Twelfth Night
Jan. 7th, 2009 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustChristmas ended yesterday, on Twelfth Night. In the afternoon we took ourselves to the pool, for the first time since Christmas Eve. For once, this hiatus was not the pool's fault - in the past I've ranted about the way swimming pools close down for the duration of any holiday period when people might have free time and want to swim, but the new pool was exemplary and maintained normal or substantial opening hours for most of the Twelve Days - so of course we have both had colds, and refrained from swimming. I really felt the effects of this yesterday - I was exhausted, and had the beginnings of cramp, by the time I'd completed my thousand metres; but afterwards I felt wonderfully loosened up and relaxed, and in the mood to be entertained.
Fortunately, entertainment was available. Phantoms at the Phil, the annual event at which we celebrate Christmas at the Lit & Phil with new ghost stories, read by their authors, had been deferred to Twelfth Night, so - despite the fact that mince pies could not be had, nor wine mulled, not even for ready money - the season had one last treat to offer us. And in fact there was perfectly good unmulled wine, and there was shortbread (and I was so busy talking to Ann Cleeves about plans for the launch of her next Shetland book, complete with fiddler, that it took me a little while to register that shortbread was not absolutely traditional...). And then we all processed downstairs to the Lecture Theatre of the Mining Institute, and there were stories.
I had very recently read Sean O'Brien's collection of short stories, The Silence Room, so it was interesting to hear him read Sylvie: A Romance while it was so fresh in my mind. Sean's reading made it a much funnier story than my own internal voice had; this was helped by the fact that it is set in the library where we had started our evening. But since much of the humour is at the expense of literary theory (particularly the French kind), emphasising the humour also underlines the way that theme runs through the story, though I may need to think further about precisely what it is doing there, with particular reference to the dramatic and eerie denouement of the tale.
Gail-Nina Anderson read second. At first it seemed that her piece was not a story at all - that she was going to talk, instead, about a piece of local folklore, the story of the Cauld Lad of Hilton (a version of which also appears in Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland). In a clever twist, her words became the words of a lecturer in folklore, and a classroom discussion of the legend became the story itself.
Although these two stories dealt with untimely death, uneasy spirits and matters dark and supernatural, they did so in a generally upbeat fashion; Chaz Brenchley wasn't letting us off so easily. His True North is a classic ghost story, with a narrator who makes a choice for which he pays a high price. It doesn't entirely come off, for me - the narrator is, at least at the outset, so insufferably pleased with himself, feels himself so entitled to whatever he can reach out and take, that I'm ready to welcome the retribution which must surely be waiting for him. But, this being![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperance, it isn't that easy: the nature of the retribution is that others must pay the price of his choices. As soon as the ghost appears, the story shifts a gear. It's a very modern ghost - there's nothing gothic about the setting, the character, the nature of its apparitions. It is also remorseless and horrific - yet it invites pity as much as revulsion.
After which, of course, there was nothing for it but to descend mob handed on Mario's and demand food and drink, in the virtuous consciousness of a job well done.
Fortunately, entertainment was available. Phantoms at the Phil, the annual event at which we celebrate Christmas at the Lit & Phil with new ghost stories, read by their authors, had been deferred to Twelfth Night, so - despite the fact that mince pies could not be had, nor wine mulled, not even for ready money - the season had one last treat to offer us. And in fact there was perfectly good unmulled wine, and there was shortbread (and I was so busy talking to Ann Cleeves about plans for the launch of her next Shetland book, complete with fiddler, that it took me a little while to register that shortbread was not absolutely traditional...). And then we all processed downstairs to the Lecture Theatre of the Mining Institute, and there were stories.
I had very recently read Sean O'Brien's collection of short stories, The Silence Room, so it was interesting to hear him read Sylvie: A Romance while it was so fresh in my mind. Sean's reading made it a much funnier story than my own internal voice had; this was helped by the fact that it is set in the library where we had started our evening. But since much of the humour is at the expense of literary theory (particularly the French kind), emphasising the humour also underlines the way that theme runs through the story, though I may need to think further about precisely what it is doing there, with particular reference to the dramatic and eerie denouement of the tale.
Gail-Nina Anderson read second. At first it seemed that her piece was not a story at all - that she was going to talk, instead, about a piece of local folklore, the story of the Cauld Lad of Hilton (a version of which also appears in Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland). In a clever twist, her words became the words of a lecturer in folklore, and a classroom discussion of the legend became the story itself.
Although these two stories dealt with untimely death, uneasy spirits and matters dark and supernatural, they did so in a generally upbeat fashion; Chaz Brenchley wasn't letting us off so easily. His True North is a classic ghost story, with a narrator who makes a choice for which he pays a high price. It doesn't entirely come off, for me - the narrator is, at least at the outset, so insufferably pleased with himself, feels himself so entitled to whatever he can reach out and take, that I'm ready to welcome the retribution which must surely be waiting for him. But, this being
desperance, it isn't that easy: the nature of the retribution is that others must pay the price of his choices. As soon as the ghost appears, the story shifts a gear. It's a very modern ghost - there's nothing gothic about the setting, the character, the nature of its apparitions. It is also remorseless and horrific - yet it invites pity as much as revulsion.After which, of course, there was nothing for it but to descend mob handed on Mario's and demand food and drink, in the virtuous consciousness of a job well done.
