Womp womp
Adam's Notes for April 18, 2024
The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize Shortlist was released this morning and it looks like I didn’t make the cut from the longlist. It’s disappointing, but it’s not too disappointing. I’ve written a good short story that I’m confident will see the light of day eventually, and now I’ve got a nice accolade to hang in my author bio. More importantly, it’s already helped me start to take myself more seriously as a writer.
In the week between the announcement and today, I managed to talk myself into taking a handful of big swings, at things I’ve wanted to do or just thought would be cool but had never previously actually considered trying my hand at. It’s too soon to say if any of this will pan out, but we’ll see.
In other news, I’ve sold a sword & sorcery story to a fantasy anthology, and it should be free to read online in the next couple of months.
I’m also doing a lot of writing and I have to decide where I want to submit “The Ball Game,” the story of mine that was longlisted.
Onwards.
Pepys Show: drinking the king’s health
When we last left Samuel Pepys, he had just returned to London to find the city preparing for the coronation of King Charles II.
We pick up today on April 17, 1661, with four arches being erected for the occasion, leaving an impression with Pepys. You can view a sketch of an arch here. Apparently some guy named John Ogilby secured exclusive publishing rights for the coronation procession. I knew there was early copyright stuff back then, but this really surprised me. Kind of depressing to think all the stuff around modern sponsorship and exclusivity deals isn’t new to our era.
At the Mitre, Pepys happens upon Mr. Allen of Chatham, the clerk of the ropeyard and the father of Rebecca, the woman Pepys had a brief fling with on his trip. He asks Mr. Allen for a repeat performance of the song, “Of Shitten come Shites the beginning of love,” which Pepys must’ve heard and enjoyed at the private concert.
On the 18th he’s with his colleagues Sir William Batten and Sir William Pen, but Lady Batten is with them too and in a foul mood, angry at the servants, and at dinner Pepys is only, “as merry as I could counterfeit myself to be.” He and Pen take off for better company and ‘brave wine’ elsewhere, and on the ride home that evening they encounter, “two country fellows upon one horse.” Pepys gives way but Pen refuses, and after some harsh words Pen, “struck them off their horse, in a simple fury, and without much honour, in my mind, and so came away.”
There’s a great rain on the 21st, threatening to spoil tomorrow’s coronation. Pepys visits his parents, and finds they’ve got rid of his father’s maid and hired a new one his mother approves of. It should be an end to his parents’ quarrel, but Pepys is still picking up bad vibes about it. At home, he complains about his workmen being foreigners and lazy rogues, a footnote explains that ‘foreigner’ in this case means from outside of London proper.
On the day of the coronation, Pepys wears his velvet coat for the first time. Pepys tells us, “it is impossible to relate the glory of this day,” and yet the entry is one of the highlights of the diary. First he describes all the fancy clothes he sees, then tells us the streets are all gravelled, and the houses hung with carpets before them. Pepys relates the ceremonies, but as always with these things they go on too long and he finds himself needing to piss, and so he ducks out, “round the Abbey to Westminster Hall, all the way within rayles, and 10,000 people, with the ground covered with blue cloth; and scaffolds all the way.”
The lords are all dressed in knightly armour, ready to combat anyone who’d dare speak out against the king, and although Pepys is disappointed that he can’t see any fireworks from the leads of his house, he notes, “the City had a light like a glory round about it”.
There’s feasting and drinking, a good opportunity for Pepys to network. He goes from table to table greeting people, is given four rabbits and some chicken, which he and his friends eat standing at a nearby stall.
Afterwards there are bonfires in the streets with many “great gallants” and a “strange frolique.” He keeps noting all the beautiful women, but for once he can’t act on impulse because he’s accompanied by his wife, although even so he manages “to make good sport” with a woman hanging out of a window above him, and later kisses a doctor’s wife. By the time he sends Mrs Pepys off to bed he’s blackout drunk: “we drank the King’s health, and nothing else, till one of the gentlemen fell down stark drunk, and there lay spewing; and I went to my Lord’s pretty well. But no sooner a-bed with Mr. Shepley but my head began to hum, and I to vomit, and if ever I was foxed it was now, which I cannot say yet, because I fell asleep and slept till morning. Only when I waked I found myself wet with my spewing.”
Pepys notes that there’s no mischance among the large crowds, except, “to Serjt. Glynne, whose horse fell upon him yesterday, and is like to kill him, which people do please themselves to see how just God is to punish the rogue at such a time as this”, and also there was a woman who, “had her eye put out by a boy’s flinging a firebrand into the coach.” But otherwise it’s all been good, rowdy fun.
The coronation is one of the masterpiece passages of the diary, up there with the 1666 fire of London. He takes two days to describe it all, the 22nd and the 23rd, and it’s definitely worth reading both entries in full.
He’s quite hung over the next day, as you can imagine. “Waked in the morning with my head in a sad taking through the last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for.” He decides to cure it with a morning draught, but what makes it curious is that he’s also given some chocolate to help settle his stomach. I believe this is the second ever mention of chocolate in the diary.
After that, the month closes with a return of day-to-day life. Also, his parents are still fighting over the maids, “After supper my father told me of an odd passage the other night in bed between my mother and him, and she would not let him come to bed to her out of jealousy of him and an ugly wench that lived there lately, the most ill-favoured slut that ever I saw in my life, which I was ashamed to hear that my mother should be become such a fool, and my father bid me to take notice of it to my mother, and to make peace between him and her. All which do trouble me very much.” I think slut at this time means something more like slovenly. But I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Years from now, towards the close of the diary, Pepys’ wife will confront him in bed about his own cheating—even threatening him “with the (fireplace) tongs red hot at the ends, made as if she did design to pinch me with them, at which, in dismay, I rose up”.
Links
#Heistfail: looks like they cracked the Pearson Airport gold heist case after all. Seems like a traffic stop in Pennsylvania tipped off the ATF to the crew, who were also involved in arms trafficking. That said, some (most?) of the crew is still at large, and very little of the loot has been recovered. #Heistfail2: Woman takes corpse in wheelchair to bank to withdraw loan in Rio. Employees became suspicious of the attempt and called the police. Maybe don’t watch the video in that story’s link.
There’s a great piece by Hari Kunzru in the the NYT about a subgenre of thrillers he calls the apocalyptic systems thriller. High stakes geopolitical stuff set in the near future. As I was reading the first half of this article I kept thinking, you know, that’s a good description of what Kim Stanley Robinson does, just without the fetishization of militarism. But Kunzru not only points out that KSR is far and away the master of this genre, but he also manages to trace its prehistory back to my man Emile Zola’s meticulously researched novels of the Second Empire.
The Life and Death of Hollywood. Daniel Bessner on the material conditions that are making the movies worse than ever.
A great piece on the conspicuous absence of money in contemporary literature. Had a good discussion about this article the other day that led me to wondering if genre fiction can express the anxieties of today’s Precariat. I don’t think it does, now, but I think it can and hope it tries.
Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
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This makes me want a velvet coat, too. Maybe for the next coronation.
I knew lobster and other seafood was getting pricey, but worth its weight in gold, per your one link?