From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #87 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Saturday, April 22 2000 Volume 02 : Number 087 Today's Subjects: ----------------- replies and serial killers ["Jennifer Stevenson" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 10:42:40 -0500 From: "Jennifer Stevenson" Subject: replies and serial killers Don writes, > Jennifer: What is the pub date for =Demonomania=? August 1, 2000. Just before festival! > I =suppose= I can understand confusing Lin Carter and Fritz Leiber > if you don't deal with the names constantly. But Carter was not much > of an editor and hardly a writer at all, while Leiber is one of the > most important 20th century sf, fantasy =and= horror writers. Hey I don't read all these modernist guys, I just listen to you and Schweitzer a lot! : ) > By the way, Judith Krantz just published a memoir called =Sex and > Shopping=, which was lead-reviewed in the new =New Yorker= this > week. (The key to the success of her novels? the reviewer opines: > good business sense.) She's good. She's gotten lazy in her extreme success so I don't read her stuff these days, but she's still good. I expect I'll get a copy at my next RWA meeting. One of our gals makes a practice of xoxing everything in the Outer World news relevant to romance and bringing us a copy. > (I blame Freud, myself.) I think he was just a symptom. Another classic, classic example of a white guy with middle class mores who decides that the screwinesses peculiar to his class are universal truths. > If I were to write a novel of =absolute mimesis= about a bunch of East > Village bands who all go to each other's shows and hang out together and > play with each other's bands...you'd call it "suburban fantasy" and say it > was too much like Bordertown (without the elves). If you wrote it? Probably yes. Because you're too nice to spend time on the grit that makes urban fantasy urban. Example, maybe: In an urban fantasy about same, bands would break up every day, every single club owner would stiff them after the gig, and often they'd have bottles chucked at them or be assaulted in the men's room on break. In your version, these events would happen once per book with great fanfare; i.e. they would have more meaning in the narrative. > (By the way: what flavor was your therapy > training: Freudian? Jungian? Something else entirely?) I did structural family theory for families and groups (hated groups a lot!) and gestalt for individual therapy. See Salvador Minuchin & Jay Haley for the early theory, and John Bradshaw, who kind of deviates from the true path as I was taught it thank god, for a later mutation. > Did you ever read =The Silence of the Lambs=? No, I never did. Lois told me it would give me nightmares. She is an excellent judge of this measure, so I let it go. > Do go on about serial-killer novels. Okay, but be warned, this is NOT my real "belief" or even a theory that I'm willing to stand up and be shot for. It's a riff I came up with while I was deeper into hanging with my crit friends and following theory & things. It is A THEORY. Make that, "A THEORY." In other words, it looks cute on the dust jacket; it would get me a publication credential in the pursuit of tenure (which I don't need). (Rustling through my old stuff trying to find it now.) HELL. I can't find my old long-version of this. (Sat on this reply for two days while I looked.) Now I've found it and maybe I'll skip it. Or e-mail it to Phaedre separado. This topic, repressed-memory-of-trauma, tends to be seriously controversial, and has ruined one friendship I can think of right off the top of my head. > Where does Clute use the "phatic fantasy" label? It's not an entry in the > final =Encyclopedia=. That is in fact a standard linguistic term (meaning > roughly "small talk"). Jane Austen's style could be described as "phatic > with subtext." I heard about Clute and phatic fiction from eluki. I never heard him use the term myself. That's why I said "third hand" > Do you think =Buffy= library conferences are tea parties? No. Not when the Mayor or Faith is busting in half the time, and friendships are breaking up, and Buffy is fighting with Giles. At their least dramatic, these are "tool-gathering" moments where we determine what resources are available and which ones will be rejected--for good or bad reasons. That I've SEEN, mind you. Late in the last season they may have degenerated to tea parties, but if so I'd be surprised. > ("Expository Lump" is a special case of "Phatic" I think.) I disagree--unless we're talking about science fiction. Science fiction readers are comfortable and indeed demand a certain number of expository lumps. I've heard that the ancient Chinese used to sleep on porcelain pillows, too. Really like the PROP DEMON rant. Very useful idea. This bit-- > This came to mind because in the course of =Psychology and Alchemy= Jung > says "we have to expose ourselves to the animal impulses of the > unconscious without identifying with them and without 'running away' [in > quotes because he's quoting a dream he's analyzing]: for flight from the > unconscious would defeat the purpose of the whole proceeding." [p. 145] > "The tendency to run away, however, [in this case] is > attributed not to the operator [the ego/conscious] but to the transforming > substance [the shadow/unconscious]. Mercurius [frequent symbol > for/guardian of/spirit-guide to the unconscious] is evasive and is labeled > =servus= (servant) or =cervus fugitivus= (fugitive stag [note Latin > pun!]. The [alchemical] vessel must be well sealed so that what is within > may not escape." [=Psychology and Alchemy=, p. 146; bracketed additions > mine] > > In my own restatement, then, sometimes the ego runs away from the shadow, > saying in effect "I'm not ready to deal with you yet," and sometimes the > shadow runs away from the ego, saying in effect "You're not ready to deal > with me yet." Opposite impulses, but arriving at much the same state. - --has a lot to do with my serial killer rant. Which is related to my theory about "the one true lie of the heart's desire." And about telling two kinds of lies to yourself: the overt denial kind, which you need to hear that help you think about what you have to think about, and the covert-denial kind, which help you not think about unbearable things while you are doing the work with overt denial. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #87 ****************************