INT. THE MURRY’S home. NIGHT.
MRS WHATSIT: hello
is anybody home
MRS. MURRY: excuse me?
MRS WHATSIT: i’m coming in for sandwiches and to take some of your sheets
also your children, i will be taking them
MRS. MURRY: you’re what?
MRS WHATSIT: oh by the way your husband is in space
and your science is terrible
just terrible
you have barely any science and your husband is trapped in space
i’ll just take these two children and those sheets over there
bye
MEG: where are we going
MRS WHATSIT: shut up and just enjoy the ride, baby
MEG: i was just wondering if–
MRS WHATSIT: well don’t
MEG: don’t…wonder?
MRS WHATSIT: don’t ask me stupid questions
I used to be a goddamn star, Meg
like in the SKY
what did you used to be
a seventh-grader?
lets compare those two things okay
MEG: i’m sorry, i didn’t–
MRS WHATSIT: everyone here who used to be an actual fucking star in the sky raise your hand
thats what i thought
MRS WHATSIT: hang on i gotta switch bodies
[MRS WHATSIT transforms herself into a winged centaur of unspeakable beauty]
MRS WHATSIT: thats better
[CALVIN falls to his knees in speechless worship]
MRS WHATSIT: THATS BETTER
CHARLES WALLACE: W H A T I S T H I S P L A C E
MRS WHATSIT: two-dimensional planet
CHARLES WALLACE: I C A N T B R E A T H E H E R E
MRS WHATSIT: oh yeah
thatll happen here
MRS WHATSIT: Meg you have to go fight IT by yourself
I can’t go with you
MEG: but why
MRS WHATSIT: okay I could go with you but i wont
happy
MEG: no
not at all
MRS WHATSIT: dont worry
i’ll give you a gift
i give you your faults
MEG: how will that help me
MRS WHATSIT: ok well Meg you know what
what do you even know about it
what do you know about anything
you wear glasses and boys don’t even talk to you
MEG: is that my gift
MRS WHATSIT: yes
i give you your stupid glasses and boys not talking to you
CALVIN: i’ll talk to Meg
MRS WHATSIT: shut up Calvin
CALVIN: i’ll go with her
MRS. WHATSIT: SHUT UP CALVIN
Tags: a wrinkle in time, books, dirtbags, madeleine l’engle
Mallory. Yes.
(I’ll be back later to discuss this book of surpassing beauty, but for now I am undone with joy.)
OMG
Can you please just retell this entire series in dirtbag?
I mean I know you have other writing to do but.
There are so many dirtbags in Many Waters.
SO MANY
Oh, you’re sunburned? whatevs, just gonna brush my glorious hair and look pretty
aren’t I pretty?
TELL ME I’M PRETTY
But, like, they were totally pretty! And they had sexy demi-angel/demon boyfriends. Why was that such a bad thing again? Seems to me those meddling twins should have butted out and left everyone to their hair brushing and sexy sex.
I would also appreciate a Dirtbag Series on the Austins.
Zachary Gray is a quintessential Dirtbag.
yeah and Vicky SHOULD have been a dirtbag. anything to cause a little grief to her awful awful dad. just once I would like to see him try to dispassionately spank the love of god and patriarchy back into a child’s heart and fail.
did Zachary redeem himself for being so vilely sexually alluring by dying chastely of tuberculosis in Vicky’s arms or am I confusing a couple of things here
I remembered he was deathly ill + tried to commit suicide, but had to turn to Wikipedia to see the outcome. While he failed to redeem himself in any book, he partially succeeded in film: “In the 2002 Disney Channel Original Movie A Ring of Endless Light, Zachary Gray is played by Jared Padalecki.”
AUGHHH
if ever anyone ever was a Jess and not a Dean. he’s not THAT kind of a lightweight idiot. this horrible casting decision only serves to make Vicky’s taste seem as bad as her judgment.
Entirely accurate. Vicky didn’t deserve Adam Eddington.
oh gosh I haven’t read the later books in the series for a couple of years now so I went over to wikipedia a quick summary and
“Adam unwisely trusts a beautiful young woman in The Arm of the Starfish, which results in the death of a friend.”
LOLOLOLOL hope you don’t want sympathy, ADAM, what did you think would happen when you trusted one of those
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN ARE POISON, ADAM unless they are your mother, with beautiful chestnut hair and then that’s ok
YOUR NAME IS “ADAM,” ADAM. WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN WHEN YOU TRUSTED A WOMAN
serves you right
There’s that Christian symbolism rearing its ugly head.
aw I think in this case the head is hilarious
really I can’t imagine L’Engle without all the Christing around, the only thing I find unspeakably offensive are the family dynamics and for those to be different she would have had to be a different kind of human entirely.
This is true, she’s almost C.S. Lewis-esque in terms of how important Christian mythos is to her work. And it’s generally super useful! The Adam thing is Pretty Great.
Yes, but the person Adam Eddington deserves (Josh) is DEAD. DEAD DEAD DEAD.
He shows up later in An Acceptable Time to try to seduce Polly O’Keefe (Meg’s daughter), and then they end up traveling back in time together. And then he pulls a classic dirtbag move and tries to trade Polly to another tribe Way Back When in exchange for a magic potion that will keep him from dying.
(Really. I’m really not making this up.)
I’ve only read a couple books in this universe and damn but this is confusing as fuck.
Zachary does NOT redeem himself. He just goes on to be an extreme dirtbag to Polly, the daughter of Meg and Calvin.
Not tuberculosis! But close. Post-scarlet-fever heart problems, and also being a drama queen. “I have a major chronic illness but I will deny it, cursing you for your bourgeois concern, until I swoooon!”
I picked up An Acceptable Time in a used bookstore six months ago and I’d entirely forgotten what a psychopath he is.
Right? And also a total creep. Polly O’Keefe is a literal child in, like, all of those books.
Totally. At least at the end where he’s all ‘sorry about almost getting you murdered. date?’ and she’s like ‘yeah no’. THANK YOU.
It’s so true! The Seraphim and Nephilim both.
OK now I have to go reread it for the 15th time.
MAAAN that book stuck with me WAY MORE than Wrinkle In Time probably because it was basically a more religious version of Maze Runner
by which I mean it had an identical flaw
Yalith: hey twins
Twins: yeah
Yalith: you’re both my boyfriend now
Twins: ok
Yalith: hey twins
Twins: yeah
Yalith: i have a new boyfriend
he’s an angel
he’s gonna save me from the flood
which you didn’t
even try
Twins: 🙁
Yalith: hey twins
Twins: yeah
Yalith: you’re still my twins
my ruddy twin boyfriends
Twins: ok
Yalith: fuckin hell yeah
just do all of L’Engle. Meg is actually my least favorite of her girls (ALTHOUGH OBVIOUSLY I FUCKING LOVE HER) so lets get some Vicky/Poly action!
I need to thumbs up this suggestion more than once, but it won’t let me. Whyyyyy is the world so unfair?
Yes, Nephilim are the ultimate dirtbags.
Another case of really liking a book as an 11-year-old and then finding it generally unsettling and at times disturbing in my 30s.
This is another in the collection of I-know-I-read-it-but-have-no-memory-of-it books. I’m not sure I should go back and read it now.
YES I remember nothing but 2 dimensional almost death
I have very strong memories of Aunt Beast and that’s maybe about it?
I realized not that long ago that A Wrinkle in Time is the book that basically taught me about spoilers–and what happens when you thoughtlessly spoil people (hint: your third grade teacher makes Stern Faces at you when all you wanted was to share your knowledge about IT, god, Mrs. Davidovitch).
I think Camazotz was also my first exposure to a dystopian setting, though I also read The Giver at around the same time and I can’t remember which was first.
When I reread A Ring of Endless Light in my twenties, I realized that I had always categorized the Austin books as “the books about normal people” without at all registering that having telepathic abilities that let you talk to dolphins might qualify as “not normal.” Yup.
Anyone else here EXPLODE to fight The Darkness? I didn’t think so.
[MRS WHATSIT transforms herself into a winged centaur of unspeakable beauty]
MRS WHATSIT: thats better
[CALVIN falls to his knees in speechless worship]
MRS WHATSIT: THATS BETTER
NEW LIFE GOAL. Inhuman form, unspeakable beauty, WINGS, staggering & unthinking worship by all who lay eyes on me. Far superior to previous goal of idk make money somehow, not die for a while? Yes.
For the record, I know plenty of former stars. Calcifer. Yvaine. You’re not all that, Mrs. Whatsit with your kidnapped children and stolen sheets.
Now I want the story where they hang out. I feel like they’d all actually get along well.
Calcifer DOES like his companions masquerading as older human women.
CALCIFER! 😀 😀 😀
And Ramandu and Coriakin…
Dirtbag Coriakin.
Don’t forget Sirius http://www.amazon.com/Dogsbody-Diana-Wynne-Jones/…
Awesome!
We need a dirtbag Meg
CW: Join IT Meg, blah blah conform blah
Meg: whatever,
MEG drops her cigarette butt on the ground.
(Exeunt MEG)
Oh man, Meg could so benefit from the dirtbag treatment. She was already halfway there, with the anger, and the sullenness.
And the fistfights!
Ooh yeah, I forgot! I want Dirtbag Meg giving the dirtbag treatment to the twins, those little shits.
Yesssss dirtbag Meg!
MEG: oh look it’s mom, cooking dinner over her bunsen burner again, how quirky and fun
“la-dee-dah, I’m meg’s mom and I just loooooooooove science, la-dee-dah-dee-dah”
MEG’S MOM: meg, you know i have to support our family–
MEG: support this *flips middle finger*
also can i have a ride to the mall
#manicpixiedreammom
MRS WHATSIT: two-dimensional planet
CHARLES WALLACE: I C A N T B R E A T H E H E R E
MRS WHATSIT: oh yeah
thatll happen here
This blew my mind as a 10 year old or whatever when I first read it. These beings, former stars, could forget that the kids couldn’t breathe on a 2 dimensional world.
I ALWAYS thought those star witches were a liiiiittle maliciously incompetent. Like, oh whoops, almost killed you. Forgot you have organs and stuff. Now go alone into unspeakable danger with this riddle I gave you. Whatsit out!
Yeahhhh. The whole Happy Medium thing was like that too — why would you think Calvin wants to see his family?! What did you think would happen?! And also — I mean, why *couldn’t* they go with them to Camazotz? I never really understood that…
I read “Meg you have to go fight IT by yourself” as “you have to go fight I. T. by yourself” and I thought “yeah, that sounds about right”
I reread this for the first time in awhile a few months ago and this was the only thing I could thing. It made total sense.
I like to imagine that when they talk about being former stars they’re really talking about how they used to be on The O.C. and they did a couple small film roles after that but then things just sort of petered out.
And the kids are actually getting led on this cosmic adventure by a handful of vainglorious Hollywood has-beens who inexplicably have magical powers.
I would read this. Bonus points if they call it “movie magic”.
That would explain what Adam Brody’s been doing lately.
And… now I have my next Changeling: The Dreaming campaign.
MRS WHATSIT: now we will tesser, we will wrinkle again
do you understand?
MEG: No.
MRS WHATSIT: (sighing) explanations are not easy when they are about things for which your civilization has no words
okay listen
imagine yourself to be a very small insect
MEG: All right…
MRS WHATSIT: good now you have a more realistic self-image
also remember that small insects don’t talk
just keep that in mind
YES.
I’m in a starbucks surrounded by Business Schlub Guys who won’t stop talking really loudly on their cell phones, so I don’t even mind that I’m cackling loudly & gleefully at this comment.
Mrs. Who’s spectacles glittered like frosty moons. “They can kiss my fuckin’ ass right downtown and print it,” she said. “John Stuart Mill.”
“That doesn’t sound like Mill,” said Charles Wallace, his brow wrinkling.
“That doesn’t sound like Mill,” said Mrs. Who. “Some grating little know-it-all.”
Y E S
Oh, gosh, I hate to be That Girl, but I’m preeeeetty sure that’s a Bentham quote.
(jk ilu)
Ha HA!
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY.
what a time to be alive
Before I read this I was distressed; I did not want my childhood ruined. After I read it I realized that this is… exactly, exactly what happened.
This is the sad truth of so many children’s classics. Remember back before you read the thoughtful commentaries about what a ridiculously bad mentor/headmaster/secret society leader Albus Dumbledore really was?
IT IS STILL THAT GLORIOUS TIME FOR ME, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
DON’T FOLLOW THE LIGHT
(or click on any Buzzfeed GIF posts about Harry Potter)
I actually find those fascinating, but lord, was I ever upset reading Deathly Hallows and finding out how unsettlingly untrustworthy he was.
When everyone was sobbing over Half-blood Prince, I was doing a little tap dance in the corner.
I feel like this is different from that. It’s one thing for Dumbledore to be worshiped by everybody while he’s making terrible decisions and playing everyone like a puppet. But Wrinkle in Time is twisted and weird and cosmic and dangerous and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Without those elements there would be nothing for the children to conquer and nothing for them to have faith in. The arc of the story isn’t “shit is terrible,” it’s “love can win out over terrible shit.” The fact that there are some slightly flaky supernatural teacher figures in it who turn into centaurs sometimes just makes things more interesting.
You save the free wizarding world with a handjob once, your expectations for what makes a good strategy are not… not up to par.
In retrospect, Dumbledore whinging about Voldemort being “incapable of love” might merely be sour grapes about not getting to use that world-saving plan again.
Zachary Gray was SUCH a dirtbag, also.
just the worst. OH LET ME TAKE YOU FLYING VICKY.
OH WAIT I DONT KNOW HOW TO FLY.
He was SO AWFUL. And I loved him, in the way that you can only when you are 12.
Also, L’Engle was clearly writing a series on ‘Boys you SHOULD NOT date’ for her Vicky/Poly books, which I have often used as a warning later in life.
I had no idea I needed this so much.
Man even when I was a kid I thought this book was weird as fuck
I just can’t with how good this series is and continues to be.
DIRTBAG GAUDIOR! Again, you don’t really have to change much about him…I mean, what was it with her and douchey time traveling companions? Better than beating around any bushes, I suppose.
NO!! Gaudior was in the third (fourth) book where Charles Wallace saves the world from the miserable dictator by switching him with a happy blue-eyed dictator by going back in time and changing betweens, or something. And his name means “more joyful” in Latin. And I love these books a weird amount.
DIRTBAG GAUDIOR: OK Im going to put you inside the bodies of a bunch of people who lived here long ago
CHARLES WALLACE: Uh but how will that stop a Third World tyrant from blowing up the planet?
DIRTBAG GAUDIOR: shut up and hold on oh you fell off too bad
(It’s the second book, btw!)
No way, man — third book. Second is A Wind in the Door; CW is deathly ill throughout.
Mallory! I finished re-reading this LAST NIGHT. Spent the whole time trying to figure out what was a metaphor for Jesus/capitalism and what was a metaphor for Satan/communism. Everything, I think? “STOP WHINING, MEG. God wants you to stop worrying about your little brother and pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”
I just wanted to see her have some good sex with age-appropriate people – Renny the doctor in A House Like A Lotus was just as much of a dirtbag as Zachary Gray!
Yeah I read this only this year and THIS. THIS WAS MY PROBLEM. “I’m a billion fucking years old, you’re twelve or something, go and fight ultimate evil. Yeah you’ll be fine. Me? I’ll be over here with a margarita and Netflix. Yes, definitely a goodie, why do you ask?”
AUGH MY CHILDHOOD
but no seriously? genius. Are the other two also dirtbags?
You know how like, 10-15 years ago, people were talking about how marvelous it was that the internet let these weird little sub-niche groups of people find one another? And how it was changing the world and all?
I think this all the time here, but today, seriously, I AM HOME.
It’s great to see you all here!
MRS WHATSIT: everyone here who used to be an actual fucking star in the sky raise your hand
thats what i thought <3
I think I may be the only person who like “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” best out of the series.
IT’S GOT ALL THE TIME TRAVEL AND THE FAMILY HISTORY also Meg got her man hell yes she did
IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY FAVORITE. Because UNICORNS and the WELSH INDIAN MYTH.
YAAAAS. My boss’ grandson is named Maddox and any time he talks about him I think about the book and feel the urgent need to re-read it.
I can never decide if I like A Swiftly Tilting Planet best or Many Waters…on plot alone, Planet wins, but Many Waters was the first time I realized, as a kid, that thinking about kissing gave me funny feelings, and that I might be willing to lose the ability to touch a unicorn for kisses. For that, Young Me owes it a debt of gratitude.
Another person who loved ASTP before and above all the others. On top of your reasons, that poem–I used to be able to recite that thing from rote memory. Even had an RPG character who used it as the trigger for a lot of his magic.
I might actually like it best out of all the other books there are in the world.
You are so not alone! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this quartet, but ASTP has always been my favorite. Possibly because, when I read it, I was awkward nerdy teen Meg and I really wanted to believe that I too would grow up into a brilliant gorgeous mom-to-be (I always loved Calvin!) who gets to save the world. And then you have kything and unicorns and time travel…yeah, I wanted to be Meg.
GENIUS.
I still love Calvin O’Keefe so much. Even though he awkwardly later turns into a dad.
Calvin as a Dad worked out, though.
Oh, totally. I actually finished reading this post and went, “CALVIN” because I will always love him.
And Leo was a total Nice Guy!!!
One of my greatest regrets is not having read L’Engle until adulthood. Like I actually think I would be a different person if I had read A Ring of Endless Light at 12 instead of 32.
Aww, but A Ring of Endless Light is just so good every time you read it. I did read it at 11 or so, and it did have (and still has) a huge impact on me, but part of why it’s still my favorite book is that I think you get different things from it depending on where you are in your life and what your priorities are at the time.
And yes, total Nice Guy! Just because she’ll hang out with you does not mean she wants to kiss you, Leo!
As a child I was obsessed with this book for years and NOW LOOK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY INNOCENCE??????
This is very Monster Manual of me, but I have always had this theory that Mrs. Whatsit was not a centaur with wings but rather a lamassu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamassu
That is honestly probably what I would ask Madeleine L’Engle if she came back to life, so if that happens, you guys should feel free to budge in front of me.
I know I read A Wrinkle in Time, but I remember nothing about it except “There is such a thing as a tesseract”. Reading this, I can sort of see why I might have failed to retain the rest, because it is ridiculous.
Josh! *sob*
Josh! *sob*
I’m sorry, is it too late to comment on this? Where was your blog all my life?! This has got to be the gold medal of one of the funniest literary things I’ve read in a long time, hands down!
i only finally got to read the book and so ONLY NOW GOT TO READ THIS AND OH! IT IS PERFECTION.