Monthly Archives: March 2017

There’s a great line in THE DROWSY CHAPERONE where the protagonist, who adores the absurd, inane 1920s musical The Drowsy Chaperone, comments that we can’t judge it the way we would most plays because it’s like porn. In porn, character and plot are simply bridges to get us between sex scenes; in older musicals, they’re bridges between musical numbers.

I think that can apply to fiction too. Kathleen Woodwiss’s Shanna, according to some of my female friends, is a scorching hot romance (or at least it was scorching when it came out in 1977) — the friends who spoke of it didn’t talk about the characters or the romance, they talked about the “screw parts” (but according to friends whose judgment I trust, it’s a traditional romance with sex, not erotica or porn). The description also fits the kind of story where the plot and characters are just setting up the ending twist. In many slasher films, most of the film is just a bridge to get from one killing to the next. More generally any story where the hook is the big set-pieces — battles, monsters, murders — could fall into this category.

Focusing on key scenes doesn’t necessarily make a book fit into this porn analogy. The first  slasher film, Halloween, has more to it than just the killings. A romance can have intense sex scenes and still be intensely readable in-between them. A book or movie with big, spectacular set-pieces can still keep me glued to the page the rest of the time as well.

Attitude makes a difference too. There are lots of books with long boring stretches, but where the author clearly cares about what’s going on — they just didn’t write it very well. The Wise Man’s Fear had long tedious stretches (YMMV) but Rothfuss clearly meant them to be interesting, not just filling pages.

Porn-equivalent stories can sell, if the sex scenes or the set pieces or whatever are good enough, but I don’t think it usually leads to quality. Lots of the slashers churned out in Halloween‘s wake got butts in theater seats, but they were crap. Nightmare on Elm Street outshines the subsequent films in the series because it has good characters I cared about, it’s not just bridging between Freddy’s reality-warping murders. As I noted in the twist ending blog post, stories that are all about the ending shocker never work for me. I’ve seen porn that actually had good character arcs between the sex scenes, and it’s much more interesting (at least to me) than porn without. Musicals like the ones The Drowsy Chaperone satirizes have gone out of fashion (Drowsy Chaperone itself is meta and parodic, so not in this category) in favor of ones where what’s between the musical numbers does matter.

None of which says set pieces or high points are bad things. They’re not, obviously. But I know I’d prefer my readers be glued to the pages between the big scenes because they like the pages, not because they’re waiting to see when things will get interesting again.

THE ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE by Salman Rushdie (jacket design by Gabrielle Bordwin, images by various creators, all rights to current holder) is a book I’d really like to like. But even though I gave it three stars on Goodreads right after finishing it, I’m feeling much less enthused a day later.

The framing sequence that opens the book is great. Mogor, a thief/murderer/con-man from Europe, shows up in the court of the Mughal Empire of India around 1600. He poses as a British ambassador and despite the Emperor Akbar’s suspicions, pulls it off. It doesn’t hurt that Akbar gets an immediate bromance for the rogue. They’re strong characters, there’s a lot of tension (if Mogor doesn’t pull it off, he’s dead) and Rushdie really writes beautifully. But it turns out there’s a twist: Mogor claims that he’s kin to Akbar by the enchantress of the title, Qara Koz, a captured princess who married Mogor’s father.

And then we jump back in time for the story of said father (alleged father—Akbar doubts this for various reasons) in Florence decades ago, along with best friend Nico Macchiavelli. While it was fun at first, when it became obvious we weren’t going back to India immediately, the story dragged. It’s the same problem I had with Black Wolves, snatching away the characters I’m interested in and replacing them with a less interesting crop. Much of the story is told at a distance, like someone remembering family history, which makes it hard to be engaged. And there’s none of the tension Mogor’s imposture generates, again partly because of the distance.

Then there’s the sexism. Pretty much every woman in the book is either a wife or a hooker (including one hooker with a heart of gold who generously gives Mogor the magic potion that helps him succeed at court). While Mogor refers to Queen Elizabeth I, women only seem to exist in relation to the men, and they’re constantly backstabbing and scheming and glaring jealously at each other over men. Because what else do they have?

This is also a very male gaze-y book, though in an unusual way. A running theme in the book is the way men bind themselves to women by the fantasies they impose on them (my interpretation, anyway). Akbar’s favorite wife Jodha is a fantasy he longed for so much she became real. Qara Koz seems to exercise a similar magic on the men of Florence — and Mogor’s stories about her and the enchantment they generate, make her appear at Akbar’s court, displacing Jodha in Akbar’s heart. Women don’t spin a web to trap men, men spin it for themselves.

It’s a good idea, but both James Branch Cabell and Carly Simon (in Take Me As I Am) have tackled it to much better effect. And in Enchantress it strips away even the power of beautiful women — ultimately it’s not even their own power. Jodha loses her grip on the emperor and fades away. Qara Koz, for all that she’s the title character, is passed as a spoil of war from one leader to another. Mogor’s father has mindwiped one woman, stripping away her memories so that the only thing in her brain is the epic of his personal adventures. Macchiavelli tries to cure her so that he can screw her, and only drives her to her death.

The good parts are good enough I wish I liked the book. But I don’t.