Recent reading

[luzula]

Shuna's Journey by Hayao Miyazaki (1983)
Well, I see why this is not as famous as Nausicaa--it's a much slighter work, and more broad strokes both in the artwork and in the story and worldbuilding. I also didn't feel that the worldbuilding made as much sense as in Nausicaa, though I think it was meant to have a more mythic feel where things don't have to make sense. Apparently I was unable to really enjoy this on its own terms without comparisons...oh well.

You May Well Ask by Naomi Mitchison (1979)
Her autobiography 1920-1940. There are lighter sections, but on the whole it is rather grim because of being bracketed by two world wars! It ends with some ominous diary entries from the beginning of WWII, with the very last sentence But my baby died. Oof. But also it's chock full of notes on everything from her love life, to politics, various of her friends, her writing, etc. I'm sure I missed lots of references, but one I did catch thanks to people in my DW circle who like reading about spies was this: I think it was in Vienna [in 1934] that I had lunch with a nice young Englishman called Philby; no doubt we talked politics. *boggles* Also she met Selma Lagerlöf! I wonder what they talked about. Also you get passages like this: We would go to the local café or Chez Louise, where I occasionally danced with the lesbian professional ladies who came to eat and dance in congenial surroundings before they went to other bars to earn their living. Louise herself was that way, with the barmaid as her wife. I remember once in the late Thirties going there with Margaret Cole; Louise thought I had at last seen the light. Heh. Also, I am not quite sure if "professional ladies" means they were selling sex or perhaps strip-dancing or something, or are they just barmaids?

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Yes, Shuna's Journey almost feels like a storyboard for a longer work, or concept art perhaps - it's impossible to avoid comparing to his later work because it many ways it's a trial run for things he developed more fully later. It's been years since I've seen Nausicaa so I didn't compare it to that specifically when I read it, but that's probably the most one with the most direct and obvious connection, but so many other things come back in other forms: the boy saves the girl and then the girl saves the boy in Spirited Away, the interest in strange flying machines comes up again and again, the protagonist wandering through strange fantastic landscapes too, most recently in The Boy and the Heron.

[luzula]

I guess I was more comparing it to the Nausicaa manga than the Nausicaa movie, since that's the other manga I've read by Miyazaki (and the manga he's famous for)! But yes, of course, there are a lot of themes which were developed more in many of his later works.

[rushthatspeaks]

The professional ladies were probably selling sex, but they might also have been taxi dancers, though I don't know much about that field's history in Europe. Right time period, though.

[oursin]

My assumption would be that they were selling sex: I'm not sure taxi dancers were a thing in Europe - there's a short story by Angus Wilson (set in the late 30s as I recall) in which a young woman at a dance in a seedy London residential hotel finds the song '10 cents a dance' glamorous and romantic (overtones of Hollywood perhaps) while her (older, married) partner gets sentimental.

I do wonder, from the phraseology, though, whether they were actually selling sex to other women. Though I am not sure Marcel Proust is necessarily an entirely reliable guide on this topic, I have come across other literary allusions. (One by Maureen Duffy, who perhaps is more reliable.)

Mitchison and Margaret Cole were in a polycule, though would not probably have phrased it thus - Margaret Cole and Dick Mitchison had an affair in the context of open marriages.

[luzula]

I had assumed they were selling sex to men, if they were selling sex (since it's implied that the bars where they earn their living are less congenial). Though I was a bit puzzled that there would be so many lesbians selling sex to men!

I didn't pick up from the book that Margaret Cole and Dick Mitchison had an affair, but maybe I missed it. I did think the bits about her love life were quite interesting.

[oursin]

It was commented by several observers of the lives of sex workers that a significant % of them preferred women in their private lives - men were business. Whether this was cause or effect, deponent knoweth not.

[luzula]

Oh interesting, I had never heard of taxi dancers! Huh.

[troisoiseaux]

one I did catch thanks to people in my DW circle who like reading about spies was this: I think it was in Vienna [in 1934] that I had lunch with a nice young Englishman called Philby; no doubt we talked politics. *boggles*

INCREDIBLE.

[luzula]

I know, right? : D

[chestnut_pod]

I did so enjoy You May Well Ask, despite the obvious gloom bracketing it. She just packed so much in!

[luzula]

There is SO MUCH packed in! I also appreciate how she writes about what daily life was like.

[genarti]

Isn't You May Well Ask fascinating? I admit I got pretty bogged down in the section about everyone who was everyone whom she had had relationships/correspondence/etc with, which wasn't especially my interest, but I loved the first section, with its finely honed writer's-eye view of what younger writers in the late 70s might have wished to know about what ordinary day-to-day life was like in the interwar years.

Shuna's Journey reminded me of Princess Mononoke too, as I recall, but I only read it a couple of years back and it's already fully receded into impressions and vagueness. A slight work, yeah, and one that feels like concept art for later works, but there's a certain charm in that.

[luzula]

Yeah, the middle part was the least interesting to me, too--I was interested in Mitchison, not these other people. But I suppose it did illuminate her life, as well. And yes, the first part about day-to-day life was great!