Impeccable Virtue

Between my birthday and Christmas I got ten new books and eight on CD. I was a bit overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. They are all books I have been wanting to read or in the case of the CD versions books I’ve read and love and are much like comfort foods. I started with the books on CD because I was about to drive sixteen hours in the course of a few days and it seemed like the best idea. I started with the Chronicles of Narnia (although not in order). I started with my favorites, The Magicians Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I listened to the two on my trip and then another over the course of a week on my way to work. Then I wanted to finishes the set so I continued. I was liking this but feeling a bit lazy for not reading at all. After the Chronicles I hit Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, this was much longer and took a little more than a weeks worth of train rides to finish. I had now gone nearly a month with out reading a book. I felt guilty and shameful. I had gotten so many new books, mostly as gifts for the holiday and I hadn’t touched them.

Tuesday I finally cracked a book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. To be honest I had started this some time ago and I had actually left off in the middle, but, frankly I couldn’t remember much of the details. So, I started from the beginning and it didn’t take long before I was back in the right state of mind and was sucked back in.

I am now on page 175 and glad I started over. Sometimes I am just not focused enough and feel like I missed things or didn’t pay close enough attention and have to go back, and I am always glad I did.

This time I am pleased because I didn’t quite realize how beautiful and charming a passage on page 159 was. It struck me as not only beautiful and charming but creative in a way that surprised me.

I read a lot of fantasy literature and frankly there is a fair amount that draws on what came before it in the fantasy genre or is based on classic fantasy “standards” (I still love it all the same). For example, writers may embellish the traits of a magician, faerie or unicorn, but the core of the beings description remains based in a classic description that can be traced back to the earliest folklore. There may be flourishes to techniques, but the basic way to kill a beast or creature is always the same in the end. So, it is not often that I am struck with a description that is so original.

As most people do, and maybe more than most, I visualize every description I read and commit to memory the settings and characters. The more description the better. I love stories that have elaborate back-stories, references and a whole host of documents and events to back up a character or scene. I relish footnotes and appendixes that give further descriptions or background that is not necessarily needed to move the story along. Basically I love detail, in every way shape and form.

Judge for yourself...

Stephen helped the gentleman on with his leaf-green coat (which was the very best quality and most fashionable cut), then the gentleman went over to the milking stool and picked up the little box that lay there. It was made of porcelain and sliver, and was about the size of a snuff box but a little longer than snuff boxes generally are. Stephen made some admiring remark about the colour which was not exactly pale blue and not exactly grey, not precisely lavender and not precisely lilac.

“Yes, indeed! It is beautiful,” agreed the gentleman enthusiastically.

“And very hard to make. The pigment must be mixed with the tears of spinsters of good family, who must live long lives of impeccable virtue and die without ever having had a day of true happiness!”

“Poor ladies!” said Stephen. “I am glad it is so rare.”

“Oh! It is not the tears that make it rare-I have bottles full of those-it is the skill to mix the colour.”

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

The imagery these words create are so bittersweet and beautiful and I can’t get the image out of my head.