|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:'Hysteric realism' in particular was a term coined for Smith's novel White Teeth, though the context is very different. quote:Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, as these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all costs. Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are concerned. If, say, a character is introduced in London, call him Toby Awknotuby (that is, “ To be or not to be”—ha!) then we will be swiftly told that he has a twin in Delhi (called Boyt, which is an anagram of Toby, of course), who, like Toby, has the same very curious genital deformation, and that their mother belongs to a religious cult based, oddly enough, in the Orkney Islands, and that their father (who was born at the exact second that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima) has been a Hell’s Angel for the last thirteen years (but a very curious Hell’s Angels group it is, devoted only to the fanatical study of late Wordsworth), and that Toby’s mad left-wing aunt was curiously struck dumb when Mrs. Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 and has not spoken a word since. And all this, over many pages, before poor Toby Awknotuby has done a thing, or thought a thought! Sounds like Tristram Shandy to me Or possibly Michael Bay's Transformers movies: quote:Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me. Established term or not people are probably going to get their teeth set on edge if you describe a work by a female author as "hysterical" anything. It's one of those gendered terms. BravestOfTheLamps posted:
Fiction ≠ autobiography, dude, and slave narratives are not definitionally non-fiction. That's weaksauce. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Sep 10, 2017 |
#
¿
Sep 10, 2017 14:06
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 12:44 |
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:"World-building" efforts are always insipid because it's a cargo-cult method of storytelling. A milieu or a setting is simply a tool for storytelling, but bad authors mistake it for a powerful magic that they must imitate to win power and wealth. Thus all the nonsense about "living, breathing worlds" with long histories and great stores of lore. This seems like a functionally circular argument; you're just asserting that thing bad because thing bad. What do you think "cargo cult storytelling" means? Cargo cults are themselves stories told. Then you assert "bad authors do X," but don't say what good authors do (perhaps because you don't think good authors can, definitionally, write alternate world settings, because then they wouldn't be good authors, etc.? just another posted:You're confusing being critical with literary criticism. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting the point of this thread. This is how most of BoL's arguments strike me too. "Good" and "Bad" seem like functionally irrelevant measures to me, absent the description of a purpose for which the work is good or bad, a goal which it either achieves or fails to achieve, the wants and preferences of a particular reader, or some other measure by which "good" and "bad" can be measured; ultimately, "good" and "bad" are purely relative and subjective terms, not objective ones. For example, if a given reader wants to read heroic quest stories of adventure, Robin Hobb's novel Dragon Keeper would be a really bad choice, but a different imagined reader who wanted to read a story about strong independent women raising Dragon Babies, they'd be striking gold.Personally, I regret the hours of my life I wasted reading the thing, but that's just my personal reaction. Mel Mudkiper posted:the great vanity of world building has always been the assumption that you are creating something new and not merely recycling tropes with new names. Eh, not really. Perhaps that's the notion in the head of some particularly noxious authors (Terry Goodkind might be imagining he's wholly original), but generally what people mean when they say there's "good world building" is that the author has made Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" particularly easy. "Originality" can help that goal -- in the same sense that taking a vacation to a place you've never been before can be more fulfilling than a vacation to somewhere you've been frequently -- but it may not be necessary to the goal. A vacation to the same beach you visit every summer may still be preferable to just staying at work. Tolkien wrote about this topic in his essay On Fairy Stories: http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf. Because he starts defining his own terms ("sub-creator") and standards it's hard to find a good passage to quote, but these are decently relevant: quote:Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that thestory-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the quote:I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism Note how Tolkien is careful to define success and failure in relation to the tastes of a particular reader. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Sep 11, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 11, 2017 22:47
|
|
|
just another posted:Absent an agreed-upon definition, I don't think you can accurately call a novel idiotic. It's a semantic argument but it's an important one because it provides the framework for everything else. Well, you can call a novel "idiotic" regardless, it just doesn't necessarily mean anything. Take, for example, the film Dumb and Dumber. I think everyone would agree that it is "idiotic"; if nothing else, it's a film about and concerning idiots. But some people think it's hilarious and some people think it's just incredibly stupid. If you judge it by "does it achieve the intended effect," it's great. If you judge it by "was it commercially successful," it's a Great Work of Art because it made zillions. If you judge it by "does this appeal to viewers seeking humor above the level of a ten year old," it's a miserable failure. If you judge it by "does it appeal to ten year olds" it's amazing. etc., etc., etc. Mel Mudkiper posted:I see what you mean but if good world building is creating a world that is consistent to the writer why are all these celebrated fantasy writers praised for having long complex lore that is basically recycled tropes from Nordic myth. "Celebrated" is relative too. I think the answer to that probably varies by author. In some cases there's some real artistic merit to their works (Tolkien, for example), in others "celebrated" probably just means "mass market appeal" and the mass market isn't always that discerning. If I had to make a shot at a generalized answer though, I'd posit that in many cases the authors are being celebrated for things other than originality as such.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2017 00:01
|
|
|
Schwarzwald posted:Less facetiously, I genuinely don't understand peoples objections. That's fair, sure. My objection was just that he was making a lot of assertions that things were "bad" without connecting up the links. He does say that the prose is bad, but it sounds like there are a lot of other, relatively unspecified additional reasons why the book is "bad" in addition to the prose, or perhaps he was using "prose" as a referrent for a lot of different types of flaws (poor characterization, oversentimental tone, etc.) I don't want to put words in BoL's mouth but if his argument is basically "bad prose style" I think that may need more precise examples -- like, Strunk and White style "here are all the words she could cut out," specific examples of strained metaphors, etc. I may be thinking of "bad prose" in a more specific sense than BoL is meaning it. Note I'm not necessarily disagreeing that the book is "bad", within the meaning of a specific definition of "bad." As above, I've only read one Robin Hobb book and I would rather read a phone book than ever read its sequel, but I can imagine a theoretical, reasonably probable reader (probably not a too-discerning reader, admittedly) who would have enjoyed it. I don't remember too much about the prose style itself but the criticism of "mawkish" seemed spot on for both the characters and plot. But "Mawkish" is a specific and definite and meaningful criticism; "bad" isn't. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Sep 12, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2017 02:04
|
|
|
OscarDiggs posted:Maybe we should have a "What is literary criticism" thread and/or post. I know I for one have very little idea of what it is, or how it differs from regular criticism. start here https://www.amazon.com/Literary-Theory-Introduction-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0816654476 then stop because, as Eagleton will teach you, marxist criticism is the only valid approach to literary analysis Generally the idea is you are using some sort of theoretical lens (marxism, feminism, etc) to analyze a work of literature and evaluate it from that perspective and according to that set of criteria. So, for example, it's relatively worthless for me to say that I think Wuthering Heights sucks, but it is useful to apply a feminist critical lens and argue that Wuthering Heights perpetuates toxic notions of masculinity, femininity, and romantic love. Conversely, it isn't too useful for someone to reply to me with "gently caress you, I love Wuthering Heights, it's awesome " but it would be useful to make the counter-argument that Wuthering Heights is intended as a deconstruction of those toxic notions, not a romanticization of them. (Please note that I haven't read Wuthering Heights in like twenty years and barely even remember it, those examples are purely hypothetical arguments). Contrast that approach with, say, a book review, which generally imagines a hypothetical reader and then tells that reader whether or not they might like the book, and why or why not. That's not really what you're doing with a literary analysis, or least usually not the primary purpose. A book review of Bridget Jones' Diary might just tell you whether the book was engaging, entertaining, etc; an analytical critique might instead look at how the book achieves the effect of being entertaining, or at what the book's popularity told us about feminism in modern culture. (I haven't read Bridget Jones' Diary either; again, hypothetical example). Take all the above with a grain of salt because it's also been about twenty years since I read Terry Eagleton. I'm too old for this poo poo. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Sep 12, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2017 19:31
|
|
|
my bony fealty posted:
You might get better responses for this in the general book recommendations thread, but there are approximately a zillion modern adaptations of Xenophon's Anabasis.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2017 21:59
|
|
|
the old ceremony posted:okay, jemisin exists. i don't like her work, but i like her - she is doing important stuff for the genre just by existing and i'm glad she's getting acclaim and success. There aren't many female authors winning awards in fantasy period, never really have been. LeGuin would meet all your criteria except "of color." Almost all her major characters have been "of color," though, depending on how you define that (is a character with brown skin a "Black Man" if they live in a fantasy world where skin color doesn't have those connotations it has in ours?) the old ceremony posted:modern sf/f hasn't produced a 1984 or an earthsea for a very, very long time, and i don't trust any of the current crop to do so any time soon d'oh ok you covered her Well, the Wrinkle in Time movie is coming out soon with a female black director and Oprah in a starring role
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2017 00:26
|
|
|
Aww, I saw it was Ghormenghast and I thought you were gonna savage it and I was all "finally I actually disagree with BoL's appraisal and not just the technicalities of his approach" and then you liked it and we agree again Curses I like Peake because I have to actually look up words sometimes when reading him Disagree partially about Tolkien comparison but the response would be beyond the scope of a phone post over lunch. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Sep 13, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2017 17:54
|
|
|
We had a good discussion of "magical realism" a few years ago in the Gabriel Garcia Marquez BotM thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3630493
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2017 13:22
|
|
|
I think one useful way to look at Banks is through a Harold Bloom, _Anxiety of Influence_ esque lens; the idea being to write a post scarcity Socialist space "Utopia" as a critical response to the previously-prevalent Space Libertopia of authors like Heinlein. That said, I think most of the flaws and gaps in the Culture are fairly deliberate choices by Banks, not mere accidents. Most (all?) Of his protagonists are outsiders and marginal figures within the Culture, and the mores and morals of the Culture are subjected to implicit critiques to much the same extent that the cultures outside the Culture are subjected to explicit critique. Most (also all?) Culture novels end with no heroes. I think the analysis of much of the Culture series as "Post Colonial" fiction probably has some merit but I'd need to reread the series with that in mind to really parse it out. Culture as colonizer, etc. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Sep 25, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2017 20:17
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:For a political or moral fable to be significant it must have an authentic connection to current experience. I think it would be valid to read the Culture as analogous to the extension of hegemonic western liberal democracy to the nth extreme.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 14:56
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:It could be, sure, but in order for that to happen the reader has to be convinced that this magnification is itself plausible Why? We don't necessarily need for the Houyhnhnms or the Laputans to be plausible in order to engage with the story, do we? Or maybe we do, the latter parts of Gulliver do always seem less persuasive that the lilliputians.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 15:10
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:The Laputans work because they are a satire of a mentality more than a system. What do you see as the failure point in the Culture's plausibility? Do you have the same issues with, say, Star Trek? Is it just that FTL travel breaks einsteinian relativity so all such depictions that don't involve time travel are impossible (that realization broke a lot of space opera for me for a while)? I think "Satire" is a strong word for what Banks is doing in the culture novels. I'd go with "explication" or "exploration." He's taking a lot of fairly standard SF tropes -- utopian future post-scarcity society a la Star Trek -- and looking at the flaws that would remain. "Ok, us socialist liberals get the space utopia we think we've always wanted: what happens then? I bet we'd still be colonialist assholes, because people are judgmental and violent even when they aren't people any more" doesn't seem inherently implausible to me. Cynical sure and I find most Banks books really depressing but if cynicism = bad then there's a lot of other babies we have to toss out with this bathwater. BravestOfTheLamps posted:The criticism of the Culture that Banks offers strikes me as Operation Margarine -like. Like I said, he presents an infinite sci-fi universe where practically anything is possible, but the only real choice is between liberal banality as represented by Culture, some form of barbarism/parochialism, and an inscrutable ancient power. That's in itself a questionable ideological statement. I had to look up the Operation Margarine essay. Good points. I suppose it turns on whether or not you think Banks is ultimately endorsing the Culture's approach, or not, and I can see arguments both ways on that. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Sep 26, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 16:05
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:Saying sci-fi shouldn't strive for significance because its sci-fi does more damage to the genre than any of us could ever do. I think I've quoted it before in this thread, but Raymond Chandler got at this issue regarding genre fiction in his essay The Simple Art of Murder: quote:And he demonstrated that the detective story can be important writing. The Maltese Falcon may or may not be a work of genius, but an art which is capable of it is not "by hypothesis" incapable of anything. Once a detective story can be as good as this, only the pedants will deny that it could be even better. http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html So two questions, then: not just "is this [objectively] good", but also, in addition to that question, also "is this subjectively better than what came before? Does it point the way to improvement? I mean, I'm not sure "is this good" is even a useful question to ask absent a definition of literary merit, and if anyone has a definition of literary merit I'd like to see it. There's a reason Chandler doesn't even directly try to answer whether or not The Maltese Falcon is "a work of genius," and just settles for calling it "important writing" instead.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 16:13
|
|
|
my bony fealty posted:In the sci-fi context - offering a leftist-informed vision of a post-scarcity future that is neither a utopia nor dystopia, but rather a genuinely nuanced imagined society, is pretty important. There are probably precedents but I don't know any that had the impact of Culture, especially given the time it came out - the mid 1980s, when the prevailing sci-fi attitude was "hypercapitalist cyberpunk future will doom us all." Culture is not only a critique of idealism, it's a critique of both political and science-fiction pessimism (consider the state of the Western left in the Thatcherite 80s - Banks had a lot to be mad about). LeGuin's The Dispossessed but, hey, who listens to female authors anyway? (j/k). The serious point is that LeGuin's . . . topia . . . isn't post-scarcity.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 16:32
|
|
|
Schwarzwald posted:It's pretty bold to claim that none of the "post-scarcity future" series that preceded the Culture series had as much impact when Star Trek came out 21 years before hand. The Federation is essentially left as a vague utopia, at least within its own boundaries and presuming there aren't any Borg near your planet. The main difference between the Federation and the Culture is that the Culture doesn't even pretend to have that pesky 'prime directive" nonsense.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 26, 2017 21:01
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:One thing I never understood is why fantasy fans talk about a consistent magical system as a benefit. If magic has rules it's not magic, its physics. There's a puzzle element. For example, most of the Harry Potter novels are basically mystery novels of the YA hardy boys / boarding school type, but with an overlay of extra "magic rules" that complicate the puzzle, so the answer isn't immediately obvious ("Mad-Eye Moody was Barty Crouch all along, under a polyjuice potion! And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!") Brandon Sanderson does this too -- most of his books are just puzzle novels where the magic system is the puzzle. So it's good for it to have consistent rules for the same reason that a genre detective novel is generally considered "superior" if the author gives you all the pieces of the puzzle in advance, rather than withholding key information until after the reveal, or changing the rules of the puzzle mid-narrative.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 16:11
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:that's not the definition of magical realism Sure, but that doesn't really explicate how that differs from, say, Dresden Files, which is also 'realistic" but with "fantasy elements." Inescapable Duck posted:There's arguments over magical realism and fantasy, which is one thing (Personally, I feel it's usually best delineated by magical realism being weird thematic poo poo sometimes happening in an otherwise grounded setting, while fantasy is where supernatural/paranormal elements are an inherent and consistent part of the fictional world. Of course, I imagine some lines can be thin, and it could be entirely possible to have magical realism in a fantasy setting) but that does make me wonder; when does a story stop being Fantasy and start being Horror, or vice-versa? Is It or The Shining fantasy or magical realism? quote:Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. There's your difference. It's a matter of perspective and authorial intent. Marquez is using fantastic elements to highlight how strange and hosed up and changeable "reality" is, but is ultimately writing about and focused on "reality'. Butcher by contrast isn't focused on reality; he's writing a fictional narrative that isn't about "reality" at all.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 16:20
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:That's just repeated what I already said tho. Right i'm just spelling out the compare and contrast part of the argument
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 16:51
|
|
|
Grounded elements and fantastical elements aren't necessarily in conflict; they can set each other off. Ideally, the fantasy elements are the painting, the realistic elements are the frame. Again, look at Harry Potter. There's not really much consistency to the magic of the Harry Potter universe, apart from "You gotta feel things really hard" which is perfect for teens because teens have so many emotions. But there's an illusion of consistency (pronunciation rules, component rules, interaction rules) that make the writing more dramatic and powerful. See, e.g., Dumbledore's battle with Voldemort at the end of, like, Book 5 -- Voldemort keeps throwing the "unblockable" death curse, and Dumbledore keeps beating and evading it -- mostly by dodging it or by summoning up "living" things to take the hit for him (conjured pet statues, etc). Technically it's following the rules, but it's also got the wish-fullfilment element of Dumbledore-as-Savior coming and breaking all the rules to save the day, magically.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 17:20
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:It sounds lazy. There is nothing interesting about finding away around rules you yourself invented. Ok, how are you defining "magic" in this context? Or is the point that you aren't? Can you give me an example of a story that used "magic" well? Off the top of my head i'm having a hard time figuring out an example of the use of magic in fiction that meets your criteria. THere's always an element of rule-breaking. Mel Mudkiper posted:Like I think in terms of pure creativity, CS Lewis was among the best fantasy writers because he at least understood the inherent nature of the fantastical What I dislike about Lewis is that if you read him and you aren't six, the christian structure of everything becomes so transparent that there cease to be any surprises at all. It all follows Christian logic and Christian theology and Christian mores to the letter. It isn't even that creative -- the lion as a symbol for christ is all through medieval iconography. It's espeecially painful in his non-Narnia books. Midway through the space trilogy he runs out of ideas so utterly that he goes full Arthur and Merlin, which is the pit-stop emergency "out of gas" flag for fantasy writing. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Oct 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 17:38
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:As I said, CS Lewis. Yeah, gotcha in an edit. Lewis just follows Christian rules throughout, it just seems "fantastical" because unless you study theology and even then Christian rules don't make sense. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 17:46
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:That's the point! That's the thing though: it's not magic that revives Aslan; it's Christian Physics: quote:"It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." It seems like MAGIC because Christian theology is pretty whackadoodle, but within its parameters it's perfectly predictable. Of course Aslan comes back from the Stone Table. Aslan + table = Christ + Cross. It math. If you're pointing to truly fantastic things in Lewis I'd argue that the most fantastic element in all the Narnia books is the lamp-post. Why is there a lamp-post in Narnia? Why is there a faun beside a lamp-post? And then he goes and ruins even that a few books later by explaining its origin away in The Magician's Nephew. I think better examples of the sort of rule-breaking MAGIC you're talking about might be in either Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell or The Last Unicorn, but I think both of those have examples of rule-brekaing and loophole-finding, too. Ultimately I think you're drawing a false dichotomy; magic is about breaking or evading the Rules, and you have to make some rules in your story in order to break them afterwards. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Oct 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 18:04
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:Yes, I am aware. It's an allegory for the stone tablets of the ten commandments, the old covenant overturned and broken by Christ's new covenant. =( I mean, good for you if it works for you but for me I find Lewis painfully formulaic. Jesus is the Answer to every puzzle.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 18:12
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:There is a difference between narratively formulaic and formulaic reality Ok, just to be clear, is this argument premised on the thesis that Christian theology is in any way congruent with reality, or are you just arguing that Lewis was writing from that viewpoint, or . . . ? Regardless, I'd argue that Tolkien did a far better job of "hiding the ball." Gandalf's resurrection is no less christian than Aslan's, but it is much more miraculous; there's no Christian Physics, he's just "sent back."
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:LotR isn't Christian, it's pagan. Ehh, sortof. Tolkien writes in his letters that he deliberately wrote everything that happens in LotR to be "consistent with" christian theology; the elves are a conceptualization of humanity that did not Fall, etc. LotR is deeply Christian, though you could definitely analyze it as an attempt to reconcile nordic and christian mythology. Mel Mudkiper posted:No my point is that Christian mythology is the definition of a fantastical construction of reality because it isn't consistent and things happen just because God wants them to. There is no consistent rules or reality god must follow, he just does whatever because he is not defined by cause and effect or quantification. I've gotten in big arguments with catholics over that; last time I made that point, after getting particularly irritated by a persistent catholic who insisted on eliciting my opinion as to a religious debate I was deliberately avoiding, I said "Religion and logic are not compatible, an omnipotent diety is definitionally extra-logical, this entire discussion is pointless, God made the world with dinosaur bones already in it", and in response I got told I had a "fundamentally protestant perspective", which that particular Catholic meant as an insult. If you're an Anglican of Lewis' bent --i.e. a professional writing theologian, not just someone who goes to church or even a member of the clergy, but a professional philosophical theologian, Christian theology is amazingly convoluted, but it isn't inconsistent -- literally everything follows rules, and the rules are consistent with each other, they're just absurdly complicated and overwrought to the point that to an outsider it looks like gibberish and absurdity. It's like a Ptolemaic astronomer describing the path of the sun around the earth via epicycles. With enough math you can make it all fit, even if you're writing nonsense. I made the mistake in my youth of reading a lot of Lewis' theological writing, and the more of that stuff you read, the more the wonder and absurdity of the Narnia books evaporates, because it really is all just math for him; even the bizarre and brilliant parts like the lamp-post get turned into math in the later books. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Oct 2, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 18:43
|
|
|
true.spoon posted:Read Lord Dunsany's Carcassonne for something fantastical that does magic very well (the Bard in particular) in my opinion. Note though that there are neither rules set up nor broken in the way you are talking about. Though maybe you'd call it more mythical than magical and perhaps this is part of the distinction we are trying to formulate here? I am curious whether his longer The King of Elfland's Daughter retains this quality but haven't had the time to read it yet. Yeah, Idle Days on the Yann might be a better example for discussion since it avoids the christianity issue we're hitting with Lewis. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/swld/swld09.htm
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 18:44
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:Zizek says it the best: I'll have to read that, thanks. Mel Mudkiper posted:Granted I have not read every Narnia book but even if he is using an Anglican framework for his world he at least has the decency to not explain how many angels can dance on the head of a pin in Narnia, you know ? Yeah, I don't want to come down too hard on Lewis because there are moments of true brilliance in his work; even the late stuff, like Magician's Nephew, has passages I find myself returning to over and over again: quote:Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn’t notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn’t run away from the big Lion. I think it's just a raw nerve for me personally because he was so much more wonderful an author before I understood him.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 19:12
|
|
|
The really sad thing is that if you buy them now they're boxed in story chronological order not publication order so it tells you to start with Magician's Nephew first and it just isn't the same Dunsany was good though read him
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2017 19:32
|
|
|
HIJK posted:What is Honor Harrington even about. I keep getting her confused with Sassinak. Horation Hornblower as a mary sue in space
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2017 21:20
|
|
|
The only thing I don't like about Vance is that his style can get really repetitive -- it's not always easy to tell one of his protagonists from another, everyone's using Vancian Diction etc. My favorite story of his is The Moon Moth, and I think it's the best thing he ever wrote, largely because he abandoned the clever charming protagonists he usually uses and substituted an inept, accidentally obnoxious one..
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2017 19:07
|
|
|
Wapole Languray posted:
We did it as a BOTM a few years ago. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3606244 edit: reading that thread isn't gonna be much help though Absurdist fiction isn't always intended to make sense. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Oct 9, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2017 05:55
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:I like Lord Dunsany I haven't! Thanks! BravestOfTheLamps posted:Thinking this over, and you're totally wrong because Cugel is an obnoxious idiot who gets owned all the time. "Much like your posting," said Gandalf, who knew the correct reply. (Yeah Cugel undercuts it too -- I'm thinking more of all the various Oikumene books).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2017 13:01
|
|
|
Is "a truly great work of art" the nymph you are seeking? I'm kinda surprised you included this in your review because (as you point out) it really isn't a "genre" novel -- the only other people writing this kind of thing at the time were Dunsany and maybe James Branch Cabell depending on how you characterize him (I wouldn't count E.R. Eddison as similar) and all three of them were considered "literary" authors at the time. The conventions of the fantasy genre didn't crystallize for another forty years or so. It's still one of the books I'm happiest about setting as a Book of the Month, it deserves more attention than it gets. Ccs posted:Would writers in 1926 dare to write such a figure? The way you phrased this made me think this was a contemporary book written as a kind of challenge to grimdark fantasy. Instead it's a fantasy published a decade before The Hobbit. I think Lamp's point isn't so much that Mirrlees was daring but rather that modern writers of genre fantasy would never include such a protagonist. It's a point about modern writers being relatively lame. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Nov 14, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2017 14:51
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:Shouldn't it be everyones? If you can't be / with the one you love, baby / love the one you're with
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2017 15:53
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:No one's written any good literature in the last fifty years. This is objective fact. Has anyone ever written good literature
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2017 20:07
|
|
|
You could do the same thing with Jack Vance, 3/4ths of his protagonists use virtually identical dialogue book to book.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2018 23:09
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:Vance' is forgivable because he favoured genre that demanded formula, and was also a career writer, which inevitably demands repetition. Wait, Kay isn't a career writer? The underlying point is that all or almost all authors have flaws and are bad in some ways. Even a relatively good author like Vance can commit venal sins like repeating the same characters and still be good in other ways. Kay commits similar sins sure and he definitely has some stinkers in his oeuvre but when he's "on" he has strong and complex characterization, solid storytelling, and at his best he evokes a very strong sense of place. He doesn't have Vance's overtly witty prose but on the other hand 3/4ths of his protagonists aren't literally the same person in different hats. If you want to make your case that Kay is "bad," it's not enough to show that Kay's writing has some faults; all authors have some faults. What you have to show is that it has no virtues.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2018 18:19
|
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:There is a difference though between authors who tend to gravitate towards certain themes or character types and an author like Kay who is literally introducing every similar character with the same grammar and syntax. That's how I react to most of Vance's dialogue, especially in the Oikumene books.  There's a certain light witticism that remains, sure, but the patterns are identical book to book, to the point that it's hard to even remember the different protagonists as distinct characters.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2018 20:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 12:44 |
|
|
Mel Mudkiper posted:If being rote, mechanical, and uncreative are banal criticisms what counts as legitimate He's creative in other ways. His trick/gimmick is setting "fantasy" novels in what are essentially historical settings with a light fantasy reskin, but he researches the historical eras in some detail, so they have much better-drawn settings than most fantasy novels do. You could criticize him for cribbing from reality and that's quasi-fair but only if you're pretending historical fiction isn't creative. He also broke a lot of ground in depicting non-white, non-male protagonists in fantasy fiction which seems like old news now but was a big deal when he did it. Lions came out in '95. Honestly I think Lions stands on its own and doesn't need my defenses. It's a solid work and accomplishes what it sets out to do. I frequently cite Lions as doing well what A Song of Ice and Fire attempts to do and fails at; the same sense of "realistic" place, but compare how the two authors treat the deaths of major characters. The worst thing you can say about Kay is probably that he's written a lot of stuff that doesn't approach the quality of his best work, but that's a common failing. I wouldn't' suggest doing an all-in read of his entire oeuvre, just start with Lions and maybe pick up Tigana and one or two others if you like the style. Definitely avoid Fionavar. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Mar 11, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2018 03:53
|
|