Miévillians discussion
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Iron Council
Bas-lag 3: Iron Council
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IC spoiler thread 4: Anamnesis: The Perpetual Train
The West, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic regions, etc, etc, etc.I saw this first hand in Northern Cyprus after the Green Line was opened not quite ten years ago. Sad, sad, had to leave.
Has anyone here read Monument by Lloyd Biggle Jr.?
Ruth wrote: "The West, Australia, New Zealand, the Arctic regions, etc, etc, etc.I saw this first hand in Northern Cyprus after the Green Line was opened not quite ten years ago. Sad, sad, had to leave.
Has..."
Yeah, because I'm more familiar with the railroad that was built into the US West, that's the first thing I thought of, also with CM's mention that Zane Grey was an influence; and its been inspiring me to brush up on my railroad history a bit. But like you also say, Ruth, this is probably a familiar picture all over the world.
But it was so brutally unnecessary. It's true that the railways across North America resulted in the destructions of peoples and ways of life, but not with anything like the rapidity of the TRT. This gave the sense of having been created specifically to destroy landscape and people, not that it happened as a mere consequence. Now, admittedly, the first transcontinental railroads in both the US and Canada were built to create nations. In both cases to ensure that the west-coast colonies joined with the east-coast colonies, rather than becoming independent nations. But rather than take the path of least resistance, as our railroads did, Weather Wrightby was determined to remake the land at any cost.
I'm thinking that Wrightby is perhaps a caricature of the ruthless capitalist.
"Move a mountainFill the ground
Take death on wheels
Re-create the land"
Runrig, Move A Mountain, Amazing Things (1993).
Traveller wrote: "I'm thinking that Wrightby is perhaps a caricature of the ruthless capitalist."Yup, I agree, though perhaps not so much of a caricature as we might hope...
The Stiltspears arrived just in time for me to begin to loosen up a bit with this one and their absolute otherness added a layer of complexity to the obvious parallels with indiginous and animal societies,wiped out by progress,over and over.Progress is too often just a code word for profit.
At the start of the section Judah seems pretty ambivalent: he is sad to see the stiltspears destroyed, and yet the railroad fascinates him. I wonder if CM himself feels a similar ambivalence; I suppose we all do to some extent or another. I mean, I enjoy modern technology despite what it had cost in terms of destroying and heaven knows what else.I was thinking all the time while reading of the stiltspears of that film called Dances with Wolves. I must see if I can get it from the rental store.
How is this for synchronistic transference....I just picked this up,published in 2008.fromA Kiss Before the Apocalypse p171
...the locomotive suddenly appeared before him,like some great leviathan surging up from the depths,its whistle wailing like the death cries of a world not yet ready to pass from life.
The great train nestled into the station,its unnerving appearance causing him to stumble back against the station wall. It released a long,hissing exhalation of foul-smelling steam,the surface of its black metal body glistening wetly in the gloom.
Carefully,he walked to the edge of the platform and....gazed down the length of the cars that made up the train's serpentine body. A sound like the throb of a pulse emanated from the train.....
this could be the IC in a parralel world!
Traveller wrote: "At the start of the section Judah seems pretty ambivalent: he is sad to see the stiltspears destroyed, and yet the railroad fascinates him. I wonder if CM himself feels a similar ambivalence; I ..."Methinks that is a great part of CM's appeal and relevance,he captures so well our ambililence as we daily handle the toxic and destructive materials and scenarios that constitute modern life.
Yes, CM does true urban fiction, in the sense that it really has an urban 'feel' to it, and even his Western pastiche bits feel--I don't know--almost steampunk-y?That's eerie about you picking up that train text, Magdelanye! I seem to remember that you've read Railsea as well.
CM does seem to feel pretty attracted to trains and railways, doesn't he? PSS is a railway station after all. Maybe he spent memorable moments on trains and tracks as a child.
I can't help thinking of The Perpetual Train as a precursor to Railsea, though the former is brutal and unflattering, whereas the latter is fanciful and romantic.I'm rather fond of trains, myself. I depend on commuter trains every day, and there's a certain elegance to the whole once it's in place. Getting to a working system is another matter, of course, and one which I don't think too many people think about in this time.
Canada, of course, also had its share of shady dealings when rail crept inexorably from Ontario to British Columbia, be it fraud, exploitation of labourers and god knows what else ignored in the gloss of history.
I'm finding that this section, while being a very disturbing commentary on the results of poorly legislated, poorly supervised, corrupt industry, also serves to highlight the mystique of parallel iron in an unforgiving wilderness. There's something attractive about it for me, about the scope involved in reshaping the very Earth to suit straight lines and straight grades over such staggering distances. It's such a boorish, clunky way of getting from point A to point B at first, yet sometimes it proves to be the best way, even today when we can fly in the sky, send messages to the other end of the globe in about a second or take a bloody jaunt on the moon if we really, really want to.
Trains are just so wonderfully basic, once you've got an engine to drive them. It's cool.
To me, the reshaping of the land is horrible, though. Nature gives us this beautiful variety, these mountains and ravines and waterfalls, hills and dales, woods and lakes and marshes.. all with their own unique features and beauty. I suppose I spent too much of my youth out in nature hiking and developing a deep, abiding love for mother nature and her treasures.So destroying natural landscapes and replacing them with iron and concrete is my idea of hell. I agree that trains are cool as a means of transport, but I'm not so inured to homogenizing the landscape as many others seem to be.
Also, there are ways and ways to do things. I somehow feel pretty sure that there are ways to build railway lines that are more respectful of the milieu they are invading, and others less so. What happens in IC, seems less so.
Oh, I most assuredly agree that the means used were not good. The industrial revolution in our world is a long string of decisions in the name of progress or efficiency with little or no regard to questions of secondary impact or fundamental justice. We've grown a bit since. Some of us, anyway...To use a hopefully clear analogy, World War II evokes much the same feeling in me. There's no question it was a vile and awful thing, but the technological (and one could argue social) progress it spurred makes me feel very small.
Traveller wrote: "Maybe he spent memorable moments on trains and tracks as a child. "Hard to imagine. Even in England, the romantic era of trains was dead by the time he was born (here in Canada, it's way more than the romance of trains that has died). You notice, he didn't make the perpetual train run on diesel!
Oh, I don't find it too much of a stretch to imagine kids playing in railways stations and around train tracks. I'm thinking the danger of potentially being brained by a train could very much add to the excitement of being around train tracks.
In this very long section of mostly painful and sad scenes there was one two page bit I found delightful: kinetopgages, eaters of movement and rhythm."Delighting like porpoises, they dive out of the earth and roll around the turning wheels. They eat the rhythm, the ka ka ka of turning iron on iron. After millennia of supping up only the quickstep of plains hunters and prey, the demons are drunk on the heavy beat."
Ruth wrote: "In this very long section of mostly painful and sad scenes there was one two page bit I found delightful: kinetopgages, eaters of movement and rhythm."Delighting like porpoises, they dive out of..."
That is a lovely section indeed, Ruth, thanks for reminding of it. It reminded me to some extent of dolphins playing around a boat or ship, as they are wont to do.
Loose aspects out of this section that I'd forgotten to mention: Those of us who had read PSS, might remember the Weaver, but I wondered what its function was here. Simply a nod to PSS?
Something else I've been wondering about, is : wouldn't it simply have been cheaper for Wrightby to just have given the workers their money than to employ a whole lot of additional gendarmes and face ruin because of the bad publicity that his failure to pay his commitments caused? Usually wealthy people like him know how to play the field, so I couldn't help finding it hard to believe that he would handle things so badly. In the end it felt too much like the plot device that it is.
Oh, and in the end I found that he had treated the destruction of a species and a way of life (the stiltspears) too perfunctorily. He implies that all the stiltspear communities are eventually destroyed, but he doesn't say exactly why. I can't help thinking that surely they could simply have moved to an area where the railroad (being a narrow construct) didn't go? Surely building a railroad through their marshes didn't destroy the entire wetlands?
I have to laugh at Travellers logic there. Has the fact that it might be cheaper to do the honorable thing,stopped any meglomaniac from waging war against the indiginous people and land?The thing is, war is profitable,whereas sustainable practices do not rely on profiteering.
And unfortunately,delicate eco-systems are destroyed by the brutal displacement of their equilibrium.
My opinion is leaning towards the idea that in this one,CM has dispensed with character and given us prototypes. Derek will probably not agree with me,but consistently the mythic and archetypal are referenced and what drives the plot,from the walking in the wilderness seeking the messenger,the threat of industrialization to the environment and the upheaval of tribal life,the whole mythos around the IC in the first place.
I see the iron council as anarchic and emblematic as Armada.Unlike The in Scar though,that worked through multiple layers of metaphor to reveal a monstrous truth at the heart of the universe,the workings of the council remain mysterious and are for all intents and purposes irrelevent to the story,which is a warning,perhaps,about how quickly things are unravelling.
Well, like I said, and as you confirm with your comment about archetypes and metaphors, to me too obviously plot devices, Mags.He hardly mentions the stiltspears and just assumes (I think) that the reader will automatically tag on and make an association with how the native Americans' way of life was destroyed. But he didn't do enough detail about the stiltspears for me, and Judah doesn't have as much sympathy for them as I would have preferred.
Wars are only profitable to those selling weapons and other technology pertaining to the war. For a state and for an individual financing a private war, they are costly things.
After all, we were told in the section about Ori, how the war is impoverishing NC, because after all, one has to pay the additional militia, pay to replace all the ships, aeroplanes etc that gets destroyed, pay for the transport and the ammunition and so forth, and your economy takes a hit because there are fewer people available for production because your able-bodied people are involved in the war effort.
I can understand why the militia eventually went after the Iron Council- after all, the remade are like products (slaves) and any slave-owner would hunt down runaway slaves.
But what I am saying is: why did Wrightby neglect to pay his workers? He obviously still had enough cash to pay the gendarmes he sent to quell their insistence on receiving the money that was rightfully theirs.
Even if in a capitalist system wages may be low, you still need to honor your contract with the laborers and pay them what you owe, and they are always free to take their labor elsewhere. There were a lot of freemen working on the railroad, and it is they who were striking initially.
There's no way you can, in a capitalist system, force a free person to work for no wages. The whole point is that labor is a commodity that has to be bought. Sure, in a Communist system you can get away with it, but NC quite obviously has a capitalist system going.
I love that this section is not a chapter (it falls between chap 13 and chap 14) and it is not a part (comiing between part 3 and part 4). It is exactly as it says, an Anamnesis. so for fun I looked it up and three of the six definitions connected for me to a greater or lesser extent:1. the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence.
2. (Platonism) recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, especially by means of reasoning.
3. (Immunology) a prompt immune response to a previously encountered antigen, characterized by more rapid onset and greater effectiveness of antibody and T cell reaction than during the first encounter, as after a booster shot in a previously immunized person.
Ruth wrote: "I love that this section is not a chapter (it falls between chap 13 and chap 14) and it is not a part (comiing between part 3 and part 4). It is exactly as it says, an Anamnesis. so for fun I loo..."Wow, that is really cool, Ruth! Once again, a word that can be viewed in more than one context, and I love the metatextual context that you placed it in--in context of its place relative to the whole book.
I do admit that I had no idea what the word meant before seeing it in IC. :P
That China guy really did swallow a wiktionary. ^_^
This word belongs in the CM glossary,I should think.Good research Ruth.
I actually thought it meant something like a cross between a midwife and a muse,someone who acted to bring about a visionary work,not the author. This worked for me,as the perpetual train acted as an inspiration for the oppressed, and the book is an account of sorts, of the birth of the IC.
I'm not sure we are disagreeing about anything,just a bit uncertain. I do agree about IC being plot not character driven,and I'm not sure that his overarching mythos is entirely consistent. Even Ori,who is one of the more developed characters,is just another chaver.For me he represents the perpetual seeker,always disappointed in what he finds.Like Moses,he won't get to see the promised land. Unlike Moses,he is no prophet and the messages he bears are old before they are delivered.
I wish I was able to get my hands on the book again but someone had a hold on it.
Magdelanye wrote: "This word belongs in the CM glossary,I should think.Good research Ruth.
I actually thought it meant something like a cross between a midwife and a muse,someone who acted to bring about a visionar..."
Have you tried online libraries, Magdelanye? In any case, you should still be able to get hold of it in time before the read finishes--or before I finish at any rate, because I'm not even close to finished yet; this read has been going slow for me.
...and you can always revisit any of the threads anytime. :)
As to points of agreement, I think I disagree more or less with your first three lines in your previous post, especially since you mention in them that you are laughing at my logic! :P ;)
Traveller wrote: "That is a lovely section indeed, Ruth, thanks for reminding of it. It reminded me to some extent of dolphins playing around a boat or ship, as they are wont to do."And there were dolphin-analogues for the trains in Railsea, too.
Magdelanye wrote: "My opinion is leaning towards the idea that in this one,CM has dispensed with character and given us prototypes. Derek will probably not agree with me,but consistently the mythic and archetypal are referenced and what drives the plot"
Derek's eyes tend to glaze, and his attention wanders when words like "archetypal" come out.
I don't completely disagree. There are a lot of simple characters here. It's Judah I mostly disagree about. But plot? There's a plot?
This is probably the place to say that where I said Embassytown was a retelling of the Garden of Eden story, the Iron Council is Moses in the wilderness. Forty years of marching around, marking time, and then the summons to the promised land. Please send me recipes for "hat", because if Judah Low makes it back to New Crobuzon, I'll have to eat mine (unless Moses is Ann-Hari).
While Traveller seems to see Judah's lack of compassion for the stiltspears as an authorial defect, I see it as a character defect. It's a part of the immensely complicated (and mostly unlikeable) character that is Judah. He has some compassion for the stiltspears, but when he returns to Wrightby and pleads his case, he caves quickly because he has, at this point, no sense of purpose. Judah slowly develops that purpose and eventually, despite his complete opposition to Wrightby, it becomes almost the same thing. Judah is dedicated to the survival of the railway, instead of the completion of it. Only a subtle difference.
Meanwhile, Wrightby is clearly not just a "capitalist". He's a man driven by religion. Even if he could be convinced that it would be more profitable to take a different route, he's not interested. His religion says the rail takes a straight line, so it does.
I agree, Traveller, that you can't expect labourers to work for nothing in a free capitalist society, but you're missing one vital point that Miéville probably lives and breathes: the owners have, time after time, spent more to break unions than it would ever cost to accommodate them. To the extent of paying the Pinkertons to break the strike (Cripple Creek miners' strike) and calling out the militia (Ludlow Massacre). Once the workers began to organize, they had to be crushed at any cost.
Derek, yes, I see the point where there's a power struggle between capitalist and unionist. Heck, we're currently even seeing such a struggle here on GR... :PI suppose there is a fear also, that once you give in to Unionists's demands, that they'll start to demand more and more.
But my entire point in argueing the logic here, has been that Wrightby was not paying the workers what he ALREADY owed them. They were not being paid at all. I would have seen the point if the workers were demanding higher pay, but the point of contention here is that they were not being paid at all.
Good catch about the straight line, btw! Also about Moses. I was wondering why the biblical name. Also, possibly indicative of a messiah?
Yes, I'm finding it rather hard to suss Judah out, as you'll see from my post in the next section.
I'm guessing (just guessing) that Judah feels a need to belong somewhere, that he has no clan or family, and that this is what the IC supplies to him and to others who love it. Of course, the IC is also a symbol of rebellion and freedom, which is, I reckon, why NC wants to destroy them. They would be destroying a symbol of insurrection.
Traveller wrote: "Good catch about the straight line, btw! Also about Moses. I was wondering why the biblical name. Also, possibly indicative of a messiah?"Ah—I thought that was specifically referenced in the book, but I finally found it on the cover blurb, so it's not canonical, but somebody else agreed: "The sprawling tale is told through the past-and-present eyes of three characters. The first is Cutter, a heartsick subversive who follows his lover, the messianic Judah Low, on a quest to return to the Iron Council hidden in the western wilds"
Tssk, that just shows you how spoilerific these cover blurbs can be. Haha, and to think how careful we've been not to say too much about what Cutter and co's quest was--meanwhile it's all out in the open on the blurb... #_#
To be clear, I searched the ebook for messiah, and didn't find it. Then I found messianic in the blurb, so searched for messia and found occurrences of messianic twice, later, but since they're both well past this part (and the first is a chapter beyond where I've read), I haven't read the passages where it occurs.
Okay. Love your new name, btw.
Derek (GR: TELL your users about the censorship policy!) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Good catch about the straight line, btw! Also about Moses. I was wondering why the biblical name. Also, possibly indicative of a messiah?"Ah—I thought that was specifically refe..."
And I have proposed that Judah is messianic in a way more consistent with Jesus,that Cutter is the chief disciple....could the promiscuous Ann-Hari be the magdelane?she certainly seems to be the most fanatical of all.
Cutter is so jealous of her,so self-absorbed with his idol Judah his whole commitment is suspect from the beginning.
Oh no... please don't spoilerise me, but I don't like the way this is going... let's keep those thoughts for the last thread, shall we, Mags? Many of us haven't finished the book yet, and I have a prickly feeling at the back of my neck that we're teetering over some huge spoilers here... :PGood thoughts, certainly, so let's get back to them later. :)
Btw! I might have forgotten to mention that the next thread is here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
Already some action going on there.
Traveller wrote: "Derek, yes, I see the point where there's a power struggle between capitalist and unionist. Heck, we're currently even seeing such a struggle here on GR... :PI suppose there is a fear also, that..."
Coincidentally, here's a story from today, about conditions only 3 years ago in Canada. Failing to pay employees in isolated conditions is alive and well.
Tree-planting company must answer to B.C. human-rights tribunal on working conditions
Derek (GR: TELL your users about the censorship policy!) wrote: "Coincidentally, here's a story from today, about conditions only 3 years ago in Canada. Failing to pay employees in isolated conditions is alive and well.. :P"
That is absolutely shocking, Derek, but it does kinda prove my point, if I may say so. Those people did actually have legal recourse against their masters. The government didn't send out soldiers to shoot them down. Sure, they were horrendously treated, and it was a gross exploitation of people's relative helplessness, but what that tree company did is not being condoned, if you see what I mean.
I'm not sure it does. Despite it being three years ago, and people being essentially enslaved, no criminal charges have been laid, and after decades of having "human rights tribunals", I've yet to see a ruling from one with any teeth. It looks to me very much as if it's been condoned.
Hmm, you mean "unofficially condoned"... At least they were ordered to pay even if they had not paid in full yet.
"The province’s Employment Standards Branch ordered the company to repay $260,000 in wages in 2011, but Ms. Khan said that not all of the wages have been paid."
Yeah, who knows what pressures are in play in such a situation. I presume there is no money left ?
No, I mean officially. This is criminal activity, but no criminal charges have been laid. They've been "ordered" to pay, but at least some of the victims are claiming they haven't been paid, yet—so, it's just a whitewash.
Wow, really enjoyed this section. Part gospel, part manifesto I think. Wrapping my brain around some things I wanted to discuss and will post in detail later.
Traveller wrote: "To me, the reshaping of the land is horrible, though. Nature gives us this beautiful variety, these mountains and ravines and waterfalls, hills and dales, woods and lakes and marshes....."just now had the chamce to come back to this thread and have to add how much I agree
Allen's post also made me re-read the thread again. We really have some good discussions here. :)..and Allen, hold on to your hat, our discussions become pretty lively at a point later on! I love the disparate personalities that take part in these discussions. We each seem to bring something different to the discussion, and I think that is great!
First, I'm going to put down some quick observations without reading all the past comments. Overall, I really enjoyed this "chapter" mostly because I was fascinated with the people, the remade, the society of the perpetual train, and the more poetic bent that CM seems to drift into during what I would call Judah's history. Although it seems really a history, or explanation, of the angst building in New Crobuzon and across the world.From the stiltspears on, we see a corporate world pushing an agenda of money. But it also is more I think. When the tycoon tells Judah that's he's going native and has seen it before, he references that the train is religion. At least that was my take. Then we move on to Judah leaving, coming back, leaving and every time he's lackadaisical - almost unemotional. It's a bit confusing and I think maybe I missed something under the surface. On the other hand, it would be nice to journey through life in that zen-like state, just watching and experiencing and not judging anything ... Which to me is the biggest point of this section. Judge not lest he be judged. Kind of hit home with me during his relationship with Ann-Hari. He exposed her to the world, but did not steer her or teach her, but let her become who she is of will be ... The woman who would in a sense say, workers of the world unite.
So, unionism, socialism (?), class struggle, building community, the frontier and pioneering, eventual democracy, etc., it's all here and afterward I understood why Cutter and company would be seeking out the Iron Council.
Then, Judah up and decides to leave again, and again I get upset with someone who I think should be a leader - in the trope of novel plots too - who just doesn't even try. Or attempts to try in later chapters when the train begins to move back toward New Crobuzon.
Also have to say I enjoyed getting closer to the remade characters, understanding them more. And understanding the nature of New Crobuzon's world through the eyes of those on the bottom rung of the world's ladder.
In a way, where PSS was a look into this world through the eyes of the well-to-do, the artists and the bourgeoisie (did I spell that right?) and politicians; and the Scar is an examination of outcasts and wanderers, pirates; Iron Council is a study of the working class that makes, and remakes, the world - they're the train that's constantly moving, and nobody really knows who's at the controls, themselves or the rulers.
I think I might have the beginnings of a review here :)
Also, I skipped all the environmentalism ties, but will weigh in on that later. We have issues here with coal mining and mountaintop removal that eerily parallel what's happening in this book.
Yip! I do hope that you read the other comments in this thread at some time. See them as a reply to your post, I guess.We all seem to agree on most of the aspects here.
Allen wrote: "He exposed her to the world, but did not steer her or teach her, but let her become who she is of will be…""Let"? I felt he was too apathetic to want her to be anything.
"bourgeoisie (did I spell that right?)"
Apparently. Didn't look right to me...
Apathetic is what I meant. Let was a poor word choice ... I meant to say that I had assumed early on their relationship she would become a disciple of sorts but nope. On the other hand maybe had he done that she would not have been led back to be the Iron Council's unionist :)
Yeah, its correct. bourgeoisie describes the class of people as a noun. Bourgeois or would be the adjective. Allen wrote: "Apathetic is what I meant. Let was a poor word choice ... I meant to say that I had assumed early on their relationship she would become a disciple of sorts but nope. On the other hand maybe had he..."
Give Ann Hari time. As for Judah, he's very much like the hermit scientist type. He seems to have two main obsessions, the Council and his golems. He certainly seems to feel more for Ann Hari than for anyone else, but she seems to be too much of a wild spirit ever to be tamed.
What do you think of my point that it might simply have been cheaper for Wrightby to have paid the workers, than to have lost them and the perpetual train and then to try to re-take them by force?
Like I said, if he still has cash to employ gendarmes, surely he could rather have used that cash to avoid the high drama that ensued and rather than risk his other investors pulling out when they heard of the trouble?
Traveller wrote: "What do you think of my point that it might simply have been cheaper for Wrightby to have paid the workers, than to have lost them and the perpetual train and then to try to re-take them by force?"Well, from a purely logical stance, you're right. Cheaper and easier but to the power-hungry, and to a lesser extent capitalists, it's not always about the cheapest way. It's about gambling on the future. If defeated, the lack of insurrection would have strengthened his hold on the worker class. Giving in could have meant less fortune in the long run. On the other hand, you make a good point that he was risking his investors pulling out, which meant his end, so hardly acting like a capitalist there?
And then I think sometimes people just go mad with the desire to be right or in control or in charge, what have you. Derek mentioned the mine strikes and Pinkertons. In my home state of Kentucky (and I grew up in the eastern coalfields, the first of my family's generations NOT to be a miner), mining and the debates between workers and the "boss class" had very little do with money. Search for and watch Matewan if you're interested in a neat parallel with IC. In a sense, this book and chapter really touched a lot of the past for me ... in a reflective, trying to understand my past way.
And, too, I have to think had CM taken a more logical course we would have lost something of the book's point. Since we know CM likes to play with words, I searched "Weather Wrightby" and found references to "whether right be" and this little gem from an interview (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200...
China says, "The golem won’t attack Weather Wrightby. It’s the only time in the book where a golem disobeys Judah. And it could be simply that Weather Wrightby has more powerful magic at his disposal. Whatever, who knows? But it’s also partly an intimation of the fact that the kind of intervention that Weather Wrightby does is not unrelated to the type of intervention that the golem is attempting to vindicate. Weather Wrightby, for all that he’s a bastard, and a murderer, and a capitalist, and an exploiter, he’s also a visionary who understands what it is to be a human intervening in the world."
I kind of skimmed the interview, and there's a lot more of China explaining IC but I'm not reading yet as I don't want it to color my impressions. (I'm almost finished.)
So, sure Wrightby could have avoided the high drama, but only for a while. I would have. But the Wrightbys of any world would not I think.
To expound on eastern Kentucky and West Virginia mine strikes and issues ... It's more about a way of life than money, even if money plays a role in the way of life. Both sides would kill people - you can find bullets today still on Blair Mountain in West Virginia - and go to church on Sunday. It was, and is war, about belief.Today, groups of people, usually poets and authors, those removed from the old mining towns (like me), gather in city centers and decry the practice of mountaintop removal, which for those who don't know is literally ripping off the top of a mountain to get the coal and dumping the detritus into neighboring valleys. Sounds like Ori's bunch doesn't it? Then, you have the "Friends of Coal" who pay extra money for their car license plates which state that slogan so the money can go to fight the "environmentalists who are trying to kill coal, our way of life and ruin our state." Everybody knows mining destroys the earth, but we need the coal; and everybody knows saving the mountains will cost jobs and we need jobs. It's about a path, really, a perpetual path not unlike the Iron Council - and whoever wins out gets to chart the course.
So it's interesting to read this book and see some of the same actors near me ... And while it seems easy to take sides, it's not really. Coal money put me through college so I could come here, read wonderful books and discuss deep philosophical points with friends around the world, and say that mining's a dead end and harmful to mother Earth. Quite a conflict. Just wish I had thought to write it down like China!
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "While Traveller seems to see Judah's lack of compassion for the stiltspears as an authorial defect, I see it as a character defect."The more and more I read of Judah, I tend to agree. He didn't take action then and I'm discouraged he will at any point - in fact I was surprised that he made the golem of dead people. Maybe he learned from this, his first encounter. His "inner" voice/being/whatever, grows and grows during this section but he's still so apathetic I find it hard to discern his purpose. Maybe he's just a prophet. (And I think someone mentioned that before, otherwise not sure why it popped out of my mind just now.)
Meanwhile, Wrightby is clearly not just a "capitalist". He's a man driven by religion.
I'm glad you said that, as had I marked that part in the book, where he tells Judah "Every one of us here ... is a missionary of a new church and there is nothing that will stop holy work." And he's very understanding of Judah's experience with the stiltspears, more so than an exploiter would be. Wrightby's got a vision and a fervour, and he knows everyone else has one, too. He knows that the "men and women are merely players." In a way, I think they're very much alike and that's what makes them both so powerful. They see a world in a naked way, unchained by day-to-day perception, glimpsing the web that it is. Maybe that's why CM threw in the Weaver scene. Maybe to remind us that they don't "feel the same cold" as Ann-Hari says later?
Allen wrote: "So it's interesting to read this book and see some of the same actors near me ... And while it seems easy to take sides, it's not really. Coal money put me through college so I could come here, read wonderful books and discuss deep philosophical points with friends around the world, and say that mining's a dead end and harmful to mother Earth. Quite a conflict. Just wish I had thought to write it down like China!"So right. But there's also the interesting side to this that coal mining—or any other environmentally damaging enterprise—actually has positive results, and much of the fighting between business and environmental interests comes from trying to define when the negatives outweigh the positives. It's hard to see that there was ever really an economic incentive to building the Transcontinental railroad. I think Weather Wrightby actually promised economic returns without every really intending to deliver.
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
Railsea (other topics)Embassytown (other topics)
Iron Council (other topics)
A Kiss Before the Apocalypse (other topics)
It starts out with Judah spending time with the stiltspears, observing their golemomancy.
This is a heartbreaking chapter. I can identify so strongly with what's being done in the marshes. I feel CM's anger here, I feel Judah's despair. I've seen this happening to places that I love.
I understand the initial incredulity and anger when the bulldozers move in, when beautiful groves of trees are uprooted and replaced with rubble, and eventually concrete... ugh, just writing this is making me feel emo all over again.
Of course overtly CM seems to be referring to "how America won the West" but it is a sickeningly recurring theme, of course. Of how blindly destructive the naked greed of profiteers can be.