Nigel’s review of They Do It With Mirrors > Likes and Comments
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Yes, the exact meaning eludes me most of the time. 'Cozy' is a sense of well being and security that suffuses a person while reading - but I've got that feeling from Clive Barker stories. Obviously a story or a book can elicit a wide range of emotional responses, but the reader is, usually - not always - enclosed within an imaginary space around the book, or the act of reading, where all those feelings can be safely experienced. I believe the current expression for what's occurring when a sub-genre is labeled 'cozy' is 'chasing vibes.'
Oh, I'm so glad I posted that remark, Nigel. Clive Barker! Excellent.
Thank you, you've opened up the whole puzzle. So The Cozy is rather like The Sublime.
Just when I think this site isn't working for me very well, too.
I think I need to stay here for logging my reading & reading & posting occasional comments, but perhaps go elsewhere to post my actual "reviews", such as they are.
Thus! The Cozy is perhaps the opposite of The Offensive. We're always being warned that a radio or tv drama, say, that we're about to experience, may be offensive.
Just as you find, have found, a Clive Barker story 'cozy', what I find offensive may be quite different from what those editorialising authorities think I need preparation for. You and Yours perhaps, or soap operas (I shan't choose one to name because I don't watch any) that present characters as possessed of only one quality, one attitude: one string on which to harp.
Those fictions, I should say, are offensive to humanity. But they don't attract warnings…
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Yes, the exact meaning eludes me most of the time. 'Cozy' is a sense of well being and security that suffuses a person while reading - but I've got that feeling from Clive Barker stories. Obviously a story or a book can elicit a wide range of emotional responses, but the reader is, usually - not always - enclosed within an imaginary space around the book, or the act of reading, where all those feelings can be safely experienced. I believe the current expression for what's occurring when a sub-genre is labeled 'cozy' is 'chasing vibes.'
Oh, I'm so glad I posted that remark, Nigel. Clive Barker! Excellent.Thank you, you've opened up the whole puzzle. So The Cozy is rather like The Sublime.
Just when I think this site isn't working for me very well, too.
I think I need to stay here for logging my reading & reading & posting occasional comments, but perhaps go elsewhere to post my actual "reviews", such as they are.
Thus! The Cozy is perhaps the opposite of The Offensive. We're always being warned that a radio or tv drama, say, that we're about to experience, may be offensive.Just as you find, have found, a Clive Barker story 'cozy', what I find offensive may be quite different from what those editorialising authorities think I need preparation for. You and Yours perhaps, or soap operas (I shan't choose one to name because I don't watch any) that present characters as possessed of only one quality, one attitude: one string on which to harp.
Those fictions, I should say, are offensive to humanity. But they don't attract warnings…
Nothing wrong with that. The strange thing about The Cozy is that, except the stream of self-conscious modern pastiche, almost every example of it turns out to exceed or elude the classification in some significant way.
A little like Twitchers and Yuppies. Anyone could confidently identify one at sight but no one, even on close examination, ever admitted or even understood themselves to be one.