His Dark Materials Trans-Atlantic Book Club

So, I (presumably) got the thing but of course there is no testing in the UK for people who need it, let alone assorted members of the general public like myself who’d just like to know if they’re through the worst. Then I was great for a couple of days, then really, really not so great, and that not-so-greatness has lingered. Net result; cancelling and foregoing various paid work things, letting people down, and not doing my central ‘life’s work’ things. Which is trying, but I am nonetheless going boing boing boing on middle class lockdown bingo. Growing tomatoes. Returning to piano-playing. Complaining about joggers. Starting and not finishing a potential longread about Parfit, past and future selves and why we ignored the letters from our future that China and Italy were kind enough to despatch. Also, tweeting too goddamn much. Eating too goddamn much. (now the food shortages have eased and I can also leave the house to buy some – I quarantined for 2 weeks, but the UK guidance seems to be only 7 days after first symptoms. In something that lasts a lot longer, that seems wrong?) Also comfort-reading.

I was 1/3 through Anna Burns’ Milkman when we went into lockdown about a week before the UK’s official lockdown. Found almost immediately I couldn’t manage it any more. Then tried Tim Maugham’s near-future post-apocalyptic Infinite Detail. Ha! past self who thought you could still read something like that for general interest! you were so so wrong. I don’t remember why exactly, but my thoughts turned to Northern Lights; specifically the Everyman edition of the His Dark Materials trilogy I bought for Ed to bring on his last tour and which he left at home. (His interest piqued to see me reading ‘his’ book, and read the dedication to him, he then said it was just the book he should have brought but only not having done so does he now understand his former self and how he has changed and really should have?)

Then, out on a neighbourhood walk a couple of weeks ago, I knocked on the door of a friend and retreated back to the footpath. Grey area activity, this, but the conversation was short and no sunbathing took place. My friend and her two children came out and Milo whinnied through the gate to be let in to raid their cat bowl. We ignored him and got quickly to book-chat, HDM, and made a plan for a HDM book club online the following night. Invitations went out. (I am that person who’s refused to use whatsapp since the day facebook bought it, but for work reasons have used zoom for years. there is no security or privacy logic to this.) 7pm the next night, those two kids, my two Washington nephews, two of my sisters, Ed and me all got on zoom for a proper conversation that was Not Work and also not ‘well, nothing much happened today, let me tell you about our new composting methodology’. Best online conversation I have ever, no really ever, been part of.

The kids are alright. They are so incredibly, togetherly alright it’s almost funny. We did it again this week, though connectivity problems meant two of my sisters couldn’t join. But I learnt so much from these people who were born when I was already in my thirties – about gender, race, class, story structure, you name it. It is just such a joy and in a moment where I can’t work, can’t read, can’t write, can just about cook and put up a pea-frame thing in the garden with bamboo and string let’s see if it lasts, this hour a week is an oasis of an almost lost sense of being through not very taxing but nonetheless incredibly nourishing doing.

Much of how we’re approaching these stories (two weeks on each book seems to be about our pace), is coming from the infinite source of reading and writing wisdom that is Jo Walton and her infinitely unpackable terms of art for some peculiarities of both activities. Yesterday we talked protagonismos. Next week it’s incluing and a bit about reading genre. I think when we get to the end of The Amber Spyglass we may turn back around for a full-arc topic called “Let’s talk about Roger”, using Jo’s spearpoint theory.

So in case it would be entertaining or even useful for anyone tempted to do similar, here are the bits of two emails on what we planned to talk about, with their links, below. Something about reading familiar things might also do you some good, but with a new frame and, if it works for you, with young people who just really get them and for whom they are essential and thrilling and in the most important ways, real.

“Hi everyone,

As I. said last week about Northern Lights / The Golden Compass; ‘we haven’t even talked about plot, yet!’.

So this week, i.e. today….. Let’s talk about the plot of Northern Lights. It’s a ‘quest story’, so the plot impetus is to go somewhere and do something. How does it gets started, what keeps it moving? Let’s discuss!

Also, tied up in plot is always character. Writers are forever debating which makes things happen, character or plot?

Jo Walton, a super writer and all-round human being, has a good way to look at character and plot together. She calls it “protagonismos”: the quality of being the kind of person that stories happen to.

So, have a quick read of this blog post and if/how you think protagonismos applies to Lyra!

31st October 2010 Protagonismos

Hi everyone,

Selfishly, my fiendish plan to extract my own rewards from our conversations is coming together, as our discussions clarified some story-building stuff I’d only thought hazily about – like the need for a novel to have the plot’s peculiar machinery engage the protagonist’s precise internal motivations. Especially if it is a quest-story!

So, next week, onward to book two of His Dark Materials; The Subtle Knife. Superb title and a much more complex story than the straightforward witches, bears and balloons quest we’ve had so far. A two-hander, no less, with Will entering the fray as a co-protagonist. (‘Will’ reminds me how important names and naming are in HDM – perhaps we should discuss that at some point.)

But for sure next week, we’re going to talk about the new worlds this second novel opens up, and as we do that, we will use Jo Walton’s term “incluing”, which, I learnt on another forum from her yesterday, she invented at 15. No pressure!

Incluing is how science fiction and fantasy (SFF) writers do exposition without it being too clunky. It’s a key part of world-building which is arguably the main thing SFF stories do. So, we may talk a little about genre and what we expect when we read genre. Jo’s take is that SFF genre is less about subject-matter (space-ships! dragons!) than about acquiring a particular and rather demanding skill-set in reading.

So for next week, below is the essential item to read on incluing. It’s cut and pasted from Wikipedia. And here, if you’re curious, is Jo’s piece from the US home of science fiction, Tor.com, about how to read genre; https://www.tor.com/2010/01/18/sf-reading-protocols/

EXPOSITION AND INCLUING:

Indirect exposition, sometimes called incluing, is a technique of worldbuilding in which the reader is gradually exposed to background information about the world in which a story is set. The idea is to clue the readers in to the world the author is building without them being aware of it. This can be done in a number of ways: through dialogues, flashbacks, characters’ thoughts,[6] background details, in-universe media,[7] or the narrator telling a backstory.[6] Instead of saying “I am a woman”, a first person narrator can say “I kept the papers inside my purse.” The reader (in most English-speaking cultures) now knows the character is probably female.[8]

The word incluing is attributed to fantasy and science fiction author Jo Walton.[10] She defined it as “the process of scattering information seamlessly through the text, as opposed to stopping the story to impart the information.”[11] “Information dump” (or info-dump) is the term given for overt exposition, which writers want to avoid.[12][13] In an idiot lecture, characters tell each other information that needs to be explained for the purpose of the audience, but of which the characters in-universe would already be aware.[14] Writers are advised to avoid writing dialogues beginning with “As you well know, Professor, a prime number is…”