Doorways in the Sand discussion
Doorways in the Sand
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Ready, set, go! (initial thoughts through Chapter 3)
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The beginning was fairly typical for Zelazny: seemingly random completely unrelated evens that will all come together by the end.
The whole rescue scene with wombat and kangaroo is really funny.
The whole rescue scene with wombat and kangaroo is really funny.
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So this is my first Zelanzy and my first time reading doorways. I am on chapter two now I just need to express my relief at the transitions. Fragments, bits and pieces time, and lo and behold, spaces between paragraphs indicating a new scene. The last book I read gave me whiplash. I don't have any feelings yet, except that this does not feel like it will be an unpleasant experience.
From now on, when I see someone I know lurking, I will say "I thought I saw an extra gargoyle..."
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Yes, the time hops are odd, but we get clued in that they are happening, and that makes all the difference.
"... or perhaps because of this..."Lolololll
Andreas wrote: "the translation didn't transport the archaic touch at all.There are other elements that didn't work in the translation"
Ah, I see - thank you!
Naomi wrote: "From now on, when I see someone I know lurking, I will say "I thought I saw an extra gargoyle...""LOL! Great name for we Doorways discussers: 'The Extra Gargoyles.' ;)
Hey! I don't want to be some "extra" gargoyle. I want to belong in the primary group. :) lol
Brad wrote: "Hey! I don't want to be some "extra" gargoyle. I want to belong in the primary group. :) lol"Bwah-ha-ha!!
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the musical stylings of 'Brad & His Extra Gargoyles'!" need coffee, too many late nights …
I just can't sing when people are watching. ; ;
Brad wrote: "I just can't sing when people are watching. ; ;"Neither can the Gargoyles … ;)
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Oh yes I did. I went there.
You don't think I see what you did???? I must be stoned not to see what you did! :)
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Do you really want me to awaken from some old government building, stumbling into some coffee house, to sit down and write lyrics for some death-metal band that is destined for no greater future than a forgettable post in a Zelazny thread on GR?Okay! I'm awake! *puff* Mostly! Where's the new gig?
:)
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Not death metal. Hard rock.
*groan*
Oh, now you've got me working on a chain gang all day long... :)
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Hey, hey, no use brining our gall bladders into this discussion... :)
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I can see people are having a blast in here (I totally want to be an Extra Gargoyle). Anyway, I have, after the kind of month that is generally banned by the Geneva Convention, finally gotten around to starting the book! So, some initial thoughts, both organized and... not. As mentioned, this is my first Zelazny book, and I am, I suspect, a fair bit younger than most of the Extra Gargoyles. So take my comments with that in mind, and judge them not too harshly.<> So, confession time. I didn't actually like the first chapter. Second was alright, but its the third which has me interested in reading onwards.
I think the main reason is that I found the university scene jarring. For better or worse, I've *been* the perpetual student for a while, having hung about one university or another for a decade now. And the setting as described resembles no university I have ever known. The idea that Wexroth is an academic counselor while in his mid-twenties is eyebrow raising to say the least, as is the idea that any university would actually *try* to get rid of a perpetual student like Fred, particularly if he's published papers. But! Academic culture can change, so we can put that aside.
('Fun' fact: Two years after Doorways in the Sand was published, in 1978 a Stanford graduate student named Theodore Streleski murdered his academic adviser after being informed that, despite having been pursuing a PhD in mathematics for nineteen years, he was not yet ready to finish)
<> I have heard Zelazny called a prose-poet on occasion, and there's definitely something phantasmagoric about his writing. It took me a while to figure out just what it was, but I think it's the fact that in Doorways, he uses very little in the way of transition of extraneous description. Consider the phone conversation with Hal Sidmore. It's just strings of dialogue. Very little framing, very little "he said, after having thought for a moments" or "I checked my watch"-style lines. Actually, not a great deal of description in general, I felt, which combined with the peculiar transitions lends a dreamlike quality to the book.
Or maybe I shouldn't be reading at half-past eleven on a worknight. This is also possible.
<> It's a novel perspective on sci-fi. Ostensibly, it is a futuristic novel. But actual futuristic elements seem sparse on the ground, other than the aliens and the crystal. I did very much like the conversation with other climbing professor, about how change seems imperceptible while you live through it, and only when you look back do you realize "Huh, things have changed." It appeals to the historian in me.
Mod
Funny, I remembered noting the dialogue markers as well, and appreciating the tremendous lack of "saids." In very inexperienced writing, there's a lot of "saids," as well as a lot of progressively odder replacements ("muttered," "replied," "murmured," etc) that I appreciated his skipping it altogether. But it isn't friendly to the inattentive.
Regarding your reading thoughts~I wonder how much also has to do with different university systems, American versus Russian, European--really, anywhere.
I get the feeling Fred is being pushed out because he's just annoying enough to the stodgy administration, referencing the policies put in place for declaring majors and against climbing. I didn't find it particularly anomalous as there are places that, despite being a university, remain quite conservative to challenging norms. Now universities are evaluated differently, and I've seen UW Madison as scored for % degrees in 4 years, and % degrees in 5 years. Here colleges can be 40 thousand a year so people want to know about financial commitment.
Well, the month was almost entirely self-inflicted, though I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. But defense, last minute dissertation revisions, conference (I did get to fly to the Cambridge in the UK though, that was nice), and now I've got a stack of finals as tall as my dog. I think at a certain point my brain gave up and retreated into Ciaphas Cain novels, which while fun, are not exactly Zelaznian-level literature.Re: Dialogue Markers
That's just the most obvious example, I think, but in general the book feels description-light. *Personally*, they never bother me, but their sudden absence does make for a weird sort of style.
Re: Universities
Well, I've been in American universities the whole time, both public and private. I think... what made me dubious was the idea that one individual could so annoy a university despite being ultimately pretty harmless. In my experience, a university is a big and lumbering bureaucratic colossus, where the hard part is getting *noticed*... and where the general impetus is to *keep* people so long as they pay money.
Ultimately, I wouldn't make too much of this. It doesn't mesh with my experiences, but I fully acknowledge that I do not have infinite experience with universities. And in any case, Doorways is not meant to be a perfectly realistic book. I think it only bugged me because I've been stewing in this world for so long, otherwise I'd have just moved on.
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Mine was small, 1600 people, so it was proportionately easier to get noticed. But then, likely not so many majors to avoid graduating for thirteen years, either.
I went to a large undergraduate university where there were many perpetual students. This was an expensive private university and they had no problems with it as long as they were getting your money. That seemed to be the case for Fred, so I was a bit surprised as well. That said, he did make himself quite the liability with his climbing and I can see them wanting to get rid of him for that alone. That advisor would have been brought up on complaints so fast, but again, they might have sided with him if they saw Fred as a liability. That advisor represents my least favorite kind of person: the one who wants to make you do what they want you to do because they don't like "people like you" based on some shallow judgment they've made in your absence. Blech.
Of course, that whole conceit about the advisor and the school trying to get rid of the perpetual student is not meant, in any way, to be taken seriously or to be realistic. It's meant to be absurd. The logic is Dickensian. I am certain Zelazny was not trying to create a believable relationship between Fred and the university.
Jason, I would not argue that he was trying to create a believable relationship, per se, but I would argue that it should be believable, if somewhat absurd, within the context of the story. Otherwise, what's the point? And I'm saying that within the context, I could buy it. I mean, the situation is not setup to be unbelievable, in any case. You just have to think a bit and try to see where they might be coming from. If I can't find the angle, that's when I start to say "this makes no sense! That would never happen! This is so dumb!" And that's when I get annoyed with the story. That didn't happen here, although I did dislike that advisor, even though he seems to have seen the light in the end. We sometimes have to forgive the young ones.
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Carol. wrote: "I think we were definitely meant to dislike the advisor. After all, he was a pipe smoker."Which means, he was an alien, or a kangaroo, or both.
Mikhail wrote: "The idea that Wexroth is an academic counselor while in his mid-twenties is eyebrow ... as is the idea that any university would actually *try* to get rid of a perpetual student like Fred ..."For advising at the class selection level this has changed radically since the 60s/70s (computerized registration killed this nonsense off). Being an academic advisor was (is) a chore most faculty avoided, the more tenure the fewer undergrad advisees as a gen'l rule thus the younger/newer Profs got stuck with it. They had to sign off on one's enrollment card before submission to the registrar, an undergrad formality at my public university (where it took an entire day standing in lines to accomplish simple course enrollment, dodging velociraptor attacks the while.) ;)
If it was a small private university they might-maybe-possibly have tried to chase out a perpetual student, but at my almost-free, huge (23,000 student) public Univ. no one got paid enough to care.
Love your 1978 student-murders-prof trivia - thanks for that!
Jason, you're right, and yet... it's interesting. I accepted the acrophile professor or the one who got kicked out due to involvement with a donkey without batting an eye. Whereas the improbable youth of Wexroth and the university acting contrary to my understanding of its bureaucratic impulses lobbed me right out of suspension of disbelief. Interesting how the mind works.With regards to universities... I remember still having to visit my undergraduate adviser to get her to sign off on my course selections, which I then had to input into a computer. I think I may have been caught right during the extinction event.
Also, university size was one factor that I hadn't considered, but which would go a long way towards explaining things. I've never attended a Uni with less than 15,000 students, and 25,000 is more typical. Whereas something Carol's size might take more of an interest. And something smaller still, like King's College in Cambridge (the university is in Cambridge, I believe it was mentioned, though I haven't quite sussed out whether it's the British or the American one), something like that would make the situation more believable still (~400 undergraduates).
I think our main character might have made himself known -- and a nuisance -- even in a quite large university.Though with the number of majors they've added over the years, it's probably growing.
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Doorways in the Sand
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It didn't, the translation didn't transport the archaic touch at all.
There are other elements that didn't work in the translation, like the hilarious
""Enter, pray."
"In which order?"
O bless this house, by all means, first. It could use a little grace."
"Bless," I said, stepping in.
Because there is no such thing as "pray" in German in that context.