(no subject)

Went last night to the NYRSF reading for my first time in the new venue (which tells how long it's been. I think the last time I went was last January). Rose Fox guest-curated and Catherynne Valente and Seanan McGuire read, but sadly I got there late and only heard Seanan McGuire. I'm pretty sure this is the second or third time I've missed Valente reading on account of my lateness. Eventually this must be remedied.

McGuire offered the choice between the creepy story and the funny story, but the funny story she read was also brilliantly creepy, a story of mad social science on the loose. I think I need to hunt down more of her work.

Afterward there was an awkward freewheeling Q&A with both authors. It was interesting to hear two complementary but very distinct perspectives on the anxiety of influence, aspiration, and the writing process.

And then we went to a bar and overflowed the place and overwhelmed its kitchen and there was entertaining conversation with old and new friends for several hours.


I want to rec a story: zephyrprince's "Three Accounts of Fratricide. It was originally written for the '09 in_the_beginning fest, but its posting was delayed, so I think it got overlooked. Well, I think every fic involved in that fest got overlooked, to be honest. The six or seven stories that emerged from it are universally astonishing. (Including my own, I say frankly. The two stories I wrote are still unquestionably my best work) But "Three Accounts of Fratricide" got particularly overlooked.

It's a good week to call attention to it because in the Jewish annual Torah reading cycle, we just read the story of Cain and Abel. But any week would be a good week to talk about it, because Cain and Abel's story is a really insightful one. Steinbeck uses it brilliantly to drive East of Eden, because it casts shadows about love and family and society in all directions, because Steinbeck's obsession with sprawling portraits of life almost inevitably drew him to Genesis.

And zephyrprince seizes some of the shadows and runs away with them. Our author doesn't go far. Unlike Steinbeck, the driving interest here is in small details of character. What was really going on, if you study someone so closely that they reveal their secrets to you.

zephyrprince presents three answers. And what I love about the answers presented is how logical they are, how emotionally resonant, how powerfully they illuminate the ensuing sections of Genesis, how consistent they are with stories like Lot's story, Leah and Rachel's story, Dinah's story, and how WRONG THEY ARE. The story subverts not just Biblical morality, as I mentioned in my original comment on the story, but Biblical order. These are stories about characters I believe in, characters I want to know more about, and yet I know somewhere in my heart that these characters cannot exist in the Bible as written, with God as he's written. And I am fascinated to no end by that tension.

I'm fascinated because obviously Cain and Abel's sisters are part of the story, but could they possibly have been part of the story in that way? I'm fascinated because the call to be your brother's keeper is one of the Bible's sharpest calls to social justice, but Cain and Abel were history's first brothers, and they really didn't know the rules, did they? Why couldn't their love have been as consumptive and destructive as their hatred?

Anyway, if you want to read Cain/Abel slashfic, this is your place to go.