I've been on a serious Ian Banks bender lately. I've had the lust for some sci-fi again and Banks was highly recommended as someone who could actually write well within that idiom.
The first three Culture novels are great, so far "Consider Phlebas" has been the best.
I don't think I'll stop too soon, it's really great stuff if you like hard sci-fi.
Book Talk
692Ike wrote:
ON DECK:
Mason and Dixon. Yep. This is it. This is the summer. I. CAN. DO. IT.
please report findings in full when done. i admire your nerve. i've made this pledge twice and failed miserably.
just finished Hamsun's Under the Autumn Star and On Muted Strings. both excellent.
half way through Steven Millhauser's The Knife Thrower. good stuff
Segment Two: Servo falls in love with Joel's new blender, but the courtship turns sour when Joel drinks from Servo's girl. Undeterred, Servo flirts with the coffeemaker, until he realizes he's a guy.
Book Talk
694dabrasha wrote:just finished Hamsun's Under the Autumn Star and On Muted Strings. both excellent.
You know there's a third book Hamsun wrote that picks up on the same protagonist as those two novellas. I forget what it's called, but it was published in a bautiful little edition by Green Integer Books a while back. I haven't read it yet, though.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother reading anything but Hamsun. More often than not, any other author is a letdown.
dontfeartheringo wrote:I need people to act like grown folks and I just ain't seeing it.
Book Talk
696Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:dabrasha wrote:just finished Hamsun's Under the Autumn Star and On Muted Strings. both excellent.
You know there's a third book Hamsun wrote that picks up on the same protagonist as those two novellas. I forget what it's called, but it was published in a bautiful little edition by Green Integer Books a while back. I haven't read it yet, though.
cool - i'll try and find it. since the captain's madame fell through the ice, i can only imagine the narrator starts pining for fair Elizabeth in this book...
Segment Two: Servo falls in love with Joel's new blender, but the courtship turns sour when Joel drinks from Servo's girl. Undeterred, Servo flirts with the coffeemaker, until he realizes he's a guy.
Book Talk
697I've started rereading Ted Hughes' "Crow" and right now I think that it is one of my favourite pieces of literature ever. Ghastly, funny, full of mind-searing images. There's a million and one probable references and influences within it, and not knowing this scaffolding does not damage my love of this book one jot.
Looking it up tonight, I found this interesting article on it(Hughes' quotes in italics):
This idea of God's Nightmare competing in creation fires my imagination.
Looking it up tonight, I found this interesting article on it(Hughes' quotes in italics):
God is having a nightmare. This hand/voice - this thing -
arrives at the moment he falls asleep and grabs him round
the throat, rushes him through the Universe, pushes him
beyond the stars and ploughs up the earth with his face
and throws him back into heaven. The moment he dozes off
this hand arrives and it all happens again, and he can't
understand what there can be in his creation which is so
hostile....Eventually this voice/hand speaks.
An argument develops between God and his Nightmare about the adequacy of Man as a creation. "God is very defensive of Man. Man is a very good and successful invention and given the materials and situation he's quite adequate". But whilst God is arguing with his nightmare, Man has
sent up a representative to the gates of Heaven....to ask
God to take life back because men are fed up with it. So
God is enraged that man has let him down - so he
challenges the voice to do better: given the materials and
the whole set-up, to produce something better than Man.
The Nightmare plunges back to "ferment and gestate in matter" and a little embryo begins. That is how Crow was created. As a creation which is better than Man, Crow is a failure, for Hughes also said that "maybe [Crow's] ambition is to become a man". However, Hughes made it clear that the actual Crow story is "not really relevant to the poems as they stand: ... I think they have a life a little aside from it. The story brought me to the poems ... (it) was a sort of machine that assembled them30". He went on to say:
The first idea of Crow was really an idea of style. In
folktales the prince going on the adventure comes to the
stable full of beautiful horses and he needs a horse for the
next stage and the King's daughter advises him to take
none of the beautiful horses that he'll be offered but to
choose the dirty, scabby little foal. You see, I throw out
the eagles and choose Crow. The idea was originally just
to write his songs, the songs that a Crow would sing. In
other words songs with no music whatsoever, in a super
simple and a super ugly language which would in a way shed
everything except just what he wanted to say without any
other consideration and that's the basis of the style of
the whole thing.
This idea of God's Nightmare competing in creation fires my imagination.
Gib Opi kein Opium, denn Opium bringt Opi um!