Saturday, 24 September 2011
But Then . . .
But then, I've got a couple of posts under "publicity" which are nothing but lists, so really what I should say is . . . DOH!!!!
The Literary List
There's a brilliant parody of A. S. Byatt's latest novel, Ragnorok: The End of the Gods in the latest Private Eye (No 1297)
The writer mocks her propensity for lists (in this instance, types of crabs, and fish) and I was reminded of all the times I hadn't read a book because, on flipping through it, I'd encountered a list. Two prominent examples -- Zadie Smith's The Autograph Hunter -- a list of different types of breakfasts enjoyed by various nations. And most recently, The Pale King by Thomas Foster Wallace. The latter presents the reader with a list of plants growing on the outskirts of a mid-west city. That's on the first page, I believe. And that's where I stopped forever more -- hundreds of pages to go.
Once upon a time, in a waiting room in the misty past, a bore with time to fill and not enough content between his ears to fill it, attempted to protract a casual conversation with me by listing all the cds in his collection. He didn't get past the first page either. But he did at least elucidate what the literary list is used for, and by whom.
The writer mocks her propensity for lists (in this instance, types of crabs, and fish) and I was reminded of all the times I hadn't read a book because, on flipping through it, I'd encountered a list. Two prominent examples -- Zadie Smith's The Autograph Hunter -- a list of different types of breakfasts enjoyed by various nations. And most recently, The Pale King by Thomas Foster Wallace. The latter presents the reader with a list of plants growing on the outskirts of a mid-west city. That's on the first page, I believe. And that's where I stopped forever more -- hundreds of pages to go.
Once upon a time, in a waiting room in the misty past, a bore with time to fill and not enough content between his ears to fill it, attempted to protract a casual conversation with me by listing all the cds in his collection. He didn't get past the first page either. But he did at least elucidate what the literary list is used for, and by whom.
Saturday, 3 September 2011
Does Not Suck
House of the Vampire
by George Sylvester Viereck (1907)
Here at Feedbooks
I’ll give vampires this much, they’re marginally less boring than zombies, even the modern incarnations – dreary and emotive teens with a flossing obsession. But still, considering how very socially inadequate all these creatures are, you really have to wonder why they "excite" the "imaginations" of so many contemporary "authors".
There’s no doubt that over the past hundred years technology has advanced, but maybe for related reasons, the originality of human imagination has declined. Thus we have Viereck’s Victorian vampire story, set in New York amongst the artistic elite, where the essence being absorbed by the monster is not a bodily fluid, but ideas and the imagination itself. The monster, by the way, has a passing resemblance to Lord Henry in Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey, and one senses Wilde’s influence throughout.
In fact, House of the Vampire works better as a novel than Dorian Grey. Although Viereck cannot duplicate Wilde’s brilliant wit, his story mounts in tension and produces a truly disturbing climax. True, the reader is obliged to think about aesthetics along the way, but the author seems aware that he must go easy on the reader’s brain, breaking the story into short chapters. Good for the morning commute. Strange, but it could have been written to be published as an ebook.
Incidentally, the heroine at one point alludes to the existence of hyperbolic geometry. This indicates an intellectual curiosity that’s striking these days because it seems so rare.
by George Sylvester Viereck (1907)
Here at Feedbooks
I’ll give vampires this much, they’re marginally less boring than zombies, even the modern incarnations – dreary and emotive teens with a flossing obsession. But still, considering how very socially inadequate all these creatures are, you really have to wonder why they "excite" the "imaginations" of so many contemporary "authors".
There’s no doubt that over the past hundred years technology has advanced, but maybe for related reasons, the originality of human imagination has declined. Thus we have Viereck’s Victorian vampire story, set in New York amongst the artistic elite, where the essence being absorbed by the monster is not a bodily fluid, but ideas and the imagination itself. The monster, by the way, has a passing resemblance to Lord Henry in Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey, and one senses Wilde’s influence throughout.
In fact, House of the Vampire works better as a novel than Dorian Grey. Although Viereck cannot duplicate Wilde’s brilliant wit, his story mounts in tension and produces a truly disturbing climax. True, the reader is obliged to think about aesthetics along the way, but the author seems aware that he must go easy on the reader’s brain, breaking the story into short chapters. Good for the morning commute. Strange, but it could have been written to be published as an ebook.
Incidentally, the heroine at one point alludes to the existence of hyperbolic geometry. This indicates an intellectual curiosity that’s striking these days because it seems so rare.
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