Traveller’s
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(group member since Jan 14, 2015)
Traveller’s
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from the On Paths Unknown group.
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Hi guys! Yes, Bill, Lori is right - there's no 'correct' way to respond to a text! If you feel your response is emotional, hey, that's good too - I think the best books make us respond emotionally... and after all, fiction is art, and art is supposed to give us emotional responses as well as intellectual responses. Please don't let the time that the discussion was first placed deter you - aren't you a member over at Mievillians as well? We've still responded to people there sometimes -years- after we'd done the discussion - in fact, there is a person posting on those old discussions as we speak! :)
So, please don't be shy... ;)
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "On a slightly more upbeat note, I found this:Flickr set of taken from Tribe Theatre's production of "Dradin, In Love"
This looks so awesome; I really want to see it, but it was staged in Irelan..."
Ah yes, the play - it does look quite awesome, thanks for the pics.
Btw, I have made a thread for The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... , which I'm not -that- impressed with; but I REALLY would like for us to discuss The Transformation of Martin Lake, which we can do here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... , and which I shall comment on shortly.
To me this was the least gripping of the four 'main' stories, but it does have some very interesting elements. I couldn't help, for example, forming analogies to Cortés' conquest of South America here.Being in the form of a journal replete with footnotes, it also has a very metafictional postmodernist feel to it.
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I also thought the portrayal of academic micro-factionalism was awesome..."
Yeah, that was cool; but also, so so much going on here on a philosophical level! In fact there is such dense philosophizing going on, that I'd have to re-read those bits in order to coherently comment on it.
I've made the next thread, here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
;but there is still much to say about what Calvino is saying in the current section about the act of translating and about translation in general; about listening as opposed to reading; about the nature of narratives and what constitutes a "story"... -and there was more besides.
...and here we start with the Cimbrian novel Without fear of wind or vertigo.
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "(He doesn't say it, but it was his father's view as well, in accepting payment for his mother's madness from The Bedlam Rovers.) This really is a very heartbreaking story. "Indeed - that whole family situation and his mother's fate which of course impacted his own seems to be the core of it.
Oh! I suddenly remember passages I had wanted to comment on weeks ago:
"Dad had, when still young and thin and mischievous, invited Cadimon over for tea and conversation, surrounded in Dad’s study by books, books, and more books. Books on culture and civilization, religion and philosophy. They would, or so Dad told Dradin later, debate every topic imaginable, and some that were unimaginable, distasteful, or all too real until the hours struck midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock, and the lanterns dimmed... [...]
He tried to imagine the richness of his father’s conversations with Cadimon—the plethora of topics discussed, the righteous and pious denials and arguments. When his father mentioned those conversations, the man would shake off the weight of years, his voice light and his eyes moist with nostalgia. If only Cadimon remembered such encounters with similar enthusiasm. [...]
In their calm but blank gaze, their slack mouths, Dradin saw the shadow of his mother’s face, and he wondered what she had done while his father and Cadimon talked. Gone to sleep? Finished up the dishes? Sat in bed and listened through the wall?
Phew, that told me a lot about Dradin's parents' relationship. If the father did not have a soul-mate in the mother - was not interested in her singing, and she either not interested or otherwise not included in his intellectual pursuits, what on earth was their relationship based on? Probably the age-old thing that is the bane of many marriages - initial sexual attraction.
(Which is either not enough in the long run and usually fades with time as well.)
In this regard, it is interesting to note that Dradin approaches "his love" very differently - his attraction for her seems to be, ironically, on a fantasized 'soul-mate' level as he fantasizes about having her for a soul-mate who would share his reading matter with him.
As you say - heart-breaking indeed.
Wonderful observations and connections, Amy, thank you so much for them!Oh yes - Mr Flay - horrible person!
The Seven Who Fled looks interesting - I might just read it with you....
Regarding green glows - check out this blue one!
Noctiluca scintillans :
https://pearlsinternational.com/sea-s...
Also, treachery seems to be a big theme. Remember that I had, at the beginning said that Dradin is naive, and you had disagreed because he had killed at least one person, (it does seem like he had killed her, yeah) and perhaps raped her? ...sure, I had used the wrong word - I had said "innocent" when I meant naive - but I still think he is naive - quite obviously so, because he tends to take things at face value.
In any case, I suppose you could say almost everyone in his life betrayed/rejected him: his father betrayed him by driving his mother insane, his mother betrayed him by cracking up, Dvorak deceived him, Cadimon rejected and betrayed him by turning him away; - you could even say the shopkeeper took advantage of him, for that matter... the city had betrayed his expectation of a "fun" festival - and I imagine Nepenthe had rejected him; so the only thing in the world which had not rejected him, was the doll in the window - no wonder he is so invested in his fantasy of her.
..and I guess this fit in with the dismemberment theme that you mention: his childhood was dismembered, and later his dreams and illusions are dismembered, as is his "innocence" (as opposed to naivete, which I think he still has) in the jungle with Nepenthe and the tribal attack on them - oh, and there's another rejection - the people he had tried to convert to his religion, chose to attack him instead.
Well, thanks, that lets us off the hook for more KIY, though I would like to come back to it again soon....and that also means we should revive the COSAM discussion before it becomes stale in our minds!
Well, yes, Tess is indeed bleak - but boy, if you think that's bleak, you mustn't read Jude the Obscure...To me at least Tess has a certain beauty about it. It's more feminist too, ha ha.
Re Moby Dick: I have always resisted reading it because I cannot STAND whale-hunting... :PRe Tess of the D'Urbervilles: now that is one of -my- all-time faves again. First made contact with it when I was around 11, but only when I re-read it many years later, did I see all the social commentary Hardy was making.
No hurry. :)
A. wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Have you read any of his Amergris stories, btw?"Yep, I've read the whole Ambergris series. I wasn't crazy about Shriek, but I liked City of Saints and Madmen (particularly "Drad..."
It would be nice if you had time to drop in on those discussions as well. COSAM here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
It's been going slow because looks like there's only mainly 2 of us interested, sadly - but I'd certainly like to discuss more if more people jumped in....
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "You will never believe what was waiting for me on my doorstep when I got home:
The Yellow Sign & Other Stories by [author:Robert W..."
Ah, S.T. Joshi! Yes, he's an expert on The Weird - he wrote/collected some stuff around Lovecraft as well. Nice!
A. wrote: "Well, give me a heads-up when you start talking Southern Reach. I will definitely join in. I *loved* that series!"
Will do! Have you read any of his Amergris stories, btw?
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: " You are right about the sense of wonder, though. I think that's just being told what to do...."Yes - one kind of felt that if you "had to" do it for school work,that takes the fun out of it.
Plus what you and Linda touched on with the "did the teacher him/herself love the book". I suppose a lot did depend on the teacher, and this is why I still have good memories of Merchant of Venice but not of Tale of 2 Cities.
Yeah, probably a few factors at play - but one very seldom has that feeling of wonder and expectancy that you have when you read a book of your own volition, and some of it might have to do with the pupil already knowing half of the surprises beforehand...?
A. wrote: "Traveller: What you found out about Jack Scott vs. Mr. Scott irks me no end! I just refuse to believe they're not the same person! ;-P Putting him in Paris at the time of "Repairer" might "fit neat..."(That site I linked to isn't necessarily right....)
Re Southern Reach, I haven't read it yet and will be doing it with this group here in January 2016. :)
Oh, and have you ever wondered why most people hate the books they were forced to read at school? ;)I'm not really bitter about IOAWNAT, but it definitely changed my reading experience, which I do regard as unfortunate for this one, as the book is about the reading experience more than anything else. ..."
Yes, exactly - and he lays a lot of emphasis on the "looking forward to the unexpected" aspect of reading fiction.
Yeah...Another thing I hate is when a book is reasonably popular or a classic, everybody just assumes that everyone else has read it, even though we all have very different reading backgrounds and some people might have preferred to read such books unspoiled.
