Tim Powers and novel construction

[pegkerr]

I just finished rereading The Stress of Her Regard and am now starting Last Call, both by Tim Powers.

I do like his work very much. I also have a soft spot in my heart for Powers because he was one of the best writing teachers I ever had. He taught at my first week at Clarion. I remember that when he got up to speak to us that first night, the paper he was holding shook because he was so nervous, but he jumped into critiquing our stories with enthusiasm, and I learned so much from him. He was the one who taught me that if you really want the reader to feel that they're right there in the scene, describe the smells. And I've mentioned before that I've always remembered that talk that he gave us at the end of the week about remembering to remain a decent human being while we're learning to become writers as one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten from a writing mentor.

I interviewed him for one of my papers for my Master's degree about On Stranger Tides, and it was one of the first chances I'd ever gotten to pump a writer, in depth, about the process of writing a novel. I just ran across the tape--the interview was in 1989--and I think I might transcribe it and send him a copy. He gave me one working suggestion which I incorporated when I was writing The Wild Swans: When you are dealing with trying to fit fictional plot around historical happenings, make a calendar, and put your historical facts in pen and pencil in your fictional plot as you work out the sequence of events.

I love the vividness of his style. Sometimes there are sentences I just have to stop and reread, just to savor the unusual, fresh look at what should be old and tired and familiar. I was talking with a beginning writer about this recently, and prescribed Powers fiction to her as I was talking to her about avoiding the cliche in similes and descriptions. He speaks of an airplane as a splinter in the sky, he speaks of clouds that are like gods sculpted from tortured living marble.

I was thinking tonight, as I continued through Last Call, that what I hope to do with this ice palace book is probably quite akin to the way Powers works, more than the books I've done before. Powers told me that what he likes to do is to research an intriguing historical character, time or setting, make note of the things that seem odd or out of place or strange, and then ask himself, "What was he really up to? What's the magical explanation for what he was trying to do?"

I wonder whether he writes out of sequence or not. His magical systems are revealed by a sort of free associative method. I'm intrigued--and heartened by how often his characters grope for explanations (just as I grope for connections as I plot). They're always explaining the magical happenings by saying, "It's sort of like . .. " and then he pulls in a bit of poetry or music or quantum physics. Individual bits of data from wildly different spheres, but when he puts them side by side, you suddenly see a pattern, and you think Huh, I wonder what that means? What's the connection? The sphinx's riddle mentions 4, then 2, then 3--and what does that have to do with the number of electrons looking for particles to fill their outer shells? Powers plots by having his characters make intuitive leaps.

Yeah, that sounds like what I've been thinking about as I try to flesh out the ice palace book. It's about water and cold and form and structure and phlogiston and mosquitoes and architecture and escape from death. And fish. And ice. So what do we make of ice fishing, magically? What do we make of the fact that Frank Gehry, one of the foremost architects in the world, made a huge sculpture of a fish out of interlocking glass plates? And what does this have to do with the fact that a fish gets frozen into the cornerstone of the ice palace every time it gets built?

[Goes away to think some more. And read more of Last Call.]

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

[inarticulate noises of delight about this entry]

Thank you, Peg. That was exactly what I needed to read at this very time.

[madlori.livejournal.com]

A frozen fish is like a metaphor for the resurrection. A fish can be frozen in a lake (or an ice palace) and then when the ice is melted, it swims away like nothing's happened. Did it dream while it was frozen? Was it aware of anything? Of time passing, or its own extraordinary circumstances? Was it aware? Was it just thinking, "hey, I haven't moved in awhile. And it's kinda cold."

Ice fishing, to me, is purely visual. Every time I've ever been, I'm struck by the visuals. A frozen lake is the only time in human experience that we're able to stand on a totally flat surface. Even the Salt Flats aren't quite the same, because they're flat to the horizon. A frozen lake has land around it, providing context for the extraordinary smoothness of the bright whiteness you're standing on. A smooth, uninterrupted plane of white with little flagsticks and a few shacks. It's like a physical incarnation of solitude. The snow absorbs all the sound, and no one talks. Most of the fishermen are alone. The ones that aren't don't talk to their friend/brother/grandson/whatever. They contemplate their tiny solitude on the vast plane of white flatness. Is that what it's like before birth, or after death? Alone on a vast plane of white flatness? Is that what it's like to float? The sky is white, the ground is white. So how do you know you're even on the ground at all? If you're on a lake large enough that you can't see the edges, it's like being inside an enormous egg. Pinned between two identical white surfaces and surrounded by a cold wind. Seems like it'd be so forbidding, so why are men drawn to it? Do they crave the isolation? Is it something within that makes them want to experience resurrection themselves? To venture into that dead land of flat white blankness and then return to the world of warmth and color must be like being born again.

Damn. It must be late. How much wine have I drunk tonight, anyway?

I too have a soft spot for him

[ksp24.livejournal.com]

My first encounter with his writing was in reading masses of US SF/F books during my stint at Heyne Verlag in Germany. Wolfgang Jeschke had me and then report for him on what was doing well in the US and how did I think it would do in the German market.

I was handed On On Stranger Tides and The Stress of her Regard and told to go away and see what I could make of this. Sitting on the steps of the Glyptothek, a Greek temple on Koenigsplatz, and being paid to read this under a blazing hot sun and blue sky is still a vivid memory.

He is utterly brilliant and a very kind man. You know, if Tim allows, it would be great to post the transcript on his site. I am not sure who is maintaining the official Powers website these days, but it would be great if you'd share that!

Re: I too have a soft spot for him

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I e-mailed him tonight at his Yahoo group to offer him the transcript. He might post it in the files section there. We'll see what he says.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Tim is a sweetie. The last time I saw him at an sf con, he and his wife Serena were hauling around a cat carrier filled with four or five teeny weeny mewing wetting kittens, crawling around and clinging to the wire mesh of the front. Apparently a stray mother cat had left them inside their car and never came back, and they had to be hand-fed, so off to the convention they went.

Oh, and I love his books. I have a particularly fond spot for the first one I read, DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE, which delighted me by turning a certain annoying romantic motif upside-down.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, I adore that one, too. Talk about character development: the protagonist changes so much through the course of the events of the novel that he discovers at the end that he doesn't even want anymore what he thought he wanted more than anything in the world.

And you're right; whenever I've met Tim and Serena, they have really struck me as being absolutely lovely people.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this -- you've given me much to chew on, as well as a new author to read. His free association sounds like (feels like) the best, most inspirational moments I've had in writing, where I start out groping blindly and serendipitously stumble upon items, information, connections that all fit together beautifully, intuitively. I need to get myself in that space again.

...remembering to remain a decent human being while we're learning to become writers...

This, in particular, I will take to heart. Thank you for sharing it.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

What would you recommend as a good read for a Powers virgin? Or almost virgin. I tried reading Earthquake Weather and got a good fourth of the way through before I conceded that I just did not like it. I'd like to try him again, as I really liked his writing, it was mostly the story that really did not interest me.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Well, in rough order of what might be nice for devirginizing:

DECLARE is John Le Carre meets djinns-- a sophisticated spy story with magic. Extremely well-written but possibly not as wild and crazy as some of his others.

THE ANUBIS GATES is almost impossible to describe but it's a lot of fun. 18th century poets, girls dressed as boys, body switching due to a werewolf curse, freakish underground societies, and the Beatles' "Yesterday" magically become part of a unified whole. (This is a theme with Powers.)

DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE is sf. It's bizarre and very funny, and turns your expectations upside down in the most delightful way. A regular Joe searches for his lost True Love in a weird post-Holocaust landscape, with help and hindrance from Sister Windchime, who is in a freakish cult, and a Lovecraftian thing that talks like the Fat Man in THE MALTESE FALCON.

I really like THE STRESS OF HER REGARD but some people find it too dark. Byron and Shelley and other poets, plus some original characters (VERY original) battle extremely creepy creatures. This one verges more on horror than most of his do, although you may have already noticed that Tim likes Fisher King motifs, which means his characters often lose body parts. The female lead in this one, who may be the strangest female romantic lead ever, is very disturbed, very disturbing, and eventually very heroic.

The pirate one, whose name I'm completely blanking on, isn't quite as good as the ones I mention above but is still lots of fun. I should re-read it, as I can't remember it well although I remember liking it.

I don't care much for LAST CALL, but lots of people like it a lot; THE DRAWING OF THE DARK is fun but slight; and FORSAKE THE SKIES is strictly beginner's work.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The pirate one is ON STRANGER TIDES. That one was the first one I read, and the one I interviewed him about.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Try Anubis Gates, perhaps. Or Dinner at Deviant's Palace.

[mgs.livejournal.com]

The trouble is that Earthquake Weather is the sequel to both Last Call and Expiration Date. I thought that his attempt to merge those two universes was not entirely successful and Powers is strange and confusing enough when you have all the background rather than being thrust into the middle of stuff from two previous books.

My personal favorites are Last Call and Anubis Gates. I'd try one or the other of them.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Tim and Serena are such wonderful people. And he's a very fine writer. Declare is my favorite but I appreciate them all.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

oh. I LOVED Last Call. This post made me So Happy. I'm very much looking forward to your book, my dear.

great post

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

I love his books, find them hard to categorize (probably one reason they're so GOOD) and really enjoyed the "smells" anecdote.