Maya, Guilty of Literature
Dec. 27th, 2005 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flyingskullI promised myself - and Maya - a review and couldn't keep that promise, so to make up for it here's two for the price of one.
Deceptive Music
Harry moved forward and grabbed it. That had always been easy for him, just a matter of speed and control and taking something for his own, leaving everyone else standing with their hands empty.
The quality of Maya's art is this: that she can use a negative, even despicable, personality trait to engage our affection for her hero and she does it by forcing the reader to think of the implications. She does this because A) she is unflinching in portraying people and generous in loving them, warts and all, for what and who they are; she's also free from the cloying sentimentality that would make insipid-pap-angels of the Good Ones and insipid-pap-devils of the Bad Ones; B) she has absolute control of rhythm, both the internal rhythm of each sentence and the overall rhythm of the whole story. I can't say if it's conscious or unconscious – maybe she was born with perfect rhythm – but frankly who cares? The end result is as subtle and expressive as baroque symphony.
So we are told that Harry is petty and grabby, which he is, but at the same time we'd forced to reflect that a lifetime of seeing all the things he craved, love most of all, snatched away from him and given to others is not conducive to generosity or magnanimity. We hear all Harry's desolate childhood resonate in that snap-quick sentence. If this isn't art, then what is?
This chapter is absolutely amazing. One ends up panting for the sheer breathlessness of it, the speed at which things happen piling almost one upon another between laughter and heart-stopping pain – the pain made crueller by the laughter, the obverse of tragedy is always farce, the laughter made fuller by surprise and the relief from pain – you know, you write lots funny Maya dear, but it seems even funnier than it really is because it's illuminated by the all the dark churning things going on.
At the end one is limp from emotions and lack of oxygen and is left with this impression of frenetically happening things. Then one starts breathing again and realises – much too late – that actually very little happens and that, most of the time, all our hero does is reading books. Ah, but Harry's thoughts are frenetic and the style and rhythm persuade us that even when he's fixed on a contemplating chain of thought, things are happening that he doesn't notice.
So we watch Harry watching Draco watch the Weasleys and learn that Hermione is insensitive, that Molly needs to think that Draco is abused – all other people's children are abused, hers have a perfect family – that Mr Weasley is not a wonderful father and has to hate someone else to feel he is, that Ginny is much younger than her age, but likes to think she's more mature, that Ron is a calculating bastard, quite good at manipulation and that Charlie is the best of the bunch: a brave decent, generous, intelligent, witty man.
Yes, I love Maya!Charlie. I also, unashamedly, love Maya's brain and heart and her writing. No, I tell a lie: I love Maya's brain and heart and I positively worship her writing.
From Psmith to Mole to Hamlet.
Or, from Wodehouse to Townsend to Shakespeare: the maturing of a tale.
Having established that I suck at titles, what can one say about the utter scrumptiousness of If You Have a Ready Mind ?
It boggles and bodes, it sniggers and sneers, it tantrums and weeps and it reflects and mirrors. Maya's problem is that she can't write crackfic, not because she's not technically able to, but her mind-set makes it impossible. She sees people, not cardboard cut-outs and you can't make a Punch and Judy show with real people, for one thing they'd only last one performance and for another the crocodile wouldn't cooperate.
What's quite odd is that, even knowing she started it as a demented crackfic, one can't see the seams, one can't see the exact moment when it ran away with her, because even the first is full of intimations of deeper and adult things. Draco may start as a sort of cross between Psmith and Nigel Molesworth, but there's a budding Hamlet in there too.
The day Draco got his first Owl from his father, remarking that Draco would go for the soft option of Ravenclaw and discussing a move to Durmstrang next year already...
Well, from what we hear of him in the tragedy Hamlet sr was an unmitigated bully with a one-track mind, if Hamlet jr keeps saying he's weak and cowardly for almost six hours, we can well imagine who convinced him when he was a child.
"Traitress!" Draco flung over his shoulder. "Fickle, wayward woman! Potter, of all people!"
Which is of course the 'Frailty, thy name is woman' rant.
Ravenclaw!Draco is my lollipop, my heart and my infinite joy. The best example of Maya's ability as a writer because he is IC!Draco and also Maya!Draco but he's different as well. This Draco is as much as unsure and an utter nervous wreck as IC!Draco, but he's also warmer because his environment at school allows him to grow that way.
Clearly in this story Maya adheres to the theory that Slytherin House is bad for people. There all his daddy issues have met all his housemates' daddy issues and got compounded; here they meet people who have no family issues at all which allow Draco to face some of his issues and understand them. This doesn’t stop him from rushing headlong into disaster, of course, he wouldn't be our All-for-love-or-the-world-well-lost Draco if he didn't, but there's a possibility of a better future growth, supposed that he manages not to get himself killed first.
Terry didn't talk about the Quibbler interview. Draco supposed it was reassurance, that Terry didn't want to hear anything about Draco's father that would make him change his mind about Draco, but Draco might have preferred some shouting and arguing and an open assurance that nothing would make him change his mind about Draco.
He had no right to expect that kind of assurance, though. It wasn't like Terry had chosen him, not really, not when the other options were Zacharias Smith and celibacy. He and Terry were friends and Draco didn't believe it was a matter of convenience or anything, but there was no evidence that Terry would have chosen him from all the world, let alone wanted him enough to keep choosing him, no matter how inconvenient it might become.
Terry is very very unworthy of Draco. He's likeable and affectionate and a decent friend, but boy is he shallow! He's a cowardly shallow patronising little rat. When he's faced with a real problem, a real earth-shattering event for the person he's supposed, if not to love, at least to feel affection for, all he can do is run away. Alright, he's fifteen and it's a shock and he doesn't know how to handle it, but he does nothing at all which, at fifteen, takes some fairly strong determination. There's no passion here, no strong feelings, no courage. Adolescence is the age of going overboard and if one can't manage it, one is either born old or shallow as a puddle.
IYHARM!Terry is Badger!Zacharias, it's nice to cuddle and snog someone one finds funny and knows well, but there's nothing else, which is sad. It's, actually, a fucking tragedy in its own right.
Hermione and the other two are insufferable in their manicheistic world view, but they feel, they insult, they demand. Granted they could have some respect, but it's fairly clear from canon they wouldn't know respect if it danced naked shooting off fireworks farts and sang: "I am respect, follow my way / or I'll be forced to make you pay / I'll cut off all your wobbly bits / and shoot sharp darts at your young tits". Respect apart, at least they care enough to try and make Draco 'see the light'. It cold be missionary zeal, but somehow one gets the impression that they really care about Draco until he proves unmanageable.
I like a LOT Evil!HarryObsessed!zacharias. I like the reversal of the character, the mirror effect. Which brings me to the conclusion: If You Have a Ready Mind is a world and a mirror of worlds, just like Discworld. It illuminates and satirises canon, it's not exactly a Metafic, though I called it one, but, like Nanny Ogg, it induces Meta in readers while making them laugh and weep and achieve true catharsis. What more could one hope to find in Literature?
Deceptive Music
Harry moved forward and grabbed it. That had always been easy for him, just a matter of speed and control and taking something for his own, leaving everyone else standing with their hands empty.
The quality of Maya's art is this: that she can use a negative, even despicable, personality trait to engage our affection for her hero and she does it by forcing the reader to think of the implications. She does this because A) she is unflinching in portraying people and generous in loving them, warts and all, for what and who they are; she's also free from the cloying sentimentality that would make insipid-pap-angels of the Good Ones and insipid-pap-devils of the Bad Ones; B) she has absolute control of rhythm, both the internal rhythm of each sentence and the overall rhythm of the whole story. I can't say if it's conscious or unconscious – maybe she was born with perfect rhythm – but frankly who cares? The end result is as subtle and expressive as baroque symphony.
So we are told that Harry is petty and grabby, which he is, but at the same time we'd forced to reflect that a lifetime of seeing all the things he craved, love most of all, snatched away from him and given to others is not conducive to generosity or magnanimity. We hear all Harry's desolate childhood resonate in that snap-quick sentence. If this isn't art, then what is?
This chapter is absolutely amazing. One ends up panting for the sheer breathlessness of it, the speed at which things happen piling almost one upon another between laughter and heart-stopping pain – the pain made crueller by the laughter, the obverse of tragedy is always farce, the laughter made fuller by surprise and the relief from pain – you know, you write lots funny Maya dear, but it seems even funnier than it really is because it's illuminated by the all the dark churning things going on.
At the end one is limp from emotions and lack of oxygen and is left with this impression of frenetically happening things. Then one starts breathing again and realises – much too late – that actually very little happens and that, most of the time, all our hero does is reading books. Ah, but Harry's thoughts are frenetic and the style and rhythm persuade us that even when he's fixed on a contemplating chain of thought, things are happening that he doesn't notice.
So we watch Harry watching Draco watch the Weasleys and learn that Hermione is insensitive, that Molly needs to think that Draco is abused – all other people's children are abused, hers have a perfect family – that Mr Weasley is not a wonderful father and has to hate someone else to feel he is, that Ginny is much younger than her age, but likes to think she's more mature, that Ron is a calculating bastard, quite good at manipulation and that Charlie is the best of the bunch: a brave decent, generous, intelligent, witty man.
Yes, I love Maya!Charlie. I also, unashamedly, love Maya's brain and heart and her writing. No, I tell a lie: I love Maya's brain and heart and I positively worship her writing.
From Psmith to Mole to Hamlet.
Or, from Wodehouse to Townsend to Shakespeare: the maturing of a tale.
Having established that I suck at titles, what can one say about the utter scrumptiousness of If You Have a Ready Mind ?
It boggles and bodes, it sniggers and sneers, it tantrums and weeps and it reflects and mirrors. Maya's problem is that she can't write crackfic, not because she's not technically able to, but her mind-set makes it impossible. She sees people, not cardboard cut-outs and you can't make a Punch and Judy show with real people, for one thing they'd only last one performance and for another the crocodile wouldn't cooperate.
What's quite odd is that, even knowing she started it as a demented crackfic, one can't see the seams, one can't see the exact moment when it ran away with her, because even the first is full of intimations of deeper and adult things. Draco may start as a sort of cross between Psmith and Nigel Molesworth, but there's a budding Hamlet in there too.
The day Draco got his first Owl from his father, remarking that Draco would go for the soft option of Ravenclaw and discussing a move to Durmstrang next year already...
Well, from what we hear of him in the tragedy Hamlet sr was an unmitigated bully with a one-track mind, if Hamlet jr keeps saying he's weak and cowardly for almost six hours, we can well imagine who convinced him when he was a child.
"Traitress!" Draco flung over his shoulder. "Fickle, wayward woman! Potter, of all people!"
Which is of course the 'Frailty, thy name is woman' rant.
Ravenclaw!Draco is my lollipop, my heart and my infinite joy. The best example of Maya's ability as a writer because he is IC!Draco and also Maya!Draco but he's different as well. This Draco is as much as unsure and an utter nervous wreck as IC!Draco, but he's also warmer because his environment at school allows him to grow that way.
Clearly in this story Maya adheres to the theory that Slytherin House is bad for people. There all his daddy issues have met all his housemates' daddy issues and got compounded; here they meet people who have no family issues at all which allow Draco to face some of his issues and understand them. This doesn’t stop him from rushing headlong into disaster, of course, he wouldn't be our All-for-love-or-the-world-well-lost Draco if he didn't, but there's a possibility of a better future growth, supposed that he manages not to get himself killed first.
Terry didn't talk about the Quibbler interview. Draco supposed it was reassurance, that Terry didn't want to hear anything about Draco's father that would make him change his mind about Draco, but Draco might have preferred some shouting and arguing and an open assurance that nothing would make him change his mind about Draco.
He had no right to expect that kind of assurance, though. It wasn't like Terry had chosen him, not really, not when the other options were Zacharias Smith and celibacy. He and Terry were friends and Draco didn't believe it was a matter of convenience or anything, but there was no evidence that Terry would have chosen him from all the world, let alone wanted him enough to keep choosing him, no matter how inconvenient it might become.
Terry is very very unworthy of Draco. He's likeable and affectionate and a decent friend, but boy is he shallow! He's a cowardly shallow patronising little rat. When he's faced with a real problem, a real earth-shattering event for the person he's supposed, if not to love, at least to feel affection for, all he can do is run away. Alright, he's fifteen and it's a shock and he doesn't know how to handle it, but he does nothing at all which, at fifteen, takes some fairly strong determination. There's no passion here, no strong feelings, no courage. Adolescence is the age of going overboard and if one can't manage it, one is either born old or shallow as a puddle.
IYHARM!Terry is Badger!Zacharias, it's nice to cuddle and snog someone one finds funny and knows well, but there's nothing else, which is sad. It's, actually, a fucking tragedy in its own right.
Hermione and the other two are insufferable in their manicheistic world view, but they feel, they insult, they demand. Granted they could have some respect, but it's fairly clear from canon they wouldn't know respect if it danced naked shooting off fireworks farts and sang: "I am respect, follow my way / or I'll be forced to make you pay / I'll cut off all your wobbly bits / and shoot sharp darts at your young tits". Respect apart, at least they care enough to try and make Draco 'see the light'. It cold be missionary zeal, but somehow one gets the impression that they really care about Draco until he proves unmanageable.
I like a LOT Evil!HarryObsessed!zacharias. I like the reversal of the character, the mirror effect. Which brings me to the conclusion: If You Have a Ready Mind is a world and a mirror of worlds, just like Discworld. It illuminates and satirises canon, it's not exactly a Metafic, though I called it one, but, like Nanny Ogg, it induces Meta in readers while making them laugh and weep and achieve true catharsis. What more could one hope to find in Literature?
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 04:24 am (UTC)I agree with you that Ron can manipulate people quite well - when he isn't in a temper. I assume that based on the chess, and what I hope it says about his character, rather than him being Ron Weasley, Idiot Savant of Chess. That said, and I know I keep telling you this, I still like Ron. Perhaps not quite as much as I do grabby Harry, but.
I squee unabashedly at your Psmith reference: I have always loved him so very much more dearly than the eternal Jeeves and Wooster, precisely because he always seemed to have depths and depths of absurdity. Which shows what I like and what I write, I suppose, and leaves poor Hamlet out in the cold. (No, I tell a lie: in my first year of college I wrote a Hamlet Was Gay essay that got me a good mark and several searching questions about drug use from the professors. But I didn't have him in mind for Draco, since my attitude to Hamlet was a mild version of my attitude to Romeo 'Quit Your Bitching' Montague.)
Oh, oh, one thing, I really did not intend to portray Slytherin as the bad house. I don't think it is: I love Slytherin. (*nerds out* I'd want to be Sorted into Slytherin) And I think Draco belongs there - good things in his life in Slytherin like Pansy Parkinson, and flying, and unchecked spontaenity, are missing in Ravenclaw. But because Slytherin is so isolated (which is not just Slytherin's fault but all the houses' fault) and Draco is a gregarious soul, the opportunity for new friends would help him, I think. I still say the Hat chose right in canon. *cheers for Slytherin*
I didn't mean to villainise either Terry or Zacharias, though - I'm fond of them both in IYARM, since I can sympathise with boys being smallminded and sulky about their crushes, and boys who are overwhelmed into silence by the enormity of what's going on with their world. But then, I can sympathise with a lot of things, except coconut bath oil.
I ramble on: thank you very much for your thoughtful review and I will close by saying you made me laugh by mentioning Nanny Ogg: I remember taking a witch test too (oh, internet, how you do make me look bad) and cheating vigorously to get Granny Weatherwax, and ending up with Nanny in spite of everything. Oh, fate!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 12:27 pm (UTC)You didn't villainise Terry and Zach, luv, I prolly overreacted and made you think I had the same reaction to them which I didn't. I like zacharias a LOT, really. I mean he deserves a good solid punch for what he'd fondly call 'damage control', but I can sympathise with the 'gordian knot of emotions' he's far too young to unravel. Besides I got a Z/D-ish kind of experience in school and, though I gave her a good solid punch for spreading lies about me, I ended up becoming her friend. So you see why I like Zacharias.
Terry, now... well, the truth is that I can't be having with boys - or girls, for that matter - who won't live. I tend to despise them, which doesn't mean that I can't see their reasons or that I want them in a piranha tank, but I'd certainly cut off my tongue before saying they're sweet or my brain before thinking it. *gags*
Continues on next comment, was too verbose to be contained in one.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 01:51 pm (UTC)Which of course makes us THINK s he's the better witch, so it's all headology. And Gytha wouldn't care.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-28 04:19 pm (UTC)But Pterry would say such a thing, him being a master of Headology and things. From evidence given I'd say that all three are just about equal, they are, after all, three aspects of the same type of power and they all do headology, each in hr own unique way. I can see why he wrote that, though, it would irk me as well to hear people try and create hyerarchies where there are none, so he redresses the imbalance in the mind of the readers, reminding them that the most effective power is the subtle one and pleasure is quite powerful and beisdes allows you to enjoy more things than duty ever could.
Continuing the above
Date: 2005-12-28 12:32 pm (UTC)On reflection, yes, Draco is The Heart of Slytherin and shouldn't be sorted anywhere else, but I prefer this mirroring tale's sorting because you've made Draco's downfall a personal choice thing. He's not TEH EBUL because everyone keeps spitting at him and his friends and so he - and his housemates - spit back a hundredfold because by Merlin if you want me to be bad I'll show you what bad is! which is the canon subtext, whether La Rowling likes it or not. One cheers for Slytherin because one's sense of justice is offended by the clear injustices being perpetrated on the basis of bias and prejudice, one cheers for Slytherin because one sees that its students are faced with terrifying moral choices at an age when one is almost sure of making the wrong one for emotional reasons and be shocked senseless when the reality of that choice slam them in the face, ultimately I cheer for it because it's tragic and complex and induces endless reflections on the nature of morality and justice. Which is why I much prefer to hate Lucius, who is a true villain (it's a form of cheering for Slytherin, after all, and he's interesting to hate and dissect, while poor Voldie barely exists. Now Tom is interesting, but to all effects and purpose Tom the Slytherin is dead) and can barely manage to despise Neville who may have made the correct moral choice - only he didn't, Nana Longbottom did for him - but who has the personality of a dead slug and is irritating as hell too. C'mon Maya babe, bring on the piranhas!
You keep on biting at all the hooks I throw, don't you? I absolutely agree with you re: Psmith as MUCH better than Jeeves &co, he's even great in "Mike" where he appeared at school. Now I know Hamlet wangsts not a bit, but Maya! He's young, he's blond, he has HUGE daddy issues, he's hysterical and sulky and gayer than a treeful of monkeys on airplane glue. What's not to like? *G* He must have surely won the 'Greatest Prat' award at Wittenberg all the years he was there, he's a brat, he's even got a Terry Boot of his very own.
HUGZ
Re: Continuing the above
Date: 2005-12-28 01:53 pm (UTC)He doesn't procrastinate for the whole play, either. It doesn't become an issue until well into the third act - in fact, he starts worrying about it being an issue well before it actually SHOULD be because he second-guesses himself all the time and worries himself to a stand-still.
Very like... er... me.
Okay... so... why do I love Hamlet again?
Re: Continuing the above
Date: 2005-12-28 04:23 pm (UTC)It's why the comparison to Hamlet came into my head. IYHARM!Draco second guesses himself a lot and worries. But it's just my extremely echoing and re-echoing mind, you know? I pick up echos all the time.
Oh, and have you noticed how dense Maya's prose is, underneath all that sparse precision?
Re: Continuing the above
Date: 2005-12-28 02:34 pm (UTC)I didn't mean to say that Slytherin had unchecked spontaenity as like, a house trait, but because I honestly think Draco belongs there I think his development in there would be more organic. Whereas in Ravenclaw he studies all the time and curbs his other impulses.
I am glad for the Ron like and I always like a deluge: whose mailbox are you talking about? I don't have notifications, oh my God, that would be awful, my mailbox is always collapsing anyway. So if I see them, it's because I came looking.
I'm a little concerned about the concern about Draco liking: this is my first chaptered thing with a Draco POV since DMABR (curse its soul) and I want to get it right, but Draco, he compartmentalises. and anyway, has a lot on his mind. I'm getting there!
Hamlet and Draco
Date: 2005-12-28 04:13 pm (UTC)As for Draco liking... I personally think you're getting him and the story right. The pace is perfect, as usual, and one can't feel rejected and humiliate and hate so much for years and then wake up and think: right, I'm gay, let's check out Potty's arse. Hmm... sexy! Will shag as soon as I have a moment free. Now, can one?
Re: Hamlet and Draco
Date: 2005-12-28 04:45 pm (UTC)Well, glad you think I'm getting it right, will remove my Hamlet distaste from your journal.
Re: Hamlet and Draco
Date: 2005-12-28 09:59 pm (UTC)And we both love Psmith and Pterry and all,,,
I really haven't the faintest idea how to be fangirlish, I don't know why but I have this utterly irrational urge to apologise. Is that fangirlish?
Re: Hamlet and Draco
Date: 2005-12-28 11:21 pm (UTC)Silly me!
Date: 2005-12-28 01:21 pm (UTC)I'm not spamming you, I'm eluging you, sorry. Things keep coming to mind in bits and snippetts and I write them down, heedless of filling-up mailboxes. Apologies.