I found some interesting links that some of you might want to read. They're from a seminar series about JSAMN. The link is: http://crookedtimber.org/category/susanna-clarke-seminar/
Here's one on the lady magician theory: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/11/29/who-is-the-narrator-of-jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-and-where-are-the-lady-magicians/#more-4076 written by Belle Waring
There's also one specifically posted by Clarke where she answers a good number of very interesting questions: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/11/29/women-and-men-servants-and-masters-england-and-the-english/#more-4074
My favorite part is when she says this on being the author:
The author has left the building. She left when the book was finished. I’m just the person who remains now she is gone. I may be able to help you because I seem to have a pile of her memories over here—also lots of her notes and stuff. But, while some of the memories are crystal sharp, others are fuzzy and quite a lot are missing. Ditto the notes and stuff. As for what she intended by writing this or that, in many cases she wouldn’t have been able to answer anyway. She never gave it any thought. I’ll do my best to reconstruct what I can. In fact I shall pretend I’m her, by saying “I” and “me”.
Have fun!
About Me
- Andy Duncan
- I'm a professor of English at Frostburg State University in the western Maryland mountains; a fiction writer whose honors include a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and three World Fantasy Awards; a journalist since age 17; and a lifelong collector of Forteana.
2 comments:
I like the abbreviation JS&MN it makes things so much easier. As for Clark's post, I think I may be confused. She mentions that JS&MN (it has so many purposes) actually do succeed in bringing back magic to include. Did I misunderstand the prophecy saying they would fail?
Everyone interested in this novel, and certainly everyone in this class hoping to write papers about this novel, can benefit from these excellent essays for which Renee has provided URLs. Start with the Clarke essay, her fullest "statement" that I know of to date, and a gold mine of paper-writing inspiration. For example:
"I’m glad Belle likes the lady in the red velvet dress (Miss Redruth) who appears at the end. I don’t believe anyone has yet recognised her and her siblings. They have a model."
" One thing that magic isn’t, is the atom bomb. Once the atom bomb has been invented, it is the property of governments -- its use is (more or less) controlled by politicians, generals, possibly terrorists. But magic is in the hands of the magician or fairy -- it grants considerable power to the person doing it. Understandably this makes governments nervous."
"English magic now belongs to Englishmen and women and no longer to any particular class or gender. Henry Farrell finds that JS&MN is about what it means to be English. I just want to give that statement a little nudge and say it’s about what England means -- the hills and the trees, the rain and the stones. By the end of the book I wanted to give the landscape a voice, rather than the underdogs of society."
For more on this last point, see John Clute's fascinating review of the novel here, in which he writes that Clarke's theme is England itself and its relationship to the fantastic -- which is also the theme, Clute argues, of "almost every English fantasy of merit published since 1926, including the central works of J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White, C.S. Lewis, Mervyn Peake, Alan Garner, Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, Philip Pullman and, for that matter, Neil Gaiman."
Post a Comment