Nursepuppy and footnotes

[mrissa]

Kind of dizzy and shaky today. I have managed both breakfast and lunch for both myself and timprov, and markgritter is getting his own lunch now, and missista is being a pretty good puppy. She's started sleeping on the bed we bought her for in my office, when I'm sitting at the computer. She'd clearly rather that I was on one of the couches or in bed, but even the best pup in the house can't always get what she wants. (For one thing, it would make the song really hard to scan, wouldn't it?) She was nursepuppy for the timprov for a little bit not very long ago, which was very sweet. (Nursepuppy considerately provides a soft petting surface for people who may need one. She also holds down people who should not get up and occasionally provides puppy kisses to hands, feet, knees, ears, etc.)

Trying to get rid of our old furniture before our new furniture arrives. This is not as easy as it sounds. I do have one of my specialist appointments lined up, though, and I'm waiting for calls back on the other two.

I'm reading Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, which is a mystery with Jane Austen as the detective. The thing that's bothering me most about it is that it is not in our genre. I don't mean that I want Jane Austen to be doing spells or genetic engineering, but that the author is working from an entirely different set of assumptions about what is acceptable incluing and what must be presented in infodump. She footnotes things. And she footnotes things that should be perfectly obvious from context. Some of the footnotes are to carry on the framing device that these are discovered diaries and letters of Jane Austen's (which framing device I find utterly unnecessary -- we can figure out that they are, and I don't need to play pretend that they were found in somebody's basement), but others are to explain customs like use of first names being confined to very close friends and relations, which are clear enough without being smacked over the head with them.

I know that this isn't wrong, it's just different, a different set of assumptions about why and how the reader is reading the book. But I find them intrusive, a constant reminder that this book may entertain me but will not become one of mine deep down. Not all mysteries do this. Gaudy Night is mine mine mine. So maybe it's not a genre thing after all; I don't know. Anybody else?

Comments

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

It puts an interesting spin on a pet literary theory of mine, that one should avoid the "bad jar" - it's alright to jar someone's senses, but you have to do it right. The "bad jar" is one that knocks you out of the story for a moment, and it sounds to me as though the footnoting was, for you, a bad jar. I'd never thought before that bad jars could be reader-specific, but of course they must; something that seems noticably wrong about, say, the linguistics of a given scene would jar me, and might not jar someone else who hadn't the same training.

Interesting.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think variation in reader protocols are often sources of "bad jar." I was reading one of the Modesty Blaise books, for example, and it said that a face she had carved "came to life." In most of my reading life, that means that Modesty and Willie now get to talk to the face, and it took me a minute to remember that we had not taken a sharp left turn into The Spirit Ring or Emerald House Rising. Also, in many non-speculative novels, people can "disappear" without the author having to worry that the reader will think they disappeared, but for me it's a jarring moment.

[ckd]

Bingo. I was recently re-reading James P. Hogan's Mirror Maze (from his short-lived technothriller period before the Brain Eater finished its meal) and there was a reference to a Soviet (yeah, it was before that too) air-to-surface missile with a NATO codename belonging to a surface-to-air missile.

Yes, I'm such a geek.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Alternately, you could call it the "jar-jar."

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i thought that said "neuroscopy". i was very concerned and then very confused and then very relieved.

scritch miss ista for me, eh?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Duly scritched!

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

As you say, it's different assumptions; but I don't think this is genre-related (vide the footnotes, appendices, etc. of Lord of the Rings). And some folks enjoy the schtick of framing devices such as this.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure, there are footnotes in genre material, but if this level of cultural difference was footnoted, most fantasy and SF novels would be 3/4 footnote.

The framing device thing, I agree, is not a genre question. I don't really like framing devices. It took me a good while to get into the idea that the Ash books didn't have a strict framing device, that it was all part of the story, but I was relieved when that became clear.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I enjoy the Jane Austen mysteries far more than I expected to, and while I was irritated by some of the unnecessary footnotes, I chalked it up to being told information that I already, as a minor Regency geek, knew. I think I also had the notion that the author was spending time footnoting things that she personally found kind of cool, and was sort of oversharing in a kind of "hey, look at what neat tidbit about society that I want to share with you!" thing. It wasn't a dealbreaker for me, and I didn't think about it in terms of genre but rather as the author needing to let the reader do a little more work on his/her own.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, and I'm not a Regency geek at all, and I have very low tolerance for that kind of oversharing when it's woven seamlessly into the text, much less when it's tacked on as an afterthought.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

It amuses me that after what you say about the other mystery (wholly valid, mind you, I'm not quibbling with that) and why it will not become yours, you then give Gaudy Night as a counterexample - one of the weirdest, most rule-breaking mystery novels ever written, where there is no corpse, not really much of a mystery, and no detecting of any kind for, what, the first third to one-half of the book!

Gaudy Night is a good book, but I can't really read it as a mystery; it breaks too many of my genre assumptions in too many ways. If I reread it, it is because I want to go say hello to Peter and Harriet again (and frankly I prefer Busman's Honeymoon for that).

I understand what you mean about phrases which you initially interpret according to a different protocol. However, as someone who is not a very literalist writer, I would like to think that once the initial couple of bumps are overcome, you find that you can switch protocol sets and proceed with the book. Do you find this is usually the case? Have some examples of this sort of protocol switch given you more trouble than others?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The more I'm enjoying a book, the more thoroughly I get into the right mindset. But if I'm not enjoying a book, it bumps along behind me like Pooh down the stairs.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I liked the first few Jane Austen mysteries, and then they bored me. I think the author is from Boulder.