square-riggers and vampires

Have arrived home from our Sunday outing, just as a high white overcast has drawn itself like a screen across the sky.

Morning notes: A History of Private Life.

Kimmie and I wanted to see the tall ships that have come into town for a few days, so we drove over to Stanley Park, in hope of parking there so we could walk to English Bay. No dice--it was after noon and there was no parking. In the heat of the summer sun we prowled through the park and through the tree-shaded sidestreets of the West End, where almost all parking is strictly for those with local permits. After about 40 minutes of driving around, we parked up on Hornby Street, east and north of the main action, and walked down.

At the foot of Hornby we arrived at the bustling, breezy seawall of False Creek and headed west toward English Bay. Passing through the cool shade of the Burrard Bridge, we arrived at Sunset Beach and a view of the ships, sitting at anchor across the bay, off Kitsilano or Jericho Beach. We sat on a boulder and I took out my prose sketchbook:

Warm/cool breeze sounding in my ears, a low roar. Sunshine on the beach with its fine gray sand. Boat-motors from English Bay in front of us: ghostly trembling moans like wind through cables, and a ground-note of mechanical rumbling beyond the splash of little waves, silty-green, down the shell-speckled slope of the shore.

The tall ships are here: the 3 masts of the tallest standing higher than the boat is long. We sit on boulders looking across the channel to Kits Point, maybe 150 m away. It is crowded with a 2-way traffic of boats: sloops under power, diesel-puffing harbor cruise-ships, power-launches, Sea-Doos, kayaks. In the sky, a complex feathering of white cloud, half-covering the blue, misting it over diaphanously.

Kids splash in the murky water: boys yelling as loud as they can. The seawall is crowded with moving human traffic, white T-shirts and sneakers, bronze skin. From Vanier Park on Kits Point a quick trumpet-riff sounds across the water. Out beyond the bay: blue mountains reaching up to the gnarled mass of cumulus in the distance.

We walked along the crowded shore of English Bay, and up the packed sidewalk of Denman Street, before setting out to meander through the shady streets of the West End, looking for old houses and apartment buildings.

We made our way home via Save-On Foods to do the weekly grocery shopping. As we tarried in the book department, Kimmie decided she wanted to get this paperback about vampires--one of her favorite genres. It's called Dead Until Dark, by a Charlaine Harris. I asked Kimmie if I could borrow it to use for my blog post, and she said sure. Knowing nothing about the book or the author, I thought it would make a suitably random sample for my first sentence/first paragraph test.

In this book, the first sentence is the first paragraph, so I'll extend it to the second paragraph. Here they are:

I'd been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.

Ever since vampires came out of the coffin (as they laughingly put it) two years ago, I'd hoped one would come to Bon Temps. We had all the other minorities in our little town--why not the newest, the legally recognized undead? Bur rural northern Louisiana wasn't too tempting to vampires, apparently; on the other hand, New Orleans was a real center for them--the whole Anne Rice thing, right?

There, I read it myself for the first time just before typing it.

First sentence, I'd say, passes muster: it's provocative without being too pushy, and there is tension in not being sure whether it's intended seriously or not. The key point: I'm willing to read on.

Paragraph 2: The humor question is answered in sentence 2, with the reference to "coming out of the coffin" (pretty funny). The town name of Bon Temps is very atmospheric, and possibly ironic (French for "good times"). By sentence 3 we've already learned that vampires have been "legally recognized"--which implies that they have rights, like other maligned minorities. Here is what I assume is the concept of the book: a world in which vampires, in our ever more inclusive, politcally correct society, have been mainstreamed.

That's funny, and provocative. It sets the mind wondering: how the hell can you mainstream vampires? What problems are going to crop up? It's not even completely implausible--if vampires ever do become identified as a group, they probably will be mainstreamed. It reminds me of the concept behind the TV series (and, I assume, the original movie) Alien Nation, in which extraterrestrial aliens were portrayed in terms of an immigration issue: they were treated as the latest wave of immigrants arriving in the U.S. In my opinion, they took Alien Nation in the wrong direction, and the audience dissipated. I don't know what Ms. Harris does with her book, but the concept is, I think, a strong one.

In sentence 4 she deals with the whole Anne Rice thing: the writer who seemingly would have a lock on the subject of Louisiana vampires. This is upstate Louisiana--not urban New Orleans. It's different. The narrator comes across as folksy, openminded, and lacking a strong attitude to mainstreamed vampires--which in itself is a bit funny, I think.

In short, Dead Until Dark passes my 1st sentence/1st paragraph test--not too common an occurrence. The more so, since I positively have no interest in vampire stories to begin with. I don't find them sexy, intriguing, or even scary. To me they're just cultural leftovers that have been in the fridge too long already, and should be garbureted. For those reasons I would never have picked up this volume in the bookstore to give it a first-sentence test there. But here, at home, I have to say I give it a passing grade. I'm willing to look at paragraph 3!

It's 6:04 p.m. Time for a glass of wine and some reading of my own. I might head back in to A History of Technology, volume 1. I'm about 80 pages in, and I'm still reading about how flaked Paleolithic hand-axes were first hafted by having animal skin wrapped around them to protect the user's hand. It's a very good book--which is good, since now I've got the first 2 volumes of this massive series. I like digging into origins and first principles.