Book rage

[bluedevi]

Have you ever woken yourself up by sitting bolt upright in bed? Ever? I know I haven't. But people do it pretty much constantly in books and films. Why? And why is it always "bolt upright" anyway? Why not some other way of saying upright?

I do have a reason for asking. I bought Kate Mosse's Labyrinth last Friday night for a couple of quid in Tesco

Comments

[ratmmjess]

I do wake up upright in bed. But--I suffer fairly regularly from dreams in which I'm being chased, and sometimes they get quite dark and frightening, and sometimes I'm caught and wake up screaming, and when that happens I jerk upright or throw myself out of bed.

[cumbrianheart]

*scratches all references to liquid diamond and falling falling from current crop of writing*
:)

[bluedevi]

Liquid diamonds falling, falling might work...

(What gets to me more about the tear thing is why is it always a single tear? The beautiful girl should have been sobbing her eyes out with a red nose.)

[dracunculus]

One of the things that's stuck most in my mind from Don DeLillo's Underworld is how he described a cat twining itself through the legs of a chair like "liquid fur".

You could make an argument that, simply because the phrase stuck in mind, means it's bad writing -- it obviously broke the narrative flow -- but I liked it. I think my point is that the "liquid diamond" thing was probably pretty cool the first time someone did it.

[bluedevi]

True, it probably was. It might have made people think about tears and liquid and diamonds in a way they never really had before. (That's why I love unusual phrases. As far as I'm concerned they're half the fun. And actually strengthen the narrative flow by making things more vivid.)

But now reading it feels a bit like reading through several pages of the same name in a phone book, so that by the end the name stops meaning anything and just turns into a jumble of symbols.

I quite like 'liquid fur'. Even though it seems slightly off-kilter, cats actually having fur and all.

[dakeyras]

I never have, and I really really hope it never happens in this bed, as if it does then I'm going to hit the ceiling very hard.

[elethe]

I went to a few of the writing a novel classes run by Mosse and her husband a few years ago when she was researching the book.

She seemed all right - but the classes (taken by her husband) were terrible.

And it was clearly all just a way to get pre-publication publicity for her book, which was the worst thing - she had a piss poor website where she 'shared' the research she wasn't using, supposedly to help other writers.

[bluedevi]

Yeeeees. Other writers who happened to be writing about the exact same things she was.

What sort of advice did they give you on the course?

[elethe]

Bog standard "this is what you call 'character'" and "If you want to make things interesting why not use a 'plot'" sort of thing.

I can't really remember details, really - but her husband was po-faced and serious about the whole thing and every single piece of advice was followed by a mention of Labyrinthe or a plug for the website.

[elethe]

I have no clue why I added the 'e' to the end of Labyrinth just now. Maybe in tribute to the author's own pointless extra 'e'.

[j4]

An ex of mine once actually sat, well, bolt upright -- sitting up, anyway -- in bed in the middle of the night and exclaimed "Life expectancy!"

Unfortunately, on waking himself up by doing this, he a) had no memory of having said it, and b) couldn't reconstruct his dream-reasoning for saying it. So I've still no idea where on earth it came from. Baffling.

What does "bolt upright" even mean? Like a bolt? Quickly, like "bolting" (I mean, of horses, not of doors)? I feel silly for not knowing this, now. Dead bits of language, though, like those huge growth things on trees, all gnarled (like the rough hardworking hands of yer gardener/cook/stout yeoman with 1 x heart of gold) and stuck-on.

Or something.

[bluedevi]

and exclaimed "Life expectancy!"

Oh, I could tell you stories about a certain gentleman of our mutual acquaintance and his gnomic utterances in sleep. I don't remember him ever doing the bolt upright thing as such, though.

[fabulousfrock]

Just the other night my boyfriend mumbled, "It smells like cheating" in an accusatory tone at me. What?? He talks in his sleep all the time, but I don't think either of us have ever bolted upright.