and we're off. this'll be what kicks off the terminal this quarter. as soon as i get all my thoughts swimming together in the same net.
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/02/27 03:31
By: maggie
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Here we are, in the midst of a new people, a different land, not of our time, but of our earth. There is land and sea and sky. Whale hunting a big industry. Don’t know the era. They talk like Scots or Irish or some bloody Dickens characters. Much whale stuff—blubber, fat, tongue as big as Cleopatra’s barge. Gallons of rendered whale oil, blow-holes, spume, and whale music. I wonder if this is in some way a tribute to, or meant to parallel or conjure thoughts of Moby Dick. And yet even with such intent, a story must stand on its own, regardless of its subtle literary allusions.
The writing is wonderful, for the most part, scenes thoroughly created through deft immediate sensual description. The VC makes up some great words (I think) like “brunnifer,” which I like.
Some simple sentences or phrases that really sing for me (no pun intended):
--long hair hanging down loose in the salt-scrub night wind.
--“Child in a whale,” said Jayne.
--The beating of the sea was all around.
--“It won’t breathe for us anymore, so we gotta breathe for ourselves, and swim.”
--Nice cadence here, tho a little repetitive: He had no time to speak, or scream. He had no time to see the whale-spouts circled around him. He only had time to swim, and to breathe, and to swim and to breathe.
--a pillow of ocean foam and stones
--aching and bendsing and blooming thick bruises…
--The char-houses and damask docks were faint lights blurry down the roll, the roar of their moany groany ruck echoing distant and unreal over the harbor waters.
The singing of Jayne and child with whales is a beautiful moment EXCEPT I’ve been so uncertain and unbalanced during this story, hoping for some stable ground on which I can build a premise of what the hell is goin on. What IS a hammerhand? Am I just stupid?
Discrepancies/problems/questions:
-couldn’t tell really what the problem was, the crux of the story, traveling the pages, and I’m thinking is it that there’s a child in a whale and someone’s gotta get him out? Is that gonna carry this story of such fierce hunters in a fierce time?...then by the time we get to pg 12 I wonder if what’s really at stake is this: “Jayne sighed. But my lad warn’t lost in a whale. My lad hated whales, grew up hating whales ‘cos (coz? ‘cause?) they kept his pa away.”—So this would be a more emotionally-based problem needing resolution instead one of plot/getting something done.
--Jayne has silver hammerhands (tho I can’t imagine what these are or why…yet enough is made of them that I think he is half robot or some machine like person.). BUT later he beats “on the hard rubber skin with the pale white-palms of his lethal Hammerhands.” So his silver metal hands have white palms??? Big mis-step there, but easily fixed. However the fact of his hammerhands being diff from human hands seems to be made much of VIA WORDS in this story but not in consequence or LOGIC. How and why is he different from other men??—this should impinge on every part of this story: the problem, the buildup of tension, how he deals w/things, and the resolution.
But I am never settled enough in this “other world” to know what truly is meant for me to follow or focus on. Help me, dear Bulldust. What is this nameless quality I seek and cannot find in this cap? What unsettles me so? What makes me say “not just yet” for this one to rise?
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/02/28 04:21
By: bulldust
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I haven't read Magpie's review. This blurb here is just my first raw gut reaction to the first four or five pages.
Interesting premise of a "bloke" lodged inside a whale, perhaps evoking the story of Jonah and the Whale, I dunno. Anyway, the dialogue is getting on my nerves a bit -- more on that later, but the setting seems rich and credible. Let's see where it all goes ...
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/02/29 21:46
By: bulldust
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well, I can tell yah this. Some of the phrasing in this piece is more than a mouthful: it's downright nonsensical at times. I read the following sentence about three or four times to try to get my tongue and brain around it:
"He lolled to his feet in the quaggy gutsy mire, stomach bag-floor beneath him rolling and squelching with the splay of his weight."
And for the reason of too much info and not enough streamline narrative, this following paragraph as well:
"At the roll-ribbed throat-way he grasped a thick vein running up like a banister, and climbed until above him like a portcullis in the fleshy dark hung the whale`s baleen krill-sieve, and wrapped up in it with a shred of cloth for a hammock hung a small yellow child."
OKay, you might say, that para is descriptive and unique. but when you repeat this "over descriptiveness" over and over you find yourself grinding your teeth. There's also something here about research, which I don't want to belabour because it's a long topic that bears much discussion. For me, for now, research shouldn't stand out in a piece the way it does in Celibate Jayne. There's a "hey, reader, look, I've gone and done all this research to win you over and to hopefully instill much credibility in the work." Too much research belongs in college essays.
Also, this piece reads like someone trying to force a certain "feeling/atmosphere" down your throat. The overusage of "bloke" for starters and other in-your-face, not-so-quaint sayings tell me one of two things: either the VC is not British/Australian at all and is trying much too hard to sound like it's written by a Brit/Australian (whose vernacular tongue is very similar) or the VC is a Brit/Aussie trying too too damned hard to push the culture and mood of the piece on you.
There's a natural, let-it-flow quality that's missing from the capital: contrived comes to mind, and too much in the vein of say "Deadwood" but not done nearly so well. For me, the sticky part I can't get past is the dialogue and the "flip" phrasing of the narrator.
I would like to see this piece again at our doorstep, because it has nice potential, no doubt. I would like to see less triteness in the speech of characters and more believable (readable) yarking between them, and as well, brush up on your sentence structuring (just an opinion, mind you). Make up all the words in the world, if you must, but present them to me (the reader, the investor) in readable constructs.
best of luck, matey
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/03/07 23:13
By: bulldust
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okay, second read, as promised.
This VC really has grabbed the whale by the tail, but I'm not sure who is swinging whom. There's a lot of fine, innovative verb usage, some of it questionable, some of it plausible, but most of it acceptable imo. But there are too many adjectives used in your average sentence.
I can see that this piece is but a lick of some longer work that the VC has in mind, or is at this time working on. If one were to turn this into a longer piece, such as a novella or novel, then I highly recommend a glossary to accompany it.
Some of the word usage seems odd at times, and I'm not sure it's trying to fit with the tone of the piece or if it's an oversight of the VC, such as this:
"And they ignored him, and boldened by their numbers [blah-blah-blah]..." This should be "...emboldened by their numbers ..." There are a few instances of this throughout and the VC should be more diligent with respect to readability, should this above-example be mere oversight and not about story tone.
So here's the nutshell.
There is a character arc. This is not plot driven, nor does it require any plot resolution. This is about revelation, a character's blinding, flashing insight at the time of the whale grieving. My second read through of this piece was far better than the first. I guess maybe my mood(s) dictated my respective reactions to it. We are still early on in the Terminal process, so changes can be made to it and still the piece can be kept in the running.
So I call on my terminali mate Guevera to read this through and to judge whether a few changes by the VC will suffice for it to rise to the Executive level or if there are far too many changes needed for it to go up.
Read it, G, and say whats yer thinks, arrrrrrrrgh!
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/03/08 23:32
By: guevara
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Hola.
This piece works best with un poquito explanaccion. In other words, I was mesmerized by the inventive language and spumy dialogue up until the point where Jayne and the child witness the pack of whales laying their own to rest. For me, their was too much explained in this passage instead of letting the images speak for themselves--the way the rest of the piece is fashioned and the way that it really works.
As Maggie said, the unconscious is a powerful thing, and somehow this piece taps into that subterranean river up to that point where it thinks it knows itself to well. Mira! Why marginalize the underlying meaning by dragging it to the surface and giving it a name when endless possibilities are at the investors' fintergtips if you simply let it be?
Que paso?
I would send this up with the caveat that the whale funeral scene must be rewritten so that what is being 'seen' is left to the investors to interpret themselves.
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/03/10 02:42
By: bulldust
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excellent yammering, hombre. I have sent out an APB to the VC concerned. Let us see if he is willing...
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Re:"Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand"
Date: 2008/03/14 05:55
By: tqr
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The VC has responded to our APB, and done the necessary craftwerk to see his creation to the next level.
