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

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: " Interesting that you got Buddhism for Cadimon; I actually managed to experience him as a Truffidian; the only place in the book where there was enough information. ..."

Well, not to want to spoilerize COSAM too much, but the Living Saint just doesn't seem to be the kind of thing you'd find in Catholicism.... :P ..and Buddhism is all about detachment, so...

But to get back to what I said about Truffidianism not seeming to me to be any of "our" religions, the living saint seemed enough of an anomaly to have made it strange for me.

I suppose I can't disagree too much with that, and yeah, I think it would be a good idea to take the discussion to a later thread, where were can freely work with more info. :)

A quick announcement: Amy was a guest mod for a while in order to work on her Banned Books project, but then decided that she likes us so much that she'd like to stay on as mod. :D
Welcome, Amy!

Heh, re the late eating: I always eat just before going to bed because if i don't, i get hungry in the night and it keeps me awake unless I go quench my tummy's rumblings.

Thread for the last section here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I love all of this philosophizing about history and the philosophy of history that takes place in this section. Philosophy of history is one of the subjects that I wanted to look into this year. (I mean 2016) I might want to come back to Chapter 4 once I've done that.

Also, referring back to our discussion of the depiction of religion in one of the earlier threads, I think this quote illustrates what I had said there quite well :

"They were lonely and screaming out for company, or for something to keep out the darkness. Even a crackpot theory is better than no theory at all. Than nobody. Than an abyss. "

Phew, lots of fireworks eventually in this part.

Hmm I'm actually looking for the thread about the first part of part 2, although I want to come back and comment on this thread as well.

Next thread here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hmm, I'm thinking this discussion would have been more suited for one of the later threads, in case we drop spoilers for the later parts of the book here, but in any case:

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Whitney wrote: "I would say that Vandermeer had no interest in interrogating religion to any great extent, but would have been remiss to neglect its influence on society and culture. Like so many o..."

Whitney wrote: "Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I don't think religion really interests him a great deal in the 'tradition' sense (it clearly interests him intensely in other ways), but by just tossing stereotypes into th..."

The only reference to Islam that we find is the word Kalif, and I admit that that maybe is a bit vague - but does it necessarily depict Islam? To me it lent a certain exotic feel to the entity of "The Kalif" rather in the way, I think that "Persia" seemed exotic to Westerners in days gone by, because, after all, the world of Ambergris does seem to be quite an exotic creation (to me, anyway).

..but as for religion - religion is the embodiment of the very human trait of believing in something beyond themselves, whether it be some form of idealism or belief in a prescriptive being out there; people have a need to believe in "isms" and in the idea that the way they are doing things is the "right" way. There is a great despair in nihilism, to the point I have found that even many atheists and agnostics feel a need to believe in some credo or set of beliefs. The god-figure might be superfluous, but 'religion' when seen as "a set of beliefs" is a pretty universal human thing.

So, to depict a society that has nothing like tradition or religion, seems to me, to depict a society that is very far removed from humanity, and perhaps that was not Vandermeer's goal. I suspect that you, Amy, wanted him to flesh out the religions more, but to do so, would lead to infodump a la Neal Stephenson, and would not have seem natural in the kind of first-person narration that we find in the novel.

After all, the novel is narrated by Ambergrisians to Ambergrisans, so the natural assumption is that the reader would be already familiar with the religions, and therefore embroidering upon them would come across as unnatural. Also, as you both already mentioned, the novel is not about religion per se, and yet it (I find rather accurately) comments on the 'closed-mindedness' of large sections of the human race.

Actually, all of this isn't so much evident in the first 4 chapters of the book yet - please refer to a quote I made in a later thread dealing with the first section of part 2: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
(Note: spoilers for part 2 chapters 1-4 in that thread)

Whitney wrote: "H&S makes me think of the British East India Company, half traders, half pirates, and largely a law unto themselves...."

Hello Whitney, welcome! Good observation!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I don't think religion really interests him a great deal in the 'tradition' sense (it clearly interests him intensely in other ways), but by just tossing stereotypes into the story, he weakens the whole structure..."

... hmm, I'm not too sure he wanted to make Truffidians Catholics or the Kalif Muslims. Can you quote specific proof from the text the he is trying to do that?
To me it seemed more like he's working with archetypes than specifics. Also, Cardomon (sp?) seemed like a Buddhist monk to me more than anything else.

I think Vandermeer was addressing, via the bit relating to book-and-thought censure, more the general inclination that people have to try and route people's thoughts and ideas into shapes and channels that remain within their comfort zone and does not challenge tradition, because tradition helps to keep people in their comfy little ruts.

Hmm, we might want to postpone Annihilation with a few days. I've now set it for January 6. I'll clock in with hopefully a few productive comments on Fahrenheit soon. :)

I've been trying to catch up with re-watching the Star Wars movies before I finally go to see the latest one, but Xmas is not letting me.... :P :D

Yolande wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Regarding "different ways to analyze a text" I refer those interested, to the
Casebooks in Criticism series:
https://global.oup.com/academic/conte......"

I have one of the critical texts on it, I can't remember which. I must really get it done and read. Shall we discuss the book a bit later in 2016?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It does seem to have spread, but I haven't... oh wait, I have! I've watched one or two episodes of the British-American show called Humans, and when I looked it up now, I saw that it is indeed based upon the Swedish one. I was about to say there's a show very similar to it called 'Humans'.

If you endorse it, I'll make a plan to catch up with it. :)

And there are many must-read plays out there, so one can't help wondering then what the rationale for skipping plays and Chekhov is.

Ah, I've just realized why no Chekhov; the same silly reason as why no Shakespeare: the list is actually 1001 NOVELS you must read before you die, not 1001 books.

They named the list incorrectly.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "But I love the play on "rock paper scissors" and Mao's "paper tigers".
Indeed!

Heh. I've never done the pole thing, but I know silly people who have.
I loved the vid that goes with the circle tea pic!

...and once again some of the images reminded me of the TV show Fortitude which I have by now stopped watching. It was becoming a bit too weird, the way Lost started to become towards the end...

I might pick it up again sometime, though.

Year of The Tiger sounds soft and fantasy-ish. Rock Paper Tiger has a lot more strength and hints at power play.

Yeah, it's pretty sad how much China is disallowed and how badly they're cut off from the world. They've started their own versions of IM's and sites like Facebook and Twitter, because there's so little from outside that they can access.

Thanks for the interesting link, Ruth.