A Ginger Post: Part 2 May 26, 2010

You know what I just realized, sitting here writing this post at .. 10:39 pm? I still have three or four episodes of Earth 2 to watch. I bought it in September and am … slowly … working my way through it. You’d think with repeated exposure to classic Doctor Who, the series would be a breeze, but I just haven’t gotten around to finishing it.

Anyway.

Seriously – the things I watch just for the actors in them – Caroline, I am thinking about Restoration right now. And just for that:

Sometimes Gingers own bad movies ... bad horrible movies with Meg Ryan trying to put on an Irish accent ...

You’re welcome. At least RDJ isn’t looking into the camera or you’d be looking at that photo longer and remember that … disaster of a film …

Anyway, another Ginger post – short but sweet this time since there isn’t anything new to really say.

Thankfully, Viking in Love (it is KILLING me that there is a lack of an ‘A’ in front of ‘Viking’) isn’t too harsh on redheads. Breanne, our female protagonist, is of course the fiery one – but Caedmon is pretty much a walking penis (with a heart, of course) so even her temper, her strong independence, blah blah is a turn on. Oh – and so are her nipples – so many pages are devoted to her breasts and nipples it’s remarkable. I wish I had kept a tally of words in this book … 362 pages of phallus, breasts, nipples, nubs, it was like reading a porno (I promise – quotes will abound in the next post so you’ll see what I’m talking about).

But back to the red hair.

I’ve yet to get Roach’s book – as mom is helping Gram with her PT and I don’t have a key to the house to even take a walk without worrying a meth head may wander in I don’t get out much and spend most of the day reading (no, I don’t live in a bad area, there’s just a suspicious house on the corner that no one likes). But I’m continuing to note the similarities between redheads.

Again: temper. independence. no need for a man. sexuality – in Viking in Love more so.

And again: the temper is controlled. independence is maintained. they find they are in love. and they keep their sexuality (ie: screwing in a bathroom as in the previous book or screwing in the basement in this text where the CHILDREN – I kid you not – have locked them to … they use the word ‘tup’ and they do, indeed, ‘tup’).

So – simple question – why isn’t the female a brunette? A blonde? Sure, Caedmon rages about redheads once or twice – but I never stopped and thought he really hated gingers – a small dislike, mayhaps (oh, yeah, look at that – using the narrative voice there). I really hate that word … mayhaps … yuck. yech. ew.

Thing is – he just isn’t set against them. So why does Breanne have to have red hair?

I don’t expect Roach’s book to be the be all end all answer – I just want a resource with probably other resources to guide me on this matter.

The wonderful mater has mentioned taking a B&N trip this weekend so hopefully – come the next Ginger post – this book will be read (along with another I was recommended – but I’ll get to that one when I get to Structuralism later on).

I’m not copping out on this post – the lack of quotes is merely because the red hair wasn’t railed against. It was just … there. I want to know why it was there though and see if this pattern continues.

Especially in the next book – which, of course, is a secret, but I picked it out by means of it’s cover (small spoiler: there is no redhead on it).

So this doesn’t seem like a total waste – I give you more RDJ to gaze into the eyes of:

Has RDJ ever gone full ginger, man? Never go full ginger.

Like you even need a PALATE CLEANSER! CLICK ME!

Reference

Hill, Sandra. Viking in Love. New York: Avon Books, 2010.

They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit … May 21, 2010

The title of this verse is from a Robert Burns’ poem – Tam o’Shanter. If you couldn’t guess just from the one line, Burns is writing in dialect – a Scottish dialect, in fact. I had the lucky opportunity to study this poem in Scotland at St. Andrews and I will say – the best way to read this poem is to do it in your best Scottish accent – no matter how bad it is (picture me on Skype with my mom trying to). Here’s the whole stanza this verse is in so you can see:

“As Tammie glowr’d, amaz’d, and curious,

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:

The piper loud and louder blew;

The dancers quick and quicker flew;

They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,

And coost her duddies to the wark,

And linket at it in her sark!”

I copied that from my massive Norton Anthology – the whole poem is available online – just google it. For fun – you could do what I did. I had to read it in class in my normal accent, but to really understand it, you have to really work through your best fake one.

That’s dialect in poetry.

Dialect in novels is also the same way. I’m just going to name authors here since my Eliot novels are either yet to be packed in NJ or are packed away here waiting to be unpacked this weekend. So – Eliot, Dickens, Twain – the list goes on. Dialect not only creates character, it sets place, time, class – all of these things.

So why am I going on about dialect? (Right now I wish I had Eliot’s Adam Bede on hand – Adam has two ways of speaking: a way with his mother at home, and a way when he is with other people – gah! But I think dialect will come up again so I won’t go into mourning)

Mayhue’s attempt at dialect is … well, laughable really. It’s so stereotypical – throw in a few ‘yer’s ‘canna’s and ‘dinna’s and poof! Scottish dialect … not so much. One could say Robbie has an excuse, of course, if his accent slips (and I swear – that is one HUGE deus ex machina if I ever saw one – she can get away with so much having that plot point of Robbie having been in the ‘future’). But Isa doesn’t. Her words become jumbled with lots of ‘yers’ and ‘canna’s and ‘dinna’s.

Thing about dialect is … if you’re going to write in it you have to be able to mold it. It’s not like there’s a set vernacular, which seems to be Mayhue’s hangup. There’s a vernacular in her dialect – all the Scots in this book talk the same way, even if they are of different rank or class – you name it.

But again – here’s the thing – does this matter?

Certainly, in an Eliot novel it matters. In a Dickens, in a Twain – of course. But does it matter in this random book I picked up in Giant a few weeks ago, just published this year, that will probably be read in a day or two by most then forgotten about once it’s ‘used up’ so to say?

It’s things like this that get me thinking – why the heck am I bothering to talk about dialect in a book whose main audience probably doesn’t give a crap. Or they do and they don’t care that it’s contrived – they just want the ‘feel’ of the voice (I don’t even know what I mean by that).

So frustration:

That lovely .gif reminds me there’s a new Doctor Who on tomorrow – woot woot!

And talking about dialect of course bring up the whole idea of research. I thought a lot about if I was going to talk about research but I’m in the middle on the subject. So – for now – sticking to just dialect.

I think the research side would infuriate me … I’m very much into researching before I write to make sure I’m not going against the period that I think if I got into research at the moment, there’d be no stopping a rant. I think the ‘historical’ aspect of these novels should be pushed aside (not like the ginger case) but until near the end.

I want to do a little research on my own – just wait and see.

But back to dialect. If you hadn’t figured it out by now, I am a picky person. I get angry about accents in movies (I actually made up my own ‘rules’ about accents – but I won’t get into that). When I’m reading a novel, though, I like the variety. I like what you can ultimately ‘get’ from dialect.

I have a feeling, though, in this genre dialect is just a sort of extra. Oh – they’re not American! Oh – it’s pretty Scottish lads! Oh – JUST. LISTEN. TO. HIS. ACCENT.

And I think that’s the case – it’s one of those: oh, doesn’t he have a nice accent?

Rather than: what do these dialects tell us?

In a phrase: it’s just for show.

Time for a PALATE CLEANSER! CLICK ME!

Reference

Mayhue, Melissa. A Highlander’s Homecoming. New York: Pocket Books, 2010.

A Ginger Post: Part 1 May 20, 2010

I promised Paul that he would be in the first sentence of this post since he supposedly ‘gave me time to blog’ by letting me off the phone.

But I’m not going so far as dedicating this post to him – nope – this one’s for Sarah, who had to put up with my constant talk of ‘why does everyone hate gingers?’

As you can see – ginger hate is a subject that hits home with me. Because I am a ginger.

Me being a ginger very recently with Sarah

Me being a ginger again as Sarah and I attend 'Ragtime'

Me as a ginger with Val on a hill in Ireland

I'm surprised the Dalek hasn't killed me for being a ginger (in Scotland)

Meeting Mr. Bingley as a ginger (also Scotland)

I guess I should consider myself lucky that my hair tends to be on the auburn side for the most part – but looking at my graduation picture (I’m now working from a wonderful little desk my aunt set up for me – pictures to come next week once I have all of my books and such in place – but if you visit my facebook group, you can see the desk untouched) that’s some red hair. No thank you photoshop. Yay for clearing up blemishes, though.

Anyway – my intention with this post is really to have fun. It’s a ‘part 1’ meaning that I intend to write about this subject more than once and this is only the inaugural post on the subject. It’s not going to be very long – not as long as the others. But, I knew I’d be writing about it more than once when I saw the cover then read the inside summary for my next book.

Red hair is a thing. A big thing.

But is it a bad thing?

Well, in context … no. But it is annoying when your male character, in this case Robbie, repeatedly says things such as:

“Their magic was as fickle as a red-headed woman.” p.25

“Not under the same roof with that redheaded bitch his brother had married.” p.18

“Now the red-haired bitch who’d used him as a stepping stone to get to his brother had managed to bring even more trouble to the MacQuarrie Keep.” p.40

“He should have known it would be like this the minute he’d learned Isabella MacGahan was a redhead.” p.77

Not that I, ya’ know, paid any attention to remarks like this throughout the book.

When I was talking on the phone to Paul, though, I told him what I was writing my newest post about. And his reply was: You know what they say about gingers! Me, thinking I would get some good quote from him, asked what and he replied with something I’m not even going to type, so you can see this theme. Isn’t there even a hug-a-ginger day thanks to Facebook?

Anyway, what the hell does this have to do with the story?

It probably doesn’t surprise you that the person Robbie ends up falling in love with is a redhead. That’s pretty much obvious. What is important, I think, with this trait is the list of other things that come along with it.

A fiery temper.

The need to do it one’s self – a strong sense of independence, I mean.

And, of course, something very sexual. To just give you a sneak peek of the next book, this is included in the ‘summary’ (why that’s in inverted commas, I will explain next week):

“And that fiery redhead who burst into my chamber that first morning is worst of all.”

It would be a interesting thing to do to keep tally of all the heroines of these novels who end up being redheaded.

It seems, looking at some of the traits that accompany these fictional redheads, they’re traits to be contained, controlled maybe. Not in a Bella/Edward way – nor like Taming of the Shrew but in … I don’t know, a way that brings a hyperbolized redheaded character down a few notches and closer to reality.

In my experience of reading A Highlander’s Homecoming, I really only found that Isa was tolerable after Robbie made an appearance. Before that she was sort of annoying – not in an anti-feminist way, don’t get me wrong. But she was too much what you expected – all the traits above. So what does that have to do with red hair?

Tangential related story: a few years ago, can’t remember exactly when, I was looking around the reference section of Barnes and Noble, then the Fiction Anthology section – since those two sections are pretty good when you need information on canon, background on different writings, and whatnot. They, to this day, remain two of my favorite sections of the store. I had been writing for years and found it almost an inclination to make at least one of my main characters have red hair – not because I did – but because it somehow fit. Then I came across this book:

'The Roots of Desire'

At this very moment I am still kicking myself for not getting it. But, seeing as I’m writing this blog all summer – I am going to get it. And I am going to read it. This is why I said this post may not be too long.

This is something I have to acquaint myself with – do a little research on (not that I could have done it for this post – but where would the fun be to pack it all in at the beginning?). I think, really, that the subject is fascinating – but I don’t want my view on it to be uninformed – or even juvenile.

My thoughts are very simple – redhair = fiery = love interest = tamed (?)

It may not prove true for all these books – it may prove so for more than I think. I’m certainly not going to pick the books out to fit this (seriously – I plan on buying the third one at the supermarket again so the pickings are slim – I’ll graduate to B&N at some point).

So – summation I suppose – I know I wasn’t very book-specific in this post. As I said, it was more of introducing this idea of a redheaded heroine. Of course, I imagine this novel will reappear as I go on to look into this topic as it was the text that brought my attention clearly to it.

I guess I should almost thank it.

30 minutes to go (my aunt goes to bed at 11 so I have to be out of the temporary office by then). Look at that Paul – could’ve had thirty more minutes to talk – my GaGa claws type fast!

Time for a PALATE CLEANSER! CLICK ME!

Reference

Mayhue, Melissa. A Highlander’s Homecoming. New York: Pocket Books, 2010.