Jessica Lee Jernigan: Cultural Criticism and Beauty Tips

Recent Acquisitions

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren

Ladies of Fantasy: Two Centuries of Sinister Stories by the Gentle Sex, selected by Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis

Pendragon: Arthur and His Britain by Joseph P. Clancy

The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman

Happy Father’s Day

Frances and I worked on this project together. Instructions for origami shirt-and-tie card here.

Interview with Virginia Kantra

If she didn't have sex with something soon, she would burst out of her skin.

So begins Sea Witch, the first novel in Virginia Kantra’s Children of the Sea trilogy. While most paranormal romance authors deploy incredibly complicated plot devices to make it acceptable for their heroines to go all the way with sultry strangers within the first thirty pages or so, Kantra refuses to offer any sort of narrative apologia. Instead, she presents readers with a protagonist who is driven purely by her own physical need. Of course, it makes a difference that Kantra’s heroine is a selkie—a seal who assumes a woman’s shape on land.

The authors of paranormal romance regularly borrow from folklore in their search for resonant tropes and characters, but Kantra makes particularly deft use of her source material. In Sea Witch, for example, she exploits her heroine’s non-human status to teasingly challenge readers’ expectations. She is working within the genre while pushing against its boundaries. Her subtlety is exceptional. One of the big surprises in the interview below is the revelation that Sea Witch was, in part, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Mermaid.” Magred’s slow transformation from selkie to human shows no traces of Andersen’s heavy-handed moralizing. Kantra is able to give her heroine a soul while preserving the ambiguity and ambivalence of the folkloric selkie.

On your Website, you say that you’ve always enjoyed fairy tales. Have you had a lifelong interest in folklore, as well, or is that something that you’ve only recently begun to study? What folklore are you interested in at the moment?

Virginia Kantra: As soon as I had a library card, I read my way through Andrew Lang's collections of fairy tales—all twelve volumes!—which were originally published around the turn of the century. A lot of those are based on folk tales from all over the world.

Growing up, I didn't make a distinction between fairy tales and folklore. My father was an English professor. The bookshelves in our living room were jammed with Aristophanes, Ovid, Pope, and Milton on one side of the fireplace and Chesterton, Belloc, and Frazer’s The Golden Bough on the other. I categorized everything as either "stuff I could read" or "boring stuff."

I'm developing more Children of the Sea stories, which as you know use the legend of the selkie, but I'm expanding the role of the finfolk, based on another bit of Orkney folklore. I'm also intrigued by the legend of the njugl, the Shetland water horse, and trying to think how to fit that in with my current project.

The Children of the Sea novels are not, of course, your first works. What inspired you to embark on this series?

VK: At the same time I was writing my first two romantic suspense novels for Berkley, I also did a couple of novellas based on legends about the fair folk. I had what I thought was the idea for another contemporary romantic suspense: police chief on a remote island in Maine finds a naked woman who’s been attacked on the beach.

And then I thought . . . What if she wasn’t human?

The “naked” bit set me off, I think. There are folk tales up and down the British coast about the selkie, shape-shifters who take the form of seals in the ocean and cast off their pelts—get naked—to come ashore as beautiful men and women who have sex with humans. Which is a fabulous fantasy if you are a lonely sailor and a pretty unarguable explanation if you are an unmarried village maiden who can’t possibly name, say, the married butcher as the father of your baby.

It was that juxtaposition, that tension between land and sea, between the contemporary, pragmatic, police procedural world of my hero and the timeless, sensual, magical world of my heroine, that totally hooked me into the first story and into the series.

One of the things that I found most striking when I read Sea Witch was the beginning: Magred is a female character looking for sex—not love—when she goes ashore. It struck me that an author can do things with a non-human character that might be difficult to do with a human character; that is, behavior that's acceptable for a selkie might not be acceptable in a human. Do you find it liberating to work with supernatural beings?

VK: I did reverse gender expectations a little there, didn't I? Genre expectations, too, perhaps. At least one reviewer criticized Margred for not falling in love sooner, for not being "human enough."

For me, non-human characters are a way to explore what makes us truly human: the capacity to choose, to love, to commit. I wanted to take Margred's "otherness" seriously, both as a non-human character with a unique point of view and as a way of exploring human relationships. I had to consider how Margred’s experience and emotions within her element—her environment, the sea—would affect her thoughts and decisions on land. There’s a recurring line in the books that I use to capture the children of the sea: “We flow as the sea flows.” I adored writing Margred because she’s so amazingly sensual and sexually confident, but has so much to learn about faith, love, and tenderness.

Romance novels are often compared to fairy tales, and they do share many structural similarities. And paranormal romance novels, in particular, borrow from folklore. But paranormal romances also tend to have a sense of cosmic danger—the heroine is often caught up in a battle between vast forces, a battle with far-reaching consequences—that is generally absent from folktales. How does this tension between your folkloric source materials and the demands of the genre affect your work?

VK: What you're saying is probably true about the majority of paranormal romance, but frankly, I don't think about the "demands of the genre" when I'm writing. For me, high personal stakes trump cosmic consequences every time.

But even in fairy tales, you'll notice, the characters' choices often have implications for their larger worlds. We miss that sometimes as modern readers because we don't think of princes and princesses as part of a recognized social order. "Cinderella," for example, hinges on dynastic realities—the prince must marry because the kingdom needs an heir. When the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast" offends the witch, his entire kingdom suffers for his sin. Even the superstitions surrounding the practice of the corn maiden have implications for the harvest. So once I have the characters and their personal conflicts in place, I do look for those kinds of larger consequences as a way of upping the stakes.

Have you been inspired by any particular folktales—rather than just the idea of selkies—in shaping the plots or characters of your Children of the Sea novels or "Sea Crossing"?

VK: Absolutely. I got the idea of linking the first three books from an old shanty, "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light": "My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light, and he married a mermaid one fine night. Of that union, there came three..."

Sea Witch borrows pretty freely from Hans Christian Andersen's original "The Little Mermaid," especially in terms of Margred's search for a soul:

“So I shall die,” said the little mermaid, “and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. Is there anything I can do to win an immortal soul?”

The whole mythology I created for the elementals and the "First Creation" is of course patterned on the Creation story in Genesis.

Sea Fever doesn't draw on any particular source, but the upcoming Sea Lord was definitely inspired by Hades' abduction of Persephone, including the rape in the garden and the setting of the story in fall and winter. Perhaps because I was already using all that harvest imagery, I also used the tradition of the corn maiden.

Since you can't get a look at that book before May, I'm pasting in the relevant bit below.

He slid his knife from the sheath at his knee.

Corn stood around them in patches, skeletons of summer among the stakes and twine. Conn gathered a sheaf in one arm and, bending, sliced it through in a single stroke close to the ground. He bound the dried stalks together with twine, tying them to form a waist, a neck, legs. The shock at the top he left loose like long, stiff hair.

He laid the corn maiden on the ground beside Lucy, measuring its length with his eyes. They were almost the same size. He dressed the sheaf in the girl's clothing, forcing the jeans over the stalks of its legs, bundling its body into the shirt. He was sweating when he finished. Bits of dust and broken chaff clung to his skin.

Kneeling beside Lucy, he gathered her hair in one hand the way he'd gathered the corn, counting the strands across his palm, one, two, three...seven. Her face was still, her skin cold and pale.
An unexpected twinge caught him beneath the ribs. He used sex as a tool, a weapon. He did not expect it to turn like a knife in his hand. But his feelings, her feelings, could not be allowed to matter. He did what he must do.

    Fisting his hand around the strands of her hair, he yanked them out by the roots.
    Her breath escaped her lips in a silent cry. A drop of blood beaded at her scalp, but his magic compelled her to sleep.
    He set his teeth, touching his finger to the blood and then to the center of the bundled corn, the claidheag, where the corn maiden's heart would beat. If such a creature had a heart. His fingertip burned. He felt the heat flow upward through his arm, power building and pulsing like a headache. He tied the seven strands of hair over the twine at the top.
    "Know," he commanded. The pressure hammered at his temples.    He blew into the featureless face. "Breathe."
    He pressed the heel of his palm between Lucy's legs, still wet with her essence and his seed. The magic gripped his neck like claws, sinking fangs into his skull, squeezing his brain. He smeared his wet hand over the dry husks of the claidheag, anointing it with life. "Be."
    He felt the surge, the shock of focused power, leap from him to the sheaf on the ground.
    Done.
    The power ebbed away, leaving him drained, his head throbbing with the aftermath of magic, and the claidheag stiff and still.
    Conn inhaled, holding his breath to fill the sudden emptiness of his chest.
    Lucy slept, unknowing.
    He lifted her body in his arms and carried her away, leaving his handiwork lying behind them in the field.

    The dried stalks rattled together. Know.
    The wind whispered. Breathe.
    The earth radiated warmth. Be.
    The breeze teased the bundle on the ground. The claidheag's hair, the pale gold of corn husks or straw, fluttered, smoothing, softening. Beneath the swaddling clothes, its limbs swelled and grew supple, taking on substance, taking on flesh.
    From the branches of a spruce, a crow launched, squawking in protest or warning.
    The corn maiden opened its eyes, the green yellow of pumpkin vines. Lucy's eyes, in Lucy's face.
    It lay in the field, watching the clouds chase across the sky, absorbing the last rays of the sun, listening to the chatter of the wind.
    A catbird landed on a nearby stake, cocked a fierce, bright eye and flew away again. An ant, wandering the furrows, traced a trail over the claidheag's motionless hand. Slowly, thought formed, a pale shoot from a kernel of consciousness.
    It did not belong here, cut down, cut off from the earth.
    Not anymore.
    Sighing, the claidheag raised on one elbow and then to its knees. To its feet. It should go...The word was buried deep, a fat, round word, moldy with disappointment. Home. It should go home.
    Following the tug of blood, the stir of memory, it shambled toward the road.

Archival Interview with Jessica Berger Gross, Editor of About What Was Lost

NOTE: This interview was conducted in 2007. I’m retrieving it from the archives because the book was just reviewed in USA Weekend.

Almost 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I didn’t know this until I had a miscarriage of my own. I was surprised to learn that it’s so common, since women almost never talk about it. I wasn’t able to find anything much written on the subject, either. I can’t say that the cultural silence surrounding miscarriage made the experience worse—I don’t know if anything could have made it worse—but it certainly didn’t make it any easier.

The anthology, About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope, is a much-needed addition to the literature of mourning. I contributed an essay, and I recently interviewed the collection’s editor, Jessica Berger Gross, for Literary Mama. We talked about loss, the publishing process, and what it’s like to edit a famous author.

Burlap Fashion

I enjoy fashion. I have a lot of respect for Miuccia Prada. I find it exceedingly tiresome when people object to, say, color field painting because their kid could do that. Nevertheless: If you’re thinking of spending $1400 on a Miu Miu burlap sack, I’ll sell you one for half the price, and I’ll even give you the jasmine rice that came in it.

Before It Was Cool

The last time I was in New York, I went to a store that specializes in vintage glasses. A couple of friends went with me, and they both checked out the frames, too. The male half of this couple tried on a pair that was thick—think Buddy Holly or Woody Allen—but rendered in clear Lucite. They were really quite perfect. They were assertively geeky but not overwhelming. They made me think of superannuated visions of the future—you know, not a future in which the nearsighted get Lasik surgery, but a future in which glasses frames are made out of clear plastic instead of black plastic.

I really tried to talk my friend into these glasses, and his girlfriend liked them, too. But he was hesitant. He left the shop saying he’d think about them.

It turns out that his hesitation was caused by the fear that every hipster in the city would be wearing them before his prescription lenses were ground. It turns out, moreover, that he was right: He is seeing clear Lucite frames all over the place, and he is happy that he’s not wearing them himself.

I know what he means. My own purchases on the shopping excursion described above were two pairs of decidedly Velmaish frames. I have received several compliments on them, but many of these compliments include the word “retro”. This causes me to have a little, tiny stroke, because what I want to say is, “These glasses are not ‘retro’. They are actually old. They have been rescued from obscurity and obsolescence by me. They are one-of-a-kind and wonderful in ways that you clearly cannot comprehend.” But I know—and the tension between the aforementioned desire and this knowing is what causes minor explosions in my brain—only a complete asshole would ever say that (and not just because said glasses have been rescued from obscurity and obsolescence from an East Village shopkeeper who’s totally got my number and, then, purchased by me.)

And now my friend is wondering, what does it say about him that he didn’t want to like those glasses because he was afraid that everyone else would like them, too? “Now and then,” he writes, “I get the awful feeling that people think I grew a beard to be trendy and I want to say, ‘I had this beard before it was cool.’… What sort of person feels that way and why?”

Here’s what I think. I think that the dynamic that accounts for his anxiety and my aneurysms is a particularly Generation X phenomenon. When we were growing up, we were fond of things that were weird and unlovable, largely because we, ourselves, felt weird and unlovable. Now that those things have been appropriated and repackaged for mass consumption, we instinctively want to reject them, even though we still love them—just like we mostly kind of hate ourselves, even though we inspire ourselves with something like the affectionate pity one might feel for a broken crayon, or, say, a tattered copy of Pac-Mania! The Official Pac-Man Joke Book.

That, in any case, is what I think. And if, sometime soon, it becomes popular to think this, I will assert—inwardly, at least—that I was thinking it before it was cool.

Cookbooks I Am Trying to Unload on Amazon

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten

The Best Vegetarian Recipes: From Greens to Grains, from Soups to Salads: 200 Bold Flavored Recipes by Martha R. Schulman

La Comida del Barrio: Latin-American Cooking in the U.S.A. by Aaron Sanchez

Nancy Silverton’s Pastries from the La Brea Bakery

Bouchon by Thomas Keller

The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller

A Return to Cooking by Eric Ripert and Michael Rulhman

Family Portrait

Jessica Jernigan Diversions

Books I Have Purchased Recently, in Alphabetical Order by Author or Editor

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Dark Prince by Christine Feehan
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
A Mermaid’s Kiss by Joey W. Hill
The Selkie by Melanie Jackson
They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James
Sea Witch by Virginia Kantra
Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up by Mollie Katzen
Man of My Dreams by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Maggie Shayne, Suzanne Forster, and Virginia Kantra
Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art by Julia Kristeva
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller
The Kristeva Reader, edited by Toril Moi
Good Babies: A Tale of Trolls, Humans, a Witch and a Switch by Tim Myers, with illustrations by Kelly Murphy
The Portable Kristeva (2nd Edition), edited by Kelly Oliver
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope
Awaiting the Moon by Donna Simpson
Lord of the Deep by Dawn Thompson
Tales of the Seal People: Scottish Folk Tales by Duncan Williamson
49 Sensational Skirts: Creative Embellishment Ideas for One-of-a-Kind Designs by Alison Willoughby
Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, edited by William Butler Yeats

Merry Christmas

Jessica Jernigan Diversions

Our Babies, Ourselves

When I first saw the cover of November 28 New York Times Magazine, I was eager to read Alex Kuczynski’s story about having a child via surrogate—not so much because I am especially interested in infertility, but because Kuczynski is a writer I love to hate. I was pretty sure that her first-person narrative was going to give me plenty of fuel for my antipathy.

I was pretty much right, but, after a couple of pages, though, I thought to myself, “This is only going to make you crazy and filled with spite, and then you are going to feel guilty and conflicted about the spite because you don’t actually know what it’s like to want a baby and not be able to have one, and that’s just no fun at all.” (I still have not processed all my thoughts and more instinctive reactions to Sarah Palin; indeed, I doubt that any feminist has, and I believe that there could be a whole women’s studies conference devoted to collectively navigating that cognitive and emotional thicket). So, I closed the magazine, but not before I looked at all the photos, which were—as has been noted by the Public Editor and others—outrageous.

I did read the letters to the editor in the latest issue of the magazine, of which there were many. I found this one to be the most interesting, as it raised some substantive, philosophical issues that hadn’t been addressed elsewhere:

In words that echo Aristotle’s view that a woman is a receptacle for the life force implanted by a man through intercourse, the author refers to Cathy Hilling as “the woman who carried our child” and explains, “Strictly speaking, she was a vessel, the carrier, the biological baby sitter, for my baby.” The title of the article, “Her Body, My Baby,” engages in the same obliterating action, with the author as the stand-in life-force impregnator, situated outside the nine-month process of creating a child but claiming responsibility for and complete ownership of the result. And Kuczynski perceives Cathy as participating in this reduction of her role when she likens herself to an Easy-Bake oven.

That simplistic formulation of so-called gestational surrogacy (“organ rental,” per Kuczynski) may have helped two strangers leap over chasms they couldn’t have traversed otherwise. But it is a shortcut that relies on denigrating concepts, concepts that have historically led to inhumane treatment. As infertility and intervention increasingly muddy the meaning of the word “mother,” we must traverse that terrain and not take shortcuts.

A woman’s body and the growing being inside her participate in an astounding symphony for about 40 weeks to build from egg and sperm a human that can survive outside the woman’s body. The woman’s feelings, thoughts, meals and actions influence that symphony, helping create what the growing being experiences at every moment. Yet Kuczynski literally reduces Cathy’s whole self to her uterus. This is a disturbing denigration of a beautiful, astoundingly complex phenomenon that builds life and that bonds most living beings and their offspring for life.

JANET BENTON
Wyncote, Pa.

After reading this, I wondered what my favorite fertility-challenged blogger would have to say about Kuczynski’s article, and I was surprised—and somewhat chastened—by what I found. It was salutary to be reminded that, while Kuczynski’s wealth made it possible to afford 11 IVF cycles, it probably didn’t do anything to relieve the pain she experienced when those attempts to become pregnant failed. And I know that money didn’t help her overcome the grief of 4 miscarriages. I thought about this, and I also thought about the most elegant line from that very wise letter I quoted above: “As infertility and intervention increasingly muddy the meaning of the word ‘mother,’ we must traverse that terrain and not take shortcuts.” My dislike for Kuczynski—which is, if I’m honest about it, mostly sour grapes—allowed me to take a shortcut through her story. It allowed me to dehumanize her, to ignore her very real pain and the complexity of her situation—a situation I have never had to confront. I like to think that I’m better than that, and it’s good to be reminded that I should be.

Some Topics about which I Know Almost Nothing, in Descending Order of Knowingness

Islam

Baseball

Chinese Astrology

American Idol

The work of Julia Kristeva

Physics

Heidi Montag

Economics

Hungarian cooking

The work of Nicholas Sparks

Rhode Island

Rock Band 2

The Electoral College

The Boer War

The Indian state of Kerala

Game Theory

Brody Jenner

This Week’s Menu

MONDAY

Borlotti Bean Mole with Roast Winter Squash from 101 Cookbooks

Substitution: Pinto beans for borlotti beans

Rice

TUESDAY

Italian Sausages and Lentils from Nigella Bites

Substitution: Chicken sausage for pork sausage

Endive, Arugula, and Orange Salad from Epicurious

WEDNESDAY

Spaghetti with Spinach, Pancetta, and Egg from Pasta Harvest

THURSDAY

Chili Pie from Real Simple Food (Fall 2006)

Substitutions: Mexican chorizo for Italian sausage, black beans for kidney beans

Green Salad

FRIDAY

Leftovers or Carryout

SATURDAY

Slow-Cooker Chili Chicken Tacos from Everyday Food (October 2008)

Homemade Salsa

SUNDAY

Fried Green Tomato BLTs

Frozen French fries

Change We Can Believe In

It will come as a surprise to no one that The New Yorker has endorsed Barack Obama. Nevertheless, the editorial announcing the magazine’s choice of presidential candidate is a worthwhile read, particularly for anyone who is still undecided. In a clear and organized fashion, the editors spell out the real and substantive differences between Obama and John McCain—differences in temperament, differences in character, and differences in political philosophy. They suggest how an Obama presidency would look, and they compare that to what we might expect from McCain. I have chosen this extended quotation, because I feel that it’s so important:

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

Back in 2000, liberals dissatisfied with Gore’s centrism liked to say that there was no real difference between the two major-party candidates. In conversations with Ralph Nader’s supporters, the disparity between the type of judge George Bush was likely to appoint and the type of judge Al Gore was likely to appoint was, I argued, a real difference. The same holds true today. I sympathize with the disappointment of Hillary Clinton’s supporters, I understand the frustration of lefties who feel that Barack Obama is insufficiently radical. I would, however, ask these constituencies to take a look at the last eight years, consider the challenges that lie ahead, and ask themselves whether or not the country—and the world—might not be at least a little bit better off if Obama is our next president.

Hey! I’m an award-winning fiction-writer.

My short short story, “She Is Not Going to Call Him” won the Editors’ Award in the latest writing contest—the topic was “Men”—sponsored by TheNovelette.com. You can find my entry, the Readers’ Choice winner, and the other finalists here.

Thanks to those discerning editors, and thanks to everyone who voted.