EI: The Einstein Intersection and the magic circle

[Andrew]

I was watching a video about the magic circle of immersion this morning, and it made me think again about why I didn't find this book engrossing.

For me, there were two main things in EI that disrupted the circle.

First up the quotes at the start of the chapters. I know they're not an uncommon feature of books, but using quotes from Delaney's own journal put him as author front and centre of the reading experience, so that I felt more like I was reading a story by an author and less like I was sharing an experience with the characters.

Secondly the importance of the mythical structure. I'm not terribly well read on classical mythology, and so didn't naturally make the connections. I think that knowing the references would have made some of the events make more sense and so created a sense of immersion in the story's own logic. But for someone who doesn't know the references, or who has to look them up, then it's less immersive.

Any thoughts? Agree, disagree, noticed something else that sheds light on this?

And has anybody got other examples of books that show something about immersion?

[Tamahome]

To appreciate most of the new wave stuff too, you have to be familiar with 'standard science fiction', to see what they're doing differently. So I guess that breaks the magic circle for people like Delany and Joanna Russ, if you don't know it.

[terpkristin]

Interestingly, I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about classical mythology, the Orpheus story, and world myths. I took a number of classes on modern mythology, classic mythology, and mythology in other countries in college and have maintained an interest in mythologies of the world. I don't know that having this background enriched my reading experience with The Einstein Intersection.

For me, as with you, the pre-chapter quotes really took me out of the story. When I usually read them, they're usually much shorter and better-formatted. The formatting in the Kindle edition made it sometimes hard to realize what was going on, and the overall length of the quotes took me out of the reading progress.

The language also pulled me out of the story. I don't mind books with "complicated" language (and in fact, I really enjoyed the Sloosha's Crossing part of Cloud Atlas), but I found it hard to focus on in this book. I also liked Infinite Jest, which also had hard language, but...maybe what happened here was a combination of the pre-chapter quotes combined with a shorter-than-typical story so it was hard to get sucked in. With Infinite Jest, I had a much longer time to "feel comfortable" (and fewer distractions as it were), whereas with The Einstein Intersection, every time I'd start to get in a rhythm, I'd get pulled out by those infernal quotes or the book was over....

Maybe?

[Andrew]

That point about the short book's an interesting one. I've never thought about different approaches to writing working differently in texts of different lengths, but it makes sense. And it would make sense that having long stretches where you just lose yourself in the characters adds to immersion.

Thinking about the language, while it didn't push me out of the story - I wasn't constantly noticing word choices or reaching for a dictionary, as with some authors - it didn't disappear into the background enough to pull me fully into the story, so though I didn't realise it that probably didn't help.

[Camilla]

terpkristin wrote: "Interestingly, I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about classical mythology, the Orpheus story, and world myths. I took a number of classes on modern mythology, classic mythology, and myt..."

I couldn't agree more. I'm literally a classics major and I don't feel like the fact that I knew what the author was talking about enriched my experience at all. And most of the references were very obvious (they literally told you the ones you needed to know). I just don't think the book was good enough to pull the whole thing off. It just reads like a pretentious first novel by a promising new author.

The quotes add nothing and the story and ideas meander aimlessly.