The Explosionist

Every so often I like to treat myself to a really smart children's or young adult novel. Last week it was Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist, an alternate history set in 1930s Scotland I got excited about before it was published, and then I forgot about it because the pub date was still so many months away.

Fifteen-year-old Sophie lives with her great-aunt Tabitha in an alternate version of Edinburgh in the late 1930s; Tabitha is rich, politically connected, and hosts seances in their dining room on a weekly basis (which in this reality isn't as eccentric as it sounds). The world is on the brink of war and Sophie and her aunt are both trying to figure out which organization is behind the city's frequent suicide bombings; Sophie has a big crush on her awkward young chemistry teacher, but fears he may be involved. Just as troubling is the prospect of her own life after boarding school; Sophie wants to study science at the university, but with war on the horizon she may be forced into the Institute for the Recruitment of Young Ladies for National Security (the acronym is pronounced "irons"—which, needless to say, is no coincidence).

The overarching premise is that Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and consequently the early 20th century is only vaguely recognizable. The United States is split in two (since Delaware, which had most of the munitions factories, sided with the South), and Europe is also divided—between the independent (mostly northern) nations of the Hanseatic League, and the Fascist state that has already gobbled up France, Germany, and all the rest. England lost the Great War, and is now reduced to mass starvation and barbed-wire borders; an independent Scotland has taken its place as a world power. This alternate political reality is really interesting 'what-if' food for thought, although the frequent historical-figure switcheroos (Oscar Wilde as an obstetrician who invented the incubator?!) are pretty distracting. But that's my only real quibble with the novel—there's no mystery as to who's behind the terrorist attacks, but because Davidson is more interested in exploring this alternate reality than in a traditional whodunit, this wasn't an issue for me.

This is a pretty intense read, and I don't think I'd give it to anybody under the age of fourteen. The glimpses of an Orwellian women's secretarial training academy were downright horrifying, as was the prospect of suicide machines that look like telephone booths available in the lobby of every post office and library in the country.

The ending isn't so much an ending as a 'this is now 450 pages long so we'll save the rest of it for next time,' which is a little frustrating because the sequel (The Snow Queen) won't be out until fall 2010. Looking forward to it!

Vintage sweater #3

Christmas knitting is already well underway. Of course, most of it I can't share with you until December 26th, and that doesn't make for very interesting blogging. I've finished the Snow Flurries Wrap for Shelley's wedding (hooray!), so I'm treating myself to one more vintage jumper before I resume my holiday knitting schedule (er..."schedule"). It's an adorable tennis jumper from the 1930s, and the pattern scan is available at Vintage Knitting.

That's a simple lace panel in the center, the rest just plain stockinette stripes. This pattern is crazy though—how can you write a pattern without mentioning the gauge?!—and it was supposedly written to fit a 32" bust (hah!) So I'm basically rewriting the whole thing, adding length (15" before binding off for the armholes instead of 12"), and shortening the sleeves so they'll match the longer stripe pattern on the body. The whole thing's going to be fitted where the original was blousey; I think it'll be more flattering, but the real reason is I'm afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. I bought a few skeins of each color on sale before I knew what I wanted to make. (More detailed notes on my Ravelry project page.)

That blue isn't a color I'd normally wear, but I'm trying to do colors other than green, purple, and black. Now I just have to find a tennis racket...

Make Do and Mend

How exciting is this: I've got an essay in this week's episode of Cast On, which is far and away my favorite podcast! The series theme is 'Make Do and Mend,' taking inspiration from WWII-era booklets on repurposing and economizing. I'm continually inspired by my grandparents' thrifty lifestyle (I've already told you about the candy tin o' buttons), so that's what my essay is about. I know a lot of you reading this aren't knitters, but Brenda's podcast is well worth a listen regardless.

I have so many items of clothing ready to be mended or repurposed—the challenge is actually getting down to making the alterations. There's the vintage 100% wool cardi I mention in the essay, which I think will become a button-down vest from A Stitch in Time (a huge, beautifully illustrated book of modernized vintage patterns, which is on my Christmas wish list). There's another purple sweater I got for Kate when I worked at Anthropologie back in college, which is half-felted; I might as well felt it all the way and make a throw pillow out of it. I have a mohair jumper my mom got me at Kilkenny Design when I graduated with my M.A.; it's forest green, a good color for me, but the design itself is none too flattering (why did it take me so long to realize that?!), and someday I want to frog it (mohair...yikes!) and reuse the yarn so it can still remind me of graduation and my mother's generosity. And I have a sweater I got in Dublin in 2001 that has a hole in the elbow; I still love it, it's purple and in perfect condition otherwise, so I need to pick up some matching sock yarn to knit a pair of elbow patches. I have a feeling I'm going to have to visit more than a few yarn shops before I find a color that's close enough.

And I have yet another project that's all about the buttons: my mother has a black cotton cardigan with beautiful sparkly ones that she never wears because the garment itself is faded. As it is, those buttons are going to waste. So for Christmas I’m knitting a classic cardigan that will showcase those lovely buttons (it was her idea), and that faded but still serviceable cotton cardi will get a plainer set of buttons (out of the tin) before it’s donated to Goodwill. Two sweaters out of one!

But add all these makeover sweaters to a huge pile of unfinished sewing and knitting projects, and it's really overwhelming. Right now I really only have one completed 'make do and mend' project to boast of, and it's five or six years old. My favorite jeans had huge holes in the seat, too big to patch, so I decided to make a yoga mat bag out of one of the legs. I cut out a circle for the bottom out of the other leg, used a sparkly purple shoelace for a drawstring, and a rainbow-striped belt for the strap. Now that I've got my mom going to yoga classes, I figure I can use some corduroy scraps to make her a mat bag too. I'll just have to add it to The List.

Next entry: vintage sweater #3!

Moldy Oldie: Trash Your Panties!

Awhile back I mentioned this Washington Square News "op/ed" I wrote in the spring of 2000. It was headlined "Trash Your Panties: Going Commando With Camille." Sadly, it was by far the best thing I ever wrote for the paper. Hope you enjoy it.

Thirty years ago we burned our bras. We didn’t go far enough.

I have issues with underpants. They are expensive, unnecessary and often uncomfortable. No one ever seriously considers the possibility that we women could avoid the nearest Victoria’s Secret (or K-Mart) altogether in favor of a far more authentic way to live - with perfect freedom.

The prospect of going “commando” always makes for a hearty laugh, and it’s true that there’s no better place for a pair of lacy panties than atop an inebriated frat guy’s head. But why do we bother wearing underpants at all? Underwear, if you’re in the market for something a little more feminine than a pair of bland white cotton undies, will cost you more money than I consider it to be worth.

A girl makes a trip to the lingerie department for one reason and one reason only, whether she admits it or not — she’s looking for the most enticing scrap of something sheer and frilly just in case the opportunity for a certain type of encounter with the opposite sex should arise. In that case, why bother wasting $30 on a pair of underpants that are just going to be ripped off with wild beastly abandon anyway? So what if the joy of unwrapping the present is gone with the panties; we have more important assets to make use of.

Not that I’m advocating a panty boycott to make it easier for those crazy boys. It makes absolute sense that female underwear evolved from the chastity belt, the ultimate symbol of feminine oppression. It is for that very reason that we should abstain from wearing panties; such a defiant act would symbolize quite appropriately the social freedom we continue to desire with such fervor.

Fetishization of female undergarments is certainly widespread; girls, if you’re ever in desperate need of tuition money, you can always sell your panties steeped in that oh-so-attractive “natural aroma” online and make a bundle. (If I weren’t so concerned with simple decency, I might advocate ridding yourself of every pair you own by this method; it’s certainly more profitable than throwing them out in the trash.) If we were to avoid the wearing of underpants, men would have to find a more productive and meaningful garment to worship. I suggest socks because of their wintry practicality and distance from the danger zone.

Reasons of simplicity and freedom aside, we should reject the restrictions imposed upon us by underwear simply because this article of clothing is a constant source of male delight and strange fascination. We still want them to be fascinated, of course — just not with our panties. Getting rid of them now would force men to hurry a little faster along that evolutionary path. The absence of underwear also makes it easier for the more carnal and filthy-minded among them to get what they want, but I’m not worried. Men like that use newspapers for house-training themselves rather than for reading material, so if this idea catches on, they won’t know about it.

No more annoying wedgies, no more unsightly panty lines and no more hard-earned money wasted on garments that nobody is ever going to see. (At least that’s what your mother thinks.) It’s a curious thing that no one ever included the suggestion to “get rid of your underwear” in any of those “Simplify Your Life” books. Spend your money on something more practical, like ice cream, crossword puzzle magazines or itching powder. I’m holding onto my bra though; there’s a three-letter word that begins with S and ends with G that scares me too thoroughly to light that match.

Note to Self

"Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise. Anything less is a bore, and I'll give you fifty dollars if you produced a writer who can honestly say he was ever helped by the prissy carpings and condescensions of reviewers. I don't mean to say that none of the professional critics are worth paying attention to—but few of the good ones review on a regular basis. Most of all, I believe in hardening yourself against opinion. I've had, and continue to receive, my full share of abuse, some of it extremely personal, but it doesn't faze me any more. I can read the most outrageous libel about myself and never skip a pulse-beat. And in this connection there is one piece of advice I strongly urge: Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper."

—Truman Capote, from an interview in the Paris Review, 1957.

The Last of Summer

The Last of Summer (1943) isn't the best-known of Kate O'Brien's novels, and I was quite lucky to find it at Charlie Byrne's a few months back. (I check the Irish lit shelf every time I go in, but I usually find only the novels I've already read.) O'Brien is among the great Irish novelists, though she isn't nearly as well known (in or out of Ireland) as she ought to be.

Raised in Paris by a French mother and an Irish father (both of whom are dead by the time this story takes place), Angèle first comes to Ireland in 1939 with several other actors over on holiday from London. Towards the end of a sunny, sultry August—yes, sometimes in Ireland the weather is really that fine!—Angèle skips out on her companions to visit her father's relations for the first time.

The Kernahan clan is headed by her frosty, magisterial Aunt Hannah (widow of her father's brother Ned), and Angèle is puzzled by Hannah's hot-and-cold reaction to her sudden appearance. She also meets her father's other brother, the bumbling, kind-hearted Uncle Corney; Hannah's cousin-slash-unpaid servant Dotey; and three cousins all about her age—Tom (the mild-mannered, responsible one), Martin (the brooding, cynical academic), and Jo (who is bound for the convent). Despite the weird vibes Hannah is giving off, Angèle becomes quick friends with her cousins, and Martin makes his attraction to her all too clear.

Having studied in Paris, Martin has far more in common with his long-lost cousin than his older brother, who is the quintessential 'mama's boy.' Their father died when Tom was a teenager, and he has managed the farm and served as his mother's most beloved companion ever since. The conversations between manipulative mother and all-too-malleable son leave the reader feeling squirmy, to say the least, and the author's treatment of their Oedipal relationship isn't exactly subtle ("Always she pleased his eyes as no other woman did." Whoa.) When Tom and Angèle announce their engagement after only a few days' acquaintance, naturally Hannah is outraged, but decides to give her blessing while secretly doing her utmost to unravel the attachment. This way Tom will come running back into her arms when the whole thing ends in tears.

Tom and Angèle don't even know each other, but they believe that the magnitude of their infatuation and their essential good natures will triumph over that pesky requirement of a papal dispensation—for being first cousins, and all—as well as the looming specter of another war in Europe, which may very well prevent Angèle from ever seeing her mother's family again. Their attraction makes sense in that Angèle is an orphan looking for a place in the family she's long wondered about, and Tom sees in her all the worldly experience he's been denied through his father's premature death and mother's 'strangling affection' (to use one of my favorite phrases from another Kate O'Brien novel). Without Angèle, Tom will live the rest of his life under his mother's thumb. He believes he needs her, but he'll never understand the real reason why.

In all her novels O'Brien does a marvelous job laying out the tangles of confused thoughts in a character's head, all the fragmentary images and memories and motives, the weird or spiteful thoughts one would never dream of uttering aloud. We are also privy to the interior monologues and personal history of minor characters like Dotey, who is no less fascinating for all her pathetically self-interested scheming, and the 'genially selfish' Dr. O'Byrne, whose daughter Norrie has been in love with Tom since childhood:

Dr. O'Byrne almost nodded his head as he listened to this delicate little speech—so exactly did it tell him what he had already told himself very often about this woman. She's certainly a great fly in the ointment, he reflected now with anxiety. I could hardly choose a worse mother-in-law for my girl. And she's only about fifty, so far as I recall, and she hasn't a thing wrong with her. Superb organic health. Nothing to stop her hanging on in vigour into the nineties. Upon my word, I think Norrie will need the heart of a lion to face it—but sure, that's what the child has! The heart of a lion, and it's set on Tom Kernahan...

And Jo Kernahan, the twenty-one-year-old future nun, is wise beyond her years, surveying the household's growing confusion over Tom and Angèle's proposed union with dispassionate sympathy. Her interior passages are particularly lovely:

And she had visited Sainte Fontaine—and knew that the best part of her soul was waiting for her there, had gone ahead of her to that out-of-date, cold, mediaeval centre of discipline and rigidity and elimination...

This is also the device through which we discover that all three of the Kernahan brothers were in love with Hannah, and that she and Angèle's father (also named Tom...hmm!) were engaged before the elder Tom jilted Hannah (glimpsed her true colors just in time) and ran off to Paris, never to return. Anxious to acquire the wealth and status of the Kernahan name, Hannah accepted Ned's subsequent offer. This tidily explains Hannah's instant hatred of her sensitive, pretty niece, but what's not so tidy (and is all the more satisfying for it) is that Angèle never discovers the real reason behind her father's hasty departure. These stream-of-consciousness passages are too intimate, all too messy, and that's precisely why they're such a delight to read.

I loved The Last of Summer for the same reason I love all Kate O'Brien's novels: the situation is a train wreck waiting to happen. You know early on how it's going to end, but it's so well done you'll never consider putting it down before you've finished it.

Requiem for a Watering Hole

A lot of pubs and restaurants have come and gone since my first trip to Galway back in the spring of 2000. I still mourn my old favorites—the River God Café (sublime food, awesome mermaid mural on the stairwell wall), Bananaphoblacht ("Banana Republic"—they had the best hot chocolate), Camelot (such a romantic wine bar), the Snug (old-school, had just what it said on the tin). Another pub, Taylor's, became a "Gentlemen's Club," turning Lower Dominick Street into the closest thing Galway has to a red-light district (aside from the "gentlemen's club," there are two sex shops, a casino, and a gay bar that hasn't looked open for business in years. Or maybe that's just what they want you to think...)

Anyway, I came upon an old matchbox collection from my college days, and I noticed a fair number of the places I got them from are no longer in business. I'm going to be a huge nerd and share them with you:

The Grange Hall used to be my favorite café in the Village—it was a really chill speakeasy-style bar/restaurant with wonderful comfort food (best garlic/herbed mashed potatoes ever), a portrait of F.D.R. above the bar, and a huge mural depicting migrant workers on the back wall. I based the local bar-restaurant in Mary Modern, The Dragon Volant, on The Grange Hall.

I had my last meal of the spring 2000 trip at Dish, a modern Irish restaurant in the Dublin city center—good food (I think I had a lemon tart for dessert), but not all that memorable otherwise. I'm pretty sure Dish is no more.

Langton's (of Kilkenny) is still open, as far as I know—I just included it in the photo because this is the coolest matchbox ever. I ordered a Sex on the Beach there just to scandalize the elderly bartender.

And Caisleán ui Cuain in Kilkenny—such a friendly pub! I've remembered the friendliest places, because it was my first solo trip and I was feeling lonesome. It's under new management with a different name now, something so dull I can't remember it.

I never got a matchbox from the River God, though I did buy a t-shirt with a mermaid on it (and later lost it at a hostel in Dublin. That was nearly five years ago, and I'm still kicking myself.) I had a delicious lunch there on my own, then dinner with Kate when we visited Galway in '03, and then with a bunch of my M.A. classmates the following year. When Diarmuid's dessert came garnished with a sprig of mint, he cried, "There's a nettle in me ice cream!" Oh, the happy memories.

I think somebody should write a guidebook for time-travelers... because if I had the power to travel back in time and 'put right what once went wrong' like Dr. Sam Beckett, naturally I would rather use it to get some really good food at a restaurant that's closed long since.