Teaser Tuesdays: The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

Are the Romanovs the new Tudors? First Robert K. Massie comes out with a blockbuster biography of Catherine the Great -- and it's a damned good book, too. Now Eva Stachniak gives the story the fictional treatment with The Winter Palace, a novel about Catherine's Russia written from the point of view of a Polish servant who becomes a confidant -- and spy -- for the German princess who will become Russia's greatest empress. The Teaser Tuesday rules: open to a random page, pick two sentences and post. If you wish, add your blog post in the comments section of the Should Be Reading blog.

So here's mine:

"Sprawled in her gilded armchair, chewing on a pork-belly slice, the Empress surveyed the scene of her making. Her feet rested on an embroidered footstool; folds of her purple dress framed her like soft drapery." (p. 292)

Yikes! I just started the novel -- but having read the biography I have a good idea what a formidable character Catherine turns out to be. Hope it's an entertaining journey ...

Book Beginnings on Friday: The Beautiful Cigar Girl

I've been remiss on my Teaser Tuesdays lately so I'm going make it up, I hope, by jumping into this meme, hosted by the Few More Pages book blog. I'm reading The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower, part of my current historical true crime kick.

Here are the first couple lines of the book, from the prologue:

In June of 1842, Edgar Allan Poe took up his pen to broach a delicate subject with an old friend. "Have I offended you by any of my evil deeds?" he asked. "If so, how? Time was when you could spare a few minutes occasionally for communion with a friend."

The opening effectively establishes Poe as a supplicant, if a persistent one. I'm about a third of the way through the book now and so far it's a lot more Poe than Mary Rogers, the murder victim (which makes sense -- we know a lot more about his life than hers).

I'm kind of dubious about the subtitle -- the invention of murder -- but at least it doesn't call it the crime of the century like the majority of the other historical true crime books sitting on my desk at the moment.

You may be hearing more about this book in the future: In googling around for a book cover image, I discovered reports that it's being made/has been made? into a movie ... starring the reclusive Joaquin Phoenix as Edgar Allan Poe.

The Over-Sea Railroad: You can no longer ridealong but you can still readalong

Exactly 100 years ago, Key West was in a tizzy, getting ready for the arrival of the First Train. On Jan. 22, 2012, the train would arrive bearing oil tycoon-turned-railroad magnate Henry Flagler and marking the completion of the Over-Sea Railroad. These days, we're in a bit of a tizzy ourselves, getting ready to commemorate the Centennial of that event -- a major one by the standards of any small town and, you could argue, in the history of Florida and the nation. It was certainly a remarkable achievement, crossing mangrove swamps and open water. Crews endured hurricanes, mosquitos and the relentless humidity of the subtropics -- without the modern comforts we take for granted now.

Lots of events are planned to mark the Centennial -- more information is available at the official Centennial committee's website. At the Key West Library, we're celebrating with our One Island One Book program. This year we're reading Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford, which tells the story of the construction of the Over-Sea Railroad -- and its destruction, barely two decades later, when the Upper Keys were hit by one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the continental U.S.

Most of our One Island One Book events don't start until mid-February -- Standiford will be speaking at the Library on Monday, Feb. 27. But one event is starting in the next few days: our first every online readalong. What does that mean? It means  you read about 50 pages a week of the book (there's a reading schedule on the blog), and comment about it at the blog. We'll start things out with some comments and questions but this isn't a class and our posts are not a syllabus -- everyone is welcome to chime in on whatever aspect they like, from wherever they are. So if you're curious about the railroad and feel like learning some more -- and interacting with others who are doing the same, please join in.

Some of you, especially those familiar with the Keys, may have noticed that the image above does not show Key West. It's Pigeon Key, the island in the bend of the Old Seven Mile Bridge (and one the best places these days to get a feel for how things were back in the railroad days). Even though it's not Key West, this is one of my favorite images of the railroad, probably because of the human element introduced by the kids waving below. And it comes from the library's spectacular collection of historic images that have been scanned and placed online for open public access -- including a collection of 700 images about the Over-Sea Railroad. Many of the library's images, incidentally, were used for a beautiful new Centennial edition of Last Train to Paradise, published by Books & Books and the Flagler Museum.

Future Perfect Continuous

It's all over but the workshops. Yet Another World materialized in the San Carlos for one night and three exhilarating days, and then it was over. What's left is the post-Seminar letdown ... and a massive new reading list.

I promised further explanation of this year's theme. Can't say I can, other than to reiterate that it isn't really dystopia -- though there was a good bit of that -- nor scifi, or speculative fiction as high-end scifi is frequently styled these days. The subtitle was "Literature of the Future" and the guiding texts were 1984 and Brave New World, if that helps. In his introduction in the Seminar's program, Program Chair James Gleick writes this, referring to the writers gathered for the Seminar: "What they do share -- what their work reveals -- is a deepening awareness of past and future, which also means an awareness that our world is not the only one possible."

I won't even try to come up with a coherent report about what the Seminar covered or explicating further on the theme -- keep an eye on the Seminar's always-expanding Audio Archives for recordings of individual sessions. Here, instead, is an episodic report of stuff I heard that I thought was interesting (and short) enough to jot down in my notebook.

Interesting information new to me

In his opening introduction, Gleick told us about a religion newly officially acknowledged as such in Sweden: Kopimism, or copyism, it is a religion dedicated to file sharing. Ctrl-C and Ctlr-V are sacred symbols. "That is not speculative fiction," Gleick said. "That is Wikipedia. And it wasn't there yesterday."

Sharks save swimmers, according to Jonathan Lethem. How? Because after a shark attack, the number of drowning deaths decreases for a few years.

Year of the Flood, according to Margaret Atwood, is not a sequel or prequel to Oryx & Crake but a simultaneal.

Colson Whitehead's first piece of professional writing, for the Village Voice, was a think piece about the series finales of Who's The Boss and Growing Pains.

After finishing a novel, Cory Doctorow buys a steampunk bondage mask from some specialty shop in Bulgaria. According to William Gibson.

After Chronic City was published, Wikipedia had to lock down the Marlon Brando page because fans of the book were trying to revive him in keeping with the book's plot.

Pithy quotes

"Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself." -- Jonathan Lethem

"Technically every woman is the woman I never married. So why not call her Marie?" -- Charles Yu, from How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"The real versus the unreal doesn't mean what it used to." == Jennifer Egan, discussing how much of our lives are now conducted virtually

"We may be tempted to dismiss books with ghosts and monsters in them. Scary is really hard to do." -- Michael Cunningham, who is currently adapting The Turn of the Screw for the screen

"I've always found someone like Beckett to be a form of high realism." -- Colson Whitehead

"MacArthur Park is an investigation of the artist's journey." -- Colson Whitehead

The human mind "is a factory for processing metaphors." -- China Mieville

"Everywhere I go, the empire collapses. The State Department is desperately trying to send me to China." -- Gary Shteyngart

On paranoia: "It's essential as a sensibility and it's disastrous as a world view." -- Jonathan Lethem

"The past is rumor. The future is speculation. The present is over. So where are we, as writers?" -- Valerie Martin

About that dystopia thing

Margaret Atwood has coined a term "ustopia" that covers both dystopia and utopia, normally cast as opposites. "They're much more like the ying and yang," she said. "Within each dystopia there's a little utopia and within every utopia there's definitely a little dystopia, especially for people who don't fit the plan."

About that steampunk thing

The Seminar's major disappointment was the spoiling of the panel addressing steampunk by the moderator's insistence on trying to make the panelists define the term (Why steam? Why punk?) -- and by the way the panelists were Dexter Palmer, China Mieville and William freaking Gibson. And when the panelists did offer definitions, and hints that it might be broader and more interesting than just young guys in funny mustaches, the moderator kept interrupting them and narrowing it down. Infuriating.

Despite that, the three extremely smart and extremely patient men managed to say some interesting things about steampunk as a genre, ethos and lifestyle choice. Mieville's definition was two words: Fantastical Victoriana. Gibson's is a little longer: Technologically driven alternative history.

When Mieville finally got to talk, he made a really interesting point about why steampunk has become so popular in the last 12 years. Victorian Britain, the epicenter of steampunk, was built on the proceeds of the Raj, Mieville pointed out. Yet in classic steampunk texts, there is no Raj. Steampunk, he said, expresses a "particular anxiety about resurgent imperialism." Mieville's disquisition met with loud applause from the audience. Unfortunately the moderator did not take this as a hint that he should get out of the way and let these guys talk. Oh well. Every Seminar has one. It was just too bad that this year's happened on the panel I was most looking forward to.

Books mentioned by Seminar authors that might be worth checking out

Futuredays by Isaac Asimov (mentioned by James Gleick in his program intro, includes the program illustrations by Jean Marc Cote)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (mentioned by Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham)

Pavane by Keith Roberts (mentioned by William Gibson)

In Praise of Shadows by Junichuro Tanizaki (Gibson again)

Pandemonium 1660-1886 by Humphrey Jennings (yet another Gibson)

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (mentioned by Valerie Martin)

Writers who could probably make it as TV stars and/or stand-up acts if the writing thing goes south

Margaret Atwood & Joyce Carol Oates (on some PBS Charlie Rose-style show)

Colson Whitehead

Gary Shteyngart

Margaret Atwood & Gary Shteyngart (on some late night Craig Ferguson-style show)

Cocktails created by Jason Rowan of Embury Cocktails for Seminar receptions

(Detailed descriptions appearing gradually ... )

City of Tomorrow

Future Perfect Continuous

Neurogibson

Atomic Sunset

Chocotopia

Release the Kraken

Fantastical Victoriana

In which I assert my coinage of the term Conch Gothic

Years ago, I came up with a term for the particular weirdness that occasionally erupts around here: Conch Gothic. This is more a sensibility than a literary genre, at least so far. The perfect exemplar of Conch Gothic would have to be the story of Elena Hoyos and Carl Von Cosel. Though I'm pretty sure serious weirdness has been going on here long before that. It's the island thing, I think, where isolation allows weirdness to develop in ways that other places might nix earlier -- paradoxically combined with the seaport diversity that gives places like this (and New Orleans and Savannah, for example) a live-and-let-live nonjudgmental ethos. I write this because 1) China Mieville said any movement or school of thought/writing needs to own its name and the name needs to be cool and 2) I mentioned Conch Gothic to William Gibson at a party Saturday night and he seemed to like it so if it shows up in a work of his fiction in the future, you'll know where he got it.

Before the Seminar, After the Apocalypse

The 2012 Key West Literary Seminar starts tonight -- it's been sold out for months, sorry, but there are free sessions on Sunday afternoon.

This year's theme is Yet Another World, which is kind of dystopia but that's an oversimplification. What is it really? Watch this space and I'll report back.

In the meantime, it's got me thinking dystopically, or post-apocalyptically. Maybe it's because we live in one of the places most vulnerable to hurricanes in the nation -- and watched what happened to New Orleans. Maybe it's The Walking Dead not to mention The Road and all the books written by the many fine writers who will be joining us this weekend. But I sometimes think about what I would do after the apocalypse. This is, of course, assuming I survive the apocalypse but hey, if I don't then it's not really my problem.

I use it as an excuse to hang onto our kayaks and canoe, even though they haven't been out of the yard in years. It makes me feel a little self-satisfied about my few remaining practical skills, like knitting. I've operated a treadle (non-electric) sewing machine, too, though it's been a couple decades. And I've always liked the idea of weaving.

So I decided my skill/niche would be knitting, and possibly making cloth. I have been hoarding yarn for about 15 years but that's not all I'd knit. After the apocalypse, I would knit whatever I could and that's the beauty of knitting. You can knit just about any damned thing. My friend Emalyn has a dress her mother knit out of cassette tape.

My husband, who has recently become a rum aficionado since spending time in the Caribbean, plans to distill booze. He thinks this will give him a lot of influence and bargaining power for other commodities. We have discussed the need for weapons (crossbows look good, based on The Walking Dead) to defend the booze and ourselves.

I like the idea of sloughing off all the artificial layers of stuff we accumulate, protect and worry about. I'm not just talking just about belongings -- but also about intangibles like your 401(k), your social obligations, your job. After the apocalypse, who cares about your credit rating or what's going to happen to windstorm insurance rates? And having a little extra meat on your bones could be an advantage. I have a strange attraction to the post-industrial agrarian visions like that at the end of "England, England" by Julian Barnes. This, even though I grew up in a rural area and am well aware that farming (especially without heavy machinery), animal husbandry, toting water and firewood, preserving food, making clothes, etc., is hard work. And how much harder will it be when you can't run down to the Agway or Jo-Ann's Fabrics for your supplies? But that's the thing about the apocalypse. It's not a voluntary dropping out, joining a commune, going back to the land. It's a Big Change and if you survive it,  you have to figure out how to cope.

The other night, at a pre-Seminar gathering, I conducted an informal survey: After the apocalypse, what will be your survival skill/economic niche? I  was surprised at how many people said they had never considered the question. And I got some interesting answers.

Dara: Arranging spaces. “I could find places for people to be and improve them, so they could survive in them.”

Kathy: Camouflage expert. Blending. Camouflage warrior.

Ashley: Stress relief, coping with stress.

John: “I’m going to die in the apocalypse. Speaking German, will that be a useful skill?”

Michael: Communication skills. “I can negotiate for trading of sticks and firewood.”

Richard: “Charming everybody else to take care of me. Maybe I should grow drugs.”

Kerry: “Food hoarding and judiciously distributing to the worthy.” Also facilitating suicide for those who want to check out.

Diane: “I’ll have to garden.”

Linda: “I’m going to be the recorder of what happens.”

Cynthia: “Cleaning houses. I think I could be pretty good at that.”

Judy: "I'm optimistic. I can lead cheers."

Arlo: Fishing

Jim: In his dreams of the apocalypse, he checks out. But he thinks he can manage it without Kerry’s help.

Miles: Potter

Alan: Make paper and soap.

Margaret: "You're assuming a society. I’m not.” Head for the woods. Having social order is the sine qua non – otherwise we can knit our heads off or produce all the booze we want and someone will just come and take it.

Valerie: Water gathering in huge trash cans under the eaves of houses.

Mary: Build a fire.

Judith: “I’ll fish.  We have to eat.”

Peyton: “I’ll make pots.”

Items we should be hoarding now:

Sugar, yeast, mosquito netting, Skin So Soft, Tupperware, mason jars, mirrors, goats, chickens, bows and arrows, manual sewing machines, antibiotics, needles, threads, seeds, bees

Question to investigate: Are iguana eggs edible?