tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post6264668289245085157..comments2024-03-28T07:13:10.797+00:00Comments on TONE DEAF: Memento MoriRoderick Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-75558047929579001962016-10-22T11:45:35.718+01:002016-10-22T11:45:35.718+01:00Are you paying more than $5 / pack of cigs? I buy ...Are you paying <b>more than $5 / pack of cigs?</b> I buy high quality cigarettes from <b><a href="http://cigarettes.syntaxlinks.com/r/DutyFreeDepot" rel="nofollow">Duty Free Depot</a></b> and I save over <b>60%</b>.Bloggerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07287821785570247118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-20255304623739691112015-03-12T07:33:16.962+00:002015-03-12T07:33:16.962+00:00Blonde Two: Redeeming features. Don't forget, ...Blonde Two: Redeeming features. Don't forget, his choice of wife was just as mistaken as Megan's choice of husband and Megan acknowledges this.<br /><br />Megan and the mistress. Given Megan's Calvary with the queue, might she find temporary comfort in the company of a woman, however weird this might seem in the circumstances? The suggestion is inevitably ambiguous.<br /><br />Thanks for "melodic". In some senses there is little difference between prose and verse. When prose works the association of sentences is usually rhythmic: short, short, long, that sort of thing.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-15560336443877659822015-03-11T19:07:50.447+00:002015-03-11T19:07:50.447+00:00I wonder if she (the widow) felt sorry for the mis...I wonder if she (the widow) felt sorry for the mistress. It didn't sound as thought the deceased possessed much in the way of redeeming features.<br /><br />If I was asked to describe the writing here, I would use the word, 'melodic'. The sounds and statements rise and fall like a song. An excellent read, thank you.Blonde Twohttp://twoblondeswalking.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-6215908657128942462015-03-11T16:07:27.126+00:002015-03-11T16:07:27.126+00:00Lucy: But was Megan intelligent? I didn't make...Lucy: But was Megan intelligent? I didn't make this clear one way or the other (quite by accident) and when it was raised as an issue I decided it was better to leave things vague.<br /><br />Might she have developed strategies? Possibly - the implications are that she is used to the company of salesmen and has learned to dislike them. However, at her husband's funeral she cannot escape them and for me, that seemed like a well-lit stage. From their point of view her prettiness and vulnerability make her doubly desirable as well as easy meat; embraces and kisses are legitimate and therefore it's only a matter of pushing the limits.<br /><br />Is Megan's reaction towards the mistress likely? To some extent this is the crux. Having been assaulted by men, might Megan be inclined to reflect on what she shared with the mistress, even though there was a significant time difference.<br /><br />I worried overnight about this story. The motives of men who write about cruelty to women are often called into question: are they relishing what they have written? In my heart of hearts I knew this wasn't the case but readers are entitled to be dubious. However your line "referring to her as if she was a real person" is a great comfort.<br /><br />MikeM: Alas, the threat of incarceration doesn't seem to work. The sort of men who commit these sort of crimes seem to be incapable of appreciating cause and effect.<br /><br />The beginning. The main changes in the "dialogue" section consists of adding a number of humdrum details.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-26337793092724983272015-03-11T12:54:35.737+00:002015-03-11T12:54:35.737+00:00Oh and I approve the changes at to beginning, espe...Oh and I approve the changes at to beginning, especially "stroked" over "fingered".mike Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-54410725431895595362015-03-11T12:52:47.067+00:002015-03-11T12:52:47.067+00:00I think Lucy's opinion: "There's a se...I think Lucy's opinion: "There's a sense that dignity consists of suffering it discreetly rather than making a visible move to repel it." applies even more to men who are under attack (shall we say with a skillet? This was a weekly source of humor in an American comic strip some years ago). A sense of dignity AND fear perhaps, as grasping at the wrist that wields the skillet will likely result in incarceration. mike Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-88135974101913063982015-03-11T10:53:53.630+00:002015-03-11T10:53:53.630+00:00We always tend to wonder why apparently intelligen...We always tend to wonder why apparently intelligent women put up with abuse though, as though they ought to know better, it's perhaps another subtle way of shifting the blame to the victim. There's a sense that dignity consists of suffering it discreetly rather than making a visible move to repel it. And I suppose her family's coldness and lack of support offer a clue about her isolation and apparent lack of self-respect, her dislike of seeking help. <br /><br />Yet it still seemed to me that if she knew what that world and those men were like and disliked it perhaps she might have developed a few strategies for survival and self-protection? But the fact that I'm referring to her as if she was a real person we know of says much for what you've achieved!<br /><br />I suppose my naive incredulity about the men's behaviour is not that it isn't believable, but that it could happen at a funeral, and that the tentative throat clearing of the funeral director was her only source of defence or the only signal of its inappropriateness. But I dare say you're right, it could happen and real life is doubtless much worse still.<br /><br />As to the mistress, what you see of her is in fact quite sympathetic, isn't it? She seems to me the only really kind person there, apart from the funeral director who to some extent enabling the abuse while barely limiting it, and Emily, who seems to be too much at a distance to be much help. The husband's choice of her is a good twist, casting a doubt on easy assumptions about his character. I wonder if he'd have taken her on full-time after the collapse of his marriage to Megan that would have taken place within a year or two if he hadn't smashed himself to smithereens?Lucyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764296105901909328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-16047963978506179262015-03-11T07:06:45.656+00:002015-03-11T07:06:45.656+00:00Lucy: Your response much appreciated since this is...Lucy: Your response much appreciated since this is deliberately not a pleasant story and it may have made you wonder whether or not I'd flipped my lid.<br /><br />In fact, Lucas's speculation (see below) does me a great good service by widening the story's scope; what started out as my cry of feminist despair can also, opportunistically, be taken to include domestic violence. What depresses me is not so much that violence against women (as wives and mothers) happens routinely, but that a medieval attitiude continues to prevail in jokes, pub talk and in male behaviour en masse. As if certain men - frequently in large numbers - believe themselves to be predisposed towards this fearful dominance.<br /><br />I wanted also to show that things do not stop short with brutal acts. Megan's family in effect blame her for having married a wrong-un.<br /><br />As to believability it wasn't (as I recall) a priority when I wrote the story. Whatever distortions I came up with are as nothing compared with what happens in real life. However, this is fiction and I didn't set out to write a social tract. I needed to catch readers' eyes, to "entertain" them somewhat. So I am glad that the story had some kind of appeal, however horrible.<br /><br />Lucas: As I say in my response to Lucy, I am entirely grateful for your suggestion that includes domestic violence as part of the "target". You've helped me make the story more universal.<br /><br />I'm assuming you read the second version in which I concentrated on making the initial "counterpoint" passage easier to understand. Poor MikeM read the first version and was left confused; I hadn't realised all the technical requirements. Since the fragmented structure is hard to read as a continuum, what is said has to be much simpler than I'd allowed. What you read is more complete, more direct, than the earlier attempt.<br /><br />As to why Megan didn't struggle harder I have no defence. It simply wasn't part of the story and this raises another point. How intelligent is Megan? Too intelligent and your point is emphasised; less intelligent and one is inclined to wonder if her objectivity is credible.<br /><br />But then no one says that fiction is easy.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-63057672962443564182015-03-10T21:08:55.165+00:002015-03-10T21:08:55.165+00:00I especially like the beginning of this story with...I especially like the beginning of this story with Megan's thoughts juxtaposed against the speechifying friend of the deceased. The story is dramatized immediately which captures the situation.<br />What then unfolds is indeed shocking yet believable, when you consider the unbelievable facts of domestic and online abuse of women. These gross acts at the funeral are possibly the thin end of the wedge. The final irony of the taxi shared with the mistress from Newcastle leaves the reader nicely hanging over the precipice of Megan's unredeemable bad choice of partner. The story pulls no punches with regard to the harassment of Megan by a gang of bad types yet leaves us wondering why she did not fight harder both while he was still alive and at the funeral to stay afloat as a free spirit.<br />Perhaps this is exactly the point.Lucashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07642126053527835870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-84265130323735625602015-03-10T11:20:44.640+00:002015-03-10T11:20:44.640+00:00I suppose Gothic rather like those Weird Tales typ...I suppose Gothic rather like those Weird Tales type stories about the man who claws his way out of his coffin at the mortuary and returns home, looks through the window and sees his wife in a clinch with his best friend. <br /><br />It is indeed bleak and horrible; I can't quite believe in it either, that she was so much at their mercy and unable to protect herself (or even resist the tongue!), that her own family were so cold and hostile even though they had bothered to turn up, that the only blessing she was counting at the end was being spared Christmas dinner (presumably Mother is his mother?). Oddly I didn't find the mistress in the car bit so hard to credit, though wondered why she'd not noticed her before, I suppose she was so busy being mauled!<br /><br />And yet it there is a point in its exaggerated grotesqueness, Gothic in the sense of larger than life? Realism isn't the only value (and anyway, what do I know of the world, perhaps it's not so unlikely, and there's no indication of the period it's taking place...) <br /><br />And once I started I couldn't stop reading, and it was over before I knew it, even though I find the long thin blog format, which works fine with your 300 word bites, quite difficult for stories. My favourite line was 'she’d mistaken his alertness for intelligence', that I can believe, and recognise.Lucyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09764296105901909328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-39092593371166094742015-03-08T16:21:37.871+00:002015-03-08T16:21:37.871+00:00Sir Hugh: Your conclusion is unexceptional, as wa...Sir Hugh: Your conclusion is unexceptional, as was the conclusion to the Peter Sellers monologue. In the latter the humour lay not in what happened but in the cruelly detached, aristocratic way it was expressed "With a low moan the unhappy wretch fell back, etc, etc."<br /><br />As I explain to MikeM, I had different aims.<br /><br />MikeM: Although you appear to have arrived at the piece's meaning by the back-door (perhaps unaware that you had in fact arrived) you have made my point. This is an RR rarity and the key lies in the short story's title (not the heading for the post). I prefer to read and write fiction that is based on aspects of ordinary life. Thus I am not a candidate for stories about dreams, generic horror, fantasy, imaginary worlds, drug-taking, many but not all forms of sci-fi, the morality of religions (even though I am fascinated by their practice), badly documented passages of history, anthropomorphism, mental illness, etc.<br /><br />I am however passionately concerned about the inequalities visited upon women by societies like yours and mine that purport to be civilised. Just for once I thought I'd illustrate my sympathies by adapting the Gothic genre. Since I don't read much Gothic material the chances are this one failed through lack of familiarity. However I am sufficiently satisfied by your choice of adjectives (sordid, gruesome, macabre) to tell myself I got part of the way there.<br /><br />Unbelievable or not. I am not sure about this. In my experience Gothic-ism proceeds by piling one stretched detail on top of another. The logical result of Megan finding herself in the company of her husband's mistress would be for her to protest. Instead, she does something else which may or may not be outrageous. Blame my amateurism.<br /><br />Puzzling opening. This wasn't wilful; I wanted to offer two diametrically opposed views about the same person in as few words as possible. Some answers are to be found in the later exchanges, others by reading the more conventional part of the story. More difficult than it looks but I wanted to have a go.Roderick Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16828395545197001637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-37454165696106333902015-03-08T11:47:13.465+00:002015-03-08T11:47:13.465+00:00I've read once too. As usual the puzzling open...I've read once too. As usual the puzzling opening coalesces into a broad picture, begging for a re-read. And as always some of this has to do with the dialect. First impression was from the photo, portraying the downside of mid or rear engined cars. A sordid portrayal of salesmen, groping and tonguing at a funeral, turns from gruesome to macabre when the mistress hitches a ride. Not quite unbelievable.mike Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6644918126688721788.post-5373819087268681662015-03-08T09:07:54.505+00:002015-03-08T09:07:54.505+00:00Read through once, may comment again more construc...Read through once, may comment again more constructively after another read, but can't help recording initial thought from a Peter Sellers cameo - it applied to the one who died for PS but here it is good for her: "A merciful release".Sir Hughhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17908756392825206914noreply@blogger.com