Fandom Loves Puerto Rico

Before I donate it to the library, I want to share a quick observation about the storytelling in the short Regency romance novel A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh (original 2010, my copy 2024). For context, Balogh is a reliable, respected, bestselling author in this genre.

(The observation that I came to share is not that the cover illustration is painful: a nose-to ankles photo from behind of a woman in a costume so glaringly period-inaccurate that it has a very prominent zipper, shimmers with the syntheticness of its fabrics, and basically looks like it was purchased at Spirit Halloween. No, I'm compelled to add this only because the cover is sitting in front of me blaring its sad wretchedness and making me feel for the model, the photographer, and the actual illustrator who could have been employed and wasn't.)

What I wanted to share is that this story is structured such that the protagonists throughout know something essential that the other characters and audience do not. This is kept from the audience until the end. Once the story performs its reveal, that the protagonists were in cahoots pulling an elaborate "Please don't throw me into the briar patch" gambit by pretending to despise each other, it recasts everything that has come before, and is a relief, because it transforms the protagonists from pretty unpleasant people to pretty typical protagonists for this genre. I think that it is supposed to be amusing and cheeky, and I bet that it would be on a second read. But I almost didn't read to the end because the protagonists felt so unpleasant and doomed, being maneuvered into a marriage that apparently they did not want; knowing that this genre always ends happily, I was increasingly tense with dread that this was a kind of especially misguided execution of enemies-to-lovers. Was I supposed to have figured out their secret? If so, there were not enough clues. The only thing that kept me reading was the flashbacks to the protagonists' childhoods.

I think that the contemporary convention of this genre always being from the perspective of the hero and heroine really tripped up this idea. The same story from the perspective of a relative, friend, or employee could have been a compelling journey with clues and concerns, not a parlor trick. Perhaps ironically, a story written in the period could have pulled off this plot better (though it would not likely have ever imagined this plot) because it would have had more narrative options.

Recently, I saw the last episode of season fifteen of Call the Midwife from PBS, and learned only after viewing that it was the series finale, not just the season finale. (Sort of. We'll get to that.)

This should not have surprised me. The historical setting had caught up to 1971. The Anglican sisters from the memoirs on which the series is based -- which I read back when the first season of the show was so amazingly well-made -- moved out of Poplar about then, when the UK's National Health Service phased out such midwifery. Our characters kept swinging for their patients, community, and mission throughout, but they went down in the end, as history says they must. (Also, the series just isn't as good as once it was. It used up the original memoirs material long ago. And successive waves of writers have seemingly had less and less feeling for important aspects, particularly religious faith, but also class and even historical accuracy. Bleah.)

Yet what made it such a surprise was that I knew the series had been renewed! What? It turns out that the renewal is for (1) a movie (feature film, not TV) set in 1972, (2) a new prequel series set during WWII with younger versions of the elderly sisters we know, and (3) a dedicated concluding "season 16" with a heavily modified premise, probably built around the lay characters adjusting to the new system -- and, I imagine, the sisters being absent entirely, or occasional cameos -- but we'll have to see the movie first, won't we?

I hope that the new things will be good. Winding back time for the prequel series appeals to me highly, but I'm concerned that without writers who understand history and faith, it will be a sad, threadbare experience for me, because I will see only what's missing. I will give them every chance.

Disney/Marvel has renewed Wonder Man for a second season! Here's the Variety article.

I'm excited. I found Wonder Man objectively the best-crafted Marvel TV since WandaVision, with Loki its only real competition. It's a story of the daring of friendship and of becoming a better version of yourself. Somehow, the corporate bosses actually let Cretton and Guest seize on the angle of a super-powered protagonist living an ordinary life in the MCU. There's no fuss here about street level vs cosmic level storytelling, multiverses, or macguffins. This tale is of two actors at different points in their lives. One happens to have superpowers (up-and-comer Simon Williams, played by Yahya Abdul Mateen II) and one was once hired to play a supervillain (washed-up Trevor Slattery, played by Ben Kingsley).

Of course I went in with my head full of comics canon (so much canon), but happily all of that was exquisitely reimagined and rendered gently moot. TV viewers need never know any of it, yet comics readers were not disrespected for knowing and caring about it. Delicate work skillfully done by this creative team.

I recently bumped into the information that Penguin Classics had been using the Arthur Waley abridged translation (1942) of The Journey to the West right up until the Julia Lovell abridged translation (2021). This startled me. It shouldn't have. What could they have used instead? It was Waley or nothing in English until the '80s. And the two translations from the '80s (Yu and Jenner) are unabridged. JttW is approximately the same length as The Lord of the Rings. Anthony Yu did abridge his own translation in 2006! But Yu is a challenging read, not least because his meticulously-faithful-to-the-original paragraphing (no breaks when different characters speak) gets exhausting.

As you may know, The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en (1592) is a masterpiece of Chinese literature and the source of loads of tropes in all media. (Look behind the waterfall? JttW.) To oversimplify, think of it as: the Homeric epics, Le Morte d'Arthur, and The Faerie Queene rolled into one by Douglas Adams. Or recognize it in Dragonball Z, Lego Monkie Kid, Black Myth Wukong... Watch the delightful Overly Sarcastic Productions retelling.

Arthur Waley's 1942 abridgement introduced the English-speaking world to JttW. While highly entertaining and accessible, it treated the text exclusively as a collection of folktales, deliberately omitting the theology, philosophy, and politics. He gave us the indelible, beloved English names Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy for the iconic characters, names which are simultaneously perfect and severe misrepresentations. I gather that Waley did this sincerely, not ignorantly or oppressively; he was consciously modernist and following the lead of Chinese scholars of his day, but... ouch! Arriving at Waley from this end of history makes for some cringing.

So, yay, Julia Lovell's lovely abridged translation for our era, and yay, Penguin Classics for getting it into more people's hands and imaginations. (See it on Amazon.)