Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Again, that's at such a subconscious level that I really can't answer
that question sensibly.  For example, I knew I wanted to write about
this strange ritual called Zozobra, and started my three characters off
to see it and comment to each other on it.  I did not plan that they'd
get separated from each other--I had no idea that would happen--and
then the boy Alijo shows up, and also gets lost.  And on and on and on.
 

These are contingencies; they didn't have to happen.  They just did.
  

    
Ok, I'm done now.  

First a complaint: Pamela, whoever designed the book did you a major
disservice.  The type face used has to be the worst one I've just about
ever seen in a book.  Horrible.  Head ache inducing.  I FINALLY got
used to it about a third of the way in, but scanning this morning for
tidbits for this post, and again eyes started going cross eyed from the
type face.  Along the same lines the justification is also annoying,
with word boundaries often smaller than they should be and more
variable than they should be.  

Ok, production rant aside I liked the book.  An interesting concept to
use what is essentially the armature from a "romance novel" and use it
for a "novel of ideas".  Also an interesting (if depressing) twist to
have the heroine choose the wrong lover (sez I!) in the end.

LOTS of really interesting big ideas: the nature of great art, the
importance of trade, the meaning of money, the boundaries of the
knowable, the nature of the transition to homo sapiens sapiens, the
nature of friendship, recurring artistic themes across cultures, etc.

Also lots of richness to the portrayal of Northern New Mexico and
Santa Fe.  

As to the preface claim that the main characters "bear no resemblance
to people living or dead" I certainly couldn't equate any of the
characters one to one with people in Santa Fe or at the Institute that
I know, however I did seem some aspects of some of the main characters 
I thought were borrowed from actual folks around town.  No more on
that here, I'll save it for a chat over tea at the Tea House!

Now to go read what others have posted here....
  

    
You're not the first to complain about the type face--no, I had
nothing to do with that.

However, you are the first to complain that Judith chose the wrong
guy.  Amusing.  
  

    
Really?  Such a real man as Benito versus one of those ultra
narcissistic guys who think they are a protagonist in an Ayn Rand book?
 You gotta know that won't end well.

Course I ain't a girl....
  
  

    
Oh, I'd go for Benito, too.  A real man vs. a myth?
  

    
Molloy is pretty far from an Ayn Rand type protagonist.  He cares
deeply for his wife until she moves into a world where he doesn't want
to follow (nor should he); cares--not abstractly but actively--for his
children.  His real interest isn't money, it's in ideas about art,
about language. He loves mythology, but is in no way a myth. He has
grown up in a milieu where none of that mattered to the people around
him, nobody encouraged him that way.  He despises the toys of his
fellow rich guys: he'll start a foundation with his money, give it
away.

Molloy could have been one of my students at the University of
Pittsburgh many years ago (I did borrow some biographical details
there).  These were the first generation in their families to go to
college; and I got to watch them in their first exposures to the life
of the mind.  They loved it.  But they mostly regarded it as a
temporary joy; never dared to think it could be for them personally, no
matter what some idiot college professor said.

Molloy breaks out of the American class system by going abroad, where
he finds people really do take the life of the mind seriously.  That's
why he's so at home in Germany.
  

    
I don't think of "Ayn Rand protagonist"  meaning "it's all about the
money".  Quite the contrary.  Remember Howard Roark?  Rather it's about
the obsession with the self.  Doesn't Molloy even describe his life as
a work of art?  If that isn't a Randian concept I don't know what is.

As to "He despises the toys of his fellow rich guys" ... well, after
keeping an open mind on him for a while you put him in a Mercedes
G-Wagon....  a vehicle not cost effective for much except making a
statement: "hey I'm a quirky rich guy", that sealed it for me.  

>cares--not abstractly but actively--for his
>children

By sending them to boarding school!  

I too have known folks like Molloy, indeed have an ex good friend that
fits the mold quite well ...  My guy is actually more of a real
intellectual than Molloy and as much as an aesthete, but like most of
those guys in the end, "all about him". Molloy has too many of the
hallmarks of those guys who are still deep down very insecure about
their prole backgrounds and over compensate for it in a fairly
ludicrous "drama king" fashion.

Now Judith is an odd fish too, obviously not putting much personal
value on domestic bliss, so perhaps her trading a real chance at
domestic happiness for a short term tumultuous affair with M works for
her.  I was sad for her, though.  It's as if she didn't learn anything
deep from Sophie's death.
  

    
Yes, he does think his life is a work of art.  I don't remember
anything like that in Rand, but it's been a while.  He sends his kids
to boarding school but is with them on weekends and holidays--more than
his wife can manage. It wouldn't work for him to be a stay-at-home
dad.  He'd hate it and so would his kids. In no way is he a saint.  He
never will be.  He's feeling his way into a new life.

I grant you Judith is an odd fish.  What should she have learned from
Sophie's death that she didn't?
  

    
That love and life are at least as important and probably more so than
work.  
  

    
On a detail, how old is Molloy?  From internal evidence my best guess
was "around 45", but flipping thru again I couldn't find anything
definitive to hang that on.  That would put him halfway between Inez
(35) and Judith (about 55) which seems right.
  

    
Born in 1950, so by this time, late forties.
  

    
There's about five years between Molloy and Judith. Madame Genius has
a weakness for hyperbole.
  

    

I don't want to interrupt, but I do wish to note that these past two weeks
have really flown by. What a wonderful conversation this has been, Pamela
and David! Though we've turned our virtual spotlight to our next Inkwell
guest, that doesn't mean you have to stop now. This topic will remain here,
open and ready for more comments, indefinitely, and you're more than welcome
to continue.

If, however, other things are demanding your time and attention now, I want
to thank you both for joining us. And to wish you, Pamela, all the best in
whatever you're working on next.
  

    
Thank you, Cynthia, and a big, big thanks to David Kline, who
moderated this discussion so admirably.

Since no author can really stop talking about his or her work, I'll
drop by every now and then to answer any questions that might come up.
  

    
the bottom line for me, that made _Edge of Chaos_ onto my "really good
books" list is that several times it made me stop and think about my
own life: aging, dying, friendship, choices in love, life, and work.  
  

    

This has been a terrific conversation.  

I'm not a big fiction reader, though intelligent science fiction grabs 
me now and then.  I'm newly aware that this book has enough of 
that special intelligence to it and I'm ordering it now.  Thanks!
  

    
As I knew it would be, it's been a pleasure to play my part these last
two weeks.  I will also stop by from time to time also, since I know
that there are lots more facets of pamela's book to be explored and I'm
sure many that I haven't thought of.
  

    
thank you so much for being so generous in answering our questinos, pamela
  

    
It was a great pleasure for me.  I'm sorry I wasn't always very
articulate about the creative process, but katecat as an actor knows
how mysterious that process can be, and so, I'm sure does everyone
else.

Yes--those issues, love and work, friendship, aging, dying: they
preoccupied me as I wrote, and they continue to preoccupy me.  I've
been extraordinarily lucky in love and friendship and work, and that
luck has assuaged aging and the inevitable. Not everyone gets such a
privilege.  I'm grateful.
  

    
Over the weekend, somebody asked me if my character Molloy had
anything to do with Beckett's novel called "Molloy."  Yes, I fessed up;
it was a tribute to Beckett, and the two characters have some things
in common.  
  

    
And then later, I came along and asked you again about your willful
characters, with minds of their own.  Do they ever try to use what what
Jostein Gaarder (he of _Sophie's World_) calls "romantic irony" and
yell out "Help, I'm a prisoner character in a chaotic novel by
someone's enigmatic elder aunt!"
  

    
Metaromance-- a new genre!
  

    
If so, I am deaf to it.

Sort of like prayers to God, isn't it?  We're told He hears them, even
if he doesn't answer.
  

    
Or we're told he answers them and we just don't understand the
answers; or we're told that he hears them and just laughs.
  

    
isn't the grandest cosmic jest, at the very edges of chaos?