Some Words upon Opening Ada Palmer's TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING
You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I described, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
Back when I was a teenager, and Star Trek was the only science fiction available on TV, there seem to be two types of fans: those who loved the contemporary references - for example, episodes with hippies - and those who fretted at the paucity of world building. Why would the federation centuries in the future keep referring back to American-related incidents in the middle of the twentieth century, when there are far more interesting times and places in world history?
When I look back, it doesn't surprise me to reflect on how those of us who crabbed about that twentieth century stuff ended up studying history or literature. As kids, we were already struggling to perceive the long view. For many people the long view is tedious and irrelevant. All that matters is the now.
But for people who delight in the patterns of history - who can relish the writings of those who engage passionately with minds long dead - this sfnal novel paying homage to Enlightenment styles and thought is going to be an especial treat.
In Ada Palmer’s future, the world teeters between disaster and great change, and just as Renaissance thinkers became fascinated by the great thinkers of ancient Greece, and fretting Victorian-era writers looked back to an orderly Middle Ages that never was, these future people are fascinated by the 52-pickup philosophical explorations of the Enlightenment - when thinkers and writers were enthusiastically reinventing their paradigm. It’s especially a salute to Denis Diderot, the charismatic iconoclast of the middle and later 1700s.
Too Like the Lightning is no turgid pastiche. I wrote this post up in hopes of getting readers who might have heard about its distinctive narrative style to give it a try. There are two important literary devices that Palmer adopts from Diderot, the sardonic free thinker behind the first Wikipedia*.
Up top is the opening. The first few pages accustom the reader to a manner that might seem stately when compared to prose styles popular now, but the vocabulary and the punctuation are all signposts to guide the modern reader.
Here are a couple of examples of actual 18th-century works and thinking. I picked them because of their popularity and influence, and because of the way humor is infused in the train of clauses, something that Palmer employs with enchanting mastery.
From Book One of Tom Jones:
Containing as Much of the Birth of the Foundling as Is Necessary or Proper to Acquaint the Reader with in the Beginning of This History
The introduction to the work, or bill of fare to the feast
An author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary at which all persons are welcome for their money. In the former case, it is well-known that the entertainer provides what fair he pleases, and though this should be very indifferent and utterly disagreeable to the taste of his company, they must not find any fault; nay, on the contrary, good breeding forces them outwardly to approve and to commend whatever is set before them. Now, the contrary of this happens to the master of an ordinary. Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates, however nice and even whimsical these may prove; and, if everything is not agreeable to their taste, will challenge a right to censure, to abuse, and to d-n their dinner without control.
Then there is Lord Chesterfield, of whom most everyone has heard, but few actually read. Big mistake, if you enjoy a satiric style, and a mind who sought to learn what there was out there on every subject:
Chesterfield, from Letter CLIX Feb 14, 1752
. . . One observation I hope you will make in reading history; for it is an obvious and a true one. It is, that more people have made great figures and great fortunes in courts by their exterior accomplishments, then by their interior qualifications. Their engaging address, the politeness of their manners, their air, their turn, hath almost always paved the way for their superior abilities, if they have such, to exert themselves. They have been favorites before they have been ministers. In courts, an universal gentleness and douceur dans les manières is most absolutely necessary: an offended fool, or a slighted valet de chamber, may very possibly do you more hurt at court, then ten men of merit can do you good. . . . There is a court garment, as well as a wedding garment, without which you will not be received. That garment is the volto sciolto; an imposing air, an elegant politeness, easy and engaging manners, universal attention, an insinuating gentleness, and all those je ne sais quoi that compose the Graces.
To get more specific, Denis Diderot’s fiction was influenced tremendously by several English writers, like Richardson, whose choice of details made his characters come alive for readers who couldn’t figure out how he did it. Richardson was the first to figure out that showing was more effective than telling.
Here’s an example, in his first letter in the massive tome Clarissa, which was a runaway bestseller for years, Lovelace writes to his buddy about how he gets the girls.
I have no notion of playing the hypocrite so egregiously as to pretend to be blind to qualifications which everyone sees and acknowledges. Such praise-begging hypocrisy! Such affectedly-disclaimed attributes! Such contemptible praise-traps! - But yet shall my vanity extend only to personals, such as the gracefulness of dress, my debonair and my assurance? Self-taught, self-acquired, these! - For my PARTS, I value not myself upon them. Thou wilt say I have no cause. Perhaps not: but if I had anything valuable as to intellectuals, those are not my own: and to be proud of what a man is answerable for the abuse of and has no merit in the right use of is to strut, like a jay, in a borrowed plumage.
Diderot learned from Richardson the art of the detail that brings characters to life, but he learned from Lawrence Sterne the art of the digression: “Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation.” And converse with the reader Palmer’s narrator does.
The result is a warmly witty, erudite, stately flow of sentences shot through with humor, that breathes life into the characters with detail, and enchants with digressions.
More anon.
* Diderot and the Encyclopedists envisioned a compendium of knowledge written by ordinary people, as opposed to those chosen by the authorities.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
Back when I was a teenager, and Star Trek was the only science fiction available on TV, there seem to be two types of fans: those who loved the contemporary references - for example, episodes with hippies - and those who fretted at the paucity of world building. Why would the federation centuries in the future keep referring back to American-related incidents in the middle of the twentieth century, when there are far more interesting times and places in world history?
When I look back, it doesn't surprise me to reflect on how those of us who crabbed about that twentieth century stuff ended up studying history or literature. As kids, we were already struggling to perceive the long view. For many people the long view is tedious and irrelevant. All that matters is the now.
But for people who delight in the patterns of history - who can relish the writings of those who engage passionately with minds long dead - this sfnal novel paying homage to Enlightenment styles and thought is going to be an especial treat.
In Ada Palmer’s future, the world teeters between disaster and great change, and just as Renaissance thinkers became fascinated by the great thinkers of ancient Greece, and fretting Victorian-era writers looked back to an orderly Middle Ages that never was, these future people are fascinated by the 52-pickup philosophical explorations of the Enlightenment - when thinkers and writers were enthusiastically reinventing their paradigm. It’s especially a salute to Denis Diderot, the charismatic iconoclast of the middle and later 1700s.
Too Like the Lightning is no turgid pastiche. I wrote this post up in hopes of getting readers who might have heard about its distinctive narrative style to give it a try. There are two important literary devices that Palmer adopts from Diderot, the sardonic free thinker behind the first Wikipedia*.
Up top is the opening. The first few pages accustom the reader to a manner that might seem stately when compared to prose styles popular now, but the vocabulary and the punctuation are all signposts to guide the modern reader.
Here are a couple of examples of actual 18th-century works and thinking. I picked them because of their popularity and influence, and because of the way humor is infused in the train of clauses, something that Palmer employs with enchanting mastery.
From Book One of Tom Jones:
Containing as Much of the Birth of the Foundling as Is Necessary or Proper to Acquaint the Reader with in the Beginning of This History
The introduction to the work, or bill of fare to the feast
An author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary at which all persons are welcome for their money. In the former case, it is well-known that the entertainer provides what fair he pleases, and though this should be very indifferent and utterly disagreeable to the taste of his company, they must not find any fault; nay, on the contrary, good breeding forces them outwardly to approve and to commend whatever is set before them. Now, the contrary of this happens to the master of an ordinary. Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates, however nice and even whimsical these may prove; and, if everything is not agreeable to their taste, will challenge a right to censure, to abuse, and to d-n their dinner without control.
Then there is Lord Chesterfield, of whom most everyone has heard, but few actually read. Big mistake, if you enjoy a satiric style, and a mind who sought to learn what there was out there on every subject:
Chesterfield, from Letter CLIX Feb 14, 1752
. . . One observation I hope you will make in reading history; for it is an obvious and a true one. It is, that more people have made great figures and great fortunes in courts by their exterior accomplishments, then by their interior qualifications. Their engaging address, the politeness of their manners, their air, their turn, hath almost always paved the way for their superior abilities, if they have such, to exert themselves. They have been favorites before they have been ministers. In courts, an universal gentleness and douceur dans les manières is most absolutely necessary: an offended fool, or a slighted valet de chamber, may very possibly do you more hurt at court, then ten men of merit can do you good. . . . There is a court garment, as well as a wedding garment, without which you will not be received. That garment is the volto sciolto; an imposing air, an elegant politeness, easy and engaging manners, universal attention, an insinuating gentleness, and all those je ne sais quoi that compose the Graces.
To get more specific, Denis Diderot’s fiction was influenced tremendously by several English writers, like Richardson, whose choice of details made his characters come alive for readers who couldn’t figure out how he did it. Richardson was the first to figure out that showing was more effective than telling.
Here’s an example, in his first letter in the massive tome Clarissa, which was a runaway bestseller for years, Lovelace writes to his buddy about how he gets the girls.
I have no notion of playing the hypocrite so egregiously as to pretend to be blind to qualifications which everyone sees and acknowledges. Such praise-begging hypocrisy! Such affectedly-disclaimed attributes! Such contemptible praise-traps! - But yet shall my vanity extend only to personals, such as the gracefulness of dress, my debonair and my assurance? Self-taught, self-acquired, these! - For my PARTS, I value not myself upon them. Thou wilt say I have no cause. Perhaps not: but if I had anything valuable as to intellectuals, those are not my own: and to be proud of what a man is answerable for the abuse of and has no merit in the right use of is to strut, like a jay, in a borrowed plumage.
Diderot learned from Richardson the art of the detail that brings characters to life, but he learned from Lawrence Sterne the art of the digression: “Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation.” And converse with the reader Palmer’s narrator does.
The result is a warmly witty, erudite, stately flow of sentences shot through with humor, that breathes life into the characters with detail, and enchants with digressions.
More anon.
* Diderot and the Encyclopedists envisioned a compendium of knowledge written by ordinary people, as opposed to those chosen by the authorities.