in panic mode because I’m behind on pretty much everything and MileHiCon is next weekend, and I have a million things to do before then, including—most frivolously—finishing my costume.

But! I’m never too busy to pay attention to myself, so of course I have some spamming about A Pretty Mouth to do. There have been some new Goodreads and Amazon reviews, so an enormous thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read my humble tome and post about it. But two reviews appeared online this week that … I’m just going to let them speak for themselves, okay? Because, truth be told, I’m a bit overwhelmed.

A Pretty Mouth was reviewed over at Seattlepi.com, and wowza. About the title novella, the reviewer says:

…the author mixes anachronistic language with historically accurate detail and strikes a perfect balance. “A Pretty Mouth” takes place at Wadham College, Oxford in the 17th century. The boys who attend the prestigious institution are typical of their age and degree of privilege. Their nefarious adventures will strike a chord with readers fond of stories about school days. But this magical tale is a far cry from the idealized world of Harry Potter and his little chums. These boys woo and taunt and brutalize one another. Their secret experiments are matters of life and death—and sex.

Another amazingly flattering quote, about “The Hour of the Tortoise” (also available in The Book of Cthulhu II):

This darkly romantic story is worthy of a Bronte, except for the naughty bits written by our heroine for her demanding editor. The naughty bits are hugely entertaining, by the way. The language, setting, and characterization are flawless; all contribute to a keen portrait of an intellectual woman undone by patriarchal power. The madwoman in the attic has nothing on our fair Chelone.

It’s so incredible, as a new author, to see people really “getting” what I was trying to do with these stories. Many thanks to S.P. Miskowski and Shock Room Horror!

A Pretty Mouth was also reviewed by Jared over at Pornokitsch.com, and again, I am nigh-speechless:

Molly Tanzer’s A Pretty Mouth (2012) is easily the best collection I’ve read this year and, honestly, for as long as I can remember. Effusive praise, but utterly well-deserved, as A Pretty Mouth combines skillful pastiche, gut-churning horror, atmospheric weirdness and atmospheric poignancy.

And as if that wasn’t enough:

The stories trace the descent of a single family through time, with Ms. Tanzer’s prose changing to incorporate the appropriate Edwardian, Victorian or Gothic style for each tale. My favourite is the Wodehouse/Lovecraft mash-up, but the author does justice to every tale. But, most importantly, despite being a stylistic chameleon, Ms. Tanzer’s prose is insightful, clever and distinctly her own.

Bring me my smelling salts! Seriously. Many, many thanks to Jared and Anne for taking the time to read and review my book. It means a lot to me.

All right! I must stop reading and re-reading my reviews and finish this friggin’ story, finish my costume, finish the book reviews I owe, finish reading a book about the sex lives of the Victorians so I can moderate a certain panel at MileHi, and also clean my house. Tinkerty-tonk!

Things have been both slow and hectic in my life of late. I’ve finally—finally—completed a piece of fiction, a short story around 5k words. It’s the first I’ve managed to write since Dad passed away. Not sure if my lack of writerly vim and vigor is related to his passing or to some anxieties regarding such heady, nebulous things as My Future that I’ve been feeling of late, but hopefully the worst of the drought has passed.

In more exciting news, last week I turned in my final proofreading pass on A Pretty Mouth, and I came away feeling very confident and enthusiastic about the project’s imminent publication. I still love the title novel as much as ever—maybe even more than when I wrote it, now that I have some distance from typing The End. Not sure about the hard date it will be available, but it will be mid-Octoberish, and I’ll definitely have copies to give away at MileHiCon. I’ll also be doing a few readings in Boulder and Denver, which I’m excited about. I really enjoy readings.

As I’ve been battling writer’s block (barf!) and proofreading A Pretty Mouth, other people have been doing cool, less navel-gazey stuff. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles of Innsmouth Free Press are trying to fund a new anthology, Sword and Mythos which … well, the title should tell you everything about the theme you need to know. I think this is an amazing idea, selfishly (I write S&S and Lovecraftiana, and would love to see a market open up for that combination), and also more in a general sense of What The Community Needs.

Why? Well, because Silvia and Paula are two editors who really care about not just including, but featuring alternative takes on established genres in their anthologies. That means it’s awesome they’re attempting this project, because if you like S&S, but desire fresh, new entries into that genre, it can be challenging to get your fix. Not impossible, by any means, but definitely challenging. And when you throw in the monkey wrench of S&S plus Mythos fiction … yeah.

I think that’s why Silvia, in particular, seems incredibly passionate about, in particular, the S&S aspect of this project. Over at her blog, as a way of drumming up excitement for Sword and Mythos, she’s been writing essays about why fresh new takes on S&S/mythos fiction are important. So far she’s talked about people of color in S&S (and did a separate piece on racism in the genre), the prevalence of beef/cheesecake in S&S, princesses and regular ladies in S&S, and a few more.

So yeah! Read Silvia’s stuff; consider throwing them some cash if you can spare it. I know those dollars will be well-spent. Plus, you can get cool rewards for donating, like free e-books/paperbacks, a hardcover copy of Fungi, the forthcoming all-fungus release from Innsmouth, a coffee mug, and lots of other treats.

Two announcements re: A Pretty Mouth, my forthcoming debut!

First: I have an uncorrected advance .pdf and will send it out to interested reviewers. It would be super-cool to get some reviews/buzz going for this project, on Amazon (when the page goes up/book comes out, obvs) and around the Webs, so if you like, I dunno, Jeeves stories, Restoration class drama, Re-Animator, sword and sorcery, The Secret History, fops, or Victorian pornography, please consider reviewing the book!

Second: I’m super-happy to report that there’s already some amazing buzz going on around my little project, and my editor, Cameron, has compiled some a list of some of the blurbs on the LFP site. So far, Laird Barron, John Langan, Nick Mamatas, W.H. Pugmire, Nathan Long, Stephen Graham Jones, and several others have had some very kind things to say about A Pretty Mouth. A more complete list can be found via the link above, but here are some quick, fabulous, awesome soundbites:

“A Pretty Mouth is a fine and stylish collection that pays homage to the tradition of the weird while blazing its own sinister mark. Tanzer’s debut is as sharp and polished as any I’ve seen.”  —LAIRD BARRON, author of The Croning

“This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: when Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.” —STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, author of Zombie Bake-Off

Tanzer is an ambitious writer, and she is talented enough for her ambition to matter.” —JOHN LANGAN, author of The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies

Sometimes fortune smiles upon me. I posted on Facebook a few months ago how much I had enjoyed the batshit-insane post-apocalyptic barbarian queen epic She, and Ross Lockhart, friend/kick-ass editor of The Book of Cthulhu pinged me, asking if I’d like an advance copy of Nathan Long’s Jane Carver of Waar. I looked up the cover (left) and started drooling. Yes, I said. Yes, send this book to me, please.

I mean, omg, look at that cover! Big-hair muscle-babe in sweet armor uses a Gatsu-proprotioned sword to carve up purple tiger-taurs amidst an epic landscape? That is pretty much all I ever wanted from a novel. But a question came to mind: Could Jane Carver possibly live up to my expectations after I had gazed upon that wonderful artist’s rendition of a bad-ass warrior woman’s enviable quadriceps?

Yes. Yes, it could. Actually—no. Jane Carver exceeded every single one of my expectations in the best possible ways.

I mean, let’s talk about the protagonist: Jane Carver. Jane is a strong, punchy biker chick and ex-Airborne Ranger, who, due to circumstances, is forced to go on the run from the law … straight into a magical cave that transports her to an alien planet: Waar. Waar is populated with terrible monsters and all-too-human alien humanoids. They ride big chocobo-style birds and have a quasi-feudal society. So far, so awesome. Also: The gravity is less than Jane’s used to, meaning she can jump high, punch hard, lift heavy things, and go braless without pain. YES!

Jane, to her credit, takes all this in stride, and for much of the book ends up helping a male-model handsome (but hopeless-with-a-sword) princeling named Kai who early-on in the book has his sexy bride stolen from him by a rival nobleman-cum-asshole. Noble Kai, who speaks in luxurious courtly language, is the straight man to Jane’s joker. The dynamic is awesome, and often very funny. Take, for example, this early exchange, after Jane helps Kai extricate himself from the ruins of his coach, post violent bride-snatching:

I passed him some of the meat pies and veggies. “Eat. You gotta get your strength back.”

He took the chow, but offered some back to me. “And you? Do you not hunger?”

I hadn’t realized it ’til then, but I did hunger. I hungered like dammit. Traveling light-years in a second, or whatever I’d done, sure built up a powerful appetite.

That’s the tone throughout; Jane narrates the whole thing (College Feminist Molly says: Look how she’s a Subject rather than an Object! Hells yes!). Thus we see Waarian culture through her eyes, and Jane is not uncritical of what she finds. It may be a beautiful world full of thoroughly decent people, but misogyny, machismo, and double-standards abound among the folks she encounters. Jane, however, calls everyone on his or her bullshit, which is really fun for the reader. Not only does she freak everyone out by being a woman who looks unusual (Waarians are purplish, dark-haired, and on the shorter side; Jane is 6’2″, white, and red-haired), as well as being strangely strong and agile, but she freaks them out with her feminist and class-eliding notions, too.

Jane articulates her problems with Waarian culture beautifully, and without pretension, and with laser-pinpoint accuracy. Take, for example, Jane’s thoughts on lordly, incompetent, honor-bound Sai’s quest to win back his fiancee via single combat when she first encounters regular ol’ Waarians (instead of the noblesse):

…I understood these people. The guys were just guys. The chicks were just chicks. They wouldn’t die for some sucker’s idea of honor if you told them heaven was an eternal blowjob. They might die for love, or for friendship or even their country, but they wouldn’t throw their lives away because it was more honorable to be dead.

Sorry. I guess Sai was pissing me off a little at that point. I bet he could have ditched his title, got the girl and lived down here on Sailcloth Street and nobody here would have given him a second glance. But with his upbringing that would probably have been harder for him than dying. Oh well, fuck it.

Jane rolls with the punches (and throws them) which is gratifying and makes for smile-inducing reading. Even better: she never considers herself superior to the Waarians because of her appearance/opinions/abilities, just different. Jane is a very “live-and-let-live (unless you piss me off or hurt my friends)” sort of person. She may think she has a handle on things, but her opinions aren’t rigid and she’s willing to learn as well as teach. Long does a bang-up job of writing a first-person female protagonist whose feminism is unobtrusive but so omnipresent you can tell that’s just who she is. It’s fantastic. I mean, after reading the book I wanted a sequel, but more than that, I wanted to go to the gym and then grab a beer with Jane. So, yeah.

The novel hit all the right notes for me, basically. I can’t talk more about what I loved with out spoilering too much, so I’ll leave off here and just say, if you like well-written adventure novels, get this book when it comes out. It’s so goddamn good.

There was literally only one little thing that bothered me in Jane Carver of Waar, and wasn’t a big deal, though it does come in the first two pages, in Long’s prologue. I liked the conceit of the prologue just fine: that Long met Jane outside of a bar, and she provided him with the account that comprises the book. But then there’s a weird moment, before we’ve even met Jane, where Long tells us:

Jane is remarkably honest in her admissions of her failings, but sometimes I wonder if she is’t being too modest. She says throughout the tapes how ugly she is. Well, I met her, and though she was no Scarlett Johansson, she was by no means ugly. She had the kind of broad-faced, rugged good looks you associate with frontierswomen and female fire-fighters.

This comment rubbed me ever so slightly the wrong way. I understand what Long’s trying to do here—Jane is, after all, a 6’2″ female ex-airborne ranger, and even on earth that’s not something one sees every day, so Jane has certain opinions regarding her physical appearance that are informed by the beauty standards of our world. That said, I don’t give a damn if the heroine of a novel is butt-ugly or not, and I don’t need an outsider’s reassurance that “it’s not like that, objectively speaking” if a heroine says she’s not attractive. I didn’t feel it was a necessary remark; indeed, I felt it kind of undermined Jane’s authority in telling her own tale. That said, I understand why Long included this comment. I think it was with the best of intentions, and it’s true that body-worship is part and parcel of the barbarian epic. I just think it would have been fine to have Jane tell us about herself, rather than Long as he appears in his prologue, I guess.

Anyways, who cares, the book ruled like dammit, as Jane would say, and I would read a billion Jane Carver novels. The back-cover copy may read: “Jane Carver is nobody’s idea of a space princess.” Well, maybe that’s true for some people, but Jane Carver is exactly my idea of a space princess. Strong, foul-mouthed, bad-ass, socially aware in interesting and engaging ways, self-aware, feminist, malleable while holding strong opinions, crafty, intelligent, resourceful, and still entirely human in all the right ways. Yes! Yes, yes, yes. We need more books like Jane Carver of Waar out there. I actually delayed finishing the book for a few days because I didn’t want to leave Jane and Waar behind; hearing that Long has already planned a sequel, Swords of Waar, took away a little of the pain. I cannot wait to devour it.