A One-Man Mob of Scribbling...Livejournal Users; or, How to Illuminate a Book and Cover it in Goat Skin

[This post reeks of self-indulgence.  It's a veritable DeLillo novel.  Don't say you ain't been warned.]

While I whiled away my summer dissertating, the Little Womedievalist spent the summer making a book.  She stretched the goat skin herself and everything.  And by "everything" I mean "illuminated the manuscript she copied in the original script."  You didn't hear that wrong.  She actually learned to forge medieval script and illumination and copied herself poetry enough to fill a book.  You don't believe me?  I have evidence in the form of pictures.  It's impressive beyond my ability to communicate, really.  Plus the smell of treated goat skin defies imagination.

In other news, my clogged head informs me that I'll be spending some time this week in bed with a terrible cold.  Probably the bird flu.  So if I don't update for a while, I'm dead.  Also, I got mauled last night.  (That's only one arm.  And the bruises ain't even visible.  Nor is my nose.)  Happy Halloween!

I have many half-formed thoughts I want to communicate.  I finished Adam Roberts' Stone this afternoon and while I don't want to gush, it's a wonderful novel.  Unlike most "hard" sci-fi—in which scientific theories and futuristic technologies are communicated in dull expository passages of interminable length—Adam strikes a balance between technological and/or theoretical fetishism and narrative pay-off.  But I'm going to write about this more in a couple of days.  When I'm not on the verge of the perpetual sneeze.  In case he fears I'll take it easy on him because he's a friend, well, I want to know how a naked man wipes blood off a blade with his shirt!  Burn!  (Seriously though, I'll be posting about it later in the week.  It's a strong book.  Not quite George Eliot, but far superior to DeLillo.)

I have more thoughts I'm currently unable to communicate adequately.  So I won't.  But expect much brilliance this week, 'cause brilliance is what I'll be bringing!  (That, or death in the form of avian flu.  One of the two.)

Comments

[Wimbrel]

Warm convalescent wishes to Cretinous Cancer Boy. Better get well soon.

[ben wolfson]

The poem pictured is Pearl, yes?

That book is too cool. Your wife rocks.

[Adam Roberts]

Naked man wipes blood off his blade with a ... oh. Damn.

Headless man must retire to bed because his cranial sinuses are full of ... now hang on a minute.

Bad news about the arm, though. Was goatskin a second choice for the book, then, after that failed attempt at flaying your forearm?

[Stephen]

Who was the culprit? Mund?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Wimbrel,

Thanks. But for accuracy's sake, it should be known than I'm Stupid Cretinous Cancer Boy. (Actaully, since I now care about accuracy, it should be Stupid Formerly Cretinous Cancer Boy.)

Ben,

The wife is quite impressed with your manuscript-reading abilities. She said neither of the medievalists here could read it, and wondered how you could. She said you must have read you some manuscripts in your time (or possibly even the particular one she copied, since she said something about it being the only extant one).

Adam,

See, this is why I'll make such a fine manuscript reader: as a once rabid sci-fi fan, I have a nose for continuity errors...that, and, I wouldn't have noticed it had you not painted so memorable a picture of his/her running around the ship naked. (I wanted to ask you about that, but I'll save it for my more substantial response.)

Goat-skin was always the wife's first choice. I remember the day it arrived. The UPS man came to the door. I opened it and he said "I have some goat-skin for Scott Kaufman." We looked at each other and both started laughing. There's something about sending sheets of goat-skin by air-mail that's inherently funny.

Stephen,

The Mund is offended you think him capable of such violence. It was actually Kelly's 24 lbs. monster who mauled me. He had escaped mid-Halloween party, I found him and tried to pick him up so he didn't run into the street, and he flipped. I have never seen a cat this scared and angry. I finally had to pin him down and wait for reinforcements. In the meantime, he did that to both arms. That cat is huge. But there's nothing like coming back to a party covered in cat urine and your own blood. (Also, I'm absolutely positively going to remember to email the comments on your Bellow chapter when I get home. I've been so spaced this past week. All apologies.)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Traditionally you wipe the blood off your blade using the shirt of the guy you've just stabbed.

It's too bad your wife didn't get to do the step of making her own paper, which I always thought sounded more fun somehow than bookbinding and illustrating. I sometimes think that handcrafted papermaking is one of the key industries in the area where I live (others include abstract-just-barely-landscape painting, collage (mixed media), nonuseful pottery, and old-time New England factory building rental).

[Adam Roberts]

See, this is why I'll make such a fine manuscript reader: as a once rabid sci-fi fan, I have a nose for continuity errors...
Ah, but you have fallen right into my narrative trap. Because, of course, this is a first-person narrative, and the narrator is an unreliable narrator, what's known in the trade as an 'if Wolfe can get away with it...' character. S/he may have put the shirt on, and omitted to say so in the narration. (And, if I remember aright, there are some discontinuities in the narrative at that point). Though to be honest, it's a while since I wrote that book, and I can no longer remember what I was thinking.

I wouldn't have noticed it had you not painted so memorable a picture of his/her running around the ship naked.
Memorable picture-painting of naked people running. Is there a nobler aim in art?

[Stephen]

Well, if you were a 24lbs cat, and some bearded mutant wearing a bicycle helmet and his wife's clothes tried to pick you up, what would you have done? Try to see it from his perspective.

[ben wolfson]

She said you must have read you some manuscripts in your time (or possibly even the particular one she copied, since she said something about it being the only extant one).

Ha! Actually I happened to notice (on one of the further-away pictures, I think) that the first word looked like "Perle", and compared what I could make out of the first two lines (gold, princes, pay, dear) to the first two lines of Tolkein's translation, which I own for reasons which now escape me. Initial hypothesis pure fortuity. Without a Modern English text for ideas, I wouldn't hazard any guesses as to what the words on any given line are.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Adam,

You're the next Gene Wolfe...by which I mean, at least I can tell your narrator from your other characters. (Am currently reading Salt...but am high on cold medicine. So probably have nothing to say about it other than "I like. It good.") That said, I'm still tweaking my drafted post on Stone, which I like more the more I think about. I think this is the benefit of stuffing a novel so full of ideas as you have, which is something I like. I think there's an interesting alteration of the narrative voice when you inform the reader that...nevermind, since I know two other readers have decided to read Stone I won't reveal this immediately. (Check your email tomorrow, maybe, or y'all read the damn faster. I'm crunked on Dayquil and impatient!)

Stephen,

Oddly, I had taken my helmet off prior to being mauled. This was a bad idea, as I have a very painful scratch down the side of my scalp which feels like it tears everytime I smile. Thankfully, I have this terrible cold now and scorn everything on principle. Also, in my defense, his alternatives were "be held down by this man who can't bear to see his friend's cat run away" or "run into the street and be hit by a car." He should've known better. (cue Richard Marx. Wait, no, please don't.) And really...he's a 24 lbs. cat, armed with razor sharp teeth and claws. Why should he be scared of me?

Ben,

I won't tell her. She now has an intense respect for your acumen, and I don't want to shatter her illusions. She sometimes thinks that medieval literature matters, and when people like you—i.e. people she doesn't know to be medievalists—provide evidence that the world still cares about 14th Century manuscripts, she's a much happier woman. I can kind of sort of not really still read Middle English. I had to learn to read it for the "History of the English Language" course I took as an undergraduate (while still a linguistics major), but at this point, well, I'm "rusty." I didn't recognize it at first glance, so I'm still impressed.