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millennial_dandy's reviews
342 reviews
One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 1 by Jeon JinSeok, Han SeungHee
3.0
3.5 rounded down to 3
Kicking off Pride month, we have a nostalgic re-read of a 2000s shounan-ai manhwa.
While nostalgia plays a big role in my desire to pick this story back up after a number of years, I don't think that's what would get me to continue on to volume two.
First of all, Han SeungHee's artwork is absolutely stunning. Her character designs are very distinct, and she leans hard into the genre's convention of having beautiful characters, both in a very objective sense, but also in the painstaking care she puts into the details on even background and side characters. The emotions she's able to convey can be quite subtle at times, though there's still plenty of room for the over-the-top, stylized reactions expected of a comic. And the costumes and the backgrounds as well are often incredibly rich with detail and texture. Just, a really good-looking series all-around.
What about the story, though? As with so many manga and manhwa set-ups, the plot of 'One Thousand and One Nights' sounds very simple: 'Shahrazad and the 1001 Arabian Nights' except with a queer veneer slapped over the top just because it's a good excuse to draw a bunch of impossibly beautiful guys in harem pants.
Admittedly, this first volume plays to that assumption in large part given the set-up of our androgynous protagonist Sehara dressing up as a woman to take his sister's place in the (equally) attractive sultan's harem, and thereby saving her life. There's some obligatory tension around this when the sultan, Shahryar, inevitably figures this out, and Sehara tries to save his own life by telling Shahryar a story connecting back to Shahryar's anger at his wife for the betrayal that kicks off his whole 'I'm going to kill a woman a day because that really hurt my feelings' murder spree.
That being said, though this first volume may feel like a frivilous reboot of the original tale, by the end we can see how writer Jeon JinSeok intends to branch off from the source material, and I remember from later volumes how what could have easily been self-indulgent gender-bent fanfiction becomes a thoughtful exploration of revenge, of redemption, of toxic masculinity. And by not simply rehashing one of the 1001 stories from the original, but taking it in a slightly new direction with a more modern spin on the moral, JinSeok demonstrates how valuable a transformative work can really be.
And, if memory serves, the story really starts to pick up in volume 2 once the authors are able to branch off from the familiar storyline.
Kicking off Pride month, we have a nostalgic re-read of a 2000s shounan-ai manhwa.
While nostalgia plays a big role in my desire to pick this story back up after a number of years, I don't think that's what would get me to continue on to volume two.
First of all, Han SeungHee's artwork is absolutely stunning. Her character designs are very distinct, and she leans hard into the genre's convention of having beautiful characters, both in a very objective sense, but also in the painstaking care she puts into the details on even background and side characters. The emotions she's able to convey can be quite subtle at times, though there's still plenty of room for the over-the-top, stylized reactions expected of a comic. And the costumes and the backgrounds as well are often incredibly rich with detail and texture. Just, a really good-looking series all-around.
What about the story, though? As with so many manga and manhwa set-ups, the plot of 'One Thousand and One Nights' sounds very simple: 'Shahrazad and the 1001 Arabian Nights' except with a queer veneer slapped over the top just because it's a good excuse to draw a bunch of impossibly beautiful guys in harem pants.
Admittedly, this first volume plays to that assumption in large part given the set-up of our androgynous protagonist Sehara dressing up as a woman to take his sister's place in the (equally) attractive sultan's harem, and thereby saving her life. There's some obligatory tension around this when the sultan, Shahryar, inevitably figures this out, and Sehara tries to save his own life by telling Shahryar a story connecting back to Shahryar's anger at his wife for the betrayal that kicks off his whole 'I'm going to kill a woman a day because that really hurt my feelings' murder spree.
That being said, though this first volume may feel like a frivilous reboot of the original tale, by the end we can see how writer Jeon JinSeok intends to branch off from the source material, and I remember from later volumes how what could have easily been self-indulgent gender-bent fanfiction becomes a thoughtful exploration of revenge, of redemption, of toxic masculinity. And by not simply rehashing one of the 1001 stories from the original, but taking it in a slightly new direction with a more modern spin on the moral, JinSeok demonstrates how valuable a transformative work can really be.
And, if memory serves, the story really starts to pick up in volume 2 once the authors are able to branch off from the familiar storyline.
The Blob That Ate Everyone (Goosebumps, #55) by R.L. Stine
4.0
Though a late entry in the original run, 'The Blob that Ate Everyone' is definitely one that I remember particularly fondly.
I remember the plot really catching me when I read it at about the age of the characters. I could (and still can) identify with Zackie, our protagonist and a budding horror writer. When he and his friend, Alex, see a lightning-struck antique shop, they just can't help taking a look inside, where Zackie falls in love with a miraculously undamaged old type-writer. No theft needed here: when the shop-owner catches them inside, she generously offers Zackie the typewriter and an old fountain pen for free. Life is looking up for Zackie, who has been suffering as the butt of the joke at school as several his classmates pull practical jokes on him.
The joke is on his classmates, however, because whatever Zackie types into the typewriter comes true...
Unlike other 'Goosebumps' stories that (probably) unintentionally punish the victims of bullying who try to fight back by having the horror bounce back at them (a message I take issue with, intentional or not), 'The Blob' keeps itself in check.
Our protagonist does get treated less than ideally by his 'friend,' Adam, who takes great pleasure in publically trying to scare Zackie just, as the kids say, 'for the lols.'
In retaliation, Zackie, without realizing it will come true, writes into his blob story that Adam gets eaten while the monster is on a rampage through town. This comes after Adama has pulled yet another of his practical jokes on Zackie.
When this comes true, Zackie immidiately feels horrified and spends the remainder of the climax trying to undo the damage.
I like this message at the center of a story like this much better. In one of his lesser versions of this type of trope, Stine would have had the 'magic typewriter' plotline backfire on Zackie, but instead, Zackie gets the opportunity for revenge, takes it, and then of his own volition, immidiately realizes that was wrong.
There are still some pretty goofy missteps, the biggest of which is Zackie being a scaredy-cat, which should logically fit into the climax somehow as a point of character development, but it never really goes anywhere. He wants to get back at Adam et.al. for making fun of him, but he needs to face his fears. In the end, he gets what he wants, but the story cuts itself off with a customary twist ending before we can see if he's also gotten what he needs. Those twist endings are par for the course when reading 'Goosebumps' but they at least usually come after the end of the protagonist's character arc.
Still, I love the set-up. Who among us who was or is into writing wouldn't gag over the chance to have everything they wrote come true? Well, at least in principle. I guess that's best left to film adaptation as Zackie also learns. Still, the aesthetic of typing out a scary story by candlelight just really strokes the lizard part of my brain that still aspires to that romantic image of the authors of yesteryear hard at work...
I remember the plot really catching me when I read it at about the age of the characters. I could (and still can) identify with Zackie, our protagonist and a budding horror writer. When he and his friend, Alex, see a lightning-struck antique shop, they just can't help taking a look inside, where Zackie falls in love with a miraculously undamaged old type-writer. No theft needed here: when the shop-owner catches them inside, she generously offers Zackie the typewriter and an old fountain pen for free. Life is looking up for Zackie, who has been suffering as the butt of the joke at school as several his classmates pull practical jokes on him.
The joke is on his classmates, however, because whatever Zackie types into the typewriter comes true...
Unlike other 'Goosebumps' stories that (probably) unintentionally punish the victims of bullying who try to fight back by having the horror bounce back at them (a message I take issue with, intentional or not), 'The Blob' keeps itself in check.
Our protagonist does get treated less than ideally by his 'friend,' Adam, who takes great pleasure in publically trying to scare Zackie just, as the kids say, 'for the lols.'
In retaliation, Zackie, without realizing it will come true, writes into his blob story that Adam gets eaten while the monster is on a rampage through town. This comes after Adama has pulled yet another of his practical jokes on Zackie.
When this comes true, Zackie immidiately feels horrified and spends the remainder of the climax trying to undo the damage.
I like this message at the center of a story like this much better. In one of his lesser versions of this type of trope, Stine would have had the 'magic typewriter' plotline backfire on Zackie, but instead, Zackie gets the opportunity for revenge, takes it, and then of his own volition, immidiately realizes that was wrong.
There are still some pretty goofy missteps, the biggest of which is Zackie being a scaredy-cat, which should logically fit into the climax somehow as a point of character development, but it never really goes anywhere. He wants to get back at Adam et.al. for making fun of him, but he needs to face his fears. In the end, he gets what he wants, but the story cuts itself off with a customary twist ending before we can see if he's also gotten what he needs. Those twist endings are par for the course when reading 'Goosebumps' but they at least usually come after the end of the protagonist's character arc.
Still, I love the set-up. Who among us who was or is into writing wouldn't gag over the chance to have everything they wrote come true? Well, at least in principle. I guess that's best left to film adaptation as Zackie also learns. Still, the aesthetic of typing out a scary story by candlelight just really strokes the lizard part of my brain that still aspires to that romantic image of the authors of yesteryear hard at work...
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay
4.0
3.5 rounded up to 4
Collections of essays and short stories, especially if not all by the same author, are incredibly hard to rate and review because the range of how much each piece speaks to you as a reader can be wide.
The goal of the collection, as explained by Roxane Gay in her heartfelt introduction, is, as the title suggests, to present the range of experiences that the various essayists have had with 'rape culture.' Including essays from cis and trans women, from men, from people of a range of ages and ethnicities, 'Not That Bad' does achieve, I think, what it set out to do: to show in a variety of ways, across time, and across people, how the specter of rape culture hovers over us all, though perhaps especially women.
So who is this aimed at? This collection has a two-pronged target audience: on the one hand, this is a book aimed at survivors of sexual assault looking for a sense of solidarity and validation of their feelings. But, on the other hand, this is also for readers who haven't had these experiences, especially (but not exclusively) cis men. I'm not sure, unfortunately, that it is as likely that the latter group would pick this up as it is that the former would.
Not to say that validation and solidarity aren't important, but the repetition of similarity across the essays would probably have more of a profound effect on readers with none of the lived experiences detailed within.
And I guess that's why I landed on my overall rating of 3.5/5. I can relate to a lot of the sentiments in these essays, and so the repetition, for me, was less profound and more...well...repetitive. I could nod along, but with increasing desensitization. For me, the value was more in mentally bookmarking certain essays along the way that resonated with me or that I could see being incredibly valuable to share with someone who may not want to take the time to read the book from cover to cover.
To be clear: these critiques are wholly separate from the value I think collections like 'Not That Bad' have. That phrase on the cover 'Not That Bad' is dynamite, and doing a lot of heavy lifting all on its own. Because at its core, that is what those who write about rape culture are talking about: the insane and arbitrary point system associated with the threat of sexual violence. From the weird urge to tell victims of violent rape 'wow, you're so lucky they didn't kill you!' to 'yes, they shouldn't have done that to you, but...' all the way down to 'yeah, but nothing really happened to you; don't be so hysterical.'
It's an important thing to acknowledge and talk about for people of all identities.
Of all the essays, the ones that I think really spoke to the heart of the theme were:
1. Fragments by Aubrey Hirsch
2. The Luckiest MILF in Brooklyn
3. All the Angry Women
4. Getting Home
5. Why I Didn't Say No
All five are very short, but punchy, and 'Getting Home' and 'Why I Didn't Say No' in particular hit at the more invisible and (to some) debatable aspects of rape culture that would probably spark the most discussion.
Collections of essays and short stories, especially if not all by the same author, are incredibly hard to rate and review because the range of how much each piece speaks to you as a reader can be wide.
The goal of the collection, as explained by Roxane Gay in her heartfelt introduction, is, as the title suggests, to present the range of experiences that the various essayists have had with 'rape culture.' Including essays from cis and trans women, from men, from people of a range of ages and ethnicities, 'Not That Bad' does achieve, I think, what it set out to do: to show in a variety of ways, across time, and across people, how the specter of rape culture hovers over us all, though perhaps especially women.
So who is this aimed at? This collection has a two-pronged target audience: on the one hand, this is a book aimed at survivors of sexual assault looking for a sense of solidarity and validation of their feelings. But, on the other hand, this is also for readers who haven't had these experiences, especially (but not exclusively) cis men. I'm not sure, unfortunately, that it is as likely that the latter group would pick this up as it is that the former would.
Not to say that validation and solidarity aren't important, but the repetition of similarity across the essays would probably have more of a profound effect on readers with none of the lived experiences detailed within.
And I guess that's why I landed on my overall rating of 3.5/5. I can relate to a lot of the sentiments in these essays, and so the repetition, for me, was less profound and more...well...repetitive. I could nod along, but with increasing desensitization. For me, the value was more in mentally bookmarking certain essays along the way that resonated with me or that I could see being incredibly valuable to share with someone who may not want to take the time to read the book from cover to cover.
To be clear: these critiques are wholly separate from the value I think collections like 'Not That Bad' have. That phrase on the cover 'Not That Bad' is dynamite, and doing a lot of heavy lifting all on its own. Because at its core, that is what those who write about rape culture are talking about: the insane and arbitrary point system associated with the threat of sexual violence. From the weird urge to tell victims of violent rape 'wow, you're so lucky they didn't kill you!' to 'yes, they shouldn't have done that to you, but...' all the way down to 'yeah, but nothing really happened to you; don't be so hysterical.'
It's an important thing to acknowledge and talk about for people of all identities.
Of all the essays, the ones that I think really spoke to the heart of the theme were:
1. Fragments by Aubrey Hirsch
2. The Luckiest MILF in Brooklyn
3. All the Angry Women
4. Getting Home
5. Why I Didn't Say No
All five are very short, but punchy, and 'Getting Home' and 'Why I Didn't Say No' in particular hit at the more invisible and (to some) debatable aspects of rape culture that would probably spark the most discussion.
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
2.0
2.5 rounded down to 2
I would describe the whole of 'How to Kill Your Family' as decidedly weaker than the sum of its parts.
Let me explain.
Here's a book where each individual componant feels strong in its essence, but not in its execution.
Let's start with voice.
Our primary POV character and first person narrator, Grace, has a very strong voice. However, while the tone remains consistant, the stances taken by that character just...don't. There's a veneer of 'wokeness' that Bella Mackie seemed to want to include, but it creates issues when paired with the character she created.
Grace is a miserable melt in almost every way imaginable. She's highly judgemental and narcissistic, lacks anything but surface-level introspection, and is completely self-rightious. Not exactly the logical mouthpiece for feminism or the right voice to speak on behalf of the working class. And yet, in truly clunky asides, Mackie has Grace virtue signal about both of those things without any indication that this character would believe in these things or feel these ways about them. Her words and actions don't line up here.
Every woman she meets is either superficial, vain, or fat, or a combination, according to Grace. And yet when faced with misgynistic male characters she's suddenly all for the 'sisterhood' and there's never any indication that she sees the hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance of holding both of those positions. The closest we get to any kind of 'aha' moment is when she comments that she doesn't like female pilots and then follows that up with 'I know that's my internalized misogyny talking, but...I don't care.'
Now THAT is the truth of this character's perspective. But then, that makes a lot of the 'woke' virtue signalling seem especially lacking in teeth. So, unless Mackie's point was to criticise the things that feminists and leftists advocate for as nothing more than virtue signalling to come across as 'politically correct' (for some unexplored reason), she failed, and in fact just created a narrative that anti-feminists and alt-rightwingers would point at as an example of how feminism and progressivism ARE nothing more than virtue signalling to come across as 'politically correct.'
Whoopsie.
That was my personal beef with this book (similar to my beef with Song of Achilles as a matter of fact). I suspect that Bella Mackie actually set out to be a champion of feminism and of anti-classism, but she just lacked the skill to actually achieve that, and as a result, unintentionally ended up with a bad message. The opposite message, in fact, to the one she probably set out to make.
This is compounded by how caricature the 'bad guys' in this story are. No redeeming qualities at all. Mackie tried to make it seem more 'shades of grey' by making one member of the family a nice person, but it's not like that 'saves' them--Grace decides to kill them anyway on the grounds that they're in the way and would likely (in her opinion) just end up turning bad if left alive. Uh huh. Ok. For a story that goes out of its way to ground itself in realism, that just doesn't cut it.
Now, again, one could argue that that's 'just the character' as though that somehow excuses bad writing, but see below for my rebuttle there. Essentially though, it boils down to: 'if you're going to go that route, you have to have the writing chops to pull it off, and well, Bella Mackie ain't no Vladimir Nobokov.
My smaller, more quibbly issues with HTKYF were as follows:
1. I didn't like Grace's voice. I love an 'unlikeable' protagonist. Love it. But, and this is key, they have to be charismatic. Grace has less charisma than a lump of coal. She's nasty without being charming (something I'm pretty sure Oscar Wilde said is a fault). There are no witty one-liners, no creative insults, nada. Just really uncharitable observations. 'That woman is fat.' 'That woman's had too much plastic surgery,' 'that guy is ugly' 'that guy's a jerk.' And that just didn't do it for me. Certainly not considering how long this book was, but we'll get to that.
2. This book was way too long. Considering that Grace is not a fun person in whose head to hang out for any length of time, the fact that this story took up 400 pages is just way too much. We didn't really need great swathes of the actual wordcount for this story to be told effectively. They were just there on the assumption that as a reader we wanted more of Grace's repetitive, 'doomer' insights into why the world sucks. I didn't.
The twists, which seem to be the main issues people have with this book, didn't actually bother me. They felt fairly effectively tied to the main plot and not just pulled out of Mackie's ass to liven up the climax. I was fine with them. If I didn't think the book had already been wrecked by all the other issues I might turn a more crtitical eye to them, but why waste ammunition putting another hole in a ship that's already sinking?
The one part I did like was the actual plot. In more capable hands this could have been really cool, and all the charitability of my extra .5 on the rating is due to that. The execution (if I may) of each of Grace's kills was infinitely better done than anything else, and I was genuinely interested in following along with each scheme the same way horror fans (such as myself) give a good, mindless cheer for every inventive or 'cool' kill in a scary movie.
TL;DR: this gets a hard pass from me, and I have no interest in reading anything else from this author. Next!
I would describe the whole of 'How to Kill Your Family' as decidedly weaker than the sum of its parts.
Let me explain.
Here's a book where each individual componant feels strong in its essence, but not in its execution.
Let's start with voice.
Our primary POV character and first person narrator, Grace, has a very strong voice. However, while the tone remains consistant, the stances taken by that character just...don't. There's a veneer of 'wokeness' that Bella Mackie seemed to want to include, but it creates issues when paired with the character she created.
Grace is a miserable melt in almost every way imaginable. She's highly judgemental and narcissistic, lacks anything but surface-level introspection, and is completely self-rightious. Not exactly the logical mouthpiece for feminism or the right voice to speak on behalf of the working class. And yet, in truly clunky asides, Mackie has Grace virtue signal about both of those things without any indication that this character would believe in these things or feel these ways about them. Her words and actions don't line up here.
Every woman she meets is either superficial, vain, or fat, or a combination, according to Grace. And yet when faced with misgynistic male characters she's suddenly all for the 'sisterhood' and there's never any indication that she sees the hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance of holding both of those positions. The closest we get to any kind of 'aha' moment is when she comments that she doesn't like female pilots and then follows that up with 'I know that's my internalized misogyny talking, but...I don't care.'
Now THAT is the truth of this character's perspective. But then, that makes a lot of the 'woke' virtue signalling seem especially lacking in teeth. So, unless Mackie's point was to criticise the things that feminists and leftists advocate for as nothing more than virtue signalling to come across as 'politically correct' (for some unexplored reason), she failed, and in fact just created a narrative that anti-feminists and alt-rightwingers would point at as an example of how feminism and progressivism ARE nothing more than virtue signalling to come across as 'politically correct.'
Whoopsie.
That was my personal beef with this book (similar to my beef with Song of Achilles as a matter of fact). I suspect that Bella Mackie actually set out to be a champion of feminism and of anti-classism, but she just lacked the skill to actually achieve that, and as a result, unintentionally ended up with a bad message. The opposite message, in fact, to the one she probably set out to make.
This is compounded by how caricature the 'bad guys' in this story are. No redeeming qualities at all. Mackie tried to make it seem more 'shades of grey' by making one member of the family a nice person, but it's not like that 'saves' them--Grace decides to kill them anyway on the grounds that they're in the way and would likely (in her opinion) just end up turning bad if left alive. Uh huh. Ok. For a story that goes out of its way to ground itself in realism, that just doesn't cut it.
Now, again, one could argue that that's 'just the character' as though that somehow excuses bad writing, but see below for my rebuttle there. Essentially though, it boils down to: 'if you're going to go that route, you have to have the writing chops to pull it off, and well, Bella Mackie ain't no Vladimir Nobokov.
My smaller, more quibbly issues with HTKYF were as follows:
1. I didn't like Grace's voice. I love an 'unlikeable' protagonist. Love it. But, and this is key, they have to be charismatic. Grace has less charisma than a lump of coal. She's nasty without being charming (something I'm pretty sure Oscar Wilde said is a fault). There are no witty one-liners, no creative insults, nada. Just really uncharitable observations. 'That woman is fat.' 'That woman's had too much plastic surgery,' 'that guy is ugly' 'that guy's a jerk.' And that just didn't do it for me. Certainly not considering how long this book was, but we'll get to that.
2. This book was way too long. Considering that Grace is not a fun person in whose head to hang out for any length of time, the fact that this story took up 400 pages is just way too much. We didn't really need great swathes of the actual wordcount for this story to be told effectively. They were just there on the assumption that as a reader we wanted more of Grace's repetitive, 'doomer' insights into why the world sucks. I didn't.
The twists, which seem to be the main issues people have with this book, didn't actually bother me. They felt fairly effectively tied to the main plot and not just pulled out of Mackie's ass to liven up the climax. I was fine with them. If I didn't think the book had already been wrecked by all the other issues I might turn a more crtitical eye to them, but why waste ammunition putting another hole in a ship that's already sinking?
The one part I did like was the actual plot. In more capable hands this could have been really cool, and all the charitability of my extra .5 on the rating is due to that. The execution (if I may) of each of Grace's kills was infinitely better done than anything else, and I was genuinely interested in following along with each scheme the same way horror fans (such as myself) give a good, mindless cheer for every inventive or 'cool' kill in a scary movie.
TL;DR: this gets a hard pass from me, and I have no interest in reading anything else from this author. Next!
Neuromancer by William Gibson
3.0
3.5 --> it gets an extra .5 just for the novetly of of having made me feel so gosh-darn disoriented.
The best way I can summarize my reading experience of 'Neuromancer' is to ask you to imagine going back in time and presenting a pre-internet reader with a book that heavily features internet-use. I now understand how that would feel having finished this novel.
From what I've read about this novel, it's widely considered to be 'difficult.' One Youtube reviewer, TheBookchemist , made a soft comparison to some of the works of Thomas Pynchon. Having never reading anything by Pynchon I can only take his word for it, but if reading Pynchon leaves one scratching their head over a passage and thinking to themselves 'well, those sure are all words on that there page' then the comparison is probably apt.
There were long, long stretches -- entire pages-- where I, frankly, had no idea what was going on. Not because the sentences were long and riddled with commas and semi-colons, but because I simply lacked the vocabulary needed to vizualize the action.
Now, we quickly realize through a lot of showing what 'simstim' is, just as over the course of a lot of showing we can get an understanding of what 'breaking ice' constitutes within cyberspace. But visualize any of it? Nah. Not the technology, and much less the 'experience' of being 'jacked in.'
Granted, the idea of these types of technologies isn't so outside a modern reader's frame of reference that I couldn't relax into a vague understanding of 'the matrix' being the ability to go 'inside' what we would call websites or data streams.
Not that I can actually picture what being 'inside' a data stream would be like as an experience, but I can imagine that I can imagine it. Those poor readers from 1984, though. I have no idea how any of them got through this, much less how Gibson came up with it. Kudos to him.
Does this ignite some deep interest in cyberpunk? Not for me. It hits all the points I dislike in Sci-fi and high fantasy, mainly that half or more of the experience is meant to be this puzzle-piecing together of what exactly 'x' or 'y' is, how it works, etc. I've just never been a fan of worldbuilding-based fiction, and this just kind of confirms for me that liminal fantasy and sci-fi is the realm I'll likely stay in.
That being said, if you are a fan of cyberpunk as an aesthetic, or just a fan of immersive sci-fi in general, I can imagine this being a very important book within that canon to be familiar with, and maybe also one you'd like.
The best way I can summarize my reading experience of 'Neuromancer' is to ask you to imagine going back in time and presenting a pre-internet reader with a book that heavily features internet-use. I now understand how that would feel having finished this novel.
From what I've read about this novel, it's widely considered to be 'difficult.' One Youtube reviewer, TheBookchemist , made a soft comparison to some of the works of Thomas Pynchon. Having never reading anything by Pynchon I can only take his word for it, but if reading Pynchon leaves one scratching their head over a passage and thinking to themselves 'well, those sure are all words on that there page' then the comparison is probably apt.
There were long, long stretches -- entire pages-- where I, frankly, had no idea what was going on. Not because the sentences were long and riddled with commas and semi-colons, but because I simply lacked the vocabulary needed to vizualize the action.
Case sat in the loft with the dermatrodes strapped across his forehead, watching motes dance in the diluted sunlight [...] Cowboys didn't get into simstim, he thought, because it was basically a meat toy. He knew that the little plastic tiara dangling from a simstim deck were basically the same, and that the cyberspace matrix was actually a drastic simplification of the human sensorium [...] but the simstim itself struck him as a gratuitious multiplication of flesh input. [...] The new switch was patched into his Sendai with a thin ribbon of fiberoptics.
Now, we quickly realize through a lot of showing what 'simstim' is, just as over the course of a lot of showing we can get an understanding of what 'breaking ice' constitutes within cyberspace. But visualize any of it? Nah. Not the technology, and much less the 'experience' of being 'jacked in.'
Granted, the idea of these types of technologies isn't so outside a modern reader's frame of reference that I couldn't relax into a vague understanding of 'the matrix' being the ability to go 'inside' what we would call websites or data streams.
Not that I can actually picture what being 'inside' a data stream would be like as an experience, but I can imagine that I can imagine it. Those poor readers from 1984, though. I have no idea how any of them got through this, much less how Gibson came up with it. Kudos to him.
Does this ignite some deep interest in cyberpunk? Not for me. It hits all the points I dislike in Sci-fi and high fantasy, mainly that half or more of the experience is meant to be this puzzle-piecing together of what exactly 'x' or 'y' is, how it works, etc. I've just never been a fan of worldbuilding-based fiction, and this just kind of confirms for me that liminal fantasy and sci-fi is the realm I'll likely stay in.
That being said, if you are a fan of cyberpunk as an aesthetic, or just a fan of immersive sci-fi in general, I can imagine this being a very important book within that canon to be familiar with, and maybe also one you'd like.
Beast by Peter Benchley
3.0
'Beast' gave me pretty much exactly what I (and I imagine anyone else who would pick it up) wanted.
The plot is basically right there on the cover, so this is a case in which you can in fact judge the book thereby.
Set in Bermuda, we follow a large enough cast of characters that you just know not everyone's going to make it. They aren't always super fleshed out or easy to differentiate from each other, but who cares? We're here for some giant squid destructo-action!
And the squid is easily the best character.
We get quite a number of chapters from its perspective, and they're some of the best parts of the book. Being in the squid's head is eerie, but puts you in a position to empathize later on, particularly as we're reminded by the obligatory scientist character that the squid isn't evil; it's just surviving.
That message is made a little hazy due to the unavoidable humanizing of the squid in its POV chapters (given that to some extent a human writing about an animal will, by necessity, make that animal a little bit human), and by the end it's sort of ambiguous whether or not the squid is out to get these people specifically.
But boy oh boy do you get a hell of a climax after nearly an entire novel of anticipation.
It was interesting to learn a little bit about the squid, as a lot of its characterization feels well-researched. The sections where the characters are learning more about the history of the giant squid through old accounts is particularly interesting, though of course one has to take it all with a slight grain of salt.
I also liked the extention of that research in a conversation between one of the protagonists and the scientist:
The ending was perfectly set up, and tied in the major, overarching theme which is one of the need for ocean conservation, something Peter Benchley was a major advocate for.
A lot of time is dedicated to laying out the tragedy of what happens when humans destroy something they claim to love, in this case the ocean.
Even though the giant squid--the monster--is what gets you to pick 'Beast' up, Benchley is very careful to make it clear fairly early on who the real villains of the story are.
I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a good 'action film' sort of reading experience that has its heart very much in the right place.
The plot is basically right there on the cover, so this is a case in which you can in fact judge the book thereby.
Set in Bermuda, we follow a large enough cast of characters that you just know not everyone's going to make it. They aren't always super fleshed out or easy to differentiate from each other, but who cares? We're here for some giant squid destructo-action!
And the squid is easily the best character.
We get quite a number of chapters from its perspective, and they're some of the best parts of the book. Being in the squid's head is eerie, but puts you in a position to empathize later on, particularly as we're reminded by the obligatory scientist character that the squid isn't evil; it's just surviving.
That message is made a little hazy due to the unavoidable humanizing of the squid in its POV chapters (given that to some extent a human writing about an animal will, by necessity, make that animal a little bit human), and by the end it's sort of ambiguous whether or not the squid is out to get these people specifically.
But boy oh boy do you get a hell of a climax after nearly an entire novel of anticipation.
It was interesting to learn a little bit about the squid, as a lot of its characterization feels well-researched. The sections where the characters are learning more about the history of the giant squid through old accounts is particularly interesting, though of course one has to take it all with a slight grain of salt.
I also liked the extention of that research in a conversation between one of the protagonists and the scientist:
"I've been waiting my whole life for this, for the chance to find a giant squid. It's my dragon."
"It's a dragon now, is it?"
"I think of it that way. That's why I called my book The Last Dragon. Man needs dragons, he always has, to explain the unknown. You've seen the old maps. When they drew unknown lands, they'd write 'Here be dragons,' and that said it all."
The ending was perfectly set up, and tied in the major, overarching theme which is one of the need for ocean conservation, something Peter Benchley was a major advocate for.
A lot of time is dedicated to laying out the tragedy of what happens when humans destroy something they claim to love, in this case the ocean.
Even though the giant squid--the monster--is what gets you to pick 'Beast' up, Benchley is very careful to make it clear fairly early on who the real villains of the story are.
I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a good 'action film' sort of reading experience that has its heart very much in the right place.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
4.0
You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. p.270
So ends Stephen King's turn of the century memoir 'On Writing.' And that more or less sums it up in terms of the crux of his advice to aspiring writers. This advice on its own is fairly generic and unassuming, but it's also true of any skill that one wishes to improve. And honestly, it's not what makes this book so popular or the reading experience so enjoyable.
Just like any of his better novels, it's the voice that had me devouring each section. This is Stephen King being unabashedly himself in writing. That very 'tell it like it is' style that people either love or hate. At his best, I really enjoy his voice, and since this was largely him at his best, I liked this book.
As much as he's known for being the King of Horror, I suspect it's his ability to turn what in another writer's hands could be mundane and boring anecdotes into fascinating case studies that makes his work have such staying power.
In 'On Writing' he talks about his thought process behind the plot research and development and how he starts with a sort of 'what if' situation: 'what if a mother and son were trapped in their car by a mad dog'? But interestingly, the part he didn't talk about: 'how did that mother and son get trapped in the car and why exactly can't they get away?' I think is the part that most writers of plot-centered fiction struggle with, and he didn't go into that here: connecting plot turns and creating believable and exciting plot twists. He does, however, spell it out nicely in 'Misery' when the trapped writer is chastised by Annie Wilkes for not playing fair in his first draft of his novel.
In many ways, 'Misery' accomplishes what 'On Writing' sets out to do: it examines the soul of a writer, his trials and tribulations, the writing process. And all wrapped around a simple but intense plot with high stakes.
So did the world really need 'On Writing'?
Need? Who knows. But though he does basically tell rather than show the underpinnings of 'Misery', thus making some of the craft sections feel dry by comparison, the biography section with memories specifically chosen to chronicle his life as a writer and explore where some of his thematic interests come from are well worth the price of admission, and feature (appropriately) some really nice writing:
The Yeats reference was kind of unexpected, but it was moments like this that showed (rather than told!) just how much King loves reading and language, and that sense of enjoyment that 'On Writing' is drenched in is infectious. By the end of it, you really do just want to pull up an empty Word doc, or grab a notebook and pen and get to it. And really, what's a better mark of a successful book on the craft of writing?
In terms of that craft from a technical perspective, his inclusion of his first and second drafts of the opening of '1408' with his notes on why he made certain changes is invaluable.
An unexpectedly cozy Stephen King book that calls for a comfortable reading perch and a cup of tea (and writing implements close at hand!).
So ends Stephen King's turn of the century memoir 'On Writing.' And that more or less sums it up in terms of the crux of his advice to aspiring writers. This advice on its own is fairly generic and unassuming, but it's also true of any skill that one wishes to improve. And honestly, it's not what makes this book so popular or the reading experience so enjoyable.
Just like any of his better novels, it's the voice that had me devouring each section. This is Stephen King being unabashedly himself in writing. That very 'tell it like it is' style that people either love or hate. At his best, I really enjoy his voice, and since this was largely him at his best, I liked this book.
As much as he's known for being the King of Horror, I suspect it's his ability to turn what in another writer's hands could be mundane and boring anecdotes into fascinating case studies that makes his work have such staying power.
In 'On Writing' he talks about his thought process behind the plot research and development and how he starts with a sort of 'what if' situation: 'what if a mother and son were trapped in their car by a mad dog'? But interestingly, the part he didn't talk about: 'how did that mother and son get trapped in the car and why exactly can't they get away?' I think is the part that most writers of plot-centered fiction struggle with, and he didn't go into that here: connecting plot turns and creating believable and exciting plot twists. He does, however, spell it out nicely in 'Misery' when the trapped writer is chastised by Annie Wilkes for not playing fair in his first draft of his novel.
In many ways, 'Misery' accomplishes what 'On Writing' sets out to do: it examines the soul of a writer, his trials and tribulations, the writing process. And all wrapped around a simple but intense plot with high stakes.
So did the world really need 'On Writing'?
Need? Who knows. But though he does basically tell rather than show the underpinnings of 'Misery', thus making some of the craft sections feel dry by comparison, the biography section with memories specifically chosen to chronicle his life as a writer and explore where some of his thematic interests come from are well worth the price of admission, and feature (appropriately) some really nice writing:
[My childhood] is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear. p.17
No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person; give them half a chance and they will ship their oars and drift... dozing to Byzantium you might say. (p.143)
The Yeats reference was kind of unexpected, but it was moments like this that showed (rather than told!) just how much King loves reading and language, and that sense of enjoyment that 'On Writing' is drenched in is infectious. By the end of it, you really do just want to pull up an empty Word doc, or grab a notebook and pen and get to it. And really, what's a better mark of a successful book on the craft of writing?
In terms of that craft from a technical perspective, his inclusion of his first and second drafts of the opening of '1408' with his notes on why he made certain changes is invaluable.
An unexpectedly cozy Stephen King book that calls for a comfortable reading perch and a cup of tea (and writing implements close at hand!).
The History Of Danish Dreams by Peter Høeg
5.0
2022 has been a year of surprises in reading for me, and this is the second time a book this year has left me windswept and delighted, if a bit bemused.
A grand oversimplification would be to summarize 'The History of Danish Dreams' as a Danish 'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' though in terms of marketing I could see why that would be done. Like 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' this is a multi-generational family saga that parallels, in this case, the evolution of 'The Danish Dream' as presented by author Peter Høeg, and it does so through the deft employment of magical realism.
Does that mean that having read one, one has no need to read the other? I think that would be an insult to both. Granted, I've not read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', though I have enough proximal knowledge to speak on it to this degree. From my understanding, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is an exploration of nearly the exact same things as 'A History of Danish Dreams': repetition, class, trauma, sex, and how all of these things intertwine. In that sense, 'A History of Danish Dreams' is the Danish 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' Needless to say, however, Argentina and Denmark's unique histories would inevitably lead to different explorations of these themes. And the places where they intersect might be an interesting place to start when examining 'human truth' in fiction.
All of this to say: Høeg very patently modeled his project off of Gabriel García Márquez's work, but I don't think that necessarily cheapens it, and if anything, gives the people more of what they so clearly want given the near universal acclaim 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' enjoys.
As far as I'm concerned, now having read 'A History of Danish Dreams', I'm more inclined to read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' than I was before because I liked this so much.
So, enough of the (necessary)'discourse'; let's get to the novel.
This is an incredibly dense 400 page novel. Not dense in language (Høeg's style is generally bouncy and breezy), but in ideas; Høeg manages to squeeze about a million different things onto a single page, and yet I never felt bogged down by it--just surprised every time I realized that after so much action I'd only gotten through several hundred words. And the asides! Høeg clearly never met an aside he didn't like. In this way, the style isn't unlike Salman Rushdie's -- specifically in 'Midnight's Children.'
One of the 'love it or hate it' elements to 'A History of Danish Dreams' is, as the name perhaps suggests, its dreaminess. 'Truth' in this novel is established early on as subjective, and our first person narrator (whose identity remains unknown to us until the final pages) reminds us of this from time to time:
Similarly, the novel concerns itself with the push and pull between perception and reality of an individual's experience.
Again, we see this in how Ramses's father views himself as the century's most infamous criminal, while Ramses sees him as a fraud who takes the credit for other people's crimes to build this fake mythos for himself.
Rinse, repeat.
I really appreciated this aspect of the novel because it sucessfully captures the idea of memories being very like dreams in the sense that they so easily slip through our fingers and are colored more by emotion than factual truth the farther we move away from them.
This is also a great opportunity to bring up magical realism. The closer to the present (1989) we get, the less of it there is, so that while the first chapter (set in 1520) reads like a twisted fairytale, the final section (set in the mid to late 80s) has only the vaguest whisper of magic about it, and it's almost exclusively attached to older characters.
I loved this execution, because it built into the bones of the narrative that very essence of the memories of the past as understood by those in the present being almost magical, especially when it comes to familial/national histories.
In the US at least, this mythologizing of the past is embedded in our very understanding of ourselves as a nation. Stories like 'The Boston Tea Party', 'one if by land, two if by sea,' the writing of the Constitution by the 'Founding Fathers,' the 'first Thanksgiving.' All of these are stories that most Americans recognize and could enthusiastically recount. However, I'd be willing to bet that if somehow a modern American could tell one of these stories to those that actually experienced these events, they would be rather surprised by some of the embellishments, smoothings over, and downright incorrectness. But then again, even those that were there probably didn't remember those things the same way either.
Because what even is the truth, anyway? Whose truth? As Høeg says succinctly:
And boy let me tell you, the stories that Høeg came up with to express the emotional reality of the period of history he covers in this text manage to be both poignant and completely bonkers, especially some of the first few.
We start with a king literally stopping time after determining that his kingdom is the center of the universe. Over the centuries, most of his subjects become so inbred that they lose the ability to talk and are visually indistinguishable from the cows ('how could they have become inbred if time stopped?' one may ask. Because this is a fairy tale and a metaphor. 'nuff said.). It's grotesque, it's uncomfortable, it's sickening...and it's a great way to understand the damage of clinging to tradition, of national isolationism, etc. And (form serving function) a fairytale is also the closest we can get to how people looking back at a period so far away from their own conceptualize the past: three hundred years is both infinitely long and yet somehow nothing changes ('Ancient Egypt' 'the Dark Ages' 'Medieval Ages' feel this way in my mind).
'The History of Danish Dreams' tackles so many social issues beyond just this question of 'what is memory?' that a thorough breakdown would take a book nearly as long.
There are a few things I took issue with here and there that are definitely worth mentioning. Firstly, the pacing towards the end of the final section of the final chapter felt incredibly rushed, like what had been a marathon suddenly became a sprint in the last 50 pages. I could almost feel Høeg running out of steam, which really was a pity given that that is then what a reader is left with. This could partially have been resolved if the final set of children had been reduced to one (the character of Madaline serves no real purpose whatsoever). The idea of twins as an image could have been interesting, except that Høeg didn't do anything interesting with it. Or, if it could have been interesting, it went by so quickly it wasn't possible for him to really tease that brilliance out.
Secondly, and this was just more of a feeling I had, but I didn't care for Høeg's presentation of 'the racialized other' in this novel. This only comes up twice explicitely, but both times it struck me how both women of color he presents (implied to be gypsies) are the exact caricature you'd expect: a circus performer turned thief, and a granddaughter who is incapable of not getting kicked out of every school she attends (she starts fights, she cuts class, she starts a fire at one point, she develops a drug addiction...). And neither of these characters are ever really given a voice, and one isn't even given a name and is simply referred to as 'The Princess.' I dunno, maybe this wouldn't bother other readers, but it really leapt out at me.
Not to end on a sour note, especially given how much I enjoyed the reading experience, I want to highlight several sections that really touched me:
1. The section in the chapter 'Adonis and Anna' where Høeg describes how both characters woefully misunderstand their own dire circumstances, to their eventual detriment:
The myth of meritocracy from the perspective of the poor is particularly vivid, and is one half of Høeg's investigation into class.
2. Carsten's experience of being a 'golden child' in the chapter 'Maria and Cartsten'. Here we have this kid who (to say the absolute least) grows up first with parents in a very toxic relationship, then is completely smothered by a mother who ties her own value to his sucess or failure in life (as determined by her), and so he must be the best at everything he does. And yet, because of this being such a nebulous goal, he never has the chance to be fully present at any point during his school days or post-graduate education, and never at any time gets to self-actualize, leading to severe depression as a middle-aged adult.
I hope to return to 'The History of Danish Dreams' once the dust settles over this first read-through. I have so many notes on other themes (nationalism, intergenerational trauma) that I couldn't quite pull together for any kind of argument this go-round.
This is a great place to start when it comes to Danish literature (especially of the twentieth century) because it covers so much of the context that I imagine would be relevant when getting stuck into anything else written in the 1900s, so you'd have a sense of pertinant events that came before, during, or after its time.
Absolutely loved it.
A grand oversimplification would be to summarize 'The History of Danish Dreams' as a Danish 'One Hundred Years of Solitude,' though in terms of marketing I could see why that would be done. Like 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' this is a multi-generational family saga that parallels, in this case, the evolution of 'The Danish Dream' as presented by author Peter Høeg, and it does so through the deft employment of magical realism.
Does that mean that having read one, one has no need to read the other? I think that would be an insult to both. Granted, I've not read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', though I have enough proximal knowledge to speak on it to this degree. From my understanding, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is an exploration of nearly the exact same things as 'A History of Danish Dreams': repetition, class, trauma, sex, and how all of these things intertwine. In that sense, 'A History of Danish Dreams' is the Danish 'One Hundred Years of Solitude.' Needless to say, however, Argentina and Denmark's unique histories would inevitably lead to different explorations of these themes. And the places where they intersect might be an interesting place to start when examining 'human truth' in fiction.
All of this to say: Høeg very patently modeled his project off of Gabriel García Márquez's work, but I don't think that necessarily cheapens it, and if anything, gives the people more of what they so clearly want given the near universal acclaim 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' enjoys.
As far as I'm concerned, now having read 'A History of Danish Dreams', I'm more inclined to read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' than I was before because I liked this so much.
So, enough of the (necessary)'discourse'; let's get to the novel.
This is an incredibly dense 400 page novel. Not dense in language (Høeg's style is generally bouncy and breezy), but in ideas; Høeg manages to squeeze about a million different things onto a single page, and yet I never felt bogged down by it--just surprised every time I realized that after so much action I'd only gotten through several hundred words. And the asides! Høeg clearly never met an aside he didn't like. In this way, the style isn't unlike Salman Rushdie's -- specifically in 'Midnight's Children.'
One of the 'love it or hate it' elements to 'A History of Danish Dreams' is, as the name perhaps suggests, its dreaminess. 'Truth' in this novel is established early on as subjective, and our first person narrator (whose identity remains unknown to us until the final pages) reminds us of this from time to time:
In these streets animal tamers presented creatures from Noah's arc: giraffes, hippopotamuses, elephants [...] all of these trained to make obscene gestures and to copulate with one another before the very eyes of the spectators. Now here I have to step in to say that I have had a hard time recognizing Rudkøbing, that respectable provincial town, in this, a description from the annals of the Danish Evangelical Mission. Nevertheless, that is what the faithful remember having seen. (p.83)
Similarly, the novel concerns itself with the push and pull between perception and reality of an individual's experience.
It was not long after this that Anna started to clean. This is a historical fact and, no matter what I do, history is history. [...] but I do have to say, beware of this "not long after" because it reminds me that time -- while establishing a context in an account such as this-- seems so unreliable [...] when this happened it was viewed in a much different light -- not least by Anna, who would have maintained that she had always had this need for order. And so it is Maria's, her daughter's, time that we relate to.(p.154)
Again, we see this in how Ramses's father views himself as the century's most infamous criminal, while Ramses sees him as a fraud who takes the credit for other people's crimes to build this fake mythos for himself.
Rinse, repeat.
I really appreciated this aspect of the novel because it sucessfully captures the idea of memories being very like dreams in the sense that they so easily slip through our fingers and are colored more by emotion than factual truth the farther we move away from them.
This is also a great opportunity to bring up magical realism. The closer to the present (1989) we get, the less of it there is, so that while the first chapter (set in 1520) reads like a twisted fairytale, the final section (set in the mid to late 80s) has only the vaguest whisper of magic about it, and it's almost exclusively attached to older characters.
I loved this execution, because it built into the bones of the narrative that very essence of the memories of the past as understood by those in the present being almost magical, especially when it comes to familial/national histories.
In the US at least, this mythologizing of the past is embedded in our very understanding of ourselves as a nation. Stories like 'The Boston Tea Party', 'one if by land, two if by sea,' the writing of the Constitution by the 'Founding Fathers,' the 'first Thanksgiving.' All of these are stories that most Americans recognize and could enthusiastically recount. However, I'd be willing to bet that if somehow a modern American could tell one of these stories to those that actually experienced these events, they would be rather surprised by some of the embellishments, smoothings over, and downright incorrectness. But then again, even those that were there probably didn't remember those things the same way either.
Because what even is the truth, anyway? Whose truth? As Høeg says succinctly:
"History is always an invention; it is a fairy tale built upon certain clues. [...] These clues are pretty well established; most of them can be laid on the desktop for anyone to handle. But these, unfortunately, do not constitute history. History consists of the links between them, and it is this that presents the problem. And the link is especially opaque when, as here, we are dealing with the History of Dreams, because the only thing that anyone --and that includes me-- can use to fill in the gaps between history's clues is themselves. (p.171)
And boy let me tell you, the stories that Høeg came up with to express the emotional reality of the period of history he covers in this text manage to be both poignant and completely bonkers, especially some of the first few.
We start with a king literally stopping time after determining that his kingdom is the center of the universe. Over the centuries, most of his subjects become so inbred that they lose the ability to talk and are visually indistinguishable from the cows ('how could they have become inbred if time stopped?' one may ask. Because this is a fairy tale and a metaphor. 'nuff said.). It's grotesque, it's uncomfortable, it's sickening...and it's a great way to understand the damage of clinging to tradition, of national isolationism, etc. And (form serving function) a fairytale is also the closest we can get to how people looking back at a period so far away from their own conceptualize the past: three hundred years is both infinitely long and yet somehow nothing changes ('Ancient Egypt' 'the Dark Ages' 'Medieval Ages' feel this way in my mind).
'The History of Danish Dreams' tackles so many social issues beyond just this question of 'what is memory?' that a thorough breakdown would take a book nearly as long.
There are a few things I took issue with here and there that are definitely worth mentioning. Firstly, the pacing towards the end of the final section of the final chapter felt incredibly rushed, like what had been a marathon suddenly became a sprint in the last 50 pages. I could almost feel Høeg running out of steam, which really was a pity given that that is then what a reader is left with. This could partially have been resolved if the final set of children had been reduced to one (the character of Madaline serves no real purpose whatsoever). The idea of twins as an image could have been interesting, except that Høeg didn't do anything interesting with it. Or, if it could have been interesting, it went by so quickly it wasn't possible for him to really tease that brilliance out.
Secondly, and this was just more of a feeling I had, but I didn't care for Høeg's presentation of 'the racialized other' in this novel. This only comes up twice explicitely, but both times it struck me how both women of color he presents (implied to be gypsies) are the exact caricature you'd expect: a circus performer turned thief, and a granddaughter who is incapable of not getting kicked out of every school she attends (she starts fights, she cuts class, she starts a fire at one point, she develops a drug addiction...). And neither of these characters are ever really given a voice, and one isn't even given a name and is simply referred to as 'The Princess.' I dunno, maybe this wouldn't bother other readers, but it really leapt out at me.
Not to end on a sour note, especially given how much I enjoyed the reading experience, I want to highlight several sections that really touched me:
1. The section in the chapter 'Adonis and Anna' where Høeg describes how both characters woefully misunderstand their own dire circumstances, to their eventual detriment:
"Most of the time I am afraid that [Adonis] is walking with his eyes only half-open, or even closed. He might well be Aladdin, but he is also blind, and this is a disturbing combination; a blind Aladdin perpetually smiling at a world he cannot properly see [...] After all, who is going to believe a young girl who tells them they are living in a sinking Atlantis [...]?" (p.148, 155)
The myth of meritocracy from the perspective of the poor is particularly vivid, and is one half of Høeg's investigation into class.
2. Carsten's experience of being a 'golden child' in the chapter 'Maria and Cartsten'. Here we have this kid who (to say the absolute least) grows up first with parents in a very toxic relationship, then is completely smothered by a mother who ties her own value to his sucess or failure in life (as determined by her), and so he must be the best at everything he does. And yet, because of this being such a nebulous goal, he never has the chance to be fully present at any point during his school days or post-graduate education, and never at any time gets to self-actualize, leading to severe depression as a middle-aged adult.
On lingering exploratory tours of his childhood home --where everything was coated with a thick but transparent layer of memories--he discovered that it looked just as it had always done, and yet it had changed irrevocably. [...] What Carsten became aware of during these days was that phenomenon he had already sensed at Søro [...] the relentlessness of time. Anyone else might have seen the white villa in a different light, but Carsten was as he was, and what now confronted him--sighing and wailing, and yet silent and uneasy-- was the traces of a bygone time and the pain of knowing that it will never come again, that it had gone [...] This longing for an imaginary past was to remain with Carsten all his days, transforming, as time went on, into a pale, faint melancholy. (p.337)Stunning prose, and a very good sample of the whimsical melancholy that the entire novel is drenched in.
I hope to return to 'The History of Danish Dreams' once the dust settles over this first read-through. I have so many notes on other themes (nationalism, intergenerational trauma) that I couldn't quite pull together for any kind of argument this go-round.
This is a great place to start when it comes to Danish literature (especially of the twentieth century) because it covers so much of the context that I imagine would be relevant when getting stuck into anything else written in the 1900s, so you'd have a sense of pertinant events that came before, during, or after its time.
Absolutely loved it.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4.0
4.5 (Just to leave room for growth upon re-read)
After polling the Russian speakers I know, I learned that ‘Master and Margarita’ is considered a good place to start if one is looking for a way to ‘break into’ Russian literature, so to speak.
Reading in translation is always a tricky business, especially when considering classics since style is often just as much a part of the reading experience as the substance. Happily, ‘Master and Margarita’ is limited to just a handful of choices, the original easily eliminated as it was of an abridged version of the text. All this to say that choosing a translation of a given book is nearly as important as reading the text itself. But unless one limits oneself to only those books published in their first language, it’s unavoidable. After all, some of these classics are big bricks of books, and imagine going to the trouble of reading a 1000-page tome only to be told ‘oh, but that translation is no good!’
Not one to fall into this trap so easily, I did my due diligence and landed on the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky in this Penguin Classics edition. I’ve heard tell that the Diana Burgin & Katherine Tiernan O'Connor translation is considered by some to be superior, but given how much harder it was to find a copy I assume it’s not the one most people have read, and for a first run-through I was willing to go with (debatably) the second best option.
I say ‘first run-through’ because ‘Master and Margarita’ is, happily, a book that I think will == continue to get better with every re-read. The plot itself is such a delightful foray into the fantastic that it holds itself up without a reader absolutely needing to understand every little reference to be able to discuss or enjoy the reading experience. But, as with all good classics and indeed all good books, there are layers and layers to the text that are just begging to be unpacked and dissected. Hence, why I say that this is a novel that warrants multiple re-reads and even then will have inexhaustible texture left over.
Having some knowledge of Russian culture and the geography of Moscow was certainly a plus for me a reader, and gave me a sense of a few things to pay attention to in terms of the satire of the Soviet system Bulgakov was going for. Next time, perhaps, I’ll do a bit of background research and/or read ‘Faust’ and then try again. And then maybe do the same to understand the biblical angle. And so on, and so forth.
But what about the lay-reader, just looking for a good story? This is also for you. Bulgakov is hilarious. The comedy requires very little in the way of prerequisite knowledge in order to ‘get it.’ It’s absurd, existing at that great intersection of humor and horror, and much of it hinges on certain characters patently breaking social conventions and others uselessly clinging to them in an almost sitcom-y sort of way (I use this as a positive, not a condescending, comparison).
"Manuscripts don’t burn" is probably the most famous quote from ‘Master and Margarita’ and does definitely capture something of the central theme of the novel. This may well be a ‘lost in translation’ question (I’ll leave that up to Russian readers to quibble over), but generally this wasn’t a book I’d praise so much for its prose as its cleverness. There weren’t nearly as many moments where I found myself reaching for a pen to write down a gorgeous turn of phrase as there were moments where I had a sensible chuckle over a witty joke or turn of phrase.
There isn’t much I can say here in terms of analysis that would add anything to the conversation so many scholars have already engaged in, but I do feel like I more deeply understand what life in the Soviet Union was about from having read it, what its bureaucracy was like, and how certain aspects of that time have spilled-over into modern Russian culture.
Overall, ‘Master and Margarita’ was definitely a great recommendation from my friends and acquaintances, a delight to read, and one I will recommend to anyone looking for a place to start in classics as well as anyone just looking for a good tale—especially if they’re a cat person.
*Note to future self: if you find yourself in possession of (or as the possession of) a big, black cat, assume he is named ‘Behemoth’ and make sure to teach him that heads are meant to remain on necks and shoulders. *
After polling the Russian speakers I know, I learned that ‘Master and Margarita’ is considered a good place to start if one is looking for a way to ‘break into’ Russian literature, so to speak.
Reading in translation is always a tricky business, especially when considering classics since style is often just as much a part of the reading experience as the substance. Happily, ‘Master and Margarita’ is limited to just a handful of choices, the original easily eliminated as it was of an abridged version of the text. All this to say that choosing a translation of a given book is nearly as important as reading the text itself. But unless one limits oneself to only those books published in their first language, it’s unavoidable. After all, some of these classics are big bricks of books, and imagine going to the trouble of reading a 1000-page tome only to be told ‘oh, but that translation is no good!’
Not one to fall into this trap so easily, I did my due diligence and landed on the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky in this Penguin Classics edition. I’ve heard tell that the Diana Burgin & Katherine Tiernan O'Connor translation is considered by some to be superior, but given how much harder it was to find a copy I assume it’s not the one most people have read, and for a first run-through I was willing to go with (debatably) the second best option.
I say ‘first run-through’ because ‘Master and Margarita’ is, happily, a book that I think will == continue to get better with every re-read. The plot itself is such a delightful foray into the fantastic that it holds itself up without a reader absolutely needing to understand every little reference to be able to discuss or enjoy the reading experience. But, as with all good classics and indeed all good books, there are layers and layers to the text that are just begging to be unpacked and dissected. Hence, why I say that this is a novel that warrants multiple re-reads and even then will have inexhaustible texture left over.
Having some knowledge of Russian culture and the geography of Moscow was certainly a plus for me a reader, and gave me a sense of a few things to pay attention to in terms of the satire of the Soviet system Bulgakov was going for. Next time, perhaps, I’ll do a bit of background research and/or read ‘Faust’ and then try again. And then maybe do the same to understand the biblical angle. And so on, and so forth.
But what about the lay-reader, just looking for a good story? This is also for you. Bulgakov is hilarious. The comedy requires very little in the way of prerequisite knowledge in order to ‘get it.’ It’s absurd, existing at that great intersection of humor and horror, and much of it hinges on certain characters patently breaking social conventions and others uselessly clinging to them in an almost sitcom-y sort of way (I use this as a positive, not a condescending, comparison).
"Manuscripts don’t burn" is probably the most famous quote from ‘Master and Margarita’ and does definitely capture something of the central theme of the novel. This may well be a ‘lost in translation’ question (I’ll leave that up to Russian readers to quibble over), but generally this wasn’t a book I’d praise so much for its prose as its cleverness. There weren’t nearly as many moments where I found myself reaching for a pen to write down a gorgeous turn of phrase as there were moments where I had a sensible chuckle over a witty joke or turn of phrase.
There isn’t much I can say here in terms of analysis that would add anything to the conversation so many scholars have already engaged in, but I do feel like I more deeply understand what life in the Soviet Union was about from having read it, what its bureaucracy was like, and how certain aspects of that time have spilled-over into modern Russian culture.
Overall, ‘Master and Margarita’ was definitely a great recommendation from my friends and acquaintances, a delight to read, and one I will recommend to anyone looking for a place to start in classics as well as anyone just looking for a good tale—especially if they’re a cat person.
*Note to future self: if you find yourself in possession of (or as the possession of) a big, black cat, assume he is named ‘Behemoth’ and make sure to teach him that heads are meant to remain on necks and shoulders. *