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

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

@ Amy; Re the very end wrt what we had discussed earlier: Here we see how very damaged he is; he was so traumatized with what happened with his parents, so afraid that he might do to a real flesh and blood person what his father did to his mother, that he would rather have a non-person, someone that he cannot hurt, or, of course, be hurt by.

I suppose I have such a deep... resonance with Dradin, because in many respects, I suppose, I -am- Dradin. (Ok, not quite, because I feel that this whole story is sort of caricatured in an exaggerated manner in order to be symbolic). But I have witnessed trauma, and I also understand that feeling of being trapped that Dradin often appears to feel.

I suspect I would get even more out of this story on an emotional level if I had the guts to dig deeper.

People who come from a very happy family background will probably not quite understand where Dradin comes from, but I have a pretty good idea, which is, I suppose, why I like this story so much.

In certain ways, I think the doll and his fascination with her, is also symbolic of our modern consumerist society. Consumerist society is so focused on outer, surface shine, that 'realness' doesn't seem to have value for them anymore.

Take for example the extreme preoccupation with plastic surgery. People would rather look like thick-lipped, big-breasted, blonde, bronzed clones of one another than to be just their real selves.

On a third level, the 'world' that Dradin constructs for himself around the robot, is possibly a reference to Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard discusses "the precession of the simulacra' in this essay. He shows how in modern society, the unreal often precedes the real, with constructs like Disneyworld, the internet, and the whole "false" world that exists in modern technological society, such as for example debits and credits in a bank account instead of real money, and all the "virtual" things we have going these days.

In that sense, this story is also very Borgian.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Does that need to be a spoiler, btw?"

Probably not, but I'd hate to turn anyone away from Sweeney Todd if they haven't experienced it yet!

Looking forward to our third thread di..."

Sure, no rush at all, since I've also been busy. I'll make the thread shortly. :)

Oh, sorry, and re the Truffidians: I think we get to learn a whole lot more of them in Finch, if I'm not mistaken, from the blurbs etc that I have read.

Yaye! Okay, if this trend continues, I think we can soon retire this thread as having been the schedule thread for 2015, and make a new one for 2016 with that schedule on top - subject to change, of course!
^_^

EDIT: Whoops! I knew I was forgetting something in January. Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg for January 20. I'll squeeze it in ... will adjust the image when I get a mo.
Edit 2: Done. Now scheduled for Jan 19. :)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I'm afraid I'm one of those rare monstrosities who has always been happy alone :) what crushes I've had have always been shallow and over quickly. But that is not why I hate instalove. I hate instalove because it has become such a convention in current literature; it is both hopelessly unrealistic and patriarchal (it's almost always f to m). So it's always hard for me to read. (Of course, (view spoiler)).."

Yes, indeed re your spoiler - remember that Dradin is just a character, not the author, and things that rounded protagonists do, needn't always be sympathetic - in other words, when the character is well-drawn, you see his/her failures foibles and faults, without necessarily losing empathy with the character, and the fact that you and I respond to Dradin differently, just proves to me that the character is subtly drawn - in other words, he's not a straight-up stereotype.

In fact, your spoiler is for me, the entire point of this story, and why one should read it as fast as possible from start to end. (..and perhaps skim over the less important world-building fluff, which I found rather indulgent in the same sense that I found China Mieville's earlier work self-indulgent).

"Hey, I didn't link Dradin with Sweeney Todd, I linked him with ...(spoiler for Sweeney Todd under the tag). Surely that's not so far from the mark!

Ohhh, *slaps forehead* Okay! sometimes i'mma bit dense on the first pass. Does that need to be a spoiler, btw? :P If it does, I'm still being dense! &_&

Yep, I'm also thinking we should rather discuss the - er... our differences in the last thread. :)

Phew! Well, that's a relief!
Okay, you aren't the only 2 members, of course, (though you are very active ones, and therefore important :) ) but two other members have also privately indicated similar sentiments to me. The schedule is quite tightly packed, so if we don't make it for all of them, it won't be the end of the world, right? :)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I actually kind of hated Dradin. (It's hard for me to say how much of that is the fact that he is experiencing insta-love when we meet him and how much is him, himself, but the word in my mind was ..."

How did I miss this post? GR acting up again. Hmm, I personally think Dradin is as far from a fop as you can actually get. (view spoiler)[ dictionary definition: fop : noun: fop; plural noun: fops
a man who is concerned with his clothes and appearance in an affected and excessive way; a dandy. (hide spoiler)]

The story mentions that he is filthy, ragged and sweaty after his time in the jungle.
The heat withers him this far from the river, but he ignores the noose of sweat round his neck.  Dradin, dressed in black with dusty white collar, dusty black shoes, and the demeanor of an out-of-work missionary (which indeed he is),[...] He had been looking down to pick up the coins he had lost through a hole in his threadbare trousers, their seat torn.. [...] The driver’s mangy beast had left its stale smell on Dradin, but it was a necessary beast nonetheless, for he could never have afforded a mechanized horse, a vehicle of smoke and oil. Not when he would soon be down to his last coins and in desperate need of a job...

This obviously bothers him, as he realizes the huge gulf between himself and the object of his passion. He feels he cannot present himself before her:
... unwashed, come before her dusty and smitten, a twelve o’clock shadow upon his chin. Obvious that he had come from the Great Beyond, for he still stank of the jungle rot...

Re the "instalove" ; yes, that is a very important aspect of the story, and I think Vandermeer is symbolising the tendency that all humans have, to project an image of our own imagination onto other people. Dradin is like a teenager; -did you never, as a teenager, get a "crush" on somebody and imagined all sorts of qualities onto that person that they never actually really had; but that you could project onto them because there was a distance between yourself and the person that served to uphold the illusion?

Also, when you read a bit further on about Dradin's childhood, you begin to see why he's not very socially adept and why he has a deep need to belong.

In any case, he is definitely an innocent, and not sophisticated in his manners, as one would expect from a "fop". A fop, to me is a "Dandy" - someone who is well-dressed and well-spoken. Dradin is so afraid of social intercourse that he prefers to hire an imtermediary, in spite of not having a lot of money to throw around.

In fact, I feel very sorry for Dradin - his whole life speaks of being trapped and helpless. I see him as a tragic figure full of pathos.

As to the Truffidians, - I suspect they are gradually revealed, the way most secret sects are. (Not sure if they are a "secret sect" in Ambergris, but they certainly are "mysterious" to the reader at first, and that might be intended.)

In fact, this entire story is only gradually revealed, as with all good mystery stories and postmodern fiction. :) ...but patience bears a lot of fruit.

Yeah, and now it really bothers me that you link Dradin with Sweeny Todd. :P Dradin seems so helpless, so artless, always a victim. One sees later on, that things obvious to other people, like to Dvorak, is not obvious to Dradin, and of course, Dvorak is the confidence trickster who takes advantage of Dradin's naiveté.

Note also that he is a shy person: "Dradin realized he must act and yet he was too shy to approach her..

I have read some Homer, and some Milton, but I never finished Paradise Lost, despite having had to read it for some course at some point in my life. :P
Don Quixote's size always scares me off, and I love whales too much to be reading about whaling... :P

Oh good! I'll send reminders around a month before the time. I'm not sure if all our members have 100% agreed on the dates yet, but we'll hopefully know at least a month or two in advance. :) Oops, I lied - it's actually scheduled for February 10 at the moment. I hope that will suit you. The date is not set in stone yet.

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Okay, i see that the third one is practically unreadable, "

I can read them all fine."

Oh, good, but is the schedule okay, as far as content and timing is concerned? With the exception of perhaps 3 books on that schedule, which can be taken out again, no problem, pretty much all of the books are books that at least 2 members said they would like to discuss.

Are there at least books that the majority of you would like to discuss, and in that order? No use I make a schedule and it doesn't suit you people.

Please give input - I know it's a very long schedule and far ahead of time, but I thought that, I'd just like to give y'all an idea of how we might be able to fit in books that many of you said yes, let's do that one! etc.

Sounds good. :)
Oh, and we can certainly do some DFW here!

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

For Erickson, I have The Sea Came in at Midnight on my TBR, (so if you haven't read it yet, if you want we could maybe discuss it here somewhere). EDIT: Ah, nevermind, I see you have read it, so scrap that then. :)
Don't know Harington at all!

Peter Pan and Oz sounds charming. :)

For Vollman, (besides Rising up and Rising Down, which is gargantuan) my two most urgent ones, are Europe Central and Kiss the Mask - those two would be good for discussion, so we should maybe try and drum up some interest for those. IIRC, actually friends of mine who are also members of this group have expressed an interest in those - I must PM them when we get closer to having a space we could squeeze them into. :P

Oh boy, yes, Vollmann! We can always exchange one of our less urgent reads for next year with a Vollmann, which is one of those authors I want to read but need a bit of motivation for.

I already have (but not read) the following Vollmanns: The Ice-Shirt, Europe Central, Argall and Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater; all of whom I am quite eager to do...

Also want to do The Tunnel by William H. Gass, now I am reminded...

Ugh and also Dave Eggers...

Hmm, I've been wanting to do a re-read of The Great Gatsby for ages now, so if you want to try and squeeze a buddy read of it into the last week of the year (if by then you'd finished all the other books for the challenge by then), I'd be happy to do that. (But I quite understand if you'd rather pass.)
I remember liking the book a lot as a youngster, but I realize now as an adult that I must have missed all the social commentary and more "adult" themes in the book.

Btw, your library sounds great! I was quite happy when I discovered my library's DVD section. Some nice adaptations of classics in there that you don't normally find in popular channels. Which reminds me I must have a look at them again!

Well, I haven't had a spare moment to myself in the past 18 months except for the last 2 weeks of 2014 and first week or 2 of 2015; so I am taking 7-8 months semi-off starting end of Nov 2015. (We'll see how long THAT lasts...)

Anyway, hmm, okay, so for books "should have" read at school, you done all the 'usual' suspects, like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Tale of 2 Cities, etc.?
You could always do an advanced re-read of Hamlet, or do Bleak House, to fit in with one of our themes, but as you know by now, it will be too far in advance for when we have them scheduled...

But actually any Shakespeare would fit into the "should have read at school" bracket, you know. Oh yes - and Grapes of Wrath? oh, and Jane Austin and/or Geoge Eliot?

Yes, Carmilla should fit- a bit of a cheat, but why not? Nobody can say it's not that.
Oh btw! So what was your graphic novel?

Listen, Amy, so for that Popsugar challenge, have you already read a book that was published this year?

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: " (I'm also still getting the hang of discussing books over GR; this really is the first group I've found where people actually read it and discuss together. It's wonderful, but there does seem to be an art to it as well.) I think a week or so per book sounds great..."

Yeah, it's an art - some people should start reading a bit before the "actual" date and people like yourself should probably start a bit after, heh heh.

Ugh, work has been popping up again. I am so going to resign from one of my jobs end of next month....

So, will around February do for Hamlet and then around March for the Dickens/Wilkie Collins project? In order to try and get a bit of order out of the chaos and to gauge how much of what we've already said we want to read and discuss can be fit into the next 6 to 8 months, I have gone to the liberty of working out a preliminary schedule, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Please view and let me know in which ways it doesn't work for you - it's not set in stone and the Murakami is just a placeholder for any Murakami.

The idea of the schedule is that there will be at least one thing per month for each person's taste; for example, one SF, one classic, one contemporary etc.

Helen wrote: "I don't believe he's mad. Have you heard of the Humoural Theory? It's the idea that a lack or an excess of one of the four bodily 'fluids'can cause mental and physical illness.

Hamlet is clearly ..."

Interesting theory, Helen. Yeah, that is what Hippocrates taught of course, and you are right, I think the theory was still in fashion around Elizabethan times. In fact, as far as I know it had adherents until the nineteenth century, at least.
I hope you're going to be around for our Hamlet discussion in around March next year?

Shakespeare was writing for Elizabethan theater. His audiences were probably less sophisticated than modern audiences. His forerunners and contemporaries wrote in even more lurid terms - Chaucer is extremely lurid.

..but in the case of Shakespeare it is usually just the outer form that comes across as "flowery" and colorful. The content packs a lot and despite the more "flowery" way in which people spoke at the time, his writing is eminently thought-provoking, often funny, and very quotable, even to this day.

Magdelanye wrote: "what happened there? it cut off where I had moved the little curser to correct a typo.... I meant to ask if you were saying that morality is subject to the vagaries of fashion, or creed, and ethics..."

Magdelanye, to the vagaries of fashion - unfortunately, yes! It certainly seems so, doesn't it? Just look at how incredibly Western mores have changed in the last 2 000 years. In the ancient days in which the Judaic bible plays out, through the days of the Roman Empire and right through the days of European empire-building, everyone thought slavery was fine and dandy. That it is deemed "wrong" was only a recent development. Note how, for example, something else, being democracy, has been in and out of fashion for as many years. etc.etc.

..but it is debates like this one, over issues of what constitutes right and wrong that are the really important aspect of the issue. ...because then people are at least thinking about the issues instead of just blindly accepting them; and I thank you for the fact that you are not just doing that, but wrestling with the problem and thinking about it.

Whether I think ethics are eternal - I see how I could perhaps have made it look like that, so I apologize for not being clearer, but no, they are not either, of course. Ethics is something more practical; a code of conduct, whereas morals are more concerned with the BELIEF of what is right or wrong.

...in other words, if you are a teacher, you might not believe that it is morally wrong to have a love affair with your student (some teachers will believe it is wrong and some won't - depending on what their moral codes say) but the teacher's ethical code would forbid them from doing such a thing.

I suppose I should have made clear that one can have a set of personal ethics and you have professional ethics; and the latter is usually an objective set of rules that all members of that profession must follow.

A bit like laws - most people in democracies tend to agree with the laws of their countries because those laws are in line with their own feelings of morality. The laws aren't in themselves moral,but they echo the morals of the people who made them. Ethics echo morals in a similar way. ...and it is when a government's policies and laws start to diverge from the people's beliefs that you get insurrection, not so?

As to your comment about love and the eternal - I think you might be commenting on that "inner voice" that most people have that instinctually tells us what seems right and wrong? Sadly that voice seems more blunted in some people than others, and they say that psychopaths don't have that inner voice.

Subject to? Well, whatever you were going to say, I think that every person has a sense of morality, of course- but there are people or schools of thought who think that "they" and /or certain religions or schools of belief have the right idea about what is 'moral' or right and wrong and what is not - for example, some would say it is immoral to have more than one spouse or to have extramarital sex, and others would say it is not. So yes, I do actually think that morality or ideas about what is "right and wrong" tends to be subjective in many respects.

Certain things most people seem to agree on, such as that it is wrong to kill another person, but even on that issue there is not consensus the world over.