Shut Up and Tell Her What She Needs to Know, or What I Am Willing to Put Up With From Connie Willis

[gtrout]

Greetings from page 26, or the end of Chapter 3, of Connie Willis's new novel Blackout, which is where I closed the book when stepping off the bus to tonight's rehearsal. It's another time-travel novel 1 centered on the historians of Oxford University, who -- because the laws of time travel as they are understood prevent pretty much anything else

Comments

[annafdd]

The novel about the Titanic was also a lot like that. I wanted to strangle her, badly.

The thing is, when writing short fiction Connie Willis doesn't need to go through this device. And when she does, it's a lot cleverer, as for example in Even the Queen, where it closes the comedy with a suitable punchline without hogging all the plot to itself (in fact, in that story the plot happens in the background when you aren't looking).

Of course A Message From the Clearys is also about failed communication, but there is a much better reason for that.

(On the topic of failed communication, I love Connie Willis both as a writer and as a person, and I will always go to a panel she's on, but if she had sent a copy of the draft to any number of willing English fans a lot of the topography and history of London wouldn't be so, er, diverging from this universe,or so they tell me.)

[gtrout]

Right! I remembered Passage as I wrote this, and how frustrated I was by the missed-connections thing then. I'm kind of worried. It's always weird when you realize that an author you LOVE suddenly doesn't pack the same punch for you anymore.

But that's an excellent point about her short fiction, and I know that I've not read a number of her short stories. So if all else fails I'll stick to that in the future. Thanks.

[ext_194791]

Her short story "All Seated On the Ground" has both failed communication with aliens and with humans! a twofer!

[apintrix]

Interesting note about the telephone...

I found Blackout almost unforgivably frustrating throughout, btw. So... you might be in for that, too. I really hope that Part II delivers.

[gtrout]

Oh dear. Yeah, as I wrote this I realized that as much as I love Willis's work my tolerance for this particular tic may be at an end. Anna's comment above may keep me focused on her short stuff after this if Blackout makes me crazy.

Also, Blackout is a very heavy book for throwing across the room. Worrisome.

[jenwrites]

There's even some of it in her wrenching debut novel Doomsday Book: somebody knows what's going on, and if only he could just relay it to the right person the book would be a hell of a lot shorter and less eventful.

I'm currently reading this book for the first time, and man, is it pissing me off. If this is something she does often, then I may not read anything of hers again. I don't recall it happening in Bellwether (the only other book of hers I've read), but maybe it was just less egregious there.

[gtrout]

Perhaps I made the Bellwether part up, then; I read it a looong time ago. I'm not sure why I've developed a stronger allergic response this time around, but it's upsetting to think I may have lost the ability to enjoy her long-form stuff. We'll find out, I guess.

I definitely had you in mind while writing this post.

[ext_194791]

The failed communication trope may not happen in Bellwether but the general Willis trope does of which failed communication is a subtrope. That is, in nearly every Connie Willis tale of any length, you have a bunch of dumb NPCs who just get in the way, don't listen, ignore important situations and messages, and, by focusing on their one-note motivations/agendas, just constantly get in the way of the hero/heroine. If there are two people who have any metacognition at all, they are going to fall in love by the end of the story. Her short story "Spice Pogrom" is in my mind the perfect example of this.

It's like a sitcom.

[rachelmanija]

Her short stories are excellent, especially the earlier ones collected in Fire Watch and Impossible Things. I darkly suspect that she does this in novels because she doesn't know what else to do with all those extra pages.

[coyotegoth]

Have you ever read her novel Passage? It's been eyeing me from my bookcase for a while, and I'm on the fence about it.