unsuspended suspenders, books
May. 31st, 2007 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Thank you, LJ. I am entirely reconciled. LJ have apologised, and they are reinstating fandom journals.
That's enough for me. :-)
Goodness, some people do actual really bad things and never say sorry.
Being depressed has made me read a lot. In the last few weeks I read (some spoilers beneath cuts):
Victor Pelevin, The Helmet of Horror
An extraordinary novel. It is my second Pelevin and it is very intense. It is the myth of the Minotaur rewritten in chatroom format. It pulls this off absolutely brilliantly. A group of people wake up in small room with a bathroom, a bed and a table with a computer on it, and the only thing they can get on the computer is this one limited chatroom, and their usernames are already assigned. They then try to figure out how to escape from the room and from the labyrinth. Various sinister figures feature, and especially amazing is the object of the Helmet which is described in hallucinatorily realistic hyperdetail, like a nightmare, so intense. I learned from this that a constrictive text type enables creativity (and doesn't constrain), and that lengthy description can be fantastic.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I was rather aware of the Gaiman-cult when I bought this, and upon reading I imagined that I recognised tones of voice that I'd encountered in fanfic. This is my second Gaiman novel. It is very readable and tells a gripping story, dipped in atmospheric evocations of a particular place (London's netherworld). It's quite audacious and marries fantasy with a wry cool-dude tone. I learned that you can MarySue at will, if you do it OTT'ishly enough, and that colloquial writing can nevertheless be quite lyrical, even baroque. Also that mere words can invent whole insane universes, but I knew that already.
Michael Crichton, State of Fear
I read this because my nano novel turned into a thriller despite myself. I don't read thrillers. It is not a genre I am familiar with. So I thought I'd better familiarise with it and read this one. It was a page turner and had some fun scientific dialogue jargon but overall, it was shite. I learned that if you're going to put plot at the centre of your novel, you'd better not leave any plot holes. And he left many.
Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
A weird, intense little novel and about as different from Crichton as you can get. Not much happens on the outside but inside a lot happens, and there is much sexuality. And then at the end, it all builds up suddenly into unbearable tension and then a murder happens? or doesn't happen? It's that kind of book, where you aren't told for sure. Lots of lyrical descriptions of weather and landscape. I learned that you can suggest and provoke in an open and very ambiguous ending and still make it feel like a satisfying ending.
Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
A fun little read. Takes an insane idea (see title) and pulls it off. Written with a great mix of different text types: email exchanges, government reports, personal diary, extracts from reports from the House of Commons. Dares to have email exchanges between terrorist cells. Has technical salmon jargon. I learned that you can mix and match text types and make it great fun to read, and that you can use the formalese of government reports to heighten tension vis-a-vis the personal diary part, and also to say emotionally-charged things because the reader joins the dots.
Lani Diane Rich, Time Off for Good Behavior
A nanowrimo novel, which is why I bought it. I recognised the hallmarks: picaresque plot pattern, characters wheeled in, wheeled off, a certain breathlessness. It's pure chick lit. I was sceptical and it's mostly bad but it did make me cry at the end. I learned that OTT can press the emo stops (at least in me, *g*).
Gayle Brandeis, Self Storage
Another nanowrimo novel. Here, the telltale nano marks have been more effaced but I still spotted some: breathless ending, sections that seem to go back to bad word-days where just any old words were hammered out. Quite atmospheric. Marries a chaotic-student-family plot with a woman-in-burqa plot. Had moving bits and used motifs quite nicely but also had absurd plot events. I learned that detailed description of a lifestyle is more interesting than mayhem plot events.
Ismail Kadare, The Successor
This is my second Kadare novel. He is Albanian and very intense. It took me a few tries to get into this novel. There is no plot and no action and not even character-driven'ness in the conventional sense. I have yet to analyse this in depth. It has characters who are simply called 'the Successor' or 'the architect'; one is called 'Suzana'. The whole thing focuses on one central event, the death (murder? suicide?) of a key government figure in the Communist totalitarian regime in Albania. It is a political novel, and I don't generally like those but this one I found very compelling. It reads like something mythical, and has lots of sex that also reads like something from primordial times. The writing is very, very spare and incredibly raw. I learned that you need none of what are often deemed the conventional elements of plot and character to make a great novel. And that you can create your own plot pattern of Aristotelian beginning, middle and end. And that you can switch povs right at the end. And that you can make omniscient, multi-pov narrative gripping. And that you can have the character in one chapter be 'the people'. And that great literature is always about the nuances and about the questions, never about the answers (but I knew that already; this just confirmed it). I wouldn't say I absolutely love Kadare (as I love Jane Austen) but I am very, very impressed by Kadare.
That's enough for me. :-)
Goodness, some people do actual really bad things and never say sorry.
Being depressed has made me read a lot. In the last few weeks I read (some spoilers beneath cuts):
Victor Pelevin, The Helmet of Horror
An extraordinary novel. It is my second Pelevin and it is very intense. It is the myth of the Minotaur rewritten in chatroom format. It pulls this off absolutely brilliantly. A group of people wake up in small room with a bathroom, a bed and a table with a computer on it, and the only thing they can get on the computer is this one limited chatroom, and their usernames are already assigned. They then try to figure out how to escape from the room and from the labyrinth. Various sinister figures feature, and especially amazing is the object of the Helmet which is described in hallucinatorily realistic hyperdetail, like a nightmare, so intense. I learned from this that a constrictive text type enables creativity (and doesn't constrain), and that lengthy description can be fantastic.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
I was rather aware of the Gaiman-cult when I bought this, and upon reading I imagined that I recognised tones of voice that I'd encountered in fanfic. This is my second Gaiman novel. It is very readable and tells a gripping story, dipped in atmospheric evocations of a particular place (London's netherworld). It's quite audacious and marries fantasy with a wry cool-dude tone. I learned that you can MarySue at will, if you do it OTT'ishly enough, and that colloquial writing can nevertheless be quite lyrical, even baroque. Also that mere words can invent whole insane universes, but I knew that already.
Michael Crichton, State of Fear
I read this because my nano novel turned into a thriller despite myself. I don't read thrillers. It is not a genre I am familiar with. So I thought I'd better familiarise with it and read this one. It was a page turner and had some fun scientific dialogue jargon but overall, it was shite. I learned that if you're going to put plot at the centre of your novel, you'd better not leave any plot holes. And he left many.
Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
A weird, intense little novel and about as different from Crichton as you can get. Not much happens on the outside but inside a lot happens, and there is much sexuality. And then at the end, it all builds up suddenly into unbearable tension and then a murder happens? or doesn't happen? It's that kind of book, where you aren't told for sure. Lots of lyrical descriptions of weather and landscape. I learned that you can suggest and provoke in an open and very ambiguous ending and still make it feel like a satisfying ending.
Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
A fun little read. Takes an insane idea (see title) and pulls it off. Written with a great mix of different text types: email exchanges, government reports, personal diary, extracts from reports from the House of Commons. Dares to have email exchanges between terrorist cells. Has technical salmon jargon. I learned that you can mix and match text types and make it great fun to read, and that you can use the formalese of government reports to heighten tension vis-a-vis the personal diary part, and also to say emotionally-charged things because the reader joins the dots.
Lani Diane Rich, Time Off for Good Behavior
A nanowrimo novel, which is why I bought it. I recognised the hallmarks: picaresque plot pattern, characters wheeled in, wheeled off, a certain breathlessness. It's pure chick lit. I was sceptical and it's mostly bad but it did make me cry at the end. I learned that OTT can press the emo stops (at least in me, *g*).
Gayle Brandeis, Self Storage
Another nanowrimo novel. Here, the telltale nano marks have been more effaced but I still spotted some: breathless ending, sections that seem to go back to bad word-days where just any old words were hammered out. Quite atmospheric. Marries a chaotic-student-family plot with a woman-in-burqa plot. Had moving bits and used motifs quite nicely but also had absurd plot events. I learned that detailed description of a lifestyle is more interesting than mayhem plot events.
Ismail Kadare, The Successor
This is my second Kadare novel. He is Albanian and very intense. It took me a few tries to get into this novel. There is no plot and no action and not even character-driven'ness in the conventional sense. I have yet to analyse this in depth. It has characters who are simply called 'the Successor' or 'the architect'; one is called 'Suzana'. The whole thing focuses on one central event, the death (murder? suicide?) of a key government figure in the Communist totalitarian regime in Albania. It is a political novel, and I don't generally like those but this one I found very compelling. It reads like something mythical, and has lots of sex that also reads like something from primordial times. The writing is very, very spare and incredibly raw. I learned that you need none of what are often deemed the conventional elements of plot and character to make a great novel. And that you can create your own plot pattern of Aristotelian beginning, middle and end. And that you can switch povs right at the end. And that you can make omniscient, multi-pov narrative gripping. And that you can have the character in one chapter be 'the people'. And that great literature is always about the nuances and about the questions, never about the answers (but I knew that already; this just confirmed it). I wouldn't say I absolutely love Kadare (as I love Jane Austen) but I am very, very impressed by Kadare.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-04 04:30 am (UTC)