It's Up!

[ellenkushner]

My most recent Riverside short story, "The Man with the Knives," is now up online for all to read at Tor.com.

Tor has added 2 more illustrations by Thomas Canty (who gave us many gorgeous ones to choose from for the limited edition of the book from Temporary Culture).  The story will also be appearing in print this March in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five - among some pretty heady company.  If you don't keep up with short fiction, but want to read the cream of the crop, I recommend this series.

The story reprint went up on Dec. 1st - the nicest Chanukah present ever! - and it's been getting some lovely feedback, both at the Tor page and on Twitter - with many references to tears and hankies.  Seems to be a specialty of mine: On panels I often tell the story of Jane Yolen calling me up to tell me that my first published story ("The Unicorn Masque") made her cry (it's about how I was so young I didn't realize how sad that story is - and about how, when you're an author, you learn to give up control of how people read your stuff) . . . and I'll never forget my agent, the very proper Julie Fallowfield, reading the ms. of Thomas the Rhymer overnight  - when I picked up the phone the next day, I heard a gruff British voice say, "Damn you, you made me cry!"

So here's my question for today:  Do you like art that makes you cry?  

In other news:
Terri Windling is selling off many of her old prints in time for the holidays, all for just $20.  If there's work of hers you've always wanted, now is the time to grab it, as I don't think she'll reprint the old pieces.

Comments

[kitgordon.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love art that makes me cry; I resent it when it's cheap sentimentality that does it, but when it's the real, deep emotion (as it is with your books and others), I cherish it. I'm glad "The Man with the Knives" now has a larger audience, though I treasure my chapbook, and the Canty print.

[jazzfish]

"Like" doesn't seem to really fit. I appreciate it, o, yes. Very much so. It reminds me that I'm still alive and still can feel. That doesn't mean that I'll want to experience it all that often.

(I went to see the recent movie version of "Where the Wild Things Are" with my partner. We're both extremely sensitive to depictions of loneliness, and didn't entirely realise what we were getting into. We spent from about the fifteen-minute mark on in tears, curled as tightly around one another as we could get in the movie theatre seats. I have a great deal of appreciation for that movie and I don't know when I'll watch it again.)

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Good thing too, as I read "The Man with the Knives" in my office while eating lunch yesterday.

[jay-of-lasgalen.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely. Richard's death in The Man with the Knives came as such a shock - I hadn't imagined anything like that. And Alec's grief and self doubt ('Hadn't they been happy? Hadn't they?') is heartrending.

Art that makes you cry shows how deeply the reader cares for the characters, and how involved in the story they become. There are very few books that affect me like that.

I've already got the book of The Man with the Knives, and copied the Tor.com feature onto my Kindle, complete with all the gorgeous illustrations. Thank you for sharing it again!

[eternaleponine.livejournal.com]

That line ('Hadn't they been happy? Hadn't they?) killed me. I'm pretty sure I was more or less sobbing for the rest of the story after that.

[squidflakes.livejournal.com]

I'm with Imogen Heap on this one. Music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry.

[elswhere1.livejournal.com]

Mostly, I love art that makes me cry. Like kitgordon, I resent it when it's cheap, though (even through my tears I resent it). And also something with deeply felt sadness woven into it is different than, say, a whole book that's just bleak and depressing.

It's such a complicated and interesting question, what makes me (or anyone) cry in art, and why, and--for me, anyway-- how it's changed as I get older. It's tricky. I think I'm more likely to actually cry--and to not resent it--when the crying-making-thing takes me by surprise, as it sometimes does in funny or seemingly light movies or books.

BTW I've been wanting to tell you how much I loved "The Man with the Knives." And also that it's so good about grief. It's gorgeous.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of music where I judge the quality of a performance by, among other things, whether it makes me cry or not. Various points in Puccini operas, for example. And there are other works which sometimes make me cry, in particular performances; I don't expect to cry during Beethoven's 9th, but there was a performance by Solti, about six months before he died, simply because it was wonderful and because I guessed it might be the last time I heard him.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

My comment on The Man with the Knives is about this articulate:

Oh, Richard.

Oh, Alec.

Ow.

(Heartbreaking, and I loved it.)

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I love art that makes me cry, though I'm not fond of purposeful tear jerking.

The Man with the Knives made me cry in a good way. I loved it too pieces. In the books I got the impression that Richard and Alec have their happily ever after on then island and then in this story it suddenly comes from fairy tail to reality, precisely because Alec can't stifle the doubts, can't rule out suicide completely.
The prefect happiness is in the tale but in reality there's ambiguity.

Thank you so much for putting the story online! I was so glad I finally got to read it!

[windbourne.livejournal.com]

Yes. Good art -should- affect me strongly, whether the result is tears or laughter or anger or any other outpouring of emotion. I've gotten easier to tweak as I've gotten older, but I've also gotten better at identifying when I'm being manipulated rather than shown truth and beauty.

Art and crying

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, Ellen, I like art that makes me cry because:
* art has to cut to the quick, and tears are the blood
* tears remind me I'm not dead yet, and art is the quickening lifeforce
* tears after art are like tears after lovemaking
* tears after art remind me why we do this hard deep thing called art or called spilling art's-blood
* art tears through the meniscus and tears are the spill from the cup refilled
* many other possible reasons depending on the day...
Love this story, and love you
write more, write deep, write my tears into being
xo
Candas

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

Yes I do like art that makes me cry, but it's not necessary. In fact, if it is working too hard to invoke tears I might get turned off rather quickly. It's sort of like a lot of things, when it works it's wonderful, as well as that which makes me smile or laugh - actually harder to do for me.... I think my hope is for engaged or lost in but even that can't be had all of the time, or I might not appreciate it - kind of why I seek out light fluff too. Interesting question.

JoEllyn :)

[eternaleponine.livejournal.com]

I tend to tear up at a lot of things, but yes, I like art that makes me cry. I like art that makes me feel anything really deeply, and tears tend to be the result for me. :-)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I like the way that Thomas the Rhymer makes me cry. I can bear the way that "The Death of the Duke" makes me cry. I have been entirely unable to re-read "The Man With The Knives" because of the particular way it makes me cry. So I'd have to say it varies.

The ending of Swordspoint doesn't really make me cry, just makes me get slightly sniffly, and that, as you know, is my favorite book in the universe, and Alec's closing line my choice for most romantic sentence in history.

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

I like good art, and sometimes good art makes me cry.

[ivy-rat.livejournal.com]

I love being made to cry when, in the end, I deem it a happy ending. I don't like when the tears are of the unhappy ending kind. It's actually been all this talk of crying that's made me not read "The Man with Knives" yet. Since I'm figuring that it will be the crying that devastates me, I need to wait until I'm emotionally able to cope. With life as it's been lately, that might be awhile...

[rmthunter.livejournal.com]

Making me cry is one option -- it's got to do something to me, make me cry or make me furious or make me ecstatic -- something that is not business as usual. (I was going to say "not daily life," but daily life can do all that to me.)

And sometimes I'm happy if it just makes me say to myself, way down deep, "hmm."

And I still love The Man With the Knives.

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

I just cried over For The Win by Cory Doctorow. I like intense emotions, and I see making the reader/viewer cry as a sign of good artistry. Although I don't mean to say it's the only sign of good artistry.

Sometimes I cry also because of the subject matter - I cried at the end of the Doctor Who episode dealing with Van Gogh and depression, and I did that more for personal reactions to the subject matter than, although it was also a well done episode.

There's also 2 kinds of crying, one because something sad happened, and one because something sad and beautiful at the same time happened, so that I'm happy at the same time that I'm sad. Unfortunately I can't think of a good example for this one right now.

Yes, I appreciate it when art makes me cry.