#speak easy

[smotherstories]

These two look like an interesting bit of trouble.

[wallacepolsom]

Wallace Polsom, Life During Wartime: Speak Easy (2023), paper collage, 24.2 x 26 cm.

[defjeep]

hello my beautiful not-so-active account. before I feel bad about leaving Tumblr from absolutely any news about me (or any of my art, sorry), I announce that I finished an animatic for my silly OCs!! :) I hope it at least piques your interest enough to give it a watch on YouTube <3

[st-just]

Now Frankie, he was born in Minnesota but mostly got to walking and talking in Buffalo, that upstate snow-show with barely a canal and a train line to run together. Daddy was a pharmaceutical man, selling Well-Being door to door. Mamma was a greengrocer's daughter with moles on her middle knuckles, all tend of them, like little pinpricks for marionette strings. Sent their boy to Catholic school to learn what boys learn there, which is mostly how not to be a Catholic ever again.

-Speak Easy, by Catherynne Valente

[muttball]

Amsterdam Coffee Shop

[breathetoseethetruth]

I can't even begin to describe just how much Catherynne M. Valente's works make my heart and soul bloom.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[firstdatedaisy]

I took myself on a date last night! I got a yummy drinks at a rooftop bar and a speak-easy. I then rode a bike on the way home though my beautiful city. Smoked a little-j on my way to a veggie dog, fully loaded with cheese fries.

It was a great date.

Moving forward: Show yourself love.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 25 – Speak Easy by Catherynne Valente

I’m a longtime fan of Valente – she might honestly be one of my favorite prose stylists currently writing, at least in her better works – and as a rule I absolutely adore any sort of fantastical take or twist on the early 20th century. So really the shocking thing is that I hadn’t already read this short little number about a faerie-supplied and hedonistically surreal bootlegger hotel in 1920s New York City sometime years ago.

The book is very, very theoretically an adaptation of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. By which I mean the book takes a second sometime in the third act to stop the action and loudly say ‘wow, isn’t this so similar to that one fairy tale about the twelve dancing princesses?’, and once it says that you can stop and squint really hard and kind of see what it means. I say this as a devoted fan of off-kilter fractured fair tale retellings; it’s a reach. It does sort of make this sort of a series with several of Valente’s other works though (I would say stronger than Six Gun Snow White, weaker than Comfort Me With Apples, and Deathless is like three times as long so the comparison seems unfair but much weaker than it too).

The story’s about the inhabitants of a supernatural and decadent residential hotel full of every scraps of Prohibition era style you can imagine, jumping between a half dozen POVs but mostly about Zelda, a flapper and belle of every ball she deigns to attend. There’s a journey into ‘Canada’ beneath the ground, from which the hotel’s supply of liquor and drugs arrive, and a magically high stakes poker game, and even a shooting – but honestly in terms of plot and character development and just things happening this is an extremely light book.

Though one thing about it that I didn’t realize until embarrassingly late in the game is that some of the main cast are actually historical figures – Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, specifically. Possibly others, but if so I entirely missed them. As far as I can tell, this is done entirely to add some period colour to the whole affair, and also Valente really really does not like F. Scott very much as a person.

So yes, the book is short and insubstantial, and there’s only barely anything you could call a plot. But I really can’t find it in myself to get particularly angry about all that, or really regret reading it. The actual star of the show itself is the style, the hotel and how it contains every roaring ‘20s archetype you can imagine, mixed with a heavy, heavy serving of the absurd and surreal – mobsters and artists and dancers and critics and politicians and mistresses and debutantes and bellhops with probably delusional dreams of grandeur. There’s a friendly pet bear on the roof and swimming pools in the basement and pneumatic tubes running through the whole structure, and the owner’s ever so helpful supplier clearly has blue skin beneath his makeu. The narration helps with this, too – it’s got a great chatty, gossip-columny sort of tone, and it really does do an excellent job selling the whole show.

Still, there really just isn’t much there there.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[wisdomfish]

I can never stop thanking God for all the wonderful gifts He has given you, now that you belong to Christ. He has enriched your whole life. He has helped you speak out for Him and has given you a full understanding of the truth. What I told you Christ could do for you has happened! Now you have every grace and blessing; every spiritual gift and power for doing God’s will are yours during this time of waiting for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ 1 Corinthians 1:4-7

[smotherstories]

I was definitely born in the wrong era.

[annadangelo]

peace & love

[defjeep]

been something I've been hesitant on directing towards since stopping fanarts. hope you enjoy <3

[st-just]

Talking to Zelda felt like talking to a radio. It talked back, but you could hardly call it a conversation.

-Speak Easy, by Catherynne Valente

[amanda1234]

Blondie in a bathroom.