Larry's Angels: Larry reads Angelology

[Datepalm]

"Dresses badly for job interviews" has to be one of the worst bad-shorthand-for-characterization traits i've ever seen.

[Alytha]

I never knew the clothing was a choice, I'd always suspected it was mandatory?

Must be habit-forming...

So is this Abigail Rockefeller a real person that one should know about?

The description of Verlaine's clothes kinda remind me of the Doctor ;)

And the name reminds me of a certain rather emo French poet. Coincidence?

So you have buried perfect angels, and wrinkly living old angels here?

[lady narcissa]

Lady N you've got me worried. Maybe we need some Singh up in here?

Aww I don't want to spoil your fun so I will say no more. I have no doubt you can do an entertaining retelling of the story and make it sporkable with a little twist here and there.

So is this Abigail Rockefeller a real person that one should know about?

Yes. She was quite the philanthropist and is one of the ones responsible for the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller

[williamjm]

The description of Verlaine's clothes kinda remind me of the Doctor ;)

And the name reminds me of a certain rather emo French poet. Coincidence?

There's also mysterious and lifelike stone angels, if you're looking for more similarities.

[Alytha]

Uh-oh...

:leaving:

[Datepalm]

Don't. Blink.

[Winter's Knight]

And they are in NYC right? Maybe our hero's instinctive avoidance of tourist spots isn't such a bad idea.

[Datepalm]

I was thinking this is like a riff on cold war spy novels though.

[Vampire Squid]

So with a boss called Grigori, do we think Verlaine's deluded-but-good-at-heart or Evil? He's handsome, but that could work either way...

[Lummel]

I guess he's outta his depth caught up in an epic struggle that he don't understand. Plus his dress sense suggests comic relief.

[Larry of the Lawn]

and next, from Angelology,

MEET THE GRIGORIS!

So with a boss called Grigori, do we think Verlaine's deluded-but-good-at-heart or Evil? He's handsome, but that could work either way...

I guess he's outta his depth caught up in an epic struggle that he don't understand. Plus his dress sense suggests comic relief.

You guys have read this before, haven't you?

Our next installment brings us to the Grigori enclave, located on the 13th (!) floor of an apartment building:

The oak-paneled lobby of his building-- an exclusive prewar with views of Central Park--was so familiar that he hardly noticed it any longer. The Grigori family had occupied the penthouse for over half a century. Once he might have registered the deference of the doorman, the opulent arrangement of orchids in the foyer, the polished ebony and mother-of-pearl elevator casement, the fire sending a spray of light and warmth across the marble floor. But Percival Grigori noticed nothing at all except the pain crackling through his joints, the popping of his knees with each step. As the doors of the elevator slid open and he hobbled inside, he regarded his stooped image in the polished brass of the elevator car and looked quickly away.

Somebody get the angel some advil, for shit's sake.

These angels like their swanky living quarters. When Grigori enters the penthouse it's all silk pillows and porcelain bowls and panoramic windows, and we learn that his mother is holding court in her suite of rooms, so the whole apartment is a bustle with highfalutin angel-folk:

It was a ritual she had grown more and more accustomed to, primarily because of the power it gave her: She selected those people [read: angels] she wished to see, enclosed them in the dark-paneled lair of her private quarters, and let the rest of the world go on with its tedium and misery. For years she had left her suite only on rare occasions, when accompanied by Percival or his sister.

Percival views his mother as some kind of reclusive yet sociable harridan, paradoxical as it may sound. She's your stereotypical snooty aristocrat, and about half of the chapter is dedicated to describing the trappings of her 'lair', her wings, and the superiority of the Grigori's over the rest of angelic society. These lavish surroundings are contrasted with Percival himself, as he retires to the bathroom.

Trussoni now gives us a page and a half of Percival removing his clothing, underneath which is some kind of black leather harness strapped to his upper body. I know, I know, angel S & M, right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, it is merely a supportive device to keep his torso from imploding. Yes, underneath his GQ old man's garb Percival is a decrepit angel, his wings are reduced to bloody blue stumps of rotting angelflesh. While at one point it seemed that the descriptions of architecture and clothing would constitute the bulk of Angelology, it is now becoming clear that descriptions of angel wings (or lack thereof) actually hold that title.

Mounted at the center of his spine, matted by sweat, deformed by the severe pressure of the harness, were two tender nubs of bone. With a mixture of wonder and pain, he noted that his wings--once full and strong and bowed like golden scimitars--had all but disintegrated. The remnants of his wings were black with disease, the feathers withered, the bones atrophied. In the middle of his back, blue and raw from chafing, fixed the blackened bones in a gelatinous pool of congealed blood. Bandages, repeated cleanings--no amount of care helped to heal the wounds or relieve his pain. Yet he understood that the true agony would come when there was nothing left of his wings. All that had distinguished him, all that the others envied, would be gone.

So the angel community used to have a big old case of wing-envy for Percival. And now he's ashamed because they've wilted away, and when they're completely gone, he's a dead angel. Apparently some kind of wing mildew appeared ten years ago, spreading along the "inner shafts and vanes of the feathers, a phosphorescent green fungus" that grew like "patina on copper." This goes on and on. He had his wings cleaned professionally, "specifying that each feather be brushed with oil, and yet the pestilence remained." So it's not like he's some dirty angel with no hygiene, this infection is just damned resilient!

Then a few more paragraphs of his formerly majestic wings and their holographic appearance, blah blah blah luminescent pearlescent opalescence blah blah blah...

After concluding these musing on his own mortality, Percival turns his attention to the Verlaine envelope. Some more alliterative prose gives the reader this gem:

Feeling its heft with pleasure, he disemboweled the dossier with the delicacy of a cat feasting upon a trapped bird, tearing open the paper with slow deliberation and placing the pages upon the marble surface of the bathroom sink.

Oh, those angels and their paperwork, they're just such bureaucrats at heart!

Percy tries to pull himself together before shuffling out to face his family and their guests; he straps the gimp-harness back on, and smoothes out his clothing, but his hair is in disarray and his clothes are soaked with sweat and his eyes are bloodshot.

The apartment is filled with rare works of art, all original, including Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Apparently the Grigori's steal the originals and swap them out with replicas. They hang out with Thomas Crown and shit. Percy notes the musical instruments in hell in the Bosch work.

Then he stumbles into his mother's immediate sphere of influence:

Gripping the ivory head of his cane, Percival made his way through the crowd. He usually put up with such debauchery but felt now--in his current condition--that it would be difficult to make it across the room. He nodded to the father of a former schoolmate--a member of his family's circle for many centuries--standing at a remove from the crowd, his immaculate white wings on display. Percival smiled slightly at a model he had once taken to dinner, a lovely creature with pellucid blue eyes who came from an established Swiss family. She was far too young for her wings to have emerged, and so there was no way to glean the full extent of her breeding, but Percival knew her family to be old and influential. Before his illness struck, hi smother had tried to convince him to marry the girl. One day she would be a powerful member of their community.

Seems like even angels can't escape the motherly concern for their matrimonial prospects. I have to give it to Trussoni though, I had to look up 'pellucid.' It's about the same as lucid. Also, I've noticed that she likes to throw an em dash into every fucking paragraph. That last one had two back to back sentences with em dashes--sentences that are written one directly after the other--successive or consecutive you might say--kind of a call and response thing if you will--and they inevitably turn out to be the most pertinent bits for a thread like this. Seriously, I just look for a paragraph with a bunch of "blah blah--blah blah-- blah blah" and copy it. Easy.

Gah.

Then, immediately after that paragraph I just quoted:

Percival could toleate their friends from old families--it was to his benefit to do so--but he found their new acquaintances, a collection of nouveau riche money managers, media moguls, and other hangers-on to be sympathetic to the delicate balance of deference and discretion the Grigori family required.

It's like you can't go three sentences without having those dash clauses or the alliteration. It's non-stop. Even the angels have little patience for the nouveau riche.

Anyway, Percival is escorted by his sister Otterley (cool name), saving him from stumbling through the crowd on his own. Otterley is kind of the Paris Hilton type, apparently her wings are still gorgeous but would be in better shape if she hadn't been partying for the last couple of centuries:

Warning: more em dashes to follow

Otterley was of average height--six feet three inches--thin, and zipped into a low-cut dress, a bit much but in keeping with her taste. She'd pulled her blond hair back into a severe chignon and had painted her lips a bright pink that seemed a little too young for her. Otterley had been stunning once--even more lovely than the Swiss model standing nearby--but had burned through her youth in a hundred-year spree of parties and ill-suited relationships that had left her--and her fortune--significantly diminished.

Whew. Brother and sister joke about their mother's vanity as Otterley leads Percy towards her. Percy takes note of the Anakim, which are a lesser caste of angels that serve the upper castes. Anakim have wings that are insect like.

This trip across the room towards their mother is like 3 pages long. The guests are observing Percy's clothes and only realize he's a Grigori when they see that he's being escorted by Otterley.

When they finally reach their mother, Sneja Grigori, we learn that her wings are more magnificent than either of her children's, and she regards them as inferior. Some more wing porn ensues. When she gets up off the divan and flexes her wings, Percy watches her, "a tremor of jealousy stopping him cold. His mother's wings were gorgeous, shimmering, healthy, fully-plumed." The Oedipal wing gazing trails off as she tells Percy he's a wimp for not dragging Verlaine up to the convent tonight and going a document binge.

This emphasizes again how important all the documents at the convent are, and how these architectural sketches are valuable and what not. There's some suggestion that the cure to Percy's wing-rot is contained therein.

Next up....

Verlaine arrives at St. Rose convent to do some more Dan Brown work for the Grigori's, since their too busy being upper-crust angels to get their hands dirty in the library.

[Larry of the Lawn]

....and guess what's being released next month? Yep, Angelopolis, the sequel. You're welcome.

[Lummel]

imploding? if the interior of his body is less than atmospheric pressure I wouldn't have thought that a leather harness would have helped much

[Alytha]

imploding? if the interior of his body is less than atmospheric pressure I wouldn't have thought that a leather harness would have helped much

Yeah, I wondered about that too.

Also, professional angel wing cleaner. I think I found my new dream job.

Has nobody told the author that there is such a thing as a comma to denote clauses in a sentence?

[Lyanna Stark]

Wing mildew? The mind boggles.

Also, loving the dashes -- you simply can't write anything proper without them -- can you? -- and they look so handsome -- and kind of stream of consciousness like!

imploding? if the interior of his body is less than atmospheric pressure I wouldn't have thought that a leather harness would have helped much

Careful there with applying physics, you might catch wing mildew and then where would we be?

[MinDonner]

So, our divine wingéd guardian angels are basically just really boring upper-class socialites?? :stunned: I guess that makes all those angel-carvings in the convent the equivalent of Hello! magazine. And the whole "sekrit race of angels hidden for millennia" thing rather collapses when there's a bunch of them just hanging out in Manhattan with all their magnificent wings. With media moguls no less! Obviously these moguls are so honourable that they would never think of breaking this awesome scoop for a quick buck. Or is it trying to imply that the world is actually run by an angel conspiracy and that these are our Evil Overlords?

[Lummel]

...Also, professional angel wing cleaner. I think I found my new dream job...

"Oh, Mrs Grigorii, your wings are looking fabulous today, I think just a touch of refined eucalyptus oil will really bring out the colour"

...Careful there with applying physics, you might catch wing mildew and then where would we be?

Good point. Although, after careful examination of my shoulder blades, I fear it is too late :crying:

So, our divine wingéd guardian angels are basically just really boring upper-class socialites?? :stunned: I guess that makes all those angel-carvings in the convent the equivalent of Hello! magazine. And the whole "sekrit race of angels hidden for millennia" thing rather collapses when there's a bunch of them just hanging out in Manhattan with all their magnificent wings. With media moguls no less! Obviously these moguls are so honourable that they would never think of breaking this awesome scoop for a quick buck. Or is it trying to imply that the world is actually run by an angel conspiracy and that these are our Evil Overlords?

Maybe the media moghuls are also angels, I mean just think of old rupert, he's practically seraphic as it is! :leaving:

[Antonius Pius]

Or maybe they're aspiring to become immortal angels? If that's even possible. :unsure:

[Alytha]

Indeed, has there been any mention whether muggles can see the wings?

Also, more importantly, do they have a blue police box secreted away somewhere in that penthouse?

[The BlackBear]

I'm disappointed by the lack of strapping young male angels as of yet. Unless Grigori somehow gets his back and becomes un-dying.