This is so great. I LOVE talking Tillermans with you. SO MUCH.
I know, right? Where have you been my whole life?!
I am with you, that is the only way I can do it as well. I think the longest I've ever managed is 10k or so :P
I'm kind of finishing up a 450,000-word fanfic series that's not nearly as good as Voigt's, and the only way I've been able to do it at all has been by doing the whole thing all at once. However she did it, she's amazing.
I knew it was confusing me, but not quite why :)
It confused me for the longest time. Only rereading Runner this last time cleared it up, and only because we were having this conversation and I was paying close attention.
And it's sort of ironic, too: Johnny is a builder who breaks all his family ties.
Oh, yeah, I thought about saying something about how I think it's more of a self-perception thing, an identity, than anything else. Also, obviously, being good with your hands does not equate to interpersonal ties! Bullet even says Johnny's a carbon copy of the old man. It's complex; there's no builder/breaker binary, in my mind. But it's a theme that I think is worth paying attention to, along with the letting go/holding on/reaching out.
(Also, stepping for a moment out of thematic concerns and into real-world healthy behaviors, HELL YES leave that abusive family behind, Johnny! Don't look back!)
I have a whole theory about why there's no boat in Stranger! My theory involves the boats being a locus for cutting ties with others.
Huuuhh. That's interesting. I like it! Fits very well with Johnny. And omggg, you're so right about Francis!
Also interesting how the motor boat is a parting gift from Bullet: reaching out and cutting ties at the same time. It also gives her a way to be less dependent on her abusive husband.
Is Sammy a builder?
Yes! I was going to mention this as I got a little further in Seventeen. Check this passage out:
“It’s a good thing Sammy took wood shop, or I don’t know what I’d have gotten for Christmas.”
“He’s got clever hands,” Jeff said.
“And he likes making things,” she added. Sammy had even roped James into making a half-court, a backboard to play tennis alone on, one summer; at the garage where he’d been hired to pump gas, he now spent most of his time working on engines. It was Sammy who kept their old pickup going for them. It was even Sammy who’d found it, and talked them into it, telling them it could be got running, he could do it easily, and at the price, which was only $485, he said— ignoring Gram’s raised eyebrows at the sum— they’d never find anything cheaper. “Who needs a wheeled vehicle?” Gram had demanded. “We do,” Sammy had told her. “You do, and you need a license, too. Maybe we can’t afford it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need it. And we can afford it.” Sammy had set his mind to it. Like anything else Sammy set his mind to, it got done. They insured it in Gram’s name, because she was the cheapest; Sammy was the only one of them who didn’t have a license at that point, and he’d turn sixteen in less than a year.
And note Gram getting the car because of the children, just like the phone! Oh, and I just remembered, she gets the boat from Bullet because her husband won't let her get a driver's license. The later books seem to put right a lot of things that are wrong in earlier books.
I don't have the book right with me (I'm out of town) but in Dicey's essay, doesn't she talk about how Liza doesn't have any songs any more at the end?
I'm not seeing it, but here's the whole essay, if you want to read and see what you were thinking of:
Mrs. Liza lived away up north, away out on Cape Cod, away in a town right at the end of the Cape. Her cabin was outside of town, right at the edge of the ocean. The ocean rolled up toward her rickety cabin, like it wanted to swallow it up; but it never did. Maybe it didn’t even want to. The wind was always blowing around the cabin, like it too wanted to have that little building gone.
Mrs. Liza had children, but she never had been married, and the man who was her children’s father had long ago gone and left her. She worked nights when the children were little, waiting tables in a restaurant, serving drinks in a bar, night-clerking in a motel. She always worked hard and was always willing to take days nobody else wanted, Christmas and Fourth of July, Easter. When the children got older, she switched to a daytime job, checkout in a supermarket. She hadn’t had any training for the kind of job that paid well, so she was always thinking about money, hoping she would have enough. Every sweater she owned had holes in it.
She had reasons to turn into a mean woman, but Mrs. Liza just couldn’t. She had a face made to smile, and her eyes always smiled with her mouth. She had long hair, the color of warm honey in the winter, the color of evening sunlight in the summer. She walked easy, high narrow shoulders, but loose, as if the joints of her body never got quite put together. She walked like a song sung without accompaniment.
Then slowly, so slowly she never really could find out the place where it began, life turned sour on Mrs. Liza. People said things. While she never heard them herself, her children heard them and got older and understood what people meant. Mrs. Liza loved her children, so that worried her. Money worried at her the way waves worry at the shoreline, always nibbling away at the soft sand. Her money seemed to run out earlier each week.
Mrs. Liza stood at the door of her cabin and looked out at the ocean. The ocean looked back at Mrs. Liza and rolled on toward her. She could see no end to the ocean. The wind that pulled at her hair was always blowing. She looked out at her children playing on the beach and reminded herself to get some tunafish for supper; but she forgot.
Her eyes stopped smiling first, and then her mouth. The holes in her sweaters got bigger. Meanwhile, people talked and she didn’t know what to say so they could understand. Meanwhile, quarters and dimes got lighter, smaller. Meanwhile, her children were growing bigger and they needed more food, more clothes. Meanwhile, nothing she did seemed to make any difference.
So Mrs. Liza did about the only thing left to her to do. She went away into the farthest place she could find. They cut her hair short. She didn’t notice that, lying there, nor when they fed her or changed the sheets. Her eyes never moved, as if what she was looking at was so far away small that if she looked off for a second, it would be gone.
I'm still planning a wall of text to our other thread, but my 450,000-word series calls. ;)
no subject
I know, right? Where have you been my whole life?!
I am with you, that is the only way I can do it as well. I think the longest I've ever managed is 10k or so :P
I'm kind of finishing up a 450,000-word fanfic series that's not nearly as good as Voigt's, and the only way I've been able to do it at all has been by doing the whole thing all at once. However she did it, she's amazing.
I knew it was confusing me, but not quite why :)
It confused me for the longest time. Only rereading Runner this last time cleared it up, and only because we were having this conversation and I was paying close attention.
And it's sort of ironic, too: Johnny is a builder who breaks all his family ties.
Oh, yeah, I thought about saying something about how I think it's more of a self-perception thing, an identity, than anything else. Also, obviously, being good with your hands does not equate to interpersonal ties! Bullet even says Johnny's a carbon copy of the old man. It's complex; there's no builder/breaker binary, in my mind. But it's a theme that I think is worth paying attention to, along with the letting go/holding on/reaching out.
(Also, stepping for a moment out of thematic concerns and into real-world healthy behaviors, HELL YES leave that abusive family behind, Johnny! Don't look back!)
I have a whole theory about why there's no boat in Stranger! My theory involves the boats being a locus for cutting ties with others.
Huuuhh. That's interesting. I like it! Fits very well with Johnny. And omggg, you're so right about Francis!
Also interesting how the motor boat is a parting gift from Bullet: reaching out and cutting ties at the same time. It also gives her a way to be less dependent on her abusive husband.
Is Sammy a builder?
Yes! I was going to mention this as I got a little further in Seventeen. Check this passage out:
“It’s a good thing Sammy took wood shop, or I don’t know what I’d have gotten for Christmas.”
“He’s got clever hands,” Jeff said.
“And he likes making things,” she added. Sammy had even roped James into making a half-court, a backboard to play tennis alone on, one summer; at the garage where he’d been hired to pump gas, he now spent most of his time working on engines. It was Sammy who kept their old pickup going for them. It was even Sammy who’d found it, and talked them into it, telling them it could be got running, he could do it easily, and at the price, which was only $485, he said— ignoring Gram’s raised eyebrows at the sum— they’d never find anything cheaper. “Who needs a wheeled vehicle?” Gram had demanded. “We do,” Sammy had told her. “You do, and you need a license, too. Maybe we can’t afford it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need it. And we can afford it.” Sammy had set his mind to it. Like anything else Sammy set his mind to, it got done. They insured it in Gram’s name, because she was the cheapest; Sammy was the only one of them who didn’t have a license at that point, and he’d turn sixteen in less than a year.
And note Gram getting the car because of the children, just like the phone! Oh, and I just remembered, she gets the boat from Bullet because her husband won't let her get a driver's license. The later books seem to put right a lot of things that are wrong in earlier books.
I don't have the book right with me (I'm out of town) but in Dicey's essay, doesn't she talk about how Liza doesn't have any songs any more at the end?
I'm not seeing it, but here's the whole essay, if you want to read and see what you were thinking of:
Mrs. Liza lived away up north, away out on Cape Cod, away in a town right at the end of the Cape. Her cabin was outside of town, right at the edge of the ocean. The ocean rolled up toward her rickety cabin, like it wanted to swallow it up; but it never did. Maybe it didn’t even want to. The wind was always blowing around the cabin, like it too wanted to have that little building gone.
Mrs. Liza had children, but she never had been married, and the man who was her children’s father had long ago gone and left her. She worked nights when the children were little, waiting tables in a restaurant, serving drinks in a bar, night-clerking in a motel. She always worked hard and was always willing to take days nobody else wanted, Christmas and Fourth of July, Easter. When the children got older, she switched to a daytime job, checkout in a supermarket. She hadn’t had any training for the kind of job that paid well, so she was always thinking about money, hoping she would have enough. Every sweater she owned had holes in it.
She had reasons to turn into a mean woman, but Mrs. Liza just couldn’t. She had a face made to smile, and her eyes always smiled with her mouth. She had long hair, the color of warm honey in the winter, the color of evening sunlight in the summer. She walked easy, high narrow shoulders, but loose, as if the joints of her body never got quite put together. She walked like a song sung without accompaniment.
Then slowly, so slowly she never really could find out the place where it began, life turned sour on Mrs. Liza. People said things. While she never heard them herself, her children heard them and got older and understood what people meant. Mrs. Liza loved her children, so that worried her. Money worried at her the way waves worry at the shoreline, always nibbling away at the soft sand. Her money seemed to run out earlier each week.
Mrs. Liza stood at the door of her cabin and looked out at the ocean. The ocean looked back at Mrs. Liza and rolled on toward her. She could see no end to the ocean. The wind that pulled at her hair was always blowing. She looked out at her children playing on the beach and reminded herself to get some tunafish for supper; but she forgot.
Her eyes stopped smiling first, and then her mouth. The holes in her sweaters got bigger. Meanwhile, people talked and she didn’t know what to say so they could understand. Meanwhile, quarters and dimes got lighter, smaller. Meanwhile, her children were growing bigger and they needed more food, more clothes. Meanwhile, nothing she did seemed to make any difference.
So Mrs. Liza did about the only thing left to her to do. She went away into the farthest place she could find. They cut her hair short. She didn’t notice that, lying there, nor when they fed her or changed the sheets. Her eyes never moved, as if what she was looking at was so far away small that if she looked off for a second, it would be gone.
I'm still planning a wall of text to our other thread, but my 450,000-word series calls. ;)