Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
Ice
Ice - Spine 2014
>
Discussion - Week One - Ice - Chapter 1 - 7
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Any thoughts about that?
I wondered if she was some sort of metaphor for drug addiction, given the author's history. She tantalizes him, draws him irresistibly to her, but is at the same time is completely passive. He is very ambivalent toward her - fiercely protective but abusive at the same time. She is almost part of his hallucinations. He builds her up in his head but when he finally finds her is often let down by her reaction (or lack of) to him. They both seem hardly real, part of the background of chaos and confusion. As a reader I loved the landscape she unfolds and how well she gives us a sense of unreality through the hallucinations and descriptions of the snow/ice. You never quite know if what you're reading is real or in his head.
I found the warden to be interesting, in many ways the exact antithesis of the girl. Again I wondered how much of him was the narrator's projection - in many ways he seems like the type of person the narrator wants to be. He seems caught between these two opposing forces - the fragile passivity of the girl and the overpowering force of the warden.
And throughout I was amazed at this was written in the 1960's, it seems so contemporary with global warming and our cultural obsession with apocalypses. I'm on the west coast but I kept thinking how many people in the east coast this winter would empathize with the ice overtaking the cities.
Mod
I imagine that her drug use and her mental health problems both come into play in this novel. The fear, paranoia, danger, and uncertainty seem like the psychic territory of an addict/patient. What amazes me is how she is able to keep everything in balance even though the premise and circumstances are so strange. Somewhere in her distorted mind lived a lucid and cogent writer.
The narrator at times wonders if he and the warden are one person or two - kind of like the narrator in Fight Club and his strange relationship with Tyler Durden.
Almost seems like the narrator is a stalker of the girl and everything he thinks he knows about her is delusional. Or it's as if he's schizophrenic and is removed from reality. it definitely reminds me of what I call " struggle dreams" wherein I keep trying to get somewhere or do something and am thwarted again and again by weird and bizarre goings on.
Initial reactions. Kavan’s prose seems elusive compared to Asylum Piece. Very impressionistic. If my thoughts stray for just a second I have to reread the previous page. I’m finding it requires a decent amount of concentration on my part, but that could also be I’m reading it on breaks at work with things on my mind. Either way isn’t that why I’m a member of Brain Pain? Make me do a little work with the old neurons. Having only read Asylum Piece I’m wondering how often Kavan employed a male narrator. One of the subtle mindfucks she employs is when she suddenly slides into the mysterious and persecuted “girl’s” perspective. Page 35 being a jarring example when she is raped by the Warden.
-We see signs of the narrator’s dark undertone when he forces the key from the landlady. “She would not oppose me again.”
-Ah the strange day dream of a viking war party. The girl found dead. p.54 “I alone should have done the breaking with tender love…” wtf narrator?
Ok by Page 85 the narrator is definitely a part-time sadist, at least in his thoughts. After reading Asylum Piece where the narrators are always the victim it’s interesting to see this guy take on the role of aggressor, though he is constantly persecuted as well. Weird freakin’ book. Not entirely sure I’m into the utter vagueness of it all yet.
“Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me. At times this could be disturbing. Now, for instance.” p. 6If, Jim, I had paid closer attention to that sentence I would have been better prepared for the events that followed!
Mod
True that...
For your penance, take a day off work and reread the book, LOL!
POV changes frequently, as does setting, danger level, sense of reality versus dream, and so on. The only seeming constant is the narrator's obsession ans the approach of the Ice.
I'm planning on rereading it too - luckily its pretty short. I feel like I spent so much time trying to figure out what was real and what was hallucination. Do you guys think the shifts in perspective (for instance when the warden and the girl are escaping the town) are "real" or are they the narrator's hallucinations? With his identity confusion with the warden I feel like it could be either.
Mod
I would say that most of the general actions "happened", such as escaping from one place and arriving at another, but a lot of the specific details and shifts are likely just the narrator's perceptions/recollections through the fog of his insomnia and drug use. Then again, this is very much speculative fiction, so it's hard to call any of it "real"...
Holly wrote: "Do you guys think the shifts in perspective (for instance when the warden and the girl are escaping the town) are "real" or are they the narrator's hallucinations? With his identity confusion with the warden I feel like it could be either. "Although the book is strange from the start the first bit that really made me start double-checking what I was reading was in section five, where the narrator slips out of the window of his lodgings and walks into the forest (chasing the girl), the narrative switches from first to third person, but now describing the girl's actions and her surrealistic fears. It then switches back to the first person male narrator who stumbles into a war-zone. There's a quote in this section which might also sum up the readers' feelings: 'I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.' Even more bizarrely, the narrator then returns home, almost as if nothing has happened.
This shift from the narrator to a third person description of the girl and the warden happens with the section you mentioned Holly. I'm not worrying too much about what is, or might be real and what isn't - at least, not at this stage. I think I'll suspend judgement on that tricky aspect of this novel at this stage. :-)
I'm starting chapter 7. This story is challenging and enjoyable. It reminds me of the 'Choose own adventure series' I enjoyed as a kid, with less structure. Many plot options to choose from! Joking aside, I can't help wondering if there is some pattern in here, a narrative thread(s) that can be followed. Or are we meant to accept the tangled alternative narrators and plot threads and just go with the general flow? Either way, I like it. Very different from anything I've read, though there are obvious comparisons to be made to Kafka (whose short stories I'm slowly reading and so far, I'm preferring kavan's style).
Jen wrote: "I'm starting chapter 7. This story is challenging and enjoyable. It reminds me of the 'Choose own adventure series' I enjoyed as a kid, with less structure. Many plot options to choose from! Joking..."Ha! That's funny, I totally get the "Choose Your Own Adventure Vibe" because the narrator feels like he keeps hitting reset.
I'm coming into this discussion a bit late; I did not start Ice until this weekend. Currently on Chapter 6.It reminds of a few other books I've read recently -- The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, The Viaduct -- in regards to the nondescript (or undescribed) protagonist, the blurring of reality versus imagination/hallucination, and the almost haphazard wandering of the main character. It's a style I've gotten used to (and which, as Jen mentioned, likely started with Kafka) and which I enjoy, and Ice appears to be a good example of the style.
The titular ice serves more as an encroaching sense of dread, so far, than any world-ending phenomenon. Sure, the towns we see are all in ruins, but the locals are living life as usual and refer to the ice as an almost seasonal phenomenon.
Mod
It's implied that the ruined towns/cities are the result of an ongoing war. The encroaching ice seems to be there to finish the job...
I just started this, only like 10 months late! It's surprisingly good, so much so that I am now wondering if there is a secret trove of weird 60s and 70s fiction that I've never read and should.
Mod
Those were very druggy days, and Kavan was a long-time junkie, so yes, you should...
It reminds me some of the two Susan Sontag books we read, and also of Angela Carter (though the book of hers I read I did not like).
Huh, I seem to have added the Inverted World to my to-read list, and then forgotten all about it. (Past Nicole is always doing stuff like that.) Thanks for the reminder.
Brain Pain
Books mentioned in this topic
The Inverted World (other topics)The Viaduct (other topics)
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (other topics)
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (other topics)
Our unnamed narrator tells us up front exactly how unreliable his narration will be.
“Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me. At times this could be disturbing. Now, for instance.” p. 6
“But the consequences of the traumatic experience were still evident in the insomnia and headaches from which I suffered. The drugs prescribed for me produced horrible dreams, in which she always appeared as a helpless victim, her fragile body broken and bruised. These dreams were not confined to sleep only, and a deplorable side effect was the way I had come to enjoy them.” p. 8 – 9
So we have an insomniac, pill-popping mercenary, with a tenuous grip on reality, obsessed with a girl who is damaged goods and living with a dangerous rival, who appears to enjoy playing sadistic games with the narrator and his obsession, in a world imperiled by rapidly changing climatic conditions, crumbling governments, martial law, and possible nuclear annihilation as a background threat. Whoa, Dorothy! We ain’t be in Kanzas no more!!
To avoid spoilers, please limit comments to p. 5 – 85.