Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Argh no! Goodreads just swallowed my rather long reply! (...and I made sure to refresh the page before I commented). I'll rewrite the comment sometime later. This is something that seems to be getting worse and worse here on GR.

Are you going to be joining us, Whitney? Even if you don't completely re-read the books, we are going to be going at a slow pace, so I do hope you will be popping in on the thread regularly. I'm already seeing a million things in the text that I would not have thought of on my first read, which comes partly from my greater general reading experience, but also from my previous acquaintance with this specific text.

When you start off, for example, you wonder: "What's with all this thematic material around death?" - I mean, it starts off with some rather unusual goings-on in a graveyard, and then there is some exposition of the story going on in a necropolis, and then when you think about it in context of the greater story, you realize that there's a constant theme of death and rebirth, of dying and coming to life, of taking life and giving life, which, if you have a philosophic bent, makes you start to wonder about the nature of life and death itself, and so on.

Cordelia wrote: "Thanks Traveller. Count me in for this read. Looking forward to it."

Oh goodie! I don't know if you've read it before, but if you haven't, don't be put off by how strange it seems at the start - Wolfe definitely pulls one out of your comfort zone.

I'm not really going to give away any spoilers, nothing about what actually happens, so don't worry - but just a few words on the nature of Wolfe's writing: Firstly, it's complex and labyrinthine in a Borgian sense, so if you enjoy Borges, you'd probably enjoy this, and secondly:
I don't know who of you have also read any Proust, but if you thought Proust is all about musing over memory, the nature of time and the nature of reality, Wolfe is even more so.
At the very outset already, the narrator is musing about memory and starts to put time into perspective. The book opens with :

"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile."

(Oh, did I mention that this book has some postmodern qualities? ) It's that type of work that if you read it for the second and third times, new details jump out at you. He's sort of encapsulating one of the main themes in the first sentence already, which you will see once you've read the book.

Another passage where he touches on the passage of time, the nature of time, and the relativity of time:

"Two thoughts (that were nearly dreams) obsessed me and made them infinitely precious. The first was that at some not-distant time, time itself would stop . . . the colored days that had so long been drawn forth like a chain of conjuror's scarves come to an end, the sullen sun wink out at last."

...for what is time after all, but a human measurement centered around the movement of the earth around the sun: We measure time in both days and in seasons - if the rhythmic trajectories of sun and earth were to stop, "time" as we know it, would cease to be. It also touches upon mortality and the finite nature of our world. Only the static can be timeless.

I'm about one and a half chapters in. I first read it as a teen, and then re-read it sometime I can't remember when, but I'm definitely finding myself looking at it with new and more mature eyes, and feeling a newness and strangeness despite the fact that I had in the meantime read some other Wolfe fiction and had read some commentary on the "New Sun" cycle itself.

So I'm kinda glad that you guys prodded me into action, because it's going to be absolutely fantastic to be able to discuss this stuff with someone!

Hello everyone, time has flown! Apologies for the short notice, but we finally have a thread for starting a discussion of The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe.

Since this book is jam-packed with strangeness, there is already food for thought in the very first chapter or two, so we'll officially start off our discussion with first impressions of the strangeness we find in the first two chapters of the book on October 17.

If you're really impatient to get going, you can already start posting your hello's and whether you've managed to find the book, whether you're doing a re-read and that kind of thing, but please, nothing beyond the first chapter until those who want to join have managed to obtain their copies and are ready to move on. If a substantial amount of people have already started by October 7-ish, we can start to discuss the actual content of the weirdness in Chapters 1 and 2.

Looking forward! :)

If you have your copy and have already been reading a bit, we have a spoiler thread up for Chapter 3 and onwards here, https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..., but I must warn you that there are unfortunately "background" spoilers on this thread from post 13 onwards. Up to that point we just discuss the storyworld in general, and nothing about the plot itself is discussed in this thread, though there might be 'world' spoilers in the last two posts.

Jennifer wrote: "So, I just thought that I would share that the movie is coming out with Adam Driver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJD7...

I had no idea this was happening."

Wow, thanks for that, Jennifer! That should be interesting to see.

Nilanjana wrote: "Also, I don’t really like Czentovic. Such a show-off!"
Very much so. The kind of person a reader loves to hate!

Nilanjana wrote: "These lines gave me the shivers—->
“ "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth"”

Indeed, Nilanjana. No doubt Zweig is giving some kind of explanation, the reasoning, that lay behind his suicide.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "White Fang was one of my formative books, most definitely. I probably read it way too young to properly appreciate, but London writes so vividly that certain pieces of it are always with me. I remember I liked it much better than Call of the Wild when I was younger. "

Ah, I had the opposite chronology. My father bought me a box full of "children's classics", which included books like Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, etc. and "The Call of the Wild" was included in the collection - so that had been my first contact with the work of Jack London, and interestingly, I do remember more of the adventures of Buck, including the very ending. From what you say, I definitely think WF will be my re-read then. :)

Bonitaj wrote: "Hey everyone.... getting there. so enjoying it! I'm up to where Czentovic has lost his first game and the main protagonist has just found out how Dr.B. acquired his chess prowess. I've tried not to..."

Hi Bonitaj, I hope this helps you to re-discover the thread. :)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "*stumbles in late with no Starbucks*

I have not much to add; my experience of the story was simply one of incredible sadness. I will say that Czentovic largely seemed superfluous to me; he in no w..."

You remember your Jack London well, Amy! I used to love WF and Call of the Wild as a child - been wanting to re-read and you've tipped me towards White Fang, especially since I don't remember the scene you're referring to.
I found Czentovic added a bit of flavor to the story at large. Yes, a sad situation - some say hell resides in the human mind and I can quite understand why.

Nilanjana wrote: "Hi Traveller, I got caught up with a lot of work and couldn’t get to “Chess Story”

I just resumed today.

Can I please join the discussion on it once I am done ..."

The discussion is here, Nilanjana, though I noticed you had already commented there. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Jennifer wrote: "Oh I have reading glasses, I have computer glasses , I have driving glassses. I also have cataracts that I need to have checked again. I don't think I am going to be able to drive this winter..... ..."

Sorry to hear about the cataracts, Jennifer. That's a worrying thing to have... 😥

Jennifer, you could always get reading glasses like I did. ;)
Whitney, I did fiddle with the to-read list, but being an optimist, I left all the books that I would still hope us to read - but maybe I should just set them all at the farthest-away date as possible for now - as in two years time.
Cordelia, yaye!

There has been a lot of criticism against The Book of the New Sun cycle of books, (I read them long ago and loved them) so I would LOVE to read them in a group where we can each pose our own arguments - these books go much deeper than is obvious at the outset, and a lot has actually been written about them if you know where to look. Cryptic, I know, but I'm hoping we will all learn out of the experience, as well as motivate me to dig deeper as I've always wanted to do regarding this cycle of books. Maybe I'm expecting too much and will come out disappointed, but somehow I have a feeling that won't be the case.

Ok, you guys are on. Very busy at the moment, but I will slowly work my way towards working out the logistics and making the announcement in the next few days or so. Watch this space! 🌞

Whitney wrote: "I would also like an excuse to reread the series, and would definitely join in. I broke it out when I got the announcement of the upcoming read, then, like Jennifer, wasn't sure if the reading schedule was still a thing. ?
"

Jennifer wrote: "I admit I am disappointed it couldn't be read sooner. But if we could push it to October ? One book a month? I have been wanting to re-read this for a long time, when I saw that it was posted, I wa..."

Ookaaayy then. 😉 Sincere apologies about the false announcements, I suppose I should try to find a way to stop them. How about we compromise and make it start Friday, October 7?

Jennifer wrote: "So, I was just kinda wondering if the group is really going to read The Book of the New Sun ?"

Jennifer, you wouldn't have to invite me twice to re-read this underappreciated classic. Could we make this a November/December/January project, perhaps spread out over a book per month, or a book every 2 or 3 weeks - do you think that would work?

Ok, so a few additions. Yes, I've seen Viet Thanh Nguyen around and been curious about his work.

Hi guys, I'm currently going through a patch of high anxiety with work and some extra studies I took on - Covid and it's unpredictability isn't exactly helping either. I've also been consumed with projects around my kids in my spare time, that needs to be done by the end of Jan, so yeah, all my cognitive bandwidth (and time) is being spent.

So, since you guys are also busy, how about we sit tight until February? I myself haven't even finished Akutagawa, and I still have that Proust group which I was totally unprepared for.

But I'd be quite happy for Amy to set up threads, and would be also willing to do it myself if BJ wants to lead something.

BJ, we do have a "to-read' shelf here https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...
, which probably needs to be updated, but I trust you'd be able to find something that fit our motto of that the book has to be challenging at some level - be it of society's norms (like gender norms, our ideas of societal justice and of crime and punishment, sanity and insanity etc, - any of our established ideas or accepted knowledge, or even just simply set in or describing a culture or setting that is outside of our normal humdrum Anglophone society, or simply if it challenges us intellectually - anything that will expand our horizons a bit. :)

Also, there are LOTS of suggestions that we still wanted to get to higher up in this thread.

Oh, and keep in mind we've decided that shorter is better for the time being, so nothing like War and Peace, or 'À Recherche du Temps Perdu, please. :P

Bonitaj wrote: "I just read Dragon and I love the sheer simplicity (through duplicity) of it all! It's pure Magic and in Freudian terms "wishfulfilment"... Will your dreams and desires into life!
Again, I'm making..."

Yes, I think it's also that stories tend to get a life of their own, like happened with X. If the original X were to stand up and say: "Hey, I'm X and it was all a hoax", I'll bet you nobody would believe him.

(view spoiler)[The story is also ambiguous as to whether people just imagined they saw a dragon and it was a kind of group hysteria, or if there really was something. We do know that there was a sort of black thing and a flash of gold, but we can't be too sure if it really was a dragon or not. Point is, thousands of people believed it was a dragon, so... does that make it any the more real ? ...and does it matter? (hide spoiler)]

It's interesting how in modern times, there are many sightings of UFO's and yet hardly anyone still seem to see ghosts - yet at a time in Western culture, and in many other cultures, ghosts are/were a 'real' thing at one time or another.