Swordspoint -- Richard, Alec, manhood, choices... lots of introspection

[rm]

The first time I read Swordspoint, I lived on Lexington Avenue in a very tiny apartment in a very grand building that had once housed some foundation or other. It was at baldanders recommendation. I had just finished the first four Harry Potter books, and I was obsessed, obsessed, and I whined to Soren that nothing else seemed capable of holding my attention. He recommended Swordspoint and noted that he thought I was a lot like Alec.

He certainly wasn't wrong, especially then. I've never been one for self-injury in all of the most common senses of it (I was never a cutter, nor did I ever put my fist through a window or wall), and it's something I can actually say I no longer engage in, but I'd lash out at myself in weird ways to make other people off balance or miserable or because I was bored or stupid or just needed to clear my head a lot. And I was smart, like Alec, and had a difficult relationship both with family and possessions, and never seemed to be living amongst my own kind no matter what I did. Of course, dark hair and angular, bad temper. It was most likely the only book I could have read then.

On the reread, which I just finished, I was struck by how deeply I identified with Richard this time, his acts of necessity, the reluctant patience of his love, the discomfort he has with his adjacencies (academic and nobility) because eventhough he can keep up, he feels it's irrelevant in light of his lack of credentials, and of course, the way certain things need to be made clear. He accepts the poor consequences of his pride with a sort of dignity I should at least like to have about the character flaws I don't seem able to do much about. It surprised me.

One of the truly masterful things about Swordspoint is the nuances in Alec's and Richard's relationship that go on below all the ways in which it's unhealty (secrets, lack of communication, codependence, enabling, etc etc etc). Its power dynamic is all over the place in a way that a lot of writers (fannish and orig fic) could really really learn from. No one is anything all the time, though we may wish it. The ebb and flow of their intimacies, the way specificity is juxtaposed with extreme vaguesness, the fact that whoever is taller doesn't decide the power dynamic (please, all fanfic writer's take heed -- the short guy is not always the bottom all the time, OMG, stop it!), etc etc etc.

Ah, I had wanted to write about this eloquently, but it's clearly not in me right now.

So just two more things of note then:

1. The compare and contrast on this book to Melusine is amazingly useful. I'll do more of that at themollyhouse, but here I wil just note -- We are given on and off glimmers of Alec's fear of physical intimacy and sex, but despite being "unmanly" it never seems false or gratuitous or annoying, despite the fact we also never get an explanation for it. Yet this issue is a big mess in Melusine. Is the reason it works with Alec simply because he's easier to like or because we learn more about him before this starts to show up (since it's hardly a plot point)? The difference is interesting.

2. As connected as I felt to Richard, as much as reading about Alec this time was with this strange removed fondness, every word about his bones, wrists in particular, and what they felt like in Richard's hands, had such a specificity to it -- my wrists aren't even five inches around and people think they are proof of all sorts of things (breeding, diseases I do and don't have, how I like to fuck, grace, etc.), so really very few people get to touch them at all. With most who aren't allowed, I take it as an insult that I know that in most cases isn't intended (when it is, people always make it clear, so when sloppy people in dance class catch me by the wrist instead of the hand, I grit my teeth and slide things into a better form as best I can). The description of the way Alec's bones there can't help by grind together everytime he's being horrid and Richard has to grab him too tightly made me smile though, the idea of gestures shared across worlds real and not.

It's a strange book, which actually, also makes me think of the last ten mintues I caught tonight of Friday Night Lights, which lawnrrd has repeatedly said is the best thng he's ever seen about American manhood.

One of the best, and most calculated, things about my life is that when it comes to my nature (as opposed to my ambitions), I have no expectations at which I can really fail -- when I fail to be a man about something, much as I hate it, well, I am a woman, afterall. And when I fail at that -- being pretty and smelling nice and all grace, well, I was raised with very specific instructions on being a lady, but I also knew from the beginning I wasn't one of those either -- the expectations were low.

Through quite the series of accidents and will I have such terrible and delightful freedom, and I really have to stop being up other people's asses because they don't. Because I can say everything is a choice all day long, but we are not always so capable of choosing. I was certainly late to the party myself. Some of us do come into it later than others, sometimes the choices of our history and of the parts of our history and selves that were never in our hands are so massive, we just come to things with different options, not smaller but just with unlikelier tools. I'm so willfull -- I want everyone to be -- that I am at times ungenerous with people in ways that aren't really fair, even if it comes from a truly gracious notion that anyone can do anything. I'm fiercely judgemental, and I probably do not fauly myself for it enough, but with the people I care about it almost always comes out of the fact that I think they could not only be more ferocious, but utterly deserve all the great fruits of that ferocity.

Aie. Richard and Alec. *sigh*. I've one of the sequels here too, thanks to hofnarr, but I think I will take a break before it, or I'll be so down the well with these boys, I'll be a bit lost to anything else.

Good heavens, it took me 40 minutes to write this post.

Comments

[fuyukodachi.livejournal.com]

I have some minor deformity/more than average asymmetry on the left side of my body: the bones are quite a bit larger in some places than they are on the right. The only thing that shows through normal clothing is the protruding bone on the side of the wrist. It sticks out quite a bit more than the other one. "Did you break your wrist? When did you break your wrist? You broke it, didn't you? Why won't you tell me about it? Are you embarrassed?"

Height as a correlation to dominance is currently fairly true in my life, which both amuses me and makes me feel tired. I've always hated being a cliche.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Definitely a book I should look at, I've had it recommended to me several times, but haven't read it yet. Given how much I loved Cyteen, your recommendation means it's likely one that will impress me.

I'm so willfull -- I want everyone to be -- that I am at times ungenerous with people in ways that aren't really fair, even if it comes from a truly gracious notion that anyone can do anything.

What I mean by this is different in part from what you mean, but yes! Perhaps it's being also an only child of a difficult family. So few people actually seek to live or be their dreams and that is truly sad and not something I accept easily.

[alabastard.livejournal.com]

My wrists lost tissue as a result of gymnastics overuse ... they are smaller, more bony now in comparison to my arms, which are oddly muscular in contrast to what you'd think I'd look like under clothes. I like them, the wrists.

Beautiful post, anyway, people SHOULD be more ferocious, and I am always aware of that in Myself.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

The power relationships are extraordinarily sophisticated. One thing that goes without explicit mention in the book is that Richard, the most dangerous man in Riverside, cannot frighten Alec -- well, not in his usual way -- because Alec is not afraid to die. And there is the scene in which Alec succeeds in flustering Richard, who knows how to cope with Alec's self-destruction but cannot cope when Alec wants to upset him: the only time in the book that Richard doesn't know what to do. (Though we're reminded -- as Ginny reminds Richard -- of the time in Richard's past when he did not have the imperturbable self-possession [possibly the most frightening thing about him], and killed his lover in a rage when she attacked him physically: as Alec does.) And then, when Alec succeeds in hurting Richard -- and only then -- Alec comforts him.

[lawnrrd]

I guess twice counts as "repeatedly." I'm just temporarily obsessed with it. You know how it is.

[rm.livejournal.com]

the camera works makes me crazy. It's very well done, but the "we use hand cam to provide immediacy" thing is getting waaaaaaay overdone for me.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I have this on order from Amazon, as it happens; I'm looking forward to reading it.