Shit, that sounds like someone got an idea while taking a poop. 10/10.
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Just gotta put this one out for me and for the homie Mrs. Wickedcestus, but fuck 1Q84, always and forever
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Finished The Book of the New Sun a week ago.
I have not read much else like it, myself. Not really a sci-fi or fantasy reader by habit, at least not beyond what I read in middle school, so excepting the past-three-years unfolding discovery of UKLG Iām a bit rusty on the form.
Echoing what Iām sure I said earlier, the first thing that struck me about the book was the prose itself, which is not to say itās ever precious or ostentatious, but really the opposite: it somehow manages to be both eliptical and precise, and always evocative. The much discussed familiar-yet-alien vocabulary Wolfe picked out of his Greek and Latin dictionaries go a long way toward creating the atmosphere, as does the attendant device of describing the world āas suchā instead of using the names we have invented to describe things (personal bugbear when reading SFF is names for things, you have to have good names; this has good names). Sort of stunning to read something in such a ānormal voiceā which then had me doing double-takes in the middle of every chapter wondering what is going on or what thing is being described. And of course there are the later events/revelations which give a fascinating texture to the first-person narration.
Despite having not read much in the genre family I am familiar enough with its tropes to recognize their expression, which in this storyās case seem to be employed as much in the interest of paying homage as they are evoked to be interrogated.
MoH and others seriously these are the Big Spoilers you should avoid if you have any intention of reading this
It didnāt always work for me, like most recently in the fourth volume with the series of chapters about the front lines of the war. And maybe my comparative boredom during those chapters prevented me from getting more out of them, but they seemed on their face to be there because itās a genre Wolfe personally likes (I have read he at some point conceived of the whole novel as being about this, how a young man is drawn to war).
Much more often I did like the episodes for their pastiche, even ignoring possible secondary or tertiary layers of meaning. I could get carried away listing them all: the Atrium of Time, the cave of the man-apes, the undine, the botanic gardens, the alzabo, Baldandersās castle, the Last House, the nested story interludes, etc. The whole Typhon episode is great. Really eerie scene-setting, the unmoving body of Typhon sitting in his laboratory, the child Severian being unceremoniously vaporized, the carved mountain face looking out over the valley.
To follow up from my previous bellyaching: the second volume/quarter of the story does ask a lot of the reader as it tends to be the most deliberately destabilizing, which I came to terms with. But one more thing on the sex stuff:
In the hindsight afforded by the two subsequent books I canāt say Iāve warmed up to Severianās completely lopsided descriptions of sex, both his fantasies and his experiences, very much. The story is in no small way about the stubborn persistence of life in the universe, of which sexual reproduction is of course humankindās ultimate expressionāI appreciate that itās an aspect of the story, but didnāt care much for the kind of focus it got in book 2 and didnāt really buy it retrospectively coming from the amalgamated Autarch-Commonwealth-Severian narratorās point of view.
The book came together in the latter two volumes, and it kept ramping up in the final chapters of Citadel. Severnianās musings on the cycles of time, life, the creation of a universeāgood stuff. In this huge unspooling of information Wolfe is able to thread the needle of saying all the events youāve read about are basically insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time demonstrates that those events (in fiction and in life) are the only things that mean anything. That āSeverianā dedicates the same care to recording the stories he reads from the brown book + the tales of the soldiers in the Pelerine outpost as to everything that āactually happensā attests to this idea.
Someday I will reread this book and have an interesting time with it.
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I dont find the T and A stuff too offensive (I realize youāre not scandalized or anything by it either ofc) but I do agree that itās kind of indicative of some missed opportunities I guess in terms of the imaginative range he stakes out: meaning that with that and in some narrative tendencies that get out of control in Urth (channeling everything into ultimately dull Catholic āmythopoeticsā; maybe this stuff is more impressive to people who havent encountered it a zillion times before idk) because it does undermine the otherwise really wildly successful tone and atmosphere. I mean, consider that Severian is like a hybrid personality of multiple generations of memories, then what are these tics exactly.
Itās a richly novel and expansive concept that gets bent into a conventional shape. And itās things like that get to be a bummer when youāre like ok heās just a conservative catholic with a good vocabulary here
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Yes exactly, Iām not scandalized by nipples obviously but when the narrator has thousands of consciousnesses informing his thoughts it just reads as unimaginative that that should so often be the point of focus in the second book.
Iām not planning to read Urth given the impression Iāve received reading this thread and from skimming (other) forum comments which insist on incorporating it into analysis of BOTNSādoesnāt seem like the right attitude. Iām not sure how this squares with what you mean by mythopoetics, the giving greater and more explicit definition to the world history and sociology presented in the first book, but it sounds to me like either way itās not to the benefit of the first book.
watch those spoiler tags my friend
And re Urth if youāre curious it shakes out like this: more time travel stuff but less interesting than the Green Man as Severian is taken to a higher realm of existence by biblical angels/and/or/aliens, is granted the right to reignite the sun, re-enters the earthly plane in prehistory and does the Noah style flood. So itās just ok then a lot of rigarmole to do basic Christianity. Thereās that essential and organizing conservativism again unfortunately
I like The Fifth Head Of Cerberus a lot Iād recommend it, and to anyone curious about the Wolfe experience but you donāt want to commit to BotNS then just read that single volume work Iād say
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Got this for my birthday and was checking out the comments.
Iām ready for this shit.
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So this is how I find out
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his goodreads is full of YA, memoirs by ex-navy seals and jackass cast members, freakanomics and malcolm gladwell, then this
only 4 stars?
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Two bullets with two distinct messages engraved on them: RICH DADā¦POOR DAD
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Good (Post must be at least 5 characters)
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I just finished reading Cynthia Rimskyās Clara y confusa, one of the winners of this yearās Herralde award. If Iām not mistaken, this is only the second time a chilean author gets it, after BolaƱo for The Savage Detectives.
The novel is a lot of fun, it has a paranoid vibe similar to Pynchon but in a lighter way and a sense of humor from tragedy that I think only writers from this side of the world truly capture. The main story is about the generational sequence of corruption of a plumbers union, but itās also about art, romance and the things we chose to celebrate. I canāt wait for it to get translated.
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going to check that one out thanks for the writeup!
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Got a copy of The Complete Plays of Sarah Kane been awhile since Iāve read them, and with the exception of Blasted, Cleansed, and 44.8 Psychosis I donāt have the strongest memory of the rest of the work (not that thereās a lot in total, unfortunately). Then because I invoked Lamborghini a little while ago I think Iāll try to tackle El fiord but idk it looks difficult although itās not super long so what the heck
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I actually read up on Blasted when you mentioned it cuz I didnāt catch the reference. Definitely has piqued my interest.
Turn
HARD booksintentional prose intoEASY bookssoulless wikipedia summaries.
Whenever I imagine a person being genuinely excited about such an ad, I get a little sad.
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fully cringing at āmaximize your reading potentialā there. feels perfectly squeezed out of a marketing-talk tube.
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digest and easy reader editions have been around forever but I suppose the question here is how accurately the āa.i.ā is going to summarize the text. Iām guessing thereās no Magibook editor checking this because that would defeat the whole point of āa.i.ā Anyway the website has a security warning so I canāt look into it further