Angela Carter Anyone?

A couple of weeks ago I saw someone criticize Camille Paglia for ripping off her idea's from Angela Carter.... I like Camille... I don't always agree with her of course but I find her entertaining and enjoy listening to her. So I was certainly curious. Rather than start with boring essay's and the like I thought I would check out Angela Carter in an easily digestible format first.

I chose a book of short stories called "The Bloody Chamber". I took a break from the PKD Valis trilogy and read some of this instead.

It's fucking incredible. She's described as a post-feminist, magical realist... not that it matters. This book is basically just her re-telling and subverting popular fairy tales. Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood... sometimes I don't know which one is being played with until the ending and sometimes I still don't know even after I've read it. These could easily be described as horror or fantasy. There's elements of each and despite the fact that she seems to come with some ivory tower pedigree she could easily be seen as a genre writer as well.

I haven't been this blown away by a writer in some time. I think she's just wonderful and as soon as I get the time I'm going to read through everything else I can get my hands on. Probably starting with Night at the Circus. Have I just been missing out? Does everyone else know who she is and I just missed it? I had a bunch of fun game design idea's just reading her. I thought it might be cool to have a game (not that I'd ever design the damn thing) where you re-tell fairy tales in altered form by piecing together the story in certain ways. You could create new yet familiar stories each time you play. I have no clue how scoring would work but it's more just to say that there is an element of fun genre story telling in this book that could easily lend itself to a certain kind of game.

In any case if you haven't heard of her I highly recommend The Bloody Chamber. Incredible book.

You need to see Company of Wolves, a 1984 Neil Jordan film. It is based on one of her stories (the Little Red Riding Hood one) and I believe she actually wrote the screenplay.

I just looked it up and it sounds amazing. Somehow I missed all of this stuff... another reminder that no matter how much you think know you still don't know shit.