As intriguing as it is often insufferable. Eddison's hyperfixations are not shared interests of me -- and I admit that my inability to engage with thiAs intriguing as it is often insufferable. Eddison's hyperfixations are not shared interests of me -- and I admit that my inability to engage with this fully must be in part due to my lack of working familiarity with the sources of many of Eddison's wellsprings. The ornate pseudo-Elizabethan language is used more as a stylistic flourish -- Eddison is clearly enamored with the manner of it, but isn't trying to create something uniquely linguistic or devoted to those ideas (as could be said for Tolkien). One of the most frustrating elements is the ludicrous naming, which is at least interesting because it is so bad. Another is the lack of characterization, which serves to make this feel more ancient and mythic (an entirely intended effect) but which left me feeling cold to much of the narrative. Hardly 'fantastical', moreso something of an outsider alternate-mythology. Weird....more
My suspicion from the very early stages was that Tokarczuk was winding up for a very particular ending -- the technique she is employing to set-up andMy suspicion from the very early stages was that Tokarczuk was winding up for a very particular ending -- the technique she is employing to set-up and execute it is incredibly apparent. Needless to say, I felt entirely cheated by the entire experience. I rather loathe art designed to connive and trick its audience. The protagonist has no reason to omit details of her narration, other than to be sneaky and surprising as a literary device. The groan-inducing denouement completely deflates any good will earned by a convincing sense of environment and the plausibility of character portraiture. And 'surprising' is likely the last word I would use to describe it.
The pull-quote in the book that suggests Tokarczuk may have topped Blake (ha) is some of the most preposterous puffed fluff....more
Speaking presumptively, this really feels handcrafted by the collaborative elements of expectation's weight, writer's block, and noble ambition -- butSpeaking presumptively, this really feels handcrafted by the collaborative elements of expectation's weight, writer's block, and noble ambition -- but, sure, I could be wrong. No hugeness of gaps between work really requires that an artist drop a masterpiece of masterpieces of equally huge breadth (and literal size) in our laps, but Yanagihara (at least at this point) seems either uninterested in writing (or doubtful in her ability to write) something concisely potent and honed. What happens instead is we have been strapped with this huge, plodding, sprawling and uneven thing that swings for the fences in some conceptual respects, but is actually -- taking it page-by-page, sentence-by-sentence -- rendered through only the most banal and rote of palettes.
All throughout, Yanagihara's use of epistolary form shows an infuriating disinterest in verisimilitude -- nobody wrote letters like this 100 years ago, nor do they now, nor will they in the future. There is nothing significant distinguishing letters penned by supposed individuals from the industry standard first-person prose of other sections, (or countless other novels by countless other writers, by the way). Nor does any of this play to Yanagihara's actual strengths as a writer. It is just one of a rather sizable handful of devices that were employed far more effectively in A Little Life, where the ambitious approach to linearity and form told a story both emotionally and temporally large, but ultimately intimate. Here, with the ludicrously gigantic brush strokes of 300 years of revisionist American social dissertation -- nevermind stabs at political analysis, conversations about race and sexuality and death and love (all the big (groan) topics) that are painfully broad and uneventful -- all the most insidious (and probably unintentional) underbellies of Yanagihara's work are flipped upside into the clear light. Namely, the sort of empty exploitation of stuff, recalling visions of straight white girls filming themselves weeping while cradling the brick-like tome of A Little Life in their trembling grips. I wouldn't blame Yanagihara for any of this -- her oddly gawking fascination with gay male suffering doesn't really bother me, personally. In fact, A Little Life's status as a work of cruel exploitation is part of what makes it a near masterpiece for me. It is a work of a palpable grotesqueness, unashamed of inflicting pain upon its characters and readers.
The first third of this novel is absolutely embarrassing. It is built around a shockingly laughable and pointless revisionist conceit, with no attempt made whatsoever to integrate such a concept into the way in which the society is portrayed -- and, in fact, very little interest is shown with the time period portrayed at all whatsoever. This section comes across as horribly superficial. It drags on endlessly with the sort of impassioned inanity of fan fiction melodrama. I very nearly gave up on this novel entirely during this section because it was such a colossally uninteresting and insufferable affair.
Luckily, the second and third sections have a bit more going on. The second hits its stride in the old man's regretful recollection of his failure and emotional impotence. These are most of the best passages in the novel (and also the only in which Yanagihara feels in control of the prose's voice) -- the impromptu-resurrected kingdom of disgraced and incompetent kings crumbling towards imminence in slow-motion. It is very melancholy. But even here, the telling is so bogged down by reiterative technique, as well as an overly explanatory style that implodes any sense of ambiguity or poeticism. These flaws are exacerbated in the final section of the novel, which most hugely suffers from the baffling over-reliance on poorly-crafted epistolary form (there is little artistic reasoning behind it, to my eyes). And the converging time-lines, while basically narratively effective, lead to so much reiteration. There get to be two or three length chapters in a row where we basically already have inferred exactly what is going to happen, and yet it is explained in eye-rollingly extensive detail as if we're having Pandora's Box opened for us. While Charlie and her grandfather are the two most well-drawn (and empathizable) characters in the entire novel, these portraits are trapped in a ho-hum science-fiction setting that is underdeveloped and wholly bog standard.
The three sections hardly cohere -- despite all attempts to insist literal connectivity they still come across as works authored separately, bearing similarity of narrative theme not for purposeful mirroring but because these are merely the recurring themes of Yanagihara's writing. (I absolutely loathed the same names being used throughout the different periods in cutesy little pointless archetyping.)
Nothing in all seven-hundred plus pages is so thematically dissimilar, nor ever more ambitious than A Little Life, and yet it feels the need for such a grander canvas, with an emboldened faux-worldliness and grandiloquent mock-historicity that lands as largely naïve and entirely unnecessary. The storytelling's intimacy is constantly eclipsed by Yanagihara's desperation to depict a bigger universe, with gargantuan stakes and global implications, but at every turn she can only think to literally depict the well-to-do arguing morosely in blandly sketched parlors. There's a disappointing lack of imagination to the actual meat of what the novel is.
The first section's deliberate parallels to James only serve to emphasize the mundane nature of Yanagihara's prose, and the lack of cynical wit or social specificity (the delightfully frustrating milieu that is entirely absent here) that he so excels in. The adoption of science-fiction technique invites comparison to any number of more considered and insightful explorations of similar topics through the genre's rich history.
That being said, this won't be rightfully labelled a genre piece because it has been marketed otherwise and comes with the reputation of bold literary stature. Nor will it be understood as "low-art" soap opera gussied up by ambition. Many have, and will, applaud the novel for simply attempting something big. But I don't care -- it is mostly very bad. But, if anything, Yanagihara is still laboring for love. It's something. But the glimpses of what could have been a great novella (or maybe even whole novel) that the second section gives are enough to break your heart. For what this just so very obviously is not. For fear of simplicity, disappointment, not measuring up -- I wonder -- has Yanagihara instead penned an interminable and somewhat loathsome anti-masterpiece?...more
Mortality as a funhouse -- everywhere surrounding, death and death, but we see nothing but ourselves, stretched to eternity. These poems occupy a partMortality as a funhouse -- everywhere surrounding, death and death, but we see nothing but ourselves, stretched to eternity. These poems occupy a particular sweet spot for me between the abstract and the concrete. Their imagery is rich and vibrant, but Roethke twists pastoral scenes and love poems into elusive inward dives, cosmic tumults, bittersweet last breaths. His sense of lyricism, the cadence of the words, the musicality of sounds, is spellbinding.
Very absolute favorites: The Longing, Meditation at Oyster River, The Tranced...more
Where Joyce's saga of a collapsing family took stream-of-consciousness and exploded it outward into a cosmic scale, Faulkner's does the opposite. His Where Joyce's saga of a collapsing family took stream-of-consciousness and exploded it outward into a cosmic scale, Faulkner's does the opposite. His story burrows inward, restricting itself to the terse and colloquial language of its characters, telling itself through confused and neurotic mental carousels, only revealing the broader narrative in spurts of unreliable perceptions. The novel is replete with the most unbearable of cruelty -- the vile Jason is a remarkable example of a character whose feelings of disenfranchisement (a belief that he has been treated unjustly) are totally understandable, but whose violence, cruelty, and seething bitterness are the most unhealthy manifestation of his pain. The long second section which is entirely lived in Quentin's swirling and suicidal distress, is as impressive as it is difficult to endure.
Faulkner's portrait of the south is enormously unflattering. There's a great care taken to replicating the language, and capturing what I'm sure he felt was the character of the time and region. It is a vision of antebellum waste that teems with shame, woundedness and venom....more
Loses a bit of steam as it approaches inevitability, but chock-full of good sections and insight, and admirably (painfully) overwrought with gay frustLoses a bit of steam as it approaches inevitability, but chock-full of good sections and insight, and admirably (painfully) overwrought with gay frustration. The stinger at the end of Chapter 42 is a thing of incredibly beauty....more
The reduction of the characters to their areas of expertise is a significant point, as the novel reveals itself to be so hauntingly about the way thatThe reduction of the characters to their areas of expertise is a significant point, as the novel reveals itself to be so hauntingly about the way that our subjectivities are the schemata that we use to exist in the world. The phantasmagoric Area X is a Rorschach for the individual's dreams and nightmares in tandem: our narrator, the biologist's obsession with ecosystems as a mirror for her distrust of community, need to alone, her solitary sanctity -- envisioning a fantasy wherein the land itself is the creatures that inhabit it, all interconnected, a world of one and all, and all as one.
The pile of journals, tomes of past lives, testaments of minds, might reveal the different worlds -- the same societies, the same Area X's, but envisioned as wholly disparate and strange environments. The undeniable reality -- the framework of a surveyor vs that of a psychologist -- appearing as a delusion to another.
This reminds me of Hodgson and similarly grandiose imaginings of the grotesquely transcendent. VanderMeer somehow manages to intermix this seamlessly with an evocative character portrait and a love story that captures a stirring romance while depicting a relationship mainly in shambles. He also pulls off the very tricky tight-rope walk of not reducing the sublime and the horrific to bland exposition, while still giving the reader enough thematic weight and tangible information to understand the significance of the worlds and events depicted. Ambiguity and interpretability not sacrificed for legibility.
An absolute conceptual marvel, bogglingly impressive, and a glorious work wrought almost wholly of an infuriating minutiae. James keeps our audience sAn absolute conceptual marvel, bogglingly impressive, and a glorious work wrought almost wholly of an infuriating minutiae. James keeps our audience surrogate, the likable but garish Gostrey, frustratingly at an arm's length from both the insufferable rigmarole of the social games in question, but also from the obvious object of her, and our, affection -- the likable but pathetic Strether. It becomes a novel about reawakening, of the self and the spirit, and how this blossoming power is inevitably to be quashed in the face of the endlessly asinine bullshit of social convention, structure and delusion that most of us willingly subject ourselves to (seeing or feeling it is somewhat necessary). We readers really come to wish that our friend Strether and his doting ally Gostrey would just hook up, drop out, and becomes grandiloquently superfluous gadflies to the ass of the Earth. Nothing of the sort is to occur.
James is so masterful here at giving a sense of atmosphere that is almost completely derived from the timbre of nebulous characterization. His puzzling and overly ornate language is mischievously abstract -- so very rarely involving concrete description of setting or action. The second half of this novel becomes hair-rippingly tedious, the malicious mechanism of the mundane, but it must be partly the point. You still feel yourself going mad.
James is also obsessed, utterly, with the word 'connexion'....more
Of literary merit, and conterminous with Townshend's masterpiece of masterpieces, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. Some similar imagery and theOf literary merit, and conterminous with Townshend's masterpiece of masterpieces, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. Some similar imagery and thematic material between the two -- but these morose and abstractly interconnected snapshots, a cubist's novel more than a librettists, have a hateful and venomous beauty all their own....more
So much of the absurd contradiction of this novel, and surely Heinlein as a whole, can be found in his decision to have his protagonist say of herselfSo much of the absurd contradiction of this novel, and surely Heinlein as a whole, can be found in his decision to have his protagonist say of herself at the start of his befuddling, yet inevitable final chapter: "they lost interest in me -- logical, as I was never anything but a walking incubator to them."
I remain fascinated by the brazen grotesqueness of Heinlein's hyper-fixations -- from the infatuation with polygamy, to the detached ogling at carefree queerness, to the way he seems to self-insert himself in bizarre reinforcements and contradictions of his unfettered misogyny. The titular Friday, clearly Heinlein's autogynephilic self-insert character (hilariously a far more successful execution of what he much more explicitly attempted in the clumsy I Will Fear No Evil), is an 'outsider inside', a hyper-competent alien in a largely hollow and unenthusiastic society. Sure, Heinlein has this largely plotless novel tied up in the end as being "about" achieving self-fulfillment in the sense of 'belonging', but it seems to be just as much -- if not moreso -- about the uncanny efficiency of a lone wolf operating day-to-day in a world where tribalism is still largely the predominant structuring element of human life.
Friday's status as an "artificial person" is again and again stressed to be an arbitrary factor in regards to how she operates within this society. While it is a fundamental element of the way her personality and behavior have formed, her status as "artificial" is undetectable (she "passes" in every way). Heinlein affirms both her humanity and womanhood over and over again, that the origins of her conception and birth do not in any meaningful way set her apart from a "non-artificial" person. However, the nagging thread throughout the entire novel is Friday's sense that, despite all this, she still does not belong -- that though she is fully integrated into, functioning within, and more-or-less successfully navigating the world, that her psychologically uneasiness and otherness cannot allow her to feel a welcome part of it. The unabashed Heinleinian idiosyncrasies of Friday being a spunky bisexual nymphomaniac hyperfeminine yet pseudo-tomboy rough-and-tumble take-no-shit but lay-down-and-moan sex fantasy ubermensch (she's not unlike a Howard Hawks female lead) is perhaps an insufferable obfuscation to the themes to some, but I do read it as a sincere and probably ultimately pained identity fantasy of a writer who was maybe tortured or maybe just a pervert (or probably both, to be fair). At the very least its smut written straight-from-the-crotch, which counts for something perhaps.
I would not defend this final chapter as a whole, however. For a novel that has such an astounding sense of aimless momentum, it feels like such a dumbly tidy bow. Heinlein can appear to be mockingly faux-feminist, as if he is snickering while he throws up his hands and bemoans that a man is "damned if he does, damned if he don't." Provided quotes on the back of the paperback emphasize the lurid sensuality of Friday, the novel, and Friday, herself. The iconic Michael Whelan cover art is hyperbolically titillating. But ultimately, sneakily, while this is a book of largely softcore sex and smut and probably penned by and for perverts, it is also a book written in the first-person with almost no plot to speak of, in which the largely male audience reading is made to imagine themselves as a woman having sex with (mostly) men.
Sneaky, ambitious, fascinating to examine and try to parse through....more
Unfortunately, not much of an overlooked gem. I hate to say something has been rightfully forgotten, and Sloane has a few moments of inspiration here Unfortunately, not much of an overlooked gem. I hate to say something has been rightfully forgotten, and Sloane has a few moments of inspiration here and there, but this is overlong and psychologically basic compared to something like Poe -- and it doesn't stack up too well to most of Sloane's more noteworthy contemporaries....more
Rabelais infuriates monks and revels in scatological excess. This is so obviously not the actual thing when read in translation -- but for a lack of fRabelais infuriates monks and revels in scatological excess. This is so obviously not the actual thing when read in translation -- but for a lack of fluency in French, translation must suffice. I hope it retains the spirit, and it seems to, but I can't help but imagine and terribly miss the linguistics (the wordplay in particular, I assume). Broken down by individual books, I was not as taken by the final two. The Third Book is probably the most consistently clever and funny, breaking down to mostly a serious of inane and pseudo-philosophical conversations that delight in morbid dissections of cuckoldry and social convention. The first two books are delightful for the sheer hyperbole of their scatology. Giants pissing and farting and shitting and explaining why they wiped their ass the way they did, etc.
This is obviously hugely formative as a piece of satire, but I'm also drawn to the idea that I saw expressed -- either in the introduction to this edition or some other piece of scholarship I was perusing -- of Rabelais's complete disinterest in creating characters of distinct psychology or personalities. Once he gets through describing the low-brow comedy elements of the giants's hugeness, he rarely mentions that they are giants ever again. While Pantagruel has a sort of vaguely defined personality, he occasionally acts contrarily to it -- for no clear reason. This lends the whole thing a sort of sketch-like, vaguely hallucinogenic-quality, not unlike reading religious texts or material of that ilk. Similarly, while individual episodes have a cursory construction of cause-and-effect, the books as a whole are largely unconcerned with any such narrative building. I am not familiar enough with typical literature of this period to weigh this against the age's conventions, but it is refreshing to read approaches to the novel form that are divorced from the exhaustingly predominant plot-oriented character study linearity of contemporary writing.
A relentlessly picked-at scab of a novel. At first appeared to me straight-forward, even commonplace, until I realized it was because the parsing of iA relentlessly picked-at scab of a novel. At first appeared to me straight-forward, even commonplace, until I realized it was because the parsing of its psychological profile was so unabashedly familiar to the unnerving daily merry-go-round of my own thought. In that sense, it quickly became one of those books where I feel envious towards those who don't intimately recognize in themselves the anxieties, heartaches, and internal melodrama that it so deftly captures.
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is more organically autobiographical, and also a kinder outlook on Baldwin's own sexuality, and thus a wonderful flip-side of a companion piece....more
Had a strange but ultimately satisfying experience with this book, which really succeeds despite not being the type of novel I gravitate towards or moHad a strange but ultimately satisfying experience with this book, which really succeeds despite not being the type of novel I gravitate towards or most ecstatically revel in. Willis has a huge section in the middle almost exclusively dedicated to the deliberate tedium of slowly churning social orders, and it is delivered (as is the whole book) in very terse, almost inelegant prose, and entirely non-stylized dialogue. This chunk is a specifically grating slog -- notably for myself because Willis composes a 600 page novel without really even a single poetic passage -- but it eventually collapses and gives way into a third act of such harrowing detail, delivered with the same monotonous and laborious machinery. Read as a piece of hard science fiction, there are very valid complaints and ambiguities that frustrate the analytical or plot-oriented reader. But as a surprisingly wrenching character drama, and a piece about the brutality of human life, the unceasing stamp of time, and the fragility of the physical body, it captivated me fully. Willis runs her characters through the wringer, but she never deprives them of their dignity. Apocalyptic....more
Begins with a section that feels like veiled autobiography, ebbs and flows into imagination, and seems to come something back to where it was about toBegins with a section that feels like veiled autobiography, ebbs and flows into imagination, and seems to come something back to where it was about to begin by the end. This novel possesses all of Smith's hallmarks -- in some ways it is a reiteration of much of what Hotel World was, but more restrained and with not as much of the insanely powerful emotive limerence. I found sections particularly engaging, others evidence of Smith's knack for making stream-of-consciousness alarmingly legible and clear, sometimes dull or reiterative. She has such a knack for small details (the Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt is perfect) that tell us so much. I love Smith for the way she does structure, but this felt -- as aforementioned -- slightly like territory she had tread before at this point, and it in no way is as extravagant as where she would go with How to Be Both....more
So-so Conrad riff. Silverberg does a fine transposition of the dramatic arc and details of the plot into a science fiction idiom, while shifting what So-so Conrad riff. Silverberg does a fine transposition of the dramatic arc and details of the plot into a science fiction idiom, while shifting what the piece is ultimately about -- which is welcome. I remain unenthused by Silverberg, even despite everything I've read from him being competently plotted and having good ideas, mainly because the nuts and bolts of his language is so uninspiring to me. Yes, compared to many of his peers his work possesses a comparable ease of readability, but we didn't go to the moon because it was easy, but because it was hard. ...more
Very cute novella. What I like most is the way the combination of the setting and elements of the plot uncannily remind me of dreams I have had througVery cute novella. What I like most is the way the combination of the setting and elements of the plot uncannily remind me of dreams I have had throughout the years -- particularly the way a romantic longing is staged in a sprawling environment that combines abstract imagined celestial spaces of sparse loneliness with snatches of familiar real-world spaces. Brisk and charming....more
A breakdown of societal code, tradition, normalcy, and safety, and Ananthamurthy lets it hang, suspended, and he never settles us in, never brings us A breakdown of societal code, tradition, normalcy, and safety, and Ananthamurthy lets it hang, suspended, and he never settles us in, never brings us back to the ground. The tension wavers, the questions linger, and fate remains veiled....more
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