talkstowolves | Review: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

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Review: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

Just shy of two weeks after the novel's release, my review of Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente has appeared at Green Man Review.

Palimpsest runs the risk that all hotly desired lovers do -- it fetches you in with a dream, teases you into a taut state of wanting, and leaves you desolate in the face of reality. Or -- here, have another analogy, for this work seems to throw itself at them -- like its namesake, you may fall in love with the gorgeous purity of its surface text, but flinch in horror from what lurks beneath, barely scraped away.

The plot of Palimpsest is rather straightforward. Four strangers find themselves the newest hosts of a sexually transmitted city. Each of them have slept with an individual bearing an intensely black mark that looks like nothing so much as a small part of a strange city map. Afterward, they experience a bizarre dream in which the four characters, still unknown to each other, find themselves ritually tied together in a frog-headed fortuneteller's shop before being released to wander separately and divided in a truly bizarre otherworldly city. In this city, the vermin are manufactured clockwork creatures of dizzying perplexity and stunning beauty; canals are filled with clothes above rivers of cream; lion-headed priests silently cry aching sermons in breathtaking cathedrals; trains are wild beasts and contain rice paddies, forests, the dead, and the rabbit of the moon. The city offers amazing wonders and staggering horrors. The city is still seeping pus from infected wounds left by war. An alien and glittering tyrant wants to open doors, the city wants to be known, and the four -- Sei, November, Oleg, and Ludovico -- don't want to leave this place they seem only able to enter in dreams. [Read the rest of the review at this link.]

Thank you to the editors at Green Man Review for giving this review of mine an Excellence in Writing Award.

Please feel free to comment here with any points you would like to discuss from my review. Below, you'll find some rambling elaboration on the book's flaws, some nitpicky observations, questions I was left with, and a listing of some things I liked. And some pretty pictures.

Beware that there are spoilers beneath the cut and also, no doubt, in the comments.

Our Lady of the Palimpsest by Zombizi

THE FLAWS

As many of you know, I was completely enchanted by Catherynne's short story "Palimpsest," which appeared in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. It grabbed hold of my imagination and left me wanting more. You can read my review of that anthology here and you can see what I wrote about Palimpsest the day Cat finished writing it at this link. I've even made icons inspired by her story, albeit under a different lj-name (icons here).

I'm sad that the novel just didn't work for me. This is what I think is mainly at the core of it: in the compressed form of the short story, the emphasis of the narrative fell on connection. But in the relatively vaster form of the novel, the emphasis fell on disconnection.

Merely a 100 pages in and I was struck by how punishing this vision of promiscuity was: so sad, so lonely. Perhaps the nature of the city-- having to have sex with so many to visit it-- and the existence of the Quartet is meant as a metaphor for how some go through life and endure meeting so many people they just can't fundamentally connect with, who disappoint them, before finding those who come to be their "true" family. But I find that sad, too, for the Quartet is fated, not a forged community, and even then does not guarantee connection (e.g. Sei runs off with her trains and Oleg ensconces himself in a disturbing dream married to his sister-who-is-not-his-sister).

Another flaw I found in Palimpsest is that, for all the pages and pages devoted to four main characters, we don't get very complex characters or get to delve deeply into them at all. Their obsession with the things they've lost is so heavy-handed that we get a very shallow understanding of Sei, November, Oleg, and Ludovico. In fact, the only truly multi-faceted and deeply-explored character in the novel is Palimpsest itself... and oh what a terrifying, seductive beast it is.

THE NIT-PICKING

As far as I am aware, it is impossible to have sex on the shinkansen the way it is described that Sei and Sato Kenji do. I know, I know: artistic license. But I just can't let this one go. Here, please, watch this video of various models of shinkansens and please notice that there is no space to stand between carriages. Why? Because it would be stupidly dangerous and the design of the shinkansen is all about reducing wind resistance.

While I can buy that map-carriers of Palimpsest would be concentrated in certain areas-- either because of how STDs spread or because they're congregating at designated areas for passports-- I absolutely cannot buy that Sei was able to find all the successive bits of train tracks that she needed in the same geographical area. Honestly, statistically, what are the chances?

The Internet is a very large and unmoderated place populated by many companies and their various infrastructures. Even after reading the Tabula Rasa part of the ARG, I cannot buy that all of Oleg's posts to various sites could have been deleted so quickly and efficiently.

THE LINGERING QUESTIONS

1. Since every tourist-wannabe-immigrant to Palimpsest is made part of a Quartet on their first night, what happens when there's not a multiple of four on any given night? What if only three people sleep with carriers one night, or nine?

2. Once you sleep with someone, do you always have access to that part of the city?

3. Do maps duplicate or is everyone unique? So when Palimpsest is mapped in full, will the virus stop? Or will the city grow beyond itself?

4. If you have a particular need such as Sei does, to follow the trainlines, how can you assume you'll find what you need within the mapped system? That more map doesn't need to be spread to pristines to open up more places?

5. How do you choose which part to visit -- like Yumiko meeting Sei in Yumiko's own map? (Or was this a continuity error, since it's later revealed that you can't enter your own map unless you sleep with someone who has a contiguous section?)

6. Can you travel between unconnected pieces you've unlocked?

7. Can others-- Casimira, Lyudmila-- bypass rules for you and take you where they will?
(I feel like that this one may have been addressed in the novel, but that I'm not quite understanding it.)

FAVORITE BITS

I loved November's lists.

I loved November's memories of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship of Her Own Making and the bits of that fictional children's novel that were revealed in the book and online at H.F. Weckweet's site.

I loved the scene in which Lucia transformed the walls of her home's hallway in a paroxysm of love and madness and sorrow.

I loved the fledgling relationship that sprung up between Ludovico and November and how it was allowed to blossom in Palimpsest (and especially regarding the bees).

I love that Cat so fearlessly and completely charted her demonic, desirous city.

Maggie Taylor's Girl in a Bee Dress

PALIMPSEST ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB

The original short story.
Theophania, the Glass-Blower (a haunting, excised piece of the novel).
Quartered, a companion album by S.J. Tucker.
Catherynne's release day Livejournal post, including icons.
Palimpsest merchandise.*
An interview with Catherynne revealing inspiration for the narrative.
Promotional videos: [Palimpsest the Trailer.] [The Trains of Palimpsest.] [The Dead of Palimpsest.]
ARG websites: [Tabula Rasa.] [Sato Kenji.] [H.F. Weckweet.]

* I really want one of those pendants from RockLove, but because my name means "bee" and I have developed a fascination with compass roses rather than because of Palimpsest.

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I wish you had liked it more. I'm sad that you didn't. I'm not going to debate all the points here or point out the answers to your nitpicks (except yes, I know about the Shinkansen. We all take liberties.) If the book doesn't stand alone without my commentary, that's a failure on my part.

I appreciate you thinking about it as much as you obviously have.

I will always have the short story!

I wonder if....I read only a tiny portion of the Palimpsest short story, and I loved the book.

I wonder how much someone's having read the short story affects their reading of the novel? I know that once we start reading something, we form expectations of where we want it to go. Maybe a taste of Palimpsest could make it harder to swallow the entire meal?

I suspect expectations set up by the short story are coloring her reading, but then, I wrote both of them, so...mostly I feel the need to apologize.

Yes.

I have only the vaguest memory of the short story - I think you posted a smidgen of it on your LJ? I seem to recall reading the first two paragraphs...and I can't recall why I didn't read the rest. I might have gotten interrupted and then never gotten back to it, but whatever the reason, I only had the briefest of glimpses.

You can read it now! I linked it at the end of this entry. (You should also check out the bit about the glassblower that Cat cut out of the final novel.)

Cat, no. Many people have enjoyed your book. Just because I didn't, there's no need to apologize. You have written other things I love. You have written other things I don't love. That's the way the world works.

I am a silly girl. When I love people, and they don't love my books, my knee jerk response is to prostrate myself and promise to do better. If I didn't love you, I wouldn't care.

Repeat after me to your knees: I do not have to apologize for my writings to friends! Unless it's libel.

Oh, and the pendants are coming, one component is delayed.

Fantastic. :)

The book "worked" for me; for me, the book was about becoming lost, and then finding your way again, about being disconnected and then re-connected.

As far as the nitpicks:

1. In looking at some of the photos, it looks like there might be just enough room to squeeze in between the carriages (almost impossible to really tell because no one takes clear pictures of the in-between spaces), but I'm more than willing to let that one go.

2. It sounded as though there were a LOT of Palimpsest tourists in Kyoto - Sei talks about how exhausted she is, and how many she's had to sleep with, to find all of the "pieces" she needed to find. I remember her mentioning sleeping with multiple partners in a night - so we didn't get to see all of her visits to Palimpsest, only those relevant to the trains. I'm figuring she saw a hell of a lot more of the city than any of the other three (which, when you stop and think about it, is in fact quite appropriate).

Also, we're given hints that Casimira )and maybe even Palimpsest itself) chose these four to be the first, and so they may have been pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure each one was able to get what they needed?

3. I can buy it. After all, you can Google yourself, and you can have Google send you alerts based on keywords. All certain folks would have to do would be to plus in certain keywords, and they'd be guaranteed to see posts with "Palimpsest" and "tattoos" and whatnot in mere seconds/minutes. People trying to find others wouldn't be attempting to hide their messages; after all, they want to be found, so the messages would be publicly posted.

On to the questions!

1. I don't know the answer to this one and there's not enough in the text to do anything more than guess. We have no idea how often "blanks" get brought in. Perhaps they have to "wait?" Meaning their entrance to the city is delayed until there are others?

2. From my reading, yes. Casimira says something to November about having to take a circuitous route because she only has access to certain parts of the city.

3. Again, no way within the text to answer this one. It really depends on a number of factors: a) how big is Palimpsest? b) how much of the city does each person get? If they only get a block or two, it could take generations for the entire city to spread, especially since it seems a lot of the current tourists don't want to bring more "blanks" in. There was definitely the idea of exclusivity, of "they don't deserve it."

4. I don't think you can make any assumptions. *laugh* Except to go back to my point up above, about these four having been specially chosen, and thus TPTB were moving things around to help them.

5. I think that meant that you can't simply go to bed at night and enter the map on your skin. We have numerous occurrences of people entering "their" sections of the map - not just Yumiko, but Gabriel.

6. Just a guess, based on Casimira and November's travels, but I'd say yes, that the carriages will somehow take you from point A to point B.

7. From the reading, I would think that would be no. Because again, Casimira talks about having to jump through hoops to get November to her house that other time, due to what areas of Palimpsest were open to her.

Oh, and it occurs to me there may be a way to "bend" the rules, like when they technically travel outside the city (or beneath it, as Oleg does).

And I do agree with you about Oleg; his story, and his ending, made me very uncomfortable. Mostly because it felt as though he spent the rest of his life living in the madness in his mind.

Ok, I'm gonna break my rule about not offering commentary.

Because to me Oleg gets a very happy ending. He gets what he wants. To live in his fantasy, to have it be real. To have it be better than real, because he doesn't even know he ever thought it was a fantasy. It might not be what the reader wants, for themselves or for him, but it is the realization of paradise /for Oleg/.

Yes!

And that's why, even though it makes me uncomfortable, I can accept it, and it doesn't tarnish the novel for me.

Well, when Oleg first goes beneath the canal of clothes, he quickly meeds Lyudmila and stays in the same place, talking to her. I assumed he slept with other people to keep searching the river of cream afterward, or maybe gained access once and just kept going back there-- perhaps by masturbation as mentioned above. I'd have to glance back through that section.

Oh good grief. Another stray thought!

Something else that I remember now is Casimira talking about the street names and their significance in terms of at least November's travels...so methinks I need to go back and look at the street names.

About the Shinkansen, definitely not. There is no "free space" between carriages that would enable riders of the train to step outside the train while it was in motion. As Cat says above, she took liberties there.

Sei did have to sleep with twice as many people, but it's indicated that she does so to keep up with the train. Check out p. 267, in about the middle of the page... "The train needed her. She had to keep up. Had to go faster. Had to have more, always more, had to run twice as fast to stay in place." She must find the successive bits of track and she becomes so sick of the sex that I doubt she's sleeping with anyone who doesn't keep her on the train.

1. That's a possibility, since there's some fuzziness around when some people notice the strange mark and the stranger dreams.

2. Ah, yes, I remember that now.

5. Ahhhh, yes now, that makes sense. Although, didn't someone... ah, yes, it was on Quartered (http://www.quartered.org)... mention that you could use masturbation to visit the city?

5. Ooooo, that's rather nifty - oh! We should remember that just because one of the tourists says "No, you can't visit your own map" doesn't mean they are right!

Ha! That is true as well.

I also agree with your "...desolate in the face of reality."

I finished the book, and wept. Because it's not real. You can't get there.

Keep in mind that I have never posted to Quartered. It is a place for immigrants to work out their own stories. I do not control the posts there, they are to be viewed as semi-canonical.

I found the occasionally-unhappy promiscuity and the obsession over the city quite negative -- but interestingly so, rather than offputtingly so.

It bothered me a little that the four characters had so little to give up in order to leave our world behind -- it seemed a little too easy (especially how easily November seems to leave her flesh bees), and I wanted more complications. But, on the other hand, I don't know if that would have fit well within the novel.

It also bothered me a little that there didn't seem to be a middle ground in reactions to Palimpsest. Either people throw themselves into it, albeit sometimes after a bit of denial, becoming willing to do absolutely anything to get in, or they completely withdraw and refuse it. Where are the people who are not willing to compromise their sexuality, for instance? (Not everyone in the entire world is bisexual.) The polarity of reactions didn't quite feel real, even though I can understand the city creating a lot of strong reactions.

But, those few minor things aside, I loved it. I think my favourite detail is the mythology built up around the trains in Sato Kenji's book.

It bothered me a little that the four characters had so little to give up in order to leave our world behind -- it seemed a little too easy

*nods* I wonder whether the city only chooses unhappy people, people who have no connections in their lives? It's the only sensical explanation I can think of, but if so, I didn't actually see anything about it in the text itself.

It also bothered me a little that there didn't seem to be a middle ground in reactions to Palimpsest. Either people throw themselves into it, albeit sometimes after a bit of denial, becoming willing to do absolutely anything to get in, or they completely withdraw and refuse it. Where are the people who are not willing to compromise their sexuality, for instance? (Not everyone in the entire world is bisexual.)

As a very sex-positive person who has some sex-negative experiences in her past, I found that troublesome as well... I always have a bit of trouble with things where a character is having sex they clearly don't want to be having. Not to the extreme of actual rape, but of coercion and just... sex they clearly do not *want*.

...there are better ways to have sex.

Unless the message is that only lonely people with not much else in their lives are likely to be promiscuous?

...but, no, because Ludovico received it from his wife. Nerezza from her friend.

It just frustrated me that such a limited array of human relationships and sexual relationships were examined in a narrative meant to be so worldly. Sure there was plenty of kink and multiple sexualities and configurations, but there seemed to be so much joy and celebration missing from the sex.

Also, I started the reading thinking that trips to Palimpsest were post-orgasmic, but the resigned attitude of some of the lovers just wanting to get through it quickly disabused me of that notion. This is definitely a post-coital ticket, no orgasm required.

Maybe it's only lonely people who become so desperate to go back, but again that seems a little simplistic. Happy and/or well-loved people can still be captivated by shiny new things. I can imagine that if I got the virus, I'd be torn between wanting more time in Palimpsest and wanting to stay here with my family and friends. It would have been interesting to hear of people who found themselves in that dilemna.

Agreed. I did not find it erotic or beautiful. It was sad, desperate and ugly. It was prostitution for passage.

Indeed. I'm glad I'm not alone in my response.

Where are the people who are not willing to compromise their sexuality, for instance? (Not everyone in the entire world is bisexual.)

I was very bothered when Ludovico first had sex with another man. Sure, he may genuinely have had unexplored bisexual feelings; however, because of the conceit of the city and the map, I felt like he was just doing it for his ticket and the encounter was not initiated out of a true sense of sexual desire.

I loved that the promiscuity and bisexuality was never a Big Deal. People struggling with their sexuality wasn't the remit of the book, and I wouldn't have wanted it to be. But I think there could have been characters who were straight or gay, and unwilling to compromise, and that wouldn't have needed to be a Big Deal either.

I suppose that one could still enjoy Palimpsest if one were hetero or homosexual. After all, it's each person's choice with whom they sleep; it would limit your available map space, of course, unless you were able to do a lot of traveling from city to city and had sme reliable means of finding others. I think the ones we got to know were desperate enough that they didn't care - they wanted in, and the vessel stopped mattering to them.

Also, one wonders exactly what becoming part of a Quarto does to a person?

Okay, I finally finished it, and now I can participate.

I also feel disappointed that the sex in the novel was so much a means to an end, something distasteful which had to be endured, specially for the women - because the notion that women have sex not for its own sake, but to get something else (be it security, love, financial support, etc) is still so prevalent, and it's not an idea I want to see perpetuated. The men in the quartet also have sex they might not have otherwise, and with people they don't care about, but for Oleg this is part of his destroying of himself, while Ludo seems to make affectionate, if troubled, connections to the remaining members of Nerezza's quartet.

I did get involved with the story and the the characters and the city more as I read, but I think this will not be one of the books by CMV which leaves a strong mark... of course, sometimes it's not until awhile after reading that I realise how much a novel has affected me.

Very good point re: women and sex.

Palimpsest has inspired more short-term thinking and discussion than any other CMV novel I've read, but the only one that's stuck with me and deeply is In the Night Garden.

In the Night Garden is special. Make that extra special.

Did you read Yumi No Hon? That was the first that really struck a chord with me, but as the narrative is fragmented, it sort of worked on me by building up pieces gradually.

I've actually only read The Grass-Cutting Sword, In the Night Garden, and Palimpsest. I have In the Cities of Coin and Spice, but In the Night Garden meant so much to me that I want to make sure I'm in the right space to read the second part before I do.

I haven't felt like acquiring either The Labyrinth or Yumi No Hon because they never sounded precisely like my cup of tea (though YnH sounds better to me than TL).

(Poetry-wise, I've read pretty much everything she's posted to LJ, as well as Music of a Proto-Suicide and Folktales in Fragile Dialects.)

The Grass Cutting Sword was one book of CMV's I found hardest to navigate.

Do read In the Cities of Coin and Spice, it is as good as In the Night Garden, and it completes the tales beautifully. I cried when I read the ending, because it was so beautiful and so right.

One more thing, and this is NOT a judgment on Cat at all, but the descriptions of the book before the release, and the trailer, made me expect the sex scenes to be more erotic than they were, which may have fed into my disappointment when, aside from the first time for each of the Quarto, this was generally not the case.

The marketing really bothered me. I'd read the book before the marketing pitches really got started and I couldn't help reflecting on how what was being sold was not what I perceived the product actually to be.

I should clarify this: the initial trailer and the ~~blurbs~~book summary bothered me. The ensuing trailers about the dead and the trains, I thought, were pretty straightforward.

Yes, the trailer with the trains was great.

I know that this is how marketing works - sex sells, so emphasize the sex. But still, the contrast was unsettling.

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Review: Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

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