Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Angela Slatter’s second novel, Corpselight, is on my table alongside a fresh cup of coffee. I get to read this week, ahead of it’s official launch on July 14, because one of the perks of being writer is befriending other writers who give you advanced copies of their books.

If you’re in Brisbane on July 14 at 6:00 PM and interested in good speculative fiction, you should totally be at that launch BTW. There will be books and smart writers talking to smart writers, and a considerable amount of cupcakes.

If you’re not in Brisbane on that date, at that time, you should hie yourself off to a bookshop and pick up a copy of Corpselight as soon as humanly possible. ‘Cause it’s a great book, by a great writer, and we need more visions of a supernatural Brisbane out there in the world.

A post shared by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on Jul 4, 2017 at 5:12pm PDT

I’m halfway through Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusader, a book that traces the evolution of Batman and the rise of geek culture. It is, at alternating intervals, fascinating and smart and very, very funny, but it also loops back to a series of conceits and bits that irritate the fuck out of me.

Mostly, it comes down to one word: normals. It gets used quite often throughout the text, the distinguishing term that others non-fans in a meaningful way, and it gets used because it’s a thread that runs through fandom in so many ways. It is, at least, nowhere near as bad as the mundanes, but it matters so little to my tooth-grinding dislike of that artificial segregation that it barely helps.

It is incredibly easy to define an identity and a subculture based on your dislike of what you’re against. Pointing and saying NOT THAT is considerably clearer than saying, TOTALLY THIS (and yes, I’m totally aware that I’m totally falling back on Not That right now; I’m embracing the stupidity of this).

But Not That eliminates the possibility of nuance. It eliminates the possibility of having an AND. I am this AND this. I am for many many things.

And the reasons behind Not That invariably, rapidly become uninteresting to me. I am much more interested in listening to people talk about the things they love, and why they love it, than I am hearing about the things they dislike intensely.

In need of distraction, I started reading Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber aloud to fill the empty spaces in my flat. I’ve adored that book since it was recommended to me back in my early twenties, but I’ve never actually paid attention to the vocal components of the language. Reading aloud, you quickly recognise just how ornate and well-crafted the opening sentence of the titular story really is. Consider, and read aloud if you’re so inclined:

I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter

There are rhythms to that sentence you don’t even recognise until you’re trying to manage your breathing the entire way through it. Hell, I didn’t even remember it being a single sentence until I got to the end.

I’ve got a mental list of stories I can re-read that are so damn good I’ll always want to write something new in an attempt to do something half as good. The Bloody Chamber is basically a collection full of them.