Miévillians discussion
This topic is about
The City & the City
The City & The City Discussion
>
SECTION 11: Chapter 29 [Coda]
The Third Cityhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-omJT...
Published on 3 Oct 2012
An interpretation of the third city from the City & the City. The third city rests between the two cities, and remain unknown unless the border between the cities are crossed. We start the video by understanding how the third city is formed - it is a result of the absorption of the consciousness of the two other cities, and hence grows stronger and stronger as the two cities grow. Though unseen, that thin line that rests between the two cities is actually an entire space compacted into thin air. The third city is a web of thoughts, that grow stronger as the two cities grow stronger.
At the end, I feel Tyador remains true to his values - like every good hard boiled detective, it is justice that motivates him. It seems to me that his version of justice is one of ongoing schism. Its so interesting how the narrative brings him from breaking one set of rules to needing to have done so to uphold a "higher" set. I don't think he would have agreed to be a member of Breach if he did not feel its motivations were just.
Could I make a distinction between law and order (on the one hand) and justice (on the other).Justice is usually concerned with a fair outcome in a dispute between two or more sides.
Law and order is concerned with the enforcement of the law of the state on behalf of the state and indirectly society.
The police are concerned with law and order, whether or not the law is just or fair. It's the law and it has to be enforced, regardless.
I wonder whether Borlu just switched the particular law and order he had to enforce.
If this is correct, he's possibly a bit more mercenary than we think.
But remember that this was his punishment for his crime.
True - but in hard-boiled etc, justice almost always prevails, often at the expense of the letter of the law. And the version of justice is often particular to the detective. Here Tyador is true to form. I see him as having found a higher/deeper/truer(for him) level of justice. I would see him being mostly at peace with this. Interesting how to serve this justice he has to enforce the rule he broke.
Did you emerge with some sympathy for the Breach?
P.s. I think that CM will have used this genre (hardboiled/whodunnit) to speak to the topic of justice vs law. It's a theme of many examples of the genre. So I do feel that at the ending, we should consider these issues.
Ian wrote: "Did you emerge with some sympathy for the Breach?"Hmm...I think yes. Again though this is not a new concept in scifi - the watched becoming the watchers - so it follows a well trodden formula. Its the context of the split/converged cities that is so drop-dead stunningly.original.
I totally agree. I think the novel went beyond police procedural, and found corruption and criminal activity at the heart of law and order. It's the sort of thing that makes you lose confidence in lawyers ;) but they say that 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
ha yes! but I do wonder quis custodiet and all that now at the end. It can only be a sense of the law and justice (their version) that keeps the Breach uncorrupted.And I just realised that Breach is a synonym for cleave....
Out of the cleavage and into the breaches.
You have to worry when the only thing that holds a system together is idealism.
This is true, idealism can be very very scary in its warpedness.
Andrea wrote: "This is true, idealism can be very very scary in its warpedness."I will use that word as soon as I learn how to pronounce it ;)
Is it just you, me and Cecily on the internet at the moment?
Yes and no lol, I went to sleep at the time you posted this.
It's wall to wall rain here at the moment. No space between the raindrops in any of the three dimensions. It's time to go home.
oh dear :-( . we have beautiful sunshine here in Wellington.
I want to go there one day...when it's not windy.
Indeed...second windiest city in the world.
At least it's not -30F like it has been all week in Duluth. Braintree sets in.
b r a I n f r e e z e
Why have you both leapfrogged section 8? I want to learn about your taste in women and song.
um...because I finished the book and wanted to explain my ultimate reaction....and I'm an impatient person.
dunno about Annie. Her brain is prolly frozen.
Andrea wrote: "um...because I finished the book and wanted to explain my ultimate reaction....and I'm an impatient person."Retrace your steps with me, then.
GR has done nothing but consistently counsel me against impatience. It knows nothing about the urgency of passion.
heh I will go onto section two in the next few days. But I just had to post my final impression while it was still fresh.
Next few days??? What about my impatience???
ha! it will at least have to wait until Ive finished watching LiFe of Pi which starts now.
Well I'm going back to my review of Proust and then the Men's Final.
Hmm, ok, after all the cit-chat is skipped over, let's go back to some of the earlier posts.I'm not convinced that i agree with Borlu's vision, and i'm not sure what CM's vision here is. Plus i don't find myself sympathetic at all with Breach...- i'd be quite interested to hear why some of the other readers might feel sympathetic towards it?
The book has given me a small measure of sympathy with nationalism- in fact, i think i always felt a degree of understanding for nationalism in the sense that cultural identity that is to some extent preserved, makes the world a lot more of an interesting place; but, certainly not to the degree that it is practiced in CM's two cities, where the two cultures are so divided that they literally cannot acknowledge on another.
And btw, i know exactly what is meant by "unseeing". My mother taught me to unsee certain people/things when i was a little girl still (not that i learned her lessons very well). For instance, if we would receive catcalls or something similar while walking down the street, my mother could put on a magnificent show of appearing to be completely oblivious to this, and if she caught me looking, i would get a discreet nudge and a low-key sotto voce murmur : "Just look ahead and pretend not to notice."
Heh, so when CM introduced the idea of "unseeing", and "unhearing" i had a good idea of what he meant...
Would any reader sympathise with Breach?I like your anecdote about unseeing, Traveller. Now you mention it, my mother did much the same, though I think it had the opposite effect and just made me all the keener to look. I would survive long in Bez or UQ.
Although this is the last chapter, is it possible to discuss reader sympathy with Breach in Perspectives?I think it is a really fundamental aspect of a reading of the book, and it would be good to use it as a centrepiece of our final discussions.
Breach works because people are afraid of it. The members of Breach take on mannerisms that make them faceless,unknowable and physically quick and powerful. They are all powerful within their realm. They use a medicated interrogation system that disarms the individual's ability to maintain privacy. There are other practices that go beyond the interrogations with problematical Breaches. This system runs on idealism or even worse is overseen by the Control Counsel(wrong name?) whose counselors represent business interests andvarious representatives of the two cities..
Although everything is turning up roses for Borlu there is good reason to bee skeptical about Breach and were it will take the two cities. It's not a political structure that I can trust. Can anyone remain uncorrupted by absolute power?
Hmm, I'm not too sure that everything turned out 100% lovely smelling roses for Borlu, though, because keep in mind that he had to say good-beye to everyone that he knew and loved- he is now not allowed to talk to his previous colleagues and lovers anymore; - he has to basically say good-beye to everything he knew and grew up with..The one thing he has gained though, is that he has been stripped of the prejudices that he grew up with, the illusions that he had held for so long.
Traveller wrote: "The one thing he has gained though, is that he has been stripped of the prejudices that he grew up with, the illusions that he had held for so long. ..."This is true, but I can't help thinking that he still is biased in that he supports the illusions everyone else has to live with. So in a way he can now see the bars of the cage he is trapped in, and is a willing prisoner so to speak. It feels a little sad to me.
Andrea wrote: "This is true, but I can't help thinking that he still is biased in that he supports the illusions everyone else has to live with. So in a way he can now see the bars of the cage he is trapped in, and is a willing prisoner so to speak. It feels a little sad to me. ."True- but i'm starting to wonder if any CM novel ever has a "happy" ending..
um....maybe only his YA stuff like Railsea. This is very true. Maybe happy is an illusion.....
Andrea wrote: "Maybe happy is an illusion....."Haha, maybe happiness is all in your mind.
maybe your mind is all in your mind...
not yours specifically, your in a generic sense
Traveller wrote: "... i'm starting to wonder if any CM novel ever has a "happy" ending..."Happy endings are for wusses!
;)
Cecily wrote: "Traveller wrote: "... i'm starting to wonder if any CM novel ever has a "happy" ending..."Happy endings are for wusses!
;)"
LOL
Myself, i've actually always been a sucker for sad endings, and even better when i have to reach for the box of tissues.
In fact, i almost always cry watching movies- so embarrassing...
Traveller wrote: "... i'm starting to wonder if any CM novel ever has a "happy" ending..."I'm a sucker for a happy ending (and they'll make me cry, too, but I blame that on the laser eye surgery...), but I think I have to agree that CM doesn't do "happy". Most of them seem to end on a vaguely upbeat note - but since the character's worlds have just been turned completely upside down, it's all relative...
I've been thinking about Bowden's little machine and have been imagining that it is an object that divides space. That it's an machine that makes spaces like breach out of nothing. I have wondered about the filmy surface that people move through while breaching. Also the way Breach move with a slower gliding motion with a purpose or greater authority. All of these make breach a space that is more than the unused area between cities. The area exists in a separate realm which was possibly created with a device like Bowen's. Did the older civilization cut Breach between the cities and what came first the city or the breach?
Yes, what exactly was that device Bowden had? Or do you think one is supposed to be left wondering about it?
Traveller wrote: "Yes, what exactly was that device Bowden had? Or do you think one is supposed to be left wondering about it?"See note 12 here:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
1. I did not see that machine again. It was funnelled into the bureauccracy of Breach.
2. aftermath of Riot Night, deaths
3. if Breach break ranks, they're insiles and they're ours.
4. Bowden never breached
5. "If he'd had an up-to-date map of Beszel you'd never have found her..Orciny."
significance of maps
6. “You did an excellent job. You’ve seen how we work. Nowhere else works like the cities,” he said. “It’s not just us keeping them apart. It’s everyone in Besźel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We’re only the last ditch: it’s everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It works because you don’t blink. That’s why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn’t work. So if you don’t admit it, it does. But if you breach, even if it’s not your fault, for more than the shortest time … you can’t come back from that.”
7. British Navy - press-ganging
8. "Can I say goodbye to anyone?" "No." "I'm a detective." "That's why we were so glad you breached."
Punishment for breach is to become a Breach.
9. Farewell to Corwi
10. That is the end of the case of Orciny and the archaeologists, the last case of Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad. Inspector Tyador Borlú is gone. I sign off Tye, avatar of Breach, following my mentor on my probation out of Besźel and out of Ul Qoma.
11. We are all philosophers here where I am, and we debate among many other things the question of where it is that we live. On that issue I am a liberal. I live in the interstice yes, but I live in both the city and the city.
Tye now has a future in the interstices, enforcing separation.
Recall the epigraph from Bruno Schulz's book "The Cinnamon Shops":
"Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets, doppelganger streets, mendacious and delusive streets."