Saturday, August 02, 2003
Things that make me want to go to bed and stay there. Under the bed wouldn't be so bad. Spooky could slide food in to me once a day. I might have a chamber pot (though the acrobatics and contortionisms necessary for its use would probably be beyond me). I would never have to come out and write again. I could be a happy lizard under a mattress rock.
In the last eighteen hours or so, I've discovered that not one, but two of the important elements from the last two chapters of Murder of Angels appear prominently in other works of fiction. The first, the Fortean refrain "These things happen," I finally realized I'd unconsciously lifted from the film Magnolia. The second is a striking similarity with China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. The latter is far more upsetting and disruptive to the novel as it now stands. It's one of those annoying coincidences that is the inevitable result of so many people writing so much at the same time. I've honestly never read Perdido Street Station. I've never even read a review of it. In fact, the only thing I've read by Miéville is his short story, "Details" (which, while we're on the subject of similarity, reminded me strongly of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic "The Yellow Wallpaper"). But now that these points of sameness have been brought to my attention, they're not something that I can ignore. I'll probably keep the line from Magnolia, with a mention of the film in the author's note before the prologue, that the film obviously had a strong impact on me. As for the similarity to the Miéville book, I'm not sure how I'll deal with that. I've dispatched Spooky to the public library to find a copy so that we can see just how profound the similarity might be. I may be more specific when I've actually seen the book and read the relevant portions for myself.
And, regardless, I might not change a word. Does this coincidence invalidate what I've written? That seems absurd. Is Juana Romani's "Salome" less valid than Gustav Klimt's "Salome"? This is not a question of quality. One of those paintings may well be better, in whatever sense one work of art may ever be said to be better than another, but a question regarding the validity of the act that created each piece. And were I to go looking, I suspect that I might find that the similarity in question can be found in many fantasy novels and stories predating Perdido Street Station, not to mention the mythological traditions of various cultures that, I'm sure, were the primary conscious inspiration for both Miéville and me.
This endless, futile quest for uniqueness makes me ill.
Under the fucking bed.
Anyway, I accomplished nothing of note yesterday. I reworked the opening scene of Chapter Seven and then spent a couple of hours staring stupidly at the screen and the keys and the wall behind my desk.
Today I need to get on with Chapter Seven. Oh. Bill Schafer tells me that The Five of Cups should ship on August 9th.
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