| Palimpsest |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|10:04 am] |
"D, I have a short story to write, and I can't think of what to write it about," Cat said.
"You should write it about.. beef.... .. stew. No! Uh.. um.. you should write it about.. a city that lives on people's skins." Sometimes she asks me for ideas, and sometimes my babble helps me spark them. More frequently, carrots and potatoes and beef in a slow cooker are involved.
But she wrote it. Palimpsest: the short story. (Go read it. It will give you a small glimpse of what the book is about). I was stunned. Flabbergasted. It hit a nerve, a cord of nerves, it touched on something about my life, about our lives.
Some time later, she was searching for novel ideas, and thought, hey, I have this bigger story of Palimpsest waiting to get out, why don't I go with that. To say that I was thrilled would be a pale understatement.
(Incidentally, what is your favorite short story-to-novel adapation? Mine would be.. well, Palimpsest, hands down. (It's currently one of my two favorite books of all time.) But before that? I would have to say Nightfall, by Asimov. Which... it wasn't /that/ great, but I'm having trouble thinking of any others. What's yours?)
Many months passed, Cat wrote like a thing possessed (a usual state for her). Palimpsest: the novel was ready. I... argh, where do I even begin. I am besotted with this book. The reading of it has made me cry in several places, and reader, let me tell you, this is NOT a usual occurrence for me (although it seems to be more frequent for Cat's books).
Why? I think the answer is very intimate and individual to each person who reads it. The book is.. full of sex, yes. It's full of longing and want, so strong it moves mountains and rends lives. It's full of a thing that I have been doing all my life, a search for place and for connection and something magic and intoxicating, the chase of a place and state only glimpsed of in dreams. Except, it's not just mere dream chasing -- the magnitude of the want, of the sacrifices, of the madness, of the plain hard work makes it... makes it real, sanctifies it, transmutes it in an act of tearful, bloody alchemy. I am not alone in this; I have seen the result of this book in the eyes of the people who have read it.
Let me put it another way. I had never wanted to get a tattoo. It was always one of those things that I said "no thank you, not for me, not my style, not this lifetime". But I read this book, and I said, I want a mark of this book upon my skin. And so I did. I wear it on my person right now; you've probably seen it already, and if not, ask me in person when you see me, I'll show it to you.
I can rave about this book for a lifetime. I probably will. It comes out on Feb 24th. For a ridiculously cheap price of under $12, I don't even know how they do that. Preorder it. Read it. If it speaks to you, if it touches something in you, I want to know what it is. I want to find some way to cut through the usual awkward distance and social situations, and hear how it made you feel.
Watch the trailer (full-size it). Cat made it herself; she put an insane amount of work into it. Also, there's more to it. It's not quite an ARG, more like a.. distributed interactive story. (I helped out with that, so have many many people).
(Is not S.J. Tucker's music fucking amazing? There is MORE to it, more of where that came from, even more beautiful and scary.) |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
justbeast's journal
