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My next positive review will also be a defence of the POTUS
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Jul 7, 2018 17:59
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:My next positive review will also be a defence of the POTUS
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Jul 7, 2018 18:02
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I like bad books but this thread is cool. May i request something by Zelazny? Lord of Light would be a great one to see teared apart. Also i'm ignorant about literary circles but in my country i always see Margaret Atwood (only read Oryx and Crake) portrayed as a serious non-genre author, and her books are highly regarded. It's not that way in the anglo world?
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Jul 12, 2018 12:35
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Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:I like bad books but this thread is cool. May i request something by Zelazny? Lord of Light would be a great one to see teared apart. Somewhat relevant: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mainstream_writers_of_sf
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Jul 12, 2018 13:35
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Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:I like bad books but this thread is cool. May i request something by Zelazny? Lord of Light would be a great one to see teared apart. Would have figured you'd go for M John Harrison given your username
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Jul 12, 2018 13:37
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Gorn Myson posted:Would have figured you'd go for M John Harrison given your username Someone who knows the word!!! I thought about it but i recently read Lord of Light and i really liked it, so it seemed a better target.
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Jul 12, 2018 14:08
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Silver2195 posted:Somewhat relevant: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mainstream_writers_of_sf Thanks, my mind went to similar concepts when asking. But i was also thinking about some sort of hipothetical distinction between literary writers and writers who get glowing reviews from specialized publications.
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Jul 12, 2018 14:17
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BotL what do you think about Gene Wolfe? I recently finished Book of the New Sun and thought it was pretty incredible. Hard to find anyone with a negative view of his work.
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Jul 12, 2018 22:42
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thats the one where at one point a guy rides by a griffin while fingerbanging a naked valkyrie or something, yeah?
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Jul 12, 2018 23:01
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sounds awful
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Jul 12, 2018 23:03
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Ccs posted:BotL what do you think about Gene Wolfe? I recently finished Book of the New Sun and thought it was pretty incredible. Hard to find anyone with a negative view of his work. I just finished this and yeah that would be interesting. I don’t think it escapes the genre ghetto like others claim since at the end of the day it’s got apple goofy poo poo and has plenty of genre tropes but it manages to tell a complete story in fewer pages than the average GRRM doorstop. chernobyl kinsman posted:thats the one where at one point a guy rides by a griffin while fingerbanging a naked valkyrie or something, yeah? Wasn’t that in Heavy Metal? Shark Sandwich fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jul 13, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2018 17:08
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Book of the New Sun is good because it has time traveling cyborgs and flying saucers and laserguns but it also has the good taste to have a narrator who doesn't realize any of that stuff is weird so he doesn't bother describing or even giving much of a poo poo about any of it.
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Jul 13, 2018 19:54
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if only he'd had the good taste to not write any of it down
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Jul 13, 2018 20:17
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There’s always going to be books about aliens.
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Jul 13, 2018 20:20
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The second time I read Book of the New Sun and read that early scene when Severian's in the library and he was describing a picture and I realized it was the famous photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon with Earth framed in the background... mindblowing barely captures it.
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Jul 13, 2018 20:21
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Holy poo poo.
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Jul 13, 2018 20:42
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Truly it must have been as if you were on the road to Damascus
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Jul 13, 2018 20:52
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Truly it must have been as if you were on the road to Damascus I think our standards for personal revelation can meet somewhere in the middle of a mind-expanding reframing what I thought books were capable of and actual Divine Revelation
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Jul 13, 2018 21:18
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if that was all it took to reframe your idea of what books are capable of you're gonna lose your fuckin mind when you read literally any other book
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Jul 13, 2018 23:30
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Yeah a favorite bit of mine was how it can be read like a fantasy book but the sci-fi aspects aren't really hidden. They're there from the beginning, it's just that Severian doesn't have the context to describe them in ways that would make us clearly see them as sci-fi. And that's all secondary to the labyrinthine allusions and cosmology that Severian sometimes grasps but mostly just relates without ever understanding his role in the story. You're left wondering whether the book is religious in nature or if the religious epiphanies that the protagonist has are due to his interaction with natural forces far beyond his understanding. A reason why I think it's be interesting to hear BotL try to criticize it is because of the wealth of academic criticism (compared to most sci-fi/fantasy books) that exist for BotNS: https://www.amazon.ca/Between-Light-Shadow-Exploration-Fiction-ebook/dp/B011YTDGY2 https://www.amazon.com/Attending-Daedalus-Artifice-Liverpool-University/dp/B005Q7GMRW https://www.amazon.ca/Solar-Labyrinth-Exploring-Gene-Wolfes/dp/0595317294 If BotL can read Book of the New Sun and come up with a compelling reason as to why all of these critics are wasting their time trying to analyze a bad piece of literature, that would be interesting to read. It would mean he's a really smart critic. And if he actually enjoys the books, great! It means Gene Wolfe really is that good.
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Jul 13, 2018 23:35
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book of the poo sun
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Jul 14, 2018 00:37
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chernobyl kinsman posted:if that was all it took to reframe your idea of what books are capable of you're gonna lose your fuckin mind when you read literally any other book Most books are bad.
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Jul 14, 2018 00:52
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Ccs posted:a compelling reason as to why all of these critics are wasting their time porfiria posted:it has time traveling cyborgs and flying saucers and laserguns
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Jul 14, 2018 01:24
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Ehh, Wolfe is basically the same as ghormenghast and y'all loved that poo poo
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Jul 14, 2018 01:37
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Hamlet has ghosts in it, supposedly (I can't read).
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Jul 14, 2018 01:50
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ehh, Wolfe is basically the same as ghormenghast and y'all loved that poo poo What no
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Jul 14, 2018 02:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ehh, Wolfe is basically the same as ghormenghast and y'all loved that poo poo How so?
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Jul 14, 2018 02:14
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Ccs posted:Yeah a favorite bit of mine was how it can be read like a fantasy book but the sci-fi aspects aren't really hidden. They're there from the beginning, it's just that Severian doesn't have the context to describe them in ways that would make us clearly see them as sci-fi. Critics analyse bad books all the time, do you not know what criticism is for?
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Jul 14, 2018 02:30
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Ccs posted:Yeah a favorite bit of mine was how it can be read like a fantasy book but the sci-fi aspects aren't really hidden. They're there from the beginning, it's just that Severian doesn't have the context to describe them in ways that would make us clearly see them as sci-fi. theres a lot of academic criticism for a lot of genre poo poo, dude. that doesnt make it serious reading. Barthes analyzed cereal boxes; that doesn't make cereal boxes high art.
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Jul 14, 2018 02:36
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Ccs posted:How so? Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe are both authors who use the trappings of the fantasy genre to play with baroque language. Ghormenghast is more of a study in setting, whereas Wolfe tends to focus more on layered unreliable narrators, but both appeal far more to the "literary" crowd than they do to the average genre fantasy reader. To say the same thing from another angle, typical genre fantasy is about pacing and narrative first, everything else second. Peake and Wolfe aren't about that -- they're crafting baroque puzzles, not just telling stories. Peake and Wolfe are both about artifice. Wolfe is crafter of intricate puzzles and Peake is about huge sprawling edifices but they're both all about lavishing intricately detailed prose on the reader. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 14, 2018 02:37
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no one has clarified whether or not the fingerbanging valkyrie scene actually takes place in the novel
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Jul 14, 2018 02:37
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I think the point is content doesn't preclude quality--although I don't think Gormeghast has Trolls or Dragons in it. Beowulf does though (allegedly).chernobyl kinsman posted:no one has clarified whether or not the fingerbanging valkyrie scene actually takes place in the novel I think there is fingerbanging and there are some weird mutant battle angel things mentioned at one point but they aren't fingerbanged afaik.
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Jul 14, 2018 02:38
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close enough thanks
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Jul 14, 2018 02:42
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A Christmas Carol has ghosts in it. High art, low art, and genre are all sucker words.
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Jul 14, 2018 02:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe are both authors who use the trappings of the fantasy genre to play with baroque language. Ghormenghast is more of a study in setting, whereas Wolfe tends to focus more on layered unreliable narrators, but both appeal far more to the "literary" crowd than they do to the average genre fantasy reader. BotNS also takes a lot from Ghormenghast in setting. The empty rituals and decayed institutions of the Commonwealth seem pretty obviously influenced by Peake.
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Jul 14, 2018 03:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe are both authors who use the trappings of the fantasy genre to play with baroque language. Ghormenghast is more of a study in setting, whereas Wolfe tends to focus more on layered unreliable narrators, but both appeal far more to the "literary" crowd than they do to the average genre fantasy reader. I'd say this is fair. BotNS is packed full of goofy genre tropes (looking at you man-apes) and its core plot is a standard male power fantasy. The difference is that it's supposedly written by the main character who's writing it to be self-aggrandizing but is surprisingly dumb and also a tremendously monstrous and lovely person so it's all about unpacking what's really going on in the story. I liked it a lot but at the end of day it's still a genre book with a different approach no matter how Wolfe talks about loving Proust. Edit: The series also has some of the worst cover art I've ever seen: 
Shark Sandwich fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jul 14, 2018 |
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Jul 14, 2018 04:28
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Shark Sandwich posted:I'd say this is fair. BotNS is packed full of goofy genre tropes (looking at you man-apes) and its core plot is a standard male power fantasy. The difference is that it's supposedly written by the main character who's writing it to be self-aggrandizing but is surprisingly dumb and also a tremendously monstrous and lovely person so it's all about unpacking what's really going on in the story. I liked it a lot but at the end of day it's still a genre book with a different approach no matter how Wolfe talks about loving Proust. That's also fair. Wolfe's other (non-BotNS) work has a really wide range. There's the Latro historical-fiction series ; I just read his The Sorceror's House a few days ago, which basically his riff on modern "weird-rear end house" fiction, and last book of his I read before that was The Land Across which is just straight fiction with few if any genre elements at all. He's a weird dude; none of his stuff is my favorite but I never regret reading his stuff and it always sticks in my head afterwards. I think most of the folks in this thread would probably like his stuff if they could get past the genre hurdle.
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Jul 14, 2018 04:41
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Shark Sandwich posted:Edit: The series also has some of the worst cover art I've ever seen: This image is missing is "From Levels 4-8!" and the TSR logo.
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Jul 14, 2018 05:18
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porfiria posted:A Christmas Carol has ghosts in it. the bible has ghosts in it you loving dunce
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Jul 14, 2018 07:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Mervyn Peake and Gene Wolfe are both authors who use the trappings of the fantasy genre to play with baroque language. Ghormenghast is more of a study in setting, whereas Wolfe tends to focus more on layered unreliable narrators, but both appeal far more to the "literary" crowd than they do to the average genre fantasy reader. That's nonsense. Peake doesn't play with "trappings of the fantasy genre". He wrote Dickensian Gothic.
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Jul 14, 2018 08:34
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