intertext

Last night I returned home from a five-day stint in Toronto, specifically at York University, more specifically the Biennial Congress of the IRSCL (International Research Society for Children's Literature), at which I was presenting a paper on intertextuality in Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood. One of the nice things was that steepholm was there, and I was able to see her presentation on adaptations of The Borrowers and also spend more time just chatting with her than I've had a chance to do before.

She has written very amusingly about a rather disastrous afternoon we spent in downtown Toronto. It was kind of like this:
Me: "I lost my phone this afternoon."
You: "Oh dear, how did that happen?"
Me: "Well, it was a little damp after I fell in a fountain, so I put it down beside me on a bench where I was sitting, forgot it was there when I walked away, and someone stole it."
You: "You fell in a fountain??"
Me: "Yes, that was when steepholm and I were nearly hit by a speeding motorcycle. When I jumped out of the way I slipped and fell in backwards."
It was, in hindsight, rather funny, especially when miraculously no one was hurt. Losing my phone that way is a whole lot more dramatic than dropping it in a toilet, which I've also done.

The conference was great. I met a lot of people, including a lovely young woman studying at Valencia University who is also doing work on intertextuality - we admired each other's work and the possibility of collaborating on an article was discussed, so that was cool. I rubbed shoulders with a lot of very Big Names, all of whom were very nice.

One of the highlights for me, as it was for steepholm, was Robin Bernstein's talk on bedtime books, featuring Goodnight Moon and Go the Fuck to Sleep and brilliantly deconstructing an argument by Jaqueline Rose. One panel on dystopias in YA fiction featured some discussion on heterotopias which looked at them differently than I did (I theorize an intertextually rich text as a kind of heterotopia for the reader), but intersected in interesting ways. Two of Steepholm's Japanese friends spoke very interestingly about the Green Knowe books, which were among my mother's favourites. I am inspired to re-read them. Yesterday I went to a panel that focussed on sexuality in YA novels, which was shocking in the fact that there are - count them - more than 50 recent YA novels depicting date rape, which raised the question of their purpose, their audience and the awful truth that so many teens and young women have experienced this. Also how few books were actually "sex positive" and what that meant.

My trip home was a lot less eventful than steepholm's, but still delayed by more than two hours, which meant that I was up until 4:30 am Toronto time, arriving home at 1:30 am in Victoria. Today I am feeling very tired and have to go out to replace my phone and also get some food in the house.

Sadly, two days before I left, one of my cats, Simon, disappeared, and he still has not come home. This is very worrying and upsetting, although I'm doing my best to hope that he may yet return. He's not normally a wanderer, though, and the longer he's gone the harder it is to keep the faith. My other cat, Tabitha, was left at home alone while I was away, and I think she missed both Simon and Baggins (who went into kennels). Certainly she greeted me ecstatically when I came home last night, which lessened the feeling of emptiness without either Baggins or Simon. Keep your fingers crossed for Simon.

This is the first time I have been addressed as "lady." Maybe I haven't been travelling in the right (or wrong) places, but I feel like a character in a 1940's movie. I'm not quite sure why.

I'm having fun. People are nice. The papers have mostly been interesting. There was one, about Pan's Labyrinth, that really excited me, and I didn't get a chance to catch the speaker afterwards. She was talking about intertextuality in a lot of the same ways as I do, but using the term hypertextuality, which of course makes a lot of sense as a metaphor. When someone asked her how that was different from Bakhtin's theory of dialogism she couldn't really say, but I piped up and suggested that it might be because they were more intentional and less open to interpretation from the reader. I hope no one thought that was a stupid remark, because that's basically a lot of what I'm going to be saying tomorrow.

I went to a Tolkien panel this morning that was really good, and a Buffy panel 1/3 of which was good, and a Fairy tale panel (that included the Pan's Labyrinth one) that was wonderful. Three absolutely beautiful young women, all from the University of Hawaii and there must be something in the water there because all their presentations were brilliant.

I had dinner with my cousin last night in a chinese restaurant in Chinatown and it was really good.

Between panels, I went up Telegraph Hill this afternoon and saw the parrots, who must be saying to themselves "fuck that movie maker - we had such a nice gig and now crowds of people come and gawk at us."

I've taken some photographs (none of the parrots, but some of nice Victorian buildings) but am really too tired to download and fiddle with them - maybe when I get back.

It was the reception this evening, and I had a jolly time with the Vampire group (I may get an invite to be on a Buffy panel next year). It was finger food and wine for $11 per glass (and not even amazingly good wine). Food is generally scarce and expensive.

No powerpoints. I needn't have worried. The Tolkien group showed clips from the movie, or one of them did; the other one had technical difficulties. I think I'm well out of it.

Anyway - tomorrow is my talk. Right now I think I'm too tired to be nervous; no doubt I will be tomorrow. But, really, I think I'm ready.

Wish me luck :)