(Originally published April 4, 2003)
(Originally published April 4, 2003)
Excuses for the 12 months' gap. Sighs. Well, first I had a public art-project to prepare in April. Then one to finish off (installed during the time Le Pen nearly got to power - a work including Algerian women, in a right-wing part of France. What timing.) My computer broke down last May 2002. By the time I got it back into working order (late-June) I had piles of RL stuff to catch up on, was in exhibition-preparation mode (again), had 12 two-hour lectures to research and write over the summer (and which I 'delivered' in packed teaching schedule of Autumn term.) Blame Mr Sphinx's success in roping me into more DIY than I wanted to do for lack of finishing in Christmas hols. (I took the computer, I calculated three days per scene…) Gargantuan thanks to every one of you who has emailed and reviewed me encouragement - without you, chapter 4 would not have been written. Thanks especially to everyone who sent me comments (JL Matthews, Warrego, Paula Ingram, Leyselle - I hope I haven't missed anyone) and to Angel of the North for doing a rapid and ruthless Beta of the text mere weeks away from her Finals. Both JLM and AotN persuaded me that I really could, even should, stop the chapter before the still-to-be-finished Haircut.
Having failed to post promised 'something' way back in January, I've divided one chapter into two. There are a number of balls cast here that will now only hit their targets in the next half-chapter, 'And Dumps Him at the Hill of Difficulty'. (This lack of tying up of certain threads, to change the metaphor, is annoying me. I had plans for the line from David Hare.) Chapter 5 will take us through the summer up to Hermione's early return to Hogwarts, 'Where Piety Discourses Him'.
I wish I could tell you that this was worth the wait, but the blasted thing is less than the sum of its wayward parts, and no better for having taken even longer than the others. "More labour than elegance", as Dr Johnson said.
References: The shameless lift of the last line of David Hare's play (later film) Plenty: 'There will be days and days and days like this.' Some Rupert Brook echoes and a twisted version of Walter Benjamin's description of the Angel of History. A weeny quotation from Sally Potter's film The Tango Lesson - an exchange about floorboards and dry rot rather than Snape's state of mind! Molly is trying very hard to be literature's most alluring Housewife, Mrs Ramsay. Hermione's notes became Bridget Jones actually thinking. The anecdote about Percy was sparked off by Cairnsy's story at ff.net Where Will the Children Play? (I've changed it to a minor incident, so as not to spoil the story for you. All three parts, not just Percy's, recommended.) The opening image of Salomé and Snape is from one of my favourite posters: the English National Opera's 1989 staging of The Magic Flute. I can't remember if it was Harold Wilson or someone else who said 'a week is a long time in politics'.
Two reminders: Maureen O'Reilly is the maiden name I gave Molly Weasley in Chapter One, and the canon time-line's been shifted a year (so that I could have the millennium when the characters need it.) Chapter three ended with Severus getting Salomé to hypnotise him into a sleep from which he didn't want to wake.
One of Christian's earliest obstacles, as you now all know, is the Slough of Despond. He flounders in it until the figure 'Help' comes and rescues him. Quite a few 'Helps' stroll along here (and in the next chapter) as it happens. None of them came to the writer's rescue when she got mired in a mass of back-stories.
I sweated blood for this; Even if it wasn't worth it, please review. Ask questions, make observations, bring in the stuff you know…
Or just leave one or two words to let me know you read it and want it continued.
Next chapter - should not take a year; its scenes are a bit clearer in my mind. Realistically - I have two exhibitions whose openings coincide mid to late June, so I'm out of action until after then. Nothing else lined up after that apart from promise to self to create RL art website with help of Mr Sphinx. (Typical artists' calendar.) So, I should be writing chapter 5 in July and August - if Book 5 doesn't have some terrible effect on it.
Footnotes for Fellow Obsessives
I: The Magic Flute poster was a close-up monochrome photograph of a man looking up at a single light bulb but blindfolded by the body of a snake. It summed up the opera's Enlightenment tensions between reason and passion brilliantly. (Shame about the production, which was very conservative - firmly on Sarastro's side rather than the Queen of the Night's.)
II: 'The Sniper': George Weasley's moniker for Snape in Morrighan's fic "George Weasley, Shadow Man". Angel of the North argues Molly wouldn't use the term, but I can imagine her adopting some Fred and George slang as ammunition.
III: Female ministers of magic: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them mentions a female chief of the Wizard's Council, whereas the canon ministry seems to have witches in secondary positions (and male idiots like Ludo Bagman in a top job!)
IV: Rowan's Tenpin Bowl still exists, but I've never been there. I was a Sarf Lundenner myself. It's opening hours are 10 am round the clock to 4am. Thanks to J L Matthews for the low-down on the true horrors of such places...
V: Socialist Workers Party - small political party well to the left of the mainstream Labour Party, but not as far-left as the Workers Revolutionary Party. Britain's voting system, however, gives very little leverage to any group that isn't fairly close to the political centre. Our Socialist and Communist Parties are taken less seriously than their equivalents on the continent, who do actually get parliamentary seats. The current conservative party, pushed way over to the Right by Thatcher, hasn't clawed its way back and seems to have lost credibility as the government's main opposition. Especially as Tony Blair behaves like the old One Nation Tories (mild, more or less well-meaning, paternalist Right.)
VI: Flanders and Swann: The quotation is from the recording 'At the Drop of Another Hat'; the song is called The Reluctant Cannibal. It concerns a young cannibal who, to his reactionary father's outrage, refuses to eat the Roast Leg of Insurance Salesman. ("I will never let another man pass my lips!" "Musta bin someone 'e ate.") The son's radical stance evaporates only when Dad points out it would be as stupid not to eat people as not to fight them. Flanders and Swann were a comic song-writing duo in the 1950s. Very British. The sort-of-contemporary duo 'Kit and the Widow' are modelled very closely on them.
VII: "Estuary" is an English accent, named after the area around the mouth of the Thames. It is pitched half-way between cockney and Received Pronunciation, and is de rigeur for anyone who wants to conceal their class origins, whether they reinvent themselves 'upwards' or 'downwards'. It came to the fore during the Yuppie 1980s, especially among trendy media types. Socially and politically equalising, it is, unfortunately, not particularly distinctive or musical compared to the accents of Northern England, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland).
VIII: Glasgow is in Scotland. Its most famous slum tenement area is/was "The Gorbals". Many of the tenement blocks were torn down and replaced by large estates of high rise blocks, amongst which is Castlemilk. Glasgow was named City of Culture in the 1990s. It is famous for the art nouveau designer Charles Rennie Macintosh (the School of Art was designed by him, and it's lovely). It has its posh districts and its artists and its yuppies too - and one of Britain's very best theatre companies (in the Gorbals), the Glasgow Citizens Theatre.
Blaise repressed his accent very early in his Hogwarts career. His father is a Squib, with touch and go associations with his sorceror relatives; his mother is Muggle. They are not 'natives' of the Gorbals - declassé (victims of negative equity in the Thatcher years) rather than working class proper.
IX: New historicism: A branch of literary criticism that has interested some historians. It combines post-structuralist theories with a more grounded attention to historical context and non-literary texts of the same epoch. It departs from both the 'great individual author' approach to literature and the 'significant individuals' explanation of history. Classic examples are Stephen Greenblatt's 'Fashioning the Subject', Jonathan Dollimore's 'Radical Tragedy' and Catherin Belsey's 'The Subject of Tragedy'. Christopher Hill's books on 17th century revolutionaries aren't NH, but something of a precursor in combining literature and history. I imagine Blaise is, in secret, a very advanced, demanding student of Muggle Studies.
X: Ice Cream wars: Actually not that funny. Rival owners of ice cream vans in vendettas over business territory. There were some deaths. Google has details.
XI: Blaise's story was planned ages ago. There are, however, similarities between it and the trapping of Slytherin students in a time warp in Anna's "Roman Holiday", which I read a few months ago. KazVL's male Blaise from a recent chapter of "Falling Further In" is also a 'subtle and intelligent 'good Slytherin'. Have read far too many Snape-Hermiones for my own good…The recruiting details owe a lot to Barb of "The Triangle of Prophecy' trilogy.
XI: Walter Benjamin's line has been borrowed: "The Angel of History rushes backwards into the future."