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mrissaOkay, here we are: March 9. Time to discuss Lloyd Alexander's Westmark. For those of you just tuning in, discussion of The Kestrel will follow on April 9, and The Beggar Queen will be discussed here May 9.
When I say discussion, I do mean it. If you want to write things in your own ljs or non-lj journals, please link in the comments or send me an e-mail; I will edit the post to add links if I get them. You do not have to be on my friendslist to participate; everyone's welcome.
Reminder: this post will contain spoilers for Westmark and only Westmark. Spoilers for The Kestrel and The Beggar Queen can come later. (Another post on my feelings about spoilers may also come later, but that's related to West Wing, not Westmark. Big difference.)
My personal history with Westmark: I was about 8 when I found the trilogy. I was in some ways the perfect audience for this book. Not only did I have parents who talked to me about politics and about evil in the world as something I would have to engage with personally, starting now rather than later, but when I was 8, my Gran was in her 80s and still running the print shop she and Great-Grandpa had started all those years ago. A political book about a printer's devil? This was immediately my kind of book. I loved it right off the bat, more than any other Lloyd Alexander books, and the trilogy has stayed in my favorite books ever for over two decades now. I see no reason to think it'll be displaced.
One thing struck me about Westmark when we recently watched the abomination that was the movie version of Prince Caspian. ("Take out the astronomy and put in badly-used griffins": not a formula for success with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissas, it turns out.) In a movie, you have to choose how old the characters are, because you have to cast a specific actor and make them up and dress them, so they will look a particular age whether you want them to or not. So there were things that didn't work nearly so well for me with Peter as a strapping at-least-17-year-old as they did with Peter at 13 or 14 in my head. (This is particularly true when you have written in 1) a continuation of the explicit WWII setting from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and 2) a frustration on Peter's part--quite reasonable in context but handled badly--with being "treated like a kid." Big hulking boy like that, war on, experience with battle, frustration with being treated like a kid? He's not going back to boarding school, you morons. His line is, "Yeah, Sarge, my name is Peter, uh, Smith, I swear I'm of age, gimme the king's shilling and ship me to France." Thousands did it. Thousands.) But I digress. (Hands who's surprised.) Many of the children's books I've reread as an adult have struck me with how young the characters are. Westmark does the opposite. Theo and Mickle are clearly older than the water rats. But how old are they? Old enough. Not too old. When you're 8 years old and reading it, they're just a bit older than you. But by any standard these are young adults--and they are treated as adults, not as children. Florian doesn't find Theo an adoptive family to lodge with, he finds him a job and a room to rent. He is big enough to be effective when he cracks the militia officer over the head with a type frame. And while Florian's crew seems a bit older than Theo, we are explicitly told that Florian himself is only a few years older.
This book was shelved in the children's section of my childhood library. They had a YA section. Westmark was in children's. The copy I have was reprinted by a YA imprint. I don't think I've ever run into an adult who read it and felt it was too "young" to be worth their time. (Speak up if that last describes you.)
This really makes me wonder how much we aren't giving children enough credit for reading older protagonists. I think the thing about Theo that makes him work as a protagonist for younger children is twofold: one, that he doesn't yet know where he's going and what he's doing with himself when he gets there, and two, that while we see some of Theo's inner thoughts and reactions, we don't really see them at length. We know that he worries about what the use is in what he's doing, and about whether it's the right thing. We know that he misses Mickle when they're apart. But they are not a swoony couple. They talk, they do things together, they teach each other things. They are very matter-of-fact. And the money concerns are matter-of-fact as well: Theo looks like a scarecrow. Theo stays in a ramshackle room where "the narrow staircase lurched up three flights and stayed in place out of habit." But he doesn't spend time agonizing. He does things about his condition. I think this makes the kind of concerns a wealthy society tries to shield children from more palatable for children than the kind of adult novel with a lot of angst-ridden interiority. I know it makes them more palatable for the kind of grown-up I grew up to be, but I am so tangled with these books now that I can't tell you how much it was that I was that kind of person, how much it was that I grew up in that kind of family, and how much it was that I learned how to be a grown-up from these very books.
One of the big things I noticed was how many of the characters and their professions were about voice. It comes up over and over again. Both Theo's original profession of printer's devil and his new profession of letter-writer are about giving people voices they wouldn't have without his help. At the end of the book he's traveling as one of the people so that the government knows what their actual conditions are, and that, too, is searching for a voice. And Mickle, Mickle is even better with voice stuff. Sign language and ventriloquy! How perfect! She is silenced, she is not herself. Yet it is absolutely impossible for Mickle to be anything but herself--as a spiritualist, she gives reassurance to the genuinely grieving as much as she can within the framework of charlatanry. And when Cabbarus tries to use her for his own purposes, her voice can't be channeled to his purposes. Even at her earliest appearance, she works with Count Las Bombas on her terms, not his: the phrenological head routine sets up her unwillingness to bow to authority or to be anything but herself in even the most outrageous of her deceptions. She can pretend to be a mermaid, a spirit, an oracle. She cannot pretend to be not-Mickle.
Mickle has some commonality with Alexander's other major heroines. He clearly had no patience for shy, demure girls who did not speak unless spoken to. But Eilonwy and Vesper Holly, despite their own personal griefs and worries--and they do have some--are not crying in their sleep and waking not knowing it. Or if they are, we don't see it. We see the night side of Mickle as well as the day side. She has been scarred by her life. The terror she feels at seeing Cabbarus and being in the palace rooms again would be simply incomprehensible to Vesper Holly. Much though I love Vesper, I think that makes her more of an archetype and Mickle more of a character. She does what needs doing, but it costs her. It has to cost her.
And there's more of that to come.
What else? Anybody?
ETA:markgritter contributes Westmark: Resisting Tyranny to the discussion.
When I say discussion, I do mean it. If you want to write things in your own ljs or non-lj journals, please link in the comments or send me an e-mail; I will edit the post to add links if I get them. You do not have to be on my friendslist to participate; everyone's welcome.
Reminder: this post will contain spoilers for Westmark and only Westmark. Spoilers for The Kestrel and The Beggar Queen can come later. (Another post on my feelings about spoilers may also come later, but that's related to West Wing, not Westmark. Big difference.)
My personal history with Westmark: I was about 8 when I found the trilogy. I was in some ways the perfect audience for this book. Not only did I have parents who talked to me about politics and about evil in the world as something I would have to engage with personally, starting now rather than later, but when I was 8, my Gran was in her 80s and still running the print shop she and Great-Grandpa had started all those years ago. A political book about a printer's devil? This was immediately my kind of book. I loved it right off the bat, more than any other Lloyd Alexander books, and the trilogy has stayed in my favorite books ever for over two decades now. I see no reason to think it'll be displaced.
One thing struck me about Westmark when we recently watched the abomination that was the movie version of Prince Caspian. ("Take out the astronomy and put in badly-used griffins": not a formula for success with
mrissas, it turns out.) In a movie, you have to choose how old the characters are, because you have to cast a specific actor and make them up and dress them, so they will look a particular age whether you want them to or not. So there were things that didn't work nearly so well for me with Peter as a strapping at-least-17-year-old as they did with Peter at 13 or 14 in my head. (This is particularly true when you have written in 1) a continuation of the explicit WWII setting from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and 2) a frustration on Peter's part--quite reasonable in context but handled badly--with being "treated like a kid." Big hulking boy like that, war on, experience with battle, frustration with being treated like a kid? He's not going back to boarding school, you morons. His line is, "Yeah, Sarge, my name is Peter, uh, Smith, I swear I'm of age, gimme the king's shilling and ship me to France." Thousands did it. Thousands.) But I digress. (Hands who's surprised.) Many of the children's books I've reread as an adult have struck me with how young the characters are. Westmark does the opposite. Theo and Mickle are clearly older than the water rats. But how old are they? Old enough. Not too old. When you're 8 years old and reading it, they're just a bit older than you. But by any standard these are young adults--and they are treated as adults, not as children. Florian doesn't find Theo an adoptive family to lodge with, he finds him a job and a room to rent. He is big enough to be effective when he cracks the militia officer over the head with a type frame. And while Florian's crew seems a bit older than Theo, we are explicitly told that Florian himself is only a few years older.This book was shelved in the children's section of my childhood library. They had a YA section. Westmark was in children's. The copy I have was reprinted by a YA imprint. I don't think I've ever run into an adult who read it and felt it was too "young" to be worth their time. (Speak up if that last describes you.)
This really makes me wonder how much we aren't giving children enough credit for reading older protagonists. I think the thing about Theo that makes him work as a protagonist for younger children is twofold: one, that he doesn't yet know where he's going and what he's doing with himself when he gets there, and two, that while we see some of Theo's inner thoughts and reactions, we don't really see them at length. We know that he worries about what the use is in what he's doing, and about whether it's the right thing. We know that he misses Mickle when they're apart. But they are not a swoony couple. They talk, they do things together, they teach each other things. They are very matter-of-fact. And the money concerns are matter-of-fact as well: Theo looks like a scarecrow. Theo stays in a ramshackle room where "the narrow staircase lurched up three flights and stayed in place out of habit." But he doesn't spend time agonizing. He does things about his condition. I think this makes the kind of concerns a wealthy society tries to shield children from more palatable for children than the kind of adult novel with a lot of angst-ridden interiority. I know it makes them more palatable for the kind of grown-up I grew up to be, but I am so tangled with these books now that I can't tell you how much it was that I was that kind of person, how much it was that I grew up in that kind of family, and how much it was that I learned how to be a grown-up from these very books.
One of the big things I noticed was how many of the characters and their professions were about voice. It comes up over and over again. Both Theo's original profession of printer's devil and his new profession of letter-writer are about giving people voices they wouldn't have without his help. At the end of the book he's traveling as one of the people so that the government knows what their actual conditions are, and that, too, is searching for a voice. And Mickle, Mickle is even better with voice stuff. Sign language and ventriloquy! How perfect! She is silenced, she is not herself. Yet it is absolutely impossible for Mickle to be anything but herself--as a spiritualist, she gives reassurance to the genuinely grieving as much as she can within the framework of charlatanry. And when Cabbarus tries to use her for his own purposes, her voice can't be channeled to his purposes. Even at her earliest appearance, she works with Count Las Bombas on her terms, not his: the phrenological head routine sets up her unwillingness to bow to authority or to be anything but herself in even the most outrageous of her deceptions. She can pretend to be a mermaid, a spirit, an oracle. She cannot pretend to be not-Mickle.
Mickle has some commonality with Alexander's other major heroines. He clearly had no patience for shy, demure girls who did not speak unless spoken to. But Eilonwy and Vesper Holly, despite their own personal griefs and worries--and they do have some--are not crying in their sleep and waking not knowing it. Or if they are, we don't see it. We see the night side of Mickle as well as the day side. She has been scarred by her life. The terror she feels at seeing Cabbarus and being in the palace rooms again would be simply incomprehensible to Vesper Holly. Much though I love Vesper, I think that makes her more of an archetype and Mickle more of a character. She does what needs doing, but it costs her. It has to cost her.
And there's more of that to come.
What else? Anybody?
ETA:
markgritter contributes Westmark: Resisting Tyranny to the discussion.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:23 pm (UTC)Ages: you're very right. I don't know what age I thought the characters were years ago, but on this read-through, I initially pegged Theo at maybe thirteen or fourteen, and Mickle substantially younger, until the relationship between them got going and I mentally revised her up to his age, and then after that they both whipsawed between fourteen and about seventeen or so. I'm very much not sure what age they're "supposed" to be -- putting that in quotes because I think they're supposed to be mutable in the eyes of the reader.
I don't think I've ever run into an adult who read it and felt it was too "young" to be worth their time. (Speak up if that last describes you.)
Kind of? Not that I think it isn't worth my time, but it didn't engage me as strongly as I wanted. (I suspect, however, that The Kestrel will do better, since I seem to recall liking that one much more.)
I thought the ideas were plenty old enough, but I wanted so much more meat on the bones of the presentation. Cabbarus was the weakest link, for me. The . . . shallowness of exploration, if I can use that term in a non-pejorative sense, that obtains in children's lit (as opposed to adult) leaves me feeling very unsatisfied, and nowhere more than with Cabbarus, who felt a little muh-ha-ha-ha for me, very heavy-handed in his manipulation of the court. Also, to a lesser extent, with things like the ease and rapidity with which Florian's political views were presented; I wanted things done more gradually, and less directly, with more exploration of their underpinnings. That's the one way in which this book felt "too young" for me; the other aspects were fine.
(And it's a worthy question, how I would have viewed it, had I not been page-proofing the very dense and highly political In Ashes Lie on the same weekend I read Westmark.)
One thing that struck me: contra the usual tropes of fantasy, this is distinctly an eighteenth-century setting. Wigs and ribbons to tie them back with are the biggest clue, but a great many of the details speak (very quietly) to that period. Which is perfect for the political issues Alexander's airing, since the democratic revolution that was the seventeenth-century English Civil War had a distinctly different flavor from the American and French Revolutions, and this is very much the latter flavor of book.
(Er, yeah. Can you tell I'm proofing Ashes right now? <g>)
I want more of Mickle. I liked her, for all the reasons you describe, but I wanted more of her in the store. And more Queen Caroline, too. And more -- well, everything. <g>
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:31 pm (UTC)I have noticed this with children's books and some YA books before, too: that at least some of the detail I remembered was stuff I brought with me to the story. I noticed this with the Arthur Ransome books: I am now forever unable to disentangle how much of how well I thought I knew the characters was from what I thought about them and what my friends and I talked about and decided was canonical, and since there are 12 of them instead of the 3 Westmark books, by the time I'm rereading Pigeon Post I'm not at all sure whether I'm remembering something because it's ingrained or because I read it in Swallowdale.
And I think it is not only distinctly 18th century (yes!) but also distinctly French-influenced rather than British. Cabbarus owes a great deal more to the series of French ministers from Richelieu through Talleyrand and even more particularly to their fictional portrayals, than he does to any of the Brits.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:13 pm (UTC)I think the moment when Cabbarus worked the least well for me was when he blatantly went front-and-center for the "adopt me as your heir!" maneuver. But in general, there's a lot of telling with him, instead of showing; with the book being only 184 pages long, Alexander doesn't have a lot of time to demonstrate Cabbarus' ideas in action, nor much leeway for subtlety of the sort I want out of that kind of character.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:27 pm (UTC)I seem to be a death penalty supporter in fiction, whatever I am in life, because I could have yelled at Theo and Mickle for letting Cabbarus go at the end. It'll all end in tears, I tell you! (And that's not a spoiler for anything further, because it's been at least ten years since I read the other two books and I can't remember whether he messes up their lives again. I'm just sure he's going to mess up somebody's.)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:29 pm (UTC)I, too, am a great deal more bloodthirsty in fiction than in life. I have wanted the characters in Numb3rs and Criminal Minds to shoot people more times than I can count, and yet not only do I want a government that tries not to shoot people, I want people to think of that as normal, or at least an option.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:08 pm (UTC)I think looking at it now that this is because of some odd tonal whiplash in the first chunk. The first paragraph, especially, where it starts by I think playing on the assumption that the reader won't know what a printer's devil is; and then you have Theo's life set up with a sort of tongue-in-cheekness to it, the stuff about how the town wants to make him miserable by itself, or how reading has spoiled him for practicality, these things that you can tell the narrative voice doesn't mean seriously. And then, no, it is a world where bad things happen and where people die, suddenly, shockingly-- except that again there are fewer consequences to that than one would think, and this tongue-in-cheekness keeps bubbling up. I feel like it took a while for the voice of the book to really integrate itself, figure out what tone it wanted to take.
And I also feel like part of this is a length issue. I liked this book fine. I think it's a good book. I think it could have been a great book at another half its length, because I feel like each of the things I felt as jerky tonal changes, or as consequences being ignored, would have had the time to be smoother, more delved, more expansive. I don't think this should have been an adult fantasy novel, but I would have loved to see it at the greater lengths YA publishing now allows.
So yes, it did feel young for me, primarily because it felt condensed. But I am very much looking forward to The Kestrel, because this also had the sense of laying the ground for a masterpiece; everything is in place for the next book to be really brilliant, if it likes.
I think someone could write a worthwhile essay on this as one of the ancestors of things like Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia books and Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper stuff. That someone is not likely to be me, but I do hope that someone exists.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:26 pm (UTC)Anyway. This time around, I noticed the names. Augusta and Augustine are obvious. Mickle, less so: "much." Theo = god, which I'm not sure what to do with. Las Bombas = pumps, which I suppose I can see, and also "bombastic." Musket makes noise. Cabbarus, I don't know. Cabal, maybe? Caroline makes me think of Carolus Magnus. Florian sounds like he ought to be your typical upper-class twit, and I don't think it's an accident. Dr. Torrens is saved by the river.
Who am I forgetting?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:33 pm (UTC)This is a good point. That kind of resolution sometimes seems to be okay because, well, the villain can't mess up the protagonists' lives anymore -- but who's to say he won't mess up someone else's?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:58 pm (UTC)I think I half agree with you on the length issue. On the one hand, I was really impressed by how much Westmark did in such a small space, but it did feel like events in the second half whizzed by awfully fast.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 11:38 pm (UTC)For characters' ages, I have the completely subjective impression of Theo as 16 or 17, and Mickle as 14 or 15. Your comment about older protagonists makes me think...not terribly coherently...about how "apprentice" was such a key archetype in the books I read, growing up, but that seems so very absent from contemporary YA fiction, let alone books aimed at younger readers. In a lot of ways Westmark seems to me the story of a boy "trying on" different masters as he transitions to adulthood. He goes from the printer, to the scoundrel, to the revolutionary. In some ways the ending feels a bit of a cop-out, because the question "how to maturely engage these social circumstances?" is cut short by the restoration of Princess Augusta. "Date the queen" doesn't seem like a reasoned response to monarchy and civil unrest.
But it is still a very good book, and I enjoyed it much.