walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2003-12-07 09:09 pm
walkingshadow) wrote2003-12-07 09:09 pm
time has fooled me into thinking it's a part of me
With some writers, I feel like I'm floundering in the half-light of dusk, straining my eyes to make out objects and distances to them. It's part of a style of writing going around that's all commas and clauses and words run together and sentences whose ends don't ever surface, just trail off into breathy murmurs. It's effective, sometimes, in the hands of a writer who can manipulate it (instead of vice-versa), depending on the subject and the mood the author is trying to create. I can't read too many stories like that in a row; like chasing someone through the sand, they exhaust me.
Merry's writing is clear. She writes in sentences, whole, crafted sentences, and I feel bright and alert just reading them, regardless of content. Most of her stories are light-hearted to the point of glee, laugh-out-loud funny in the way Douglas Adams is, from the language much more than the situation itself. This is why when she turned to a story that was so different in mood and subject (which she says was weird for her), it couldn't fall flat, not with writing that solid beneath it, not with such vivid and inventive images to give it substance and shape.
I didn't even think of Mirage as Timbertrick until I read the warnings and story notes, after the fact; I don't know if that says more about me, the story, or the way we usually perceive what we're anticipating, and in the absence of something to expect, sometimes interpret the data differently. So it was a group story to me first and foremost, which still makes the most sense. One leaving--or dying, though that's still unclear to me--is horrific and crippling, but two would be strangely lopsided, and selfish. And I love the order in which they go; if it's Justin first, then Chris must follow, maybe the one with the strongest tie and the most grief, but also the one most likely to get in his car and drive without questioning himself about it; and Lance has to be last, standing finally with all the evidence pooled in front of him and a tug he can believe in.
I love that Chris and then Lance hear voices and music in the static and white noise of the space between radio stations; they offer an English seminar at UF called Eccentric Spaces, and I keep wanting to offer it to the professor as a topic of discussion because it resonates so fiercely for me, a space for them and only them.
It didn't strike me as "creepy" either, though Merry's amended the story warning to say that probably isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. I was intrigued by the map with Chris's writing on it, but I wasn't freaked by it, not the way Chris was. Justin never seemed like a haunting; he was too real for it, dusty and warm and wearing jeans, scuffing up Chris's dashboard and arguing about it. It was fascinating how they were disappearing, flickering weakly and strongly, and hindsight says it started at the Taco Bell with the red sauce, but I didn't catch that until the second reading. The most powerful part for me was the last part, seven short paragraphs in which everything comes around in an unexpected but bone-satisfying full circle. The last line makes me suck in my breath and stare, and after that, the final lyrics give me goosebumps in a totally non-metaphorical way, every time I read them. After the first time I read it, over the summer in my parents' house on their old computer, I remember practically stumbling out of my chair, filled to overflowing and whispering, "Whoa. Just whoa." The only time it's ever seemed creepy was that night, when I woke up for no reason at four a.m. and couldn't shake the image of Lance standing outside his house with his hand on the hood of his car, thinking it wouldn't be long now.
That's what's been going around in my head. I made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gjstruthseeker read it almost immediately, and we talked it over; frankly, I don't think either of us knows exactly what happened. But the story's enough for me.
Merry's writing is clear. She writes in sentences, whole, crafted sentences, and I feel bright and alert just reading them, regardless of content. Most of her stories are light-hearted to the point of glee, laugh-out-loud funny in the way Douglas Adams is, from the language much more than the situation itself. This is why when she turned to a story that was so different in mood and subject (which she says was weird for her), it couldn't fall flat, not with writing that solid beneath it, not with such vivid and inventive images to give it substance and shape.
I didn't even think of Mirage as Timbertrick until I read the warnings and story notes, after the fact; I don't know if that says more about me, the story, or the way we usually perceive what we're anticipating, and in the absence of something to expect, sometimes interpret the data differently. So it was a group story to me first and foremost, which still makes the most sense. One leaving--or dying, though that's still unclear to me--is horrific and crippling, but two would be strangely lopsided, and selfish. And I love the order in which they go; if it's Justin first, then Chris must follow, maybe the one with the strongest tie and the most grief, but also the one most likely to get in his car and drive without questioning himself about it; and Lance has to be last, standing finally with all the evidence pooled in front of him and a tug he can believe in.
I love that Chris and then Lance hear voices and music in the static and white noise of the space between radio stations; they offer an English seminar at UF called Eccentric Spaces, and I keep wanting to offer it to the professor as a topic of discussion because it resonates so fiercely for me, a space for them and only them.
It didn't strike me as "creepy" either, though Merry's amended the story warning to say that probably isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. I was intrigued by the map with Chris's writing on it, but I wasn't freaked by it, not the way Chris was. Justin never seemed like a haunting; he was too real for it, dusty and warm and wearing jeans, scuffing up Chris's dashboard and arguing about it. It was fascinating how they were disappearing, flickering weakly and strongly, and hindsight says it started at the Taco Bell with the red sauce, but I didn't catch that until the second reading. The most powerful part for me was the last part, seven short paragraphs in which everything comes around in an unexpected but bone-satisfying full circle. The last line makes me suck in my breath and stare, and after that, the final lyrics give me goosebumps in a totally non-metaphorical way, every time I read them. After the first time I read it, over the summer in my parents' house on their old computer, I remember practically stumbling out of my chair, filled to overflowing and whispering, "Whoa. Just whoa." The only time it's ever seemed creepy was that night, when I woke up for no reason at four a.m. and couldn't shake the image of Lance standing outside his house with his hand on the hood of his car, thinking it wouldn't be long now.
That's what's been going around in my head. I made
gjstruthseeker read it almost immediately, and we talked it over; frankly, I don't think either of us knows exactly what happened. But the story's enough for me.