Deep thoughts, with bironic handey

[bironic]

Book:

We are reading China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh for book club. (wiki) It's got excellent worldbuilding and a braid of engrossing character- and culture clash-driven stories, but the constant comma splices are driving me up the wall. There's at least one per page. Here is a sample passage:

I head north up Daqing Lu, the street is lined with stores. I stop and look in windows, the prices are ghastly. I have some of my Baffin Island salary on credit plus a stipend from the University. Because I study technology, my only cost was getting here, the rest is scholarship. Getting here was expensive enough.

Really not my style. It has to be deliberate style; there are too many of them to be editing errors. Although my copy does have a handful of typos as well, like "peal" for "peel" (twice), or, ironically enough, missing commas, as in "Hainandao. The name means South Sea Island. The first character, 'hai' means 'sea.'" It's enough to make it read like a self-published novel, grammatically, except for how it won the Tiptree award and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula and was published by Tor/edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Strange.

TV:

Started watching Agent Carter after seeing the adorable dubsmash war clips from Hayley Atwell and James D'Arcy on Twitter/Tumblr. Have now seen the first three eps with a fellow fan's help. Quite enjoyable. High production values, unsurprisingly, and, as people like no_detective promised, solid, women-driven storytelling. I'm only surprised not to be enjoying buttoned-up Jarvis more as Peggy's boy Friday. Maybe I like my D'Arcy ruffled and smiling in a t-shirt. However, I did relish the scene where he put on glasses and stitched up Peggy's leg. Peggy is fabulous. She should hang out with Phryne Fisher.

Movie:

In less exciting news, we have achieved a new low in the dwindling Paul Bettany project: Mood Swingers, apparently a.k.a. Dead Babies. Bleh. Body horror and unsexy nudity and hallucinations and recreational drugs and occasional manic editing and general grossness and I just, not my thing. A little like David Cronenberg without deeper meaning and with low production quality. No, I can't even make that comparison; I probably only watched about 10 minutes total, fast-forwarding through the rest, whereas Cronenberg's stuff is good, if hard to watch. It wasn't just the teeth falling out and the barf and the needles and the entrails and the peeing and the tedious dialogue and the boobs, it's that it wasn't good. Compare to, say, DC's Crash, or Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Rather: no comparison.

Two decent visuals: Young, lean Paul Bettany wearing lipstick in one scene and playing badminton in another. The latter was edited in such a way that he probably only had to actually hit the shuttle twice, but his follow-through was elegant.

*shakes head at self*

Comments

[thedeadparrot]

Agent Carter is just so delightful! And Hayley Atwell is definitely something special in that role. I remember being so sad after the first Captain America movie because I didn't think we'd get any more of Peggy now that we were in the future. I am thankful that the universe has proved me wrong! This was my first exposure to D'Arcy, so I appreciated him and Atwell having a buttoned-up stiff-upper-lip competition between the two of them. That scene of him stitching up her leg made me ship Peggy/Jarvis so hard.

I suspect that China Mountain Zhang is trying to imitate Chinese speech patterns, though that doesn't 100% explain the comma splicing. My ability to speak Chinese is limited and possibly even terrible, so I'm not the best reference, but I think a direct translation from how I'd say that first line in Chinese is: "I on Daqing Lu walk north, everywhere is small stores." I don't know if that makes it more reasonable or less reasonable, but I hear your frustration with reading it in English.

[bironic]

I appreciated him and Atwell having a buttoned-up stiff-upper-lip competition

:) :) I think I'd only seen him in Master & Commander, which was part of the Paul Bettany thing. It wasn't until a few weeks after that that I understood the Tumblr gifs saying M&C had Jarvis & JARVIS.

ETA: Wait, that's a lie - apparently he was one of Jupiter's relatives in Jupiter Ascending?! And someone I'd seen in Virtuality but hadn't remembered.

ETA ETA: Oh, I bet it was her father. Okay, makes more sense now. And I'll stop spamming you.

I suspect that China Mountain Zhang is trying to imitate Chinese speech patterns

Oh, interesting. I'll look that up. Another interesting thing is that by the end of the book, I'd fallen into the rhythms of her style. Even though I still do not condone comma splices, her writing definitely had a consistent tone across narrators that included that quirk and I found myself falling into it overall.

[cinco]

Those errors (I cannot call comma splices a style!!!) would have made me throw the book across the room in probably 3 pages, ugh! /o\

I love Agent Carter so very, very much! I am so pleased it's getting a second season. <333 Also, homg would I ever click like lightning on a fic where Peggy and Phryne do anything at all! What a great idea.

[bironic]

China Mountain Zhang, or, How I Learned to Stop Growling and Accept the Comma Splice

Peggy&Phryne // Peggy/Phryne ftw. Thanks for reminding me I wanted to tweet about that!