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I look forward to you deliberately acting in bad faith towards the subject of character voice. on a more positive note, I'm about halfway through Urth (Severian's starting to get his healing hands on) and based on a lot of things I had heard about it I was kind of expecting it to be dry and not quite fit but aside from a really rocky start I think it's been pretty great so far? It really ties the whole thing together and it's wild to see Severian turn into the promised messiah figure while still being a doofus that peaked in high school. ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 19:17
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Why the gently caress do people keep talking about bad faith, I do not yield in my adherence to the Church
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Sep 9, 2018 20:03
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ManlyGrunting posted:I look forward to you deliberately acting in bad faith towards the subject of character voice. I just recently read through it. I enjoyed the opening action, and Sevarian's first space walk, but I kind of found myself struggling through the back half, largely due to the intentional repetition. It does neatly tie up a lot of loose ends.
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Sep 9, 2018 20:15
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Why the gently caress do people keep talking about bad faith, I do not yield in my adherence to the Church How much longer do you need to be in the church until the lessons on charitability kick in?
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Sep 10, 2018 04:06
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https://twitter.com/StephenPiment/status/1050447102935855104 Might be Interlibrary Loan, the sequel to A Borrowed Man. Part of me hopes it's Latro 4.
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Oct 13, 2018 08:22
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less laughter posted:https://twitter.com/StephenPiment/status/1050447102935855104 Finishing off Latro would be amazing.
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Oct 13, 2018 13:30
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Would it? Soldier of Sidon always felt pretty weak to me.
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Oct 13, 2018 22:10
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anilEhilated posted:Would it? Soldier of Sidon always felt pretty weak to me. That's why it would be nice to get closure.
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Oct 14, 2018 01:22
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Good news! I finally reviewed one of this guy's garbage books!
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Nov 1, 2018 17:36
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Harsh on Oldboy.
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Nov 1, 2018 20:51
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I think this review is particularly bad spirited. I love Lawrence Sterne, Nabokov, Faulkner, Gene Wolfe, Zelazny, Proust (whose prose and sentence structure New Sun is in some part hoisted from - some lines are taken directly from in search of lost time) and the book stands up to reread and symbolic analyses. Attacking readers for what they like is a precedent you approach here so I don’t mind suggesting you are a mouth breathing plot driven philistine. Let’s be honest modern prose from the likes of Pynchon is either wooden or farcical and that is a matter of taste. Quoting finnegans wake would be far worse on readers than these Wolfe sections, but, much like Joyce, Wolfe is always doing something. Severian isn’t a bad writer his thoughts are metaphysically beautiful and resonant but he is not someone in tune with your zeitgeist so you label him as such. I don’t mind that the book isn’t for you but attacking the readers and the idea that there is scholarship on the book (though much of it is bad) makes your review pretty bitter and hamfisted. Tendentious tripe.
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Nov 4, 2018 13:56
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felicibusbrevis posted:Severian isn’t a bad writer his thoughts are metaphysically beautiful and resonant Cross post from another thread: 
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Nov 4, 2018 14:12
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Cross post from another thread: You can laugh all you want you will be a philistine all the days of your life.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:33
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Man botl seems to get sent to the phantom zone of probation a lot these days
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Nov 4, 2018 16:31
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Supermechagodzilla did it better.
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Nov 4, 2018 16:41
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 Apparently Amano of Final Fantasy fame did a series of covers for Book of the New Sun
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Nov 4, 2018 22:08
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Much more interesting than the books.
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Nov 4, 2018 22:31
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Lol I googled it and the Death Note guy did some too
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Nov 4, 2018 22:33
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Now that's perfect for the series.
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Nov 4, 2018 22:35
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WOW these probations are coming quick now
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Nov 5, 2018 04:08
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So I stumbled on this thread yesterday and wondered how I'd like this guy, and I borrowed Pirate Freedom off the Open Library and read through it in a night. I feel like I must be missing something -- why do you guys call him the most despicable protagonist? Am I missing something? The only thing that was really shocking was toward the end of the book, when he spends a paragraph or two mentioning that the pirates DID torture people, but I can't bring myself to blame him too much. It was shown several times in the first half of the book how being a pirate captain didn't actually give you a ton of authority, and how if you didn't do things the way the crew wanted they'd end up killing you or leaving you for dead on some remote island -- I lost track of how many of his own pirates he had to fight by the end. I have to imagine he didn't have a lot of latitude to say "Hey, don't burn that guy or sell those slaves." I didn't blame him for the "murder" he confesses to at the beginning either; from what we'd already seen he'd end up having to kill Michet one way or another. I felt like he got up to some bad things in a Heart of Darkness sort of way, but at the same time, he was what, 16 at the start of the book? He left school and immediately got dropped into a very brutal world, and it's going to be very hard for a teenager to stop himself from getting caught up in it, especially when his first brush with the Spanish Navy has them break their word, steal from him, and generally seem less honorable than the pirates. He still freed the slaves that he could and stopped his women from getting raped, it felt like he was at least trying to hold onto his humanity. I know he could have probably ditched the ship at some port and ran away inland to go and be a farmhand or something, but he's constantly seeing reasons to view the Spanish as the enemy and hey, he's a teenager. It's gonna be very hard for him to leave behind something that has been rewarding him and making him feel successful, especially when he has nowhere else to go. From the sounds of this author, I'm probably missing some important subtleties here, but I'm interested to know whether "despicable protagonist" is typical SA hyperbole or if he's to blame for more than I know about. A lot of the brutality seemed very typical for the time period and it's hard to imagine Crisoforo not having to take part, unless this was a typical boys' adventure novel where he's able to talk all the pirates into being nice people with modern sensibilities.
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Nov 6, 2018 14:52
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Phenotype posted:So I stumbled on this thread yesterday and wondered how I'd like this guy, and I borrowed Pirate Freedom off the Open Library and read through it in a night. It is probably wolfe’s simplest but he still has some tricky stuff going on. Spoilers of course. His father leaves him at the monastery and is a real “wise guy” - later he thinks that if he can find his father he can avert some of The disasters (see literal meaning of the name lesage - the wise guy). Also, Chris leaves the monastery to avoid being thought of as a homosexual and he falls immediately into being raped. When he almost dies at the end he is thrust back into the future and has the chance to make sure that his young self never goes back, but instead as Ignacio (fiery) condemns cristofero (follower of Christ) to follow his own desires rather than christ’s And even stands by and watches as the boy steals food when he could have bought the boy food and stopped it all. He chooses it at the end and condemns himself. The whole thing is moral casuistry. He had the chance to undo it (pirate freedom) but instead choose it again to get the girl as an old man, damning himself. Some passages make clear how awful the things the pirates did were, like twisting our guts and eyeballs etc. it isn’t necessarily the boy by himself who sins irrevocably but the old man whose lack of charity ensures it all happens just as it did, becoming the damned ignacio following his own will, that leads to the fire.
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Nov 7, 2018 15:14
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Many of the names in pirate freedom are also allegorical so when certain characters are killed or traded off it’s like a pilgrim’s progress to moral bankruptcy.
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Nov 7, 2018 15:16
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felicibusbrevis posted:It is probably wolfe’s simplest but he still has some tricky stuff going on. Spoilers of course. His father leaves him at the monastery and is a real “wise guy” - later he thinks that if he can find his father he can avert some of How's the prose?
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Nov 10, 2018 00:12
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Hey BOTL I'm halfway through McLuhan's Understanding Media, and it's a blast to read if nothing else
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Nov 10, 2018 02:01
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:How's the prose? Much more minimalist than New Sun he adopts different styles for different projects.
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Nov 10, 2018 21:11
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felicibusbrevis posted:Much more minimalist than New Sun he adopts different styles for different projects. How is it?
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Nov 10, 2018 21:27
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Don't you have a Ducktales thread to poo poo up or something?
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Nov 12, 2018 10:21
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Goddamn, gotta say, rereads are indeed a must. On second read, I realized why Jonas is freaking out when they get stuck in captivity. I thought at first he was having trouble dealing with finding out Korean names are so far in the past they no longer exist, but that doesn't make sense. He's made peace with being in a world he doesn't recognize. He's freaking out because he isn't going to die in 80 years like the rest of the eternal captives. How long has he been alive? Centuries? Millenia? How much longer would he be stuck in that loving place?
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Dec 13, 2018 19:03
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:How is it? The first line of the first chapter reads: "Sometimes it seems that I spend most of my time trying to explain things to people who do not want to understand." Sounds like a character perspective that you could really relate to.
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Dec 17, 2018 22:50
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finished Soldier in the Mist a few days ago very confused cool book, wtf happened at all
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Dec 17, 2018 23:57
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my bony fealty posted:finished Soldier in the Mist a few days ago Gene Wolfe - cool book, wtf happened at all
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Dec 18, 2018 21:01
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my bony fealty posted:finished Soldier in the Mist a few days ago Anti-Spartan plot. It's been quite a few years since my last read but my memory is there are significant and substantial signs of what's intended so it's not one of those things as with much Wolfe a good reader wouldn't stand a chance of picking up on a first read (that being said I didn't pick it up either at first). I recently read some interesting analysis that major theme is masculinity, with the Spartans perverting the positive traits of male virtues (not merely acting out male vices) in contrast to Latro who exemplifies the hero archetype. Time for a reread with that in mind I think which is also timely on the back of reading the Aeneid where the conventional Roman morality of Aeneas was such a big deal!
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Dec 19, 2018 07:20
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my bony fealty posted:finished Soldier in the Mist a few days ago ask me a question. Felicibusbrevis knows all and will clarify everything. From the immortals of Mardonius, with the golden apple on the spear equating them with the Persian Apple Bearers in chapter 1, to the appearance of Silenus and Asopus, to the conflation of Aphrodite with the fey tradition as that small moth on the anemone (also pertinent for its associations with not only the death of Adonis but in Christian imagery ... the earth deities Gaia, Hera, and Rhea are syncretized as the Great Mother of ancient Greek worship as in Graves mythology, juxtaposed against the moon Triple Goddess, Selene, Artemis, and Hecate (maiden, mother, crone - the waxing and waning of the moon influences whether the chthonic dark mother or the celestial huntress Artemis appears) ... the helots of the Ropemaker spartans want a return to their old worship and prominence, but the Great Mother reveals that she will help them ... by supporting the historical figure of Pausanias. There is a sublime moment in Soldier when Drakaina tells Latro his falcata is a kopis .... they are the same blade, basically, which arose in two different geographical regions ... thus the gods, syncretized between Egypt, Rome, Greece, and still the sense that this is a Miltonic presentation of the merciless pagan deities as the servants and fallen servants of a greater lord, in this case equated with the Persian all-good God Ahura Mazda. It is no mistake that Latro begins on the side of the Persians.
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Dec 22, 2018 00:03
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my bony fealty posted:finished Soldier in the Mist a few days ago Herodotus informs much of it, from his tale of the lycanthropic Neurians to little details that the name Oior means man (see the grave necromancy scene, when the girls says Man dug up her grave). Fabulous books. Those who can't appreciate Wolfe are true nincompoops.
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Dec 22, 2018 00:06
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Uh, same
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Dec 22, 2018 00:53
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felicibusbrevis posted:ask me a question. Felicibusbrevis knows all and will clarify everything. From the immortals of Mardonius, with the golden apple on the spear equating them with the Persian Apple Bearers in chapter 1, to the appearance of Silenus and Asopus, to the conflation of Aphrodite with the fey tradition as that small moth on the anemone (also pertinent for its associations with not only the death of Adonis but in Christian imagery ... the earth deities Gaia, Hera, and Rhea are syncretized as the Great Mother of ancient Greek worship as in Graves mythology, juxtaposed against the moon Triple Goddess, Selene, Artemis, and Hecate (maiden, mother, crone - the waxing and waning of the moon influences whether the chthonic dark mother or the celestial huntress Artemis appears) ... the helots of the Ropemaker spartans want a return to their old worship and prominence, but the Great Mother reveals that she will help them ... by supporting the historical figure of Pausanias. There is a sublime moment in Soldier when Drakaina tells Latro his falcata is a kopis .... they are the same blade, basically, which arose in two different geographical regions ... thus the gods, syncretized between Egypt, Rome, Greece, and still the sense that this is a Miltonic presentation of the merciless pagan deities as the servants and fallen servants of a greater lord, in this case equated with the Persian all-good God Ahura Mazda. It is no mistake that Latro begins on the side of the Persians. lay off the weed, dude
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Dec 22, 2018 01:55
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anilEhilated posted:Would it? Soldier of Sidon always felt pretty weak to me. I haven't liked anything he's written after soldier of mist 
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Dec 22, 2018 04:30
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sebmojo posted:I haven't liked anything he's written after soldier of mist Do you mean in the Soldier series? Because the Short Sun post-dates Soldier of Mist and I thought that would be liked by anyone who likes Wolfe at all.
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Dec 22, 2018 04:34
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Neurosis posted:Do you mean in the Soldier series? Because the Short Sun post-dates Soldier of Mist and I thought that would be liked by anyone who likes Wolfe at all. i've read the one in the space station (long sun?) soldier of sidon and wizard knight and they all seemed endless tedious processions of people trying to explain the plot to each other, which is a huge pity because i loved his earlier stuff. e: oh, no I'm dumb - i mean soldier of arete, that was my cut off.
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Dec 22, 2018 04:50
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