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Post by sturgeon on Jan 8, 2020 13:45:38 GMT
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
At last, after all this time, capital that TQR will be proud to publish! We have been patient to a fault, and yet we have been richly rewarded. This is a glittering golden nugget of goodstuff. The Monkey Has Been Slapped Upon Its Crimson Behind.
This is true literature. Confident writing, sometimes even lyrical; mythic characters that feel more real than I do - even the character who's really just an upstart painting; and a plot that moves at just the right pace, with a fitting Big Finish (to borrow Terry Rossio's phrase). It's a tale about beauty, meaning, obsession, art, hubris, jealousy - those are grand topics to tackle and yet the author has succeeded in a most entertaining, satisfying, and resonant way.
Yes, says I. Publish or be damned.
I've made a list below of some errors I found and minor editorial suggestions, which should serve to remind us lesser writers that while polish helps, content is king.
- "She was are of her own beauty impersonally, as she was are, as part of a neutral inventory of facts, that she was left handed" - "are" should be "aware" x2. - It is odd, at the beginning, that Georgette speaks as if Hilda owns Mark - it smacks of a fantasy setting; so it's jarring when Georgette says with unnatural (authorial) directness "this is 1968 and not the middle ages". - "literal transliteration" - delete "literal", it causes an unnecessarily clumsy repetition. - 'PI'll take it all" - opening quotes should be double, and "PI'll" should be "I'll" - When she arrives at the Louvre and drinks the potion I assumed she was already inside, but then she enters again. - "I imagine it is because you consider her bulgar" - I don't think he meant to talk about wheat... - "Amused, Georgette sat down, somewhere on the outskirts and watched Andy hold court" - move the second comma after "outskirts", also Georgette uses the phrase "pay court" a page earlier which is sufficiently unusual that it stuck in my mind and "hold court" felt like a repetition. - "Georgette glared -- then went wide-eyed as she drew, by the hand, Boy out of the bedroom as well" - the structure of this sentence makes it sound like the "she" pronoun refers to Georgette, which is confusing at a key dramatic point. Change "she" to "Hilda". - I'm afraid it's a bit lame that Mark speaks with his dying breath. If he's been strangled into submission, he'd be unconscious or already dead. He can be silent and we get exactly the same impact from this ending. If you must, have him say "At last you have - your masterpiece" while he is still in her grip. |
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Post by bulldust on Jan 8, 2020 20:45:53 GMT
Moo, moo, moo.
The Bull skulks around his pasture muttering and drinking brews…alone.
Since Rocks left, nothing is the same. Even cheap hookers have lost their charm for the Bullmeister. Things are bleak and grim in Bullworld.
Alas, Sturgeon has risen to try to fill the shoes of Bull’s fallen comrade. Although nobody could replace Rocks, the Bull appreciates the attempt to keep the torch going.
Now, as far as this cap “BOY, RECLINING, the Bull isn’t nearly as enthusiastic as his new associate.
While the language and pros are good, the story bounced around a bit. Nearly half of the capital was a lead to the main gist of plot. The characters were hard to sympathize with and art crowd a bit stereotyped.
However, I did like the line:
“Georgette believed in no afterlife, but she believed that whatever state one was in when one died was, in some sense, the meaning of one’s whole life.”
The cap was good, but it’s not screaming yes to me. So, I’m going with no, for the tiebreaker. Or maybe this is just an attempt to drag a certain someone back into the fray…
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Post by rockefeller on Jan 13, 2020 18:58:28 GMT
A bunch of quarters ago, The Monkey, without going through all the vetting rigmarole that has earned TQR its place of uniqueness and renown (and only one black-listing) in the world of publishing, did purchase and publish here, and even anthologize, a work called Radiation by an author whose name Rocks forgets and cannot review because of TQR's erstwhile site's capsizing with all archives lost. Anyway, upon first read of this Radiation story, Rocks was dismayed. Seemed like a real lit-turd. But then after the anthology was published and Rocks given his contributor's copy, he read it again and was impressed. Still didn't seem to have any sort of plot, but as a character study of the 1st person narrator and historical look at post-nuked Japan, Rocks found it interesting and poignant. So, good call, Monkey. Nice end run.
Rocks tried to read this Boy, Reclining thing. Really he did. Given how impressed two of the three other editors here were with it, he figured it must be great. And so Rocks took at least two good runs at it, once making it over 2/3 through, and then a final run starting toward the end in which he almost made it before pushing the skim button. It seems to be about some woman painter who hires some pretty boy from some magic shop to use as a model for a painting by "P------" (?) called "Boy, Reclining" (which comma Rocks never did come to understand, despite the dozen-plus, mostly italicized iterations of this motif). Technically it seemed okay except for the weird search-and-replace thing Sturgeon found. But aside from characters killing themselves and other characters, nothing seemed to happen. Or maybe Rocks just never came to care about any of them. At all. The whole thing seemed to be intensely (yet somehow vaguely) metaphorical of something or other. Probably art. So, in short, Rocks liked it even less than his buddy, The Bull, did, and still views it as 8200 words of his life that he'll never get back.
But, and this is a BIG butt, Rocks can't shake the feeling that he must again be missing something. Okay, Doomey probably never read it, just licked a couple pages for the ink buzz. But this new kid, The Sturgeon, seems to know his way around a manuscript. And he loved it? So maybe there is a baby in all that bathwater somewhere. Rocks no longer feels qualified to say (which is partly why he jumped).
So, Yes. A thousand-and-two times, YES. Perhaps the Monkey's final review of and decision on it will, once again, enlighten.
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