Signe (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
oxoniensis.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
crack_van2003-11-12 08:16 pm
oxoniensis.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2003-11-12 08:16 pm
Entry tags:
A Campaign Thing by Candle Beck (PG-13)
Fandom: THE WEST WING
Pairing: Joshua Lyman/Sam Seaborn
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: Candle Beck's stories on The Big Block of Cheese
Why this must be read: Why this must be read: Because this is a story of such intensity and harsh beauty that it insinuates itself into your head and won't leave.
'A Campaign Thing' is a story wherein style and content are perfectly matched. It's a story about a temporary life, on the campaign trail, where none of the normal rules exist, and where addictions of all sorts get the campaigners through their crazy days. Candle Beck pulls us into long, meandering sentences that make us feel the exhaustion and exhilaration, all the highs and lows of the experience. Campaigns engender circular, philosophical trains of thought that come on buses at steady threes in the morning, the fabric of the night black as tar and soft as lake water, watching the whole smooth country roll by at seventy miles an hour, in a constant state of motion, city to city, event to event, checking newspaper racks to learn the name of each fresh town, until they began to wonder, confused and weary, if they woke up enough times not knowing where they were, would they eventually wake up not knowing who they were either?
Yet it also, paradoxically feels grounded in gritty reality. There's no soft sheen put on the life on campaign - it's all shown in stark, sharp light.
There are lighter moments too, such as Sam describing Toby by email to his father 'If multiple abstract concepts could somehow produce offspring, Toby would be the spawn of Disgruntlement, Sarcasm, Poetry, Tactlessness and Wisdom. Wrap it all up in a sports coat, slap a beard on it, give it a shot of whiskey and a cigar, and that's Toby.'
Throughout it all, driving the story along as the campaign progresses, we have the delicately balanced thing that is Josh and Sam's relationship. At times it's on a knife edge, and we have no assurances or expectations as to how it will develop or end, whether it can ever be more than a campaign thing.
A Campaign Thing
Pairing: Joshua Lyman/Sam Seaborn
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: Candle Beck's stories on The Big Block of Cheese
Why this must be read: Why this must be read: Because this is a story of such intensity and harsh beauty that it insinuates itself into your head and won't leave.
'A Campaign Thing' is a story wherein style and content are perfectly matched. It's a story about a temporary life, on the campaign trail, where none of the normal rules exist, and where addictions of all sorts get the campaigners through their crazy days. Candle Beck pulls us into long, meandering sentences that make us feel the exhaustion and exhilaration, all the highs and lows of the experience. Campaigns engender circular, philosophical trains of thought that come on buses at steady threes in the morning, the fabric of the night black as tar and soft as lake water, watching the whole smooth country roll by at seventy miles an hour, in a constant state of motion, city to city, event to event, checking newspaper racks to learn the name of each fresh town, until they began to wonder, confused and weary, if they woke up enough times not knowing where they were, would they eventually wake up not knowing who they were either?
Yet it also, paradoxically feels grounded in gritty reality. There's no soft sheen put on the life on campaign - it's all shown in stark, sharp light.
There are lighter moments too, such as Sam describing Toby by email to his father 'If multiple abstract concepts could somehow produce offspring, Toby would be the spawn of Disgruntlement, Sarcasm, Poetry, Tactlessness and Wisdom. Wrap it all up in a sports coat, slap a beard on it, give it a shot of whiskey and a cigar, and that's Toby.'
Throughout it all, driving the story along as the campaign progresses, we have the delicately balanced thing that is Josh and Sam's relationship. At times it's on a knife edge, and we have no assurances or expectations as to how it will develop or end, whether it can ever be more than a campaign thing.
A Campaign Thing