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King Rat: Part One: "A London Sometin'…Tek 9" to Chapter Four
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That first paragraph of the book (the first two lines of which Derek quoted above) reminded me of why I so enjoy Mieville. I am curious though, what are the great gas-cylinders he mentions? Are they part of the London skyline, or...?I don't think it was the jargon that put me off last time. I mean, every Mieville has a new language. That's part of really good scifi, and as a linguist, the part I like/respect the most. But I have already started a list of slang which I can post here. Or do we want a separate thread for vocab?
I suspect the "great gas cylinders" are no longer part of the skyline, but when I was a child they were everywhere. There was one directly across the road from my aunt's house, and when I was there in 2010, there it was — gone!They're storage facilities for coal gas, used for heating and originally lights. I don't think they're needed now that they have North Sea gas. They're essentially two enormous cylinders, one inside the other, and the two cylinders spread apart as the internal pressure increases. Always seemed like an accident waiting to happen to me…. Especially when they're so close to housing.
I've set up a vocabulary thread, here.
I have only become away of rhyming slang recently---less than a year ago. Consequently, while I can recognize it for what it is, it can sometimes be a bit confusing, especially when the particularly obscured form is used. I'm fortunate I was near a source of Internet connectivity when I read the scene introducibg King Rat, otherwise I would have been leafing through the book trying to figure out who this Barnaby person is. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who finds Saul difficult to identify with. When he's not rude and rash, he's snivelling, so there's not much to recommend him, at least in Part 1. Things do indeed seem to improve some in Part 2, fortunately.
More than anything the setting and premise remind me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere at the outset, but that may change.
Yes. I'm pretty sure I said that Neverwhere reminded me of King Rat in my review :-) I forgot to note Barnaby when I came across him, even though that was the point that screams "we need to brush up on our rhyming slang."
Here's a couple of bits that I enjoyed in this first section:- The dark dwindled. Daylight, wan and anaemic, had done what it could by seven o'clock.
Sounds almost Pratchett-ian.
- to piss on your chips
which reminded me of an old Yiddish saying, though it doesn't mean the same thing, 'don't pee on my back and tell me it's rain'.
I've marked a couple of passages (in the next section I think) where he's given such animated descriptions of inanimate objects. Which reminds me very much of Un Lun Dun
Like that. Animated descriptions of inanimate ... trademark China. Can't wait to, ahem, tuck in to this book :)
Ok, I actually finished it today, and now I feel ready for discussion (somehow, being only partway through it last week made me feel as though I was so not ready to even know myself what I thought of it).It's far from Mieville's best (those would have to be 'The Scar' and 'Embassytown', of course), but it would have looked amazing had it been penned by most other writers than CM.
The opening lines of chapter 1 also reminded me a lot of 'Perdido Street Station'. It's like I can imagine Mieville spreading his literary wings, gearing up for reimagining of London as New Crobuzon. The descriptions are his overall strong part, I believe.
The resemblance to 'Neverwhere' is striking, too - and Saul really reminds me of Gaiman's Richard Mayhew. I actually had to look up to see which story was first - and it was Gaiman's, both TV series and the book.
As for the Cockney slang - reading through some sentences reminded me of reading English books without a dictionary back when my English was still rather shaky - you have to resort to figuring stuff out from context alone, and it worked (as I discovered, venturing to the Vocab section later - thanks, Derek!)
It's far better than The Scar, of course! (Nataliya and I have been arguing about The Scar for at least two years, I think)I doubt Neverwhere preceded King Rat by enough to matter (unless the authors already knew each other). As Miéville's first published novel, it's unlikely that it wasn't at least partly finished before Neverwhere, the TV series, aired. Still, it's not unlikely that Miéville might have known of Neverwhere before the general public did.
I agree that the protagonists have similarities. Overall, I prefer Saul. Richard basically denies what he wants until it's very nearly too late. Saul starts the story as pretty much a lost soul: a fairly typical teenager! But when he's introduced to his rat-ness, he embraces it wholeheartedly.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I agree that the protagonists have similarities. Overall, I prefer Saul. Richard basically denies what he wants until it's very nearly too late. Saul starts the story as pretty much a lost soul: a fairly typical teenager! But when he's introduced to his rat-ness, he embraces it wholeheartedly."How old is Saul? Apparently he was born in late 1972, but he does act like a teenager. It seems at some point it was mentioned that he is in his early twenties, which would have been ok to show him as a young man just a tad behind in emotional development, as we often see with somewhat overgrown teenagers - but he would have been a fully grown adult by 1998.
And now I looked up the birth year of Mieville, and it's 1972. A protagonist of the same exact age as the author - who would have expected that? ;) Stephen King does that a lot, in his books that feature younger characters - those are all born in 1947 or whereabouts. But to not get distracted - if Saul is in his early 20s (and part of me wants to say 22, from something that was mentioned at one point in the book), I guess we have a fairly good idea how young CM was when writing this book - and why it reads indeed like a work of a very young person (but, of course, already immensely talented, but still needing a few years to hone his writing ability).
As for Saul embracing his rat-ness - lets just say that having a snack while reading the garbage food eating experience was not too smart of a choice. I made sure that for the rest of this book I did not have any food around me, since the loving descriptions of rotten food apparently make my stomach feel a bit unhappy.
And more on the rat-ness - what I actually thought strange was that he accepted the truth about his origin without a shred of doubt; I guess the call of blood was just that strong. Richard Mayhew in 'Neverwhere' did spend more time clutching at what one could think of as a comfortable sanity.
Oh, and 'The Scar' is all that and a bag of chips ;)
Even though I said teenager, I did for some reason think he was 22. Which I should have said, because I was really trying to make the point that at the beginning he seems immature. He's definitely over twenty: "To his father this could only mean that Saul was paralyzed in the face of a terrifying and vast future…. Saul had emerged, passed twenty unscathed…", and a cryptic comment from Peter, when they meet, suggests he's 25: "You’re a fucking abortion. If you don’t dance to my tune, you don’t belong in this world. Twenty-five years in the planning, and here’s the rat’s secret weapon.."Interesting that they were born in the same year. Anyone who tries to claim there's nothing of autobiography in anything they write is only lying to himself!
"what I actually thought strange was that he accepted the truth about his origin without a shred of doubt; I guess the call of blood was just that strong."
Definitely. CM certainly convinced me that that was the case. And I agree that the descriptions of the food were stomach turning. Which I think is part of what made it so clear that this was a case of Nature over Nurture. We, the readers, are all repulsed to some degree by the food, but not Saul. He simply can't be quite human.
"Oh, and 'The Scar' is all that and a bag of chips ;)"
Yes! Pure junk food!
Nataliya wrote: "The resemblance to 'Neverwhere' is striking, too - and Saul really reminds me of Gaiman's Richard Mayhew. ..."Yep. I always thought of Richard as more collected, and almost along for the ride, and I liked him. Saul not so much at first. Mostly because of the snivelling that J points out. (Although truth be told I'd probably be such should I ever find myself in the same situation.)
On the other hand, it's refreshing to see a character in a murder-mystery plot that's just downright real. The stark reality of being given someone else's peed in clothes is not what you see in mainstream tales or TV.
I just wanted to scream at Saul, "Just talk, tell them all you're thinking, stop holding it in." But we are the ever-knowing reader when we say that, and then that frustration builds so much that I'm ready and willing to believe Mieville about who King Rat is and accept Saul's willingness to go with him. Well-played author, well played.
Oh, and thanks everyone for the age discussion. I was wondering. He did seem like a teenager. But I also got the feel throughout of that vagabond-like drifting through life mentality of today's millenials...
Nataliya wrote: "As for Saul embracing his rat-ness - lets just say that having a snack while reading the garbage food eating experience was not too smart of a choice. I made sure that for the rest of this book I did not have any food around me, since the loving descriptions of rotten food apparently make my stomach feel a bit unhappy...."Funny. My wife and daughter and I were at a restaurant last week when instead of our usual "tell about your day" I suggested we "tell about what we were reading." Both of them have forever banned me from doing that at dinnertime again.
But it was one of my favorite parts, so far, because ... "He was changing from the inside out." What an image.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Oh, and 'The Scar' is all that and a bag of chips ;)"Yes! Pure junk food! "
Your denial of the greatness of Mieville's best work still hurts, Derek! ;)
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Re-reading it, I'm struck by how much the opening of Chapter One feels like Perdido Street Station. Which shouldn't be terribly surprising as New Crobuzon is a thinly veiled London!"
That had struck me as well, you know.
...as well as the... really unlikeableness of the characters... more so so far, than in any of CM's novels that I can think of.
King Rat says "This is the city where I live. It shares all the points of yours and theirs, but none of its properties."
Again, a common theme, to be revisited most clearly in The City & the City, but also in Un Lun Dun and to a lesser extent in most of his tales. If he isn't superimposing topographies, he's investigating the interfaces between them.
The way that King rat manages to slip through interstices and to all the 'inbetween' places, made me think I must have been a bit of 'rat' myself sometime in my childhood. (Rather a cat than a rat, though, since I really really dislike rats.) ...because as a child, I used to imagine myself as a cat who could run through alleyways and over roofs--and reading these first few chapters somehow made me feel that China himself must have done something similar as a child, heheheh.
Don't start me thinking of you as a cat, Traveller. It's going to affect our friendship. My wife's cat is, you might say, in the dog-house right now. He peed on the bed Sunday night (my side, of course), and left three turds in the laundry room. It's been warfare, since.
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Don't start me thinking of you as a cat, Traveller. It's going to affect our friendship. My wife's cat is, you might say, in the dog-house right now. He peed on the bed Sunday night (my side, of co..."...sounds like your cat is getting old... :(
Just to reassure you, I used to like cats as a kid, but not anymore. They're too destructive. Haven't had one in years. I prefer dogs. ;)
J. wrote: "I have only become away of rhyming slang recently---less than a year ago. Consequently, while I can recognize it for what it is, it can sometimes be a bit confusing, especially when the particularl..."Hmm. I actually do have sympathy for Saul. I mean... in spite of the awkwardness between him and his father, his father had been good to him, and Saul had not really hated or even disliked his father--just felt awkward with him.
So,it must have been a huge shock when his father died. I cried (and snivelled) when my father died, even though I was already fully an adult, and even though I had even more of a love-hate relationship with my own father than Saul had. (And even though Saul's father was probably a nicer man than my own father... :P)
I cry and snivel about my father's premature death, still, almost twenty years later. I don't think it's really how Saul deals with the aftermath of the death that made him unsympathetic. After all, he's promptly arrested for murder by a detective who's already made up his mind about a whole scenario centred on Saul. But we already start to dislike Saul on his way home. He spends the whole trip whingeing about how much he dislikes living with his father, but he's living with his father! I was just shouting at the book: "So move out, you whiney git!"
Have you read Lolita? Now, Humbert is a protagonist that to me, was waaayyy easier to hate than Saul-almost from the word go.
Hey Traveller ... You said "interstices" and it made me think of TC&TC, and you know this other rat London ... ratdon ... and the fact it's always been there, just people sort of looked the other way, and there are detectives, makes me wonder if China already had another novel ready to write? At least in his mind. :)
Allen wrote: "Hey Traveller ... You said "interstices" and it made me think of TC&TC, and you know this other rat London ... ratdon ... and the fact it's always been there, just people sort of looked the other w..."Yes, the more one reads of his earlier work, the more it seems as if he does seem to be focused on certain themes. With King Rat, I can't help wondering why he seems to revel in ickiness so much. Perhaps his way of rebelling against fantasy that is too 'flowery' and has too much (in his words) "rural nostalgia"?
Traveller wrote: "Perhaps his way of rebelling against fantasy that is too 'flowery' and has too much (in his words) "rural nostalgia"?"Are you referring to the known socialist dislike of Tolkien themes in fantasy?
Nataliya wrote: "Are you referring to the known socialist dislike of Tolkien..."It's a little more personal for Miéville, as he's come out pretty firmly against Tolkien and his brand of fantasy. "rural nostalgia" is from Moorcock (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009...), but quoted by many, including CM.
Yip, what Derek said. :)
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Re-reading it, I'm struck by how much the opening of Chapter One feels like Perdido Street Station. Which shouldn't be terribly surprising as New Crobuzon is a thinly veiled London!
"The trains that enter London arrive like ships sailing across the roofs. They pass between towers jutting into the sky like long-necked beasts and the great gas-cylinders wallowing in dirty scrub like whales."
As Saul takes the "tube" to his home, he passes the Gaumont State cinema. I'm sure that's the theatre that plays a significant part in The Tain, but I no longer have a copy of the story to check.
Saul's treatment by the police reflects a common Miéville theme. As a shaven-headed Marxist who lived through the Brixton riots, I suspect China is not given to a lot of faith in the police.
King Rat says "This is the city where I live. It shares all the points of yours and theirs, but none of its properties."
Again, a common theme, to be revisited most clearly in The City & the City, but also in Un Lun Dun and to a lesser extent in most of his tales. If he isn't superimposing topographies, he's investigating the interfaces between them.
Many people have trouble with this novel, and I think it may be the prevalence of dialect. We do all know what Cockney Rhyming Slang is, I hope? On my first read, I just skimmed right by all that. I was born in South London (which does NOT make me Cockney, but close enough for most people), and much of the lingo seemed natural to me, but could be pretty hard for many people. I think that Miéville has deliberately steered clear of this kind of dialect in later tales.
If you need help, I'll put up a mini-dictionary of the words I notice, but as I said it seems pretty natural so I don't notice all of them. And it's 50 years since I lived there, so I don't know a lot of the slang either.
Saul's also not a very likable character, and King Rat far less so, which is usually a killer for me. I usually can't stand stories where I can't empathize with the characters, but I think we see Saul changing almost from the very beginning, which is redemptive — both for Saul and the story.
A technical publishing note. The copyright notice on this e-book says "The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without … DRM…. You may not print or post this e-book or make … publicly available in any way." Thank you! I despise publishers who try to put restrictions on the way I can use an e-book I've purchased ("try", because those conditions are often only legal in the US).