A Day in the Lonesome October-fest, October 5th

The continuing account of reading A Night in the Lonesome October with an eight-year-old nine-year-old, out loud and during the day.

October 5

With the exception of some commentary from Lily about how she pictures our cats when I describe Graymalk, I read this chapter without almost no interruptions until the end.

Me: Nightwind said, "For three nights now a small, hunched man has been raiding graveyards. I saw him on my patrols. Two nights back I followed him by the full of the moon. He bore his gleanings to a large farmhouse to the south of here, a place with many lightning rods, above which a perpetual storm rages. Then he delivered them to a tall, straight man he addressed as the 'Good Doctor.' It may be they are seven, or perhaps eight."

Lily: Is the Good Doctor Sherlock Holmes?

Me: No, they call Sherlock Holmes “The Great Detective”. The Good Doctor is Doctor Frankenstein.

And we had a lengthy digression about Frankenstein. She was better informed than I had expected, and she complained that people should call Frankenstein's monster "the monster" or "the creature" I fear I was in danger of being out-pedanted by a nine-year-old. We got in a discussion about Victor Frankenstein, and she became very passionate about him, and wanted to know why people got so upset when he was just trying to make something. "You don't get mad at people when they make babies the regular way!" I didn't offer much of an opinion, as I was more interested on hearing her expound on her observations.

I'm a big fan of Frankenstein, so this was of particular interest to me. My story, Mother of Monsters, is a very direct homage. I've long thought Mary Shelley a very admirable person, and I decided I wanted to be the kind of parent her father was to her when I read this quote, where he described her at fifteen, as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible."

Lily pursued the Frankenstein angle at some length, even pestering her mom for an opinion, and growing irritated when she, inexplicably, in Lily's mind, didn't have a strong opinion on the morality of Frankenstein's actions.

After the digression, we finished up the chapter. She really appreciated the fact that this one was a little longer than the previous ones had been.

A Day in the Lonesome October-fest, October 4th

The continuing account of reading A Night in the Lonesome October with an eight-year-old, out loud and during the day.

October 4th

Snuff makes his rounds. Lily is certainly capable of reading the book on her own, but I do the reading, so I can omit any of the minor bad language.

I skipped past the line where the Thing in the Circle says "Son of a bitch!" to Snuff, but somehow she intuited that something was missing and peered over and looked at the page, and giggled at the transgressive language. 

Cheeter showed up, and Lily asked if every chapter would be introducing a new animal and I said that we were just about done with that part of the book. We decided that my Cheeter voice was a little too much like my Needle voice (rapid and high-pitched), so Lily suggested that I go slow and deep, "just to be ironic" and I did.

At the end of the chapter I read the part that went "and somewhere in the distance a howling rose up. No one I knew. I wasn't even sure it was a dog. It said a single word in the language of my kind, a long, drawn-out "Lost!" My hackles rose at the sound of it." and said to Lily,  trying to get her to speculate on what it might be, "What do you think that was?  It sounded like a dog, but not exactly-" and she interrupted with "Daddy, we're reading a horror book. It's obviously a werewolf." 

Nobody likes a smartass. 

A Day in Lonesome October-fest, October 3rd

Reading a Night in the Lonesome October out loud with an eight-year-old, one chapter a day

October 3rd

I wouldn't call Lonesome October a comedy. While it has funny moments, certainly, and the idea of Jack the Ripper's talking dog is an absurd premise, it's a premise played more or less straight, and I think the phrase that best describes the book is from the Publisher's Weekly review "good-humored".

That said, when I read: "They had already been out. The broom beside the rear entrance was still warm", Lily absolutely cracked up.

This wasn't written as a children's book, but Zelazny was very good about writing stories that could be appreciated on several levels,so if you missed the references to the Revenger's Tragedy in Nine Starships Waiting, you could still enjoy the work as a straight adventure story. Likewise, this is a story for adults, but it's very accessible to kids, too. (I'd put it ahead of A Dark Traveling, which was intended as a children's book) I ran it through Word's readability metrics, and it came back with a Flesch–Kincaid grade level score of 3.9. That's primarily because Snuff narrates in short, declarative sentences, as is his nature, which, almost incidentally, makes for a book that's very easy to read.

We read through the rest of the chapter, and she had no other comments.

A Day in Lonesome October-fest, October 2nd

The second entry in the continuing saga of reading A Night in the Lonesome October with an eight-year-old, out loud and during the day. 

Lily spent a fair amount of time scrutinizing the cover again. She was trying to pair up Masters and Companions, and puzzling out their relationships. She asked if everyone on the cover appeared in the book and I said that mostly they did. (I never thought about it, but the old woman must be Linda Enderby). She asked if Jill was a gypsy, which is not a question you expect from kids in 2015. I told her, no, she’s a witch. “Oh, she’s young and very pretty.”

I had explained about openers and closers, and she asked me who was on which side, but I wouldn’t bite. She’s very concerned about liking a character who might turn out to be a villain.

With all that discussed, we began reading the chapter. I did the reading, and Lily interjected regularly with questions or commentary. I liked the back and forth, because it helped stretch out the reading of another very short chapter.

Me: "We took a walk last night, acquiring mandrake root in a field far from here at the place of a killing by somebody else."
Lily: I think I know what mandrake root is. It’s a magical plant that screams when you pick it.
Me: I’m pretty sure you saw that in Harry Potter, and it’s not actually true. Let’s figure it out. A drake is another word for a duck, so a man-drake must be some kind of wereduck.

Jen was wandering through the kitchen, and she was able to clarify what mandrake was, so we returned to the text.

Me: The cat Graymalk came slinking about, pussyfoot, peering in our windows.
Lily: Can I see that? How’s it spelled?

There was then a protracted discussion. She thought that the name was Gray-milk when I had mentioned it earlier (Pause for a Simpsons reference) 

and said that Graymalk was a terrible name. I was able to refer to Chris Kovacs’s excellent essay for the likely provenance of the name, and strangely, my eight-year-old warmed to neither a scholarly essay nor Graymalk’s name. I think she’ll come to like the name as we read more about a character she already likes.


For those of you playing at home, this is the first sentence of the second paragraph of the second chapter.

"We have our tasks."
"We do."
"And so it has begun."
"It has."
"Goes it well?"
"So far. And you?"
"The same. I suppose it is easiest simply to ask this way, for now."

This part actually tripped me up, because I lost track of who was talking when I turned the page. I was giving each character a different voice, which is, of course, a big part of the fun in reading it out loud. (I gave Snuff a slightly gruff voice and Grey one that was a little bit detached in what I hope was a catlike way)

Lily liked lines detailing Gray’s cat mannerisms, such as: She tossed her head, raised a paw and studied it.

I’ve always said that I thought Zelazny did a very good job of imaging the mannerisms specific to each animal. I’d go so far as to say that it’s one of the essential components of why the book works so well.

Me (reading for Graymalk)  "The owl, Nightwind, consort of Morris and MacCab. I saw him flee at dawn, found a feather out back. The feather is tainted with mummy dust, to do you ill."
Lily: Was the mummy dust going to make them sick?
Me: I get the impression that it’s more that it’s part of a magic spell, and they’re trying to lay a curse on Jack and Snuff.

a little bit later

Me: " I saw Quicklime, the black snake who lives in the belly of the mad monk, Rastov. He rubbed against your doorpost, shedding scales."
Lily: Quicklime. That’s a great name.
Me: Yeah it is.
Lily: Can I call him Monk-Man?
Me: As long as you do it after October 23rd, I don’t think he’ll be fine with it.

And that was it. These early chapters are so short. ( I gave her the option of rereading what we had read before, just to ensure that we weren’t done reading in two minutes, but she declined. She knew there was a cat, and she was very eager to get to that part.) So we wrapped it and reviewed the characters. She went fishing about who was an opener, but I wouldn’t tell her.

She didn’t like Gahan Wilson’s illustrations, and, while it may mark me as a philistine, neither do I. I just don’t dig his particular style. (I do like the one with Zelazny as the Great Detective, but that’s about it.)

A Day in the Lonesome October-fest, introduction and October First

If I absolutely had to pick a favorite single piece from Roger Zelazny’s body of work, I think it would have to be “A Night in the Lonesome October”. I have more posts about it than I do any of his other works and I dedicated an entire month to it in 2013. I even joined the Twitter read-along in 2014. (Briefly. I just don’t like the medium of Twitter.) My first two published works (The Great and Groovy Game and Mother of Monsters) were sequels to A Night in a Lonesome October. You can read them in the Lovecraft eZine, which is something you should be reading anyway.

So I have a sentimental attachment on top of everything, but I think I’d love it even if I didn’t. It’s such a fun book. This is the book you give your non-Zelaznyphile friends.

Like a lot of people, I read a chapter a day in October. I used to do this out loud with my wife, but we never seemed to be able to find the time after our daughter was born. Lily has an October birthday. I tried reading it to her as a newborn, when my words had no meaning except as comforting noises, but my wife was like “Joshua, stop doing that to the baby.”

However, she’s going to be nine years old this year, and that’s old enough. We’re reading it together, in the morning, right before she leaves for school. I don’t think I have anything new to say about a book I’ve read so many times and on which I’ve offered such extensive commentary, but she will.

So I present to you the companion piece to 2013’s A Night in the Lonesome October-fest, A DAY in the Lonesome October-fest!!





Lily’s thoughts:

She liked the cover, felt Snuff was a little goofy looking, but really liked the look of Graymalk, which she described as “sleek and regal”. She agrees with H.P. Lovecraft when it comes to cats:

Cats are the runes of beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self-sufficiency, and dainty individuality—the qualities of sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilised, master-class men. The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

Introduction

She asked what kind of curse Jack was under, and I told her we’d find out later. (Spoiler, we won’t.) She liked the exchange between Snuff and the graveyard dogs. She caught the subtext of the graveyard dog backing down when they bared their teeth at each other, which kind of surprised me. This chapter is pretty brief, so this section will be too. 

Lily: "He talked to a dog and the chapter was over.'

October 1st

This is the chapter where Snuff first makes his rounds to check on the various Things. It's just two pages, but Lily really enjoyed it. I was reading it out loud, so I gave the Things silly voices. 

I gave her a sneak peek of tomorrow, and she's looking forward to meeting Graymalk.