So, what happens on a Friday here, in this libraries of libraries?
Nothing much.
I have been sick, however, the last week - and I took the last two days off just to get some cough-less sleep. I spent most of it knocked out, but also listening to the radio, watching a few films, and reading Doris Lessing's A Briefing before a Descent into Hell.
At one point in this book, I thought: what the hell is she on about? She's just giving me mystical nonsense rambling. I didn't know what the book was about when I started reading it and all that kept me going was that I'd read other books by her which I really liked.
Even though, there's something eerie about Lessing's books. I've not read her latest but from her reviews it sounds fascinating. It's about the origin of men - not the origin of humans, but the origins of men, when they are first born by originally women-only humans.
There's a certain strain of science-fiction/fantasy that seems to include Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, eh....Stansilaw Lem, and maybe just maybe Iain M. Banks (if he wasn't so obsessed with making stuff up). It's uh, uhm, it's - it's ahm, it's -
Science fiction I like. Ech...no.
I really don't know what it is. Sometimes, it seems you can draw a line through several authors in terms of some undefined quality. This author has alot of what that author has, but has less than what that author has, and so on. Going back to Lessing, when I talk about a sort of eerieness, I mean a sort humanistic eerieness. And if there is a scale for such a thing, I think you can put Atwood on it, as well as Vonnegut, Lem, and Huxley. I think Banks drifts a little, and tends toward something else. His people are not ps - that's it.
By humanistic eerieness, I'm thinking of people being psychologically different but enough like us that we can feel that difference. We feel stretched by the writing.
Nothing much.
I have been sick, however, the last week - and I took the last two days off just to get some cough-less sleep. I spent most of it knocked out, but also listening to the radio, watching a few films, and reading Doris Lessing's A Briefing before a Descent into Hell.
At one point in this book, I thought: what the hell is she on about? She's just giving me mystical nonsense rambling. I didn't know what the book was about when I started reading it and all that kept me going was that I'd read other books by her which I really liked.
Even though, there's something eerie about Lessing's books. I've not read her latest but from her reviews it sounds fascinating. It's about the origin of men - not the origin of humans, but the origins of men, when they are first born by originally women-only humans.
There's a certain strain of science-fiction/fantasy that seems to include Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, eh....Stansilaw Lem, and maybe just maybe Iain M. Banks (if he wasn't so obsessed with making stuff up). It's uh, uhm, it's - it's ahm, it's -
Science fiction I like. Ech...no.
I really don't know what it is. Sometimes, it seems you can draw a line through several authors in terms of some undefined quality. This author has alot of what that author has, but has less than what that author has, and so on. Going back to Lessing, when I talk about a sort of eerieness, I mean a sort humanistic eerieness. And if there is a scale for such a thing, I think you can put Atwood on it, as well as Vonnegut, Lem, and Huxley. I think Banks drifts a little, and tends toward something else. His people are not ps - that's it.
By humanistic eerieness, I'm thinking of people being psychologically different but enough like us that we can feel that difference. We feel stretched by the writing.
I get that much more with Lessing than Atwood (though I think Margaret Atwood is the best living writer I can think of at the moment). Every time I read Lessing, I feel like I'm ably occupying the viewpoint of compassionate people who make me cold. But I still want to do that. I - eh, I -
Shikasta was a book by Lessing that was just lying about the house in Dungarvan when I was in college. I suppose it was Winifred's, as Lessing apparently is noted for being a feminist (why? Because she doesn't write about weddings?). I was reading Gene Wolfe for a while at the time, and really liking it -
Ah, wait - right. Okay, this is what it is about Banks vs. this lot I'm mentioning. Wolfe reminds me of it: Gene Wolfe's characters are humans living in a far off future; so, pretty much, are Banks'. Yet, for much of it, they are very familiar, very, contemporary. I feel I could talk to them, to some degree. Their technology would be different, but they would be - no no no that's not it at all.
Maybe it's that the Banks' beings are unreflective - there's a sealed aspect, a cap to their questioning, or to the potential for answers. The universe is explicable, mysterious only insomuch as the complexity of process, not in terms of the categories of things in it. In Banks, particularly, I feel at least, on having read his stuff, that a star is a star, a planet a planet, a person a person; computers are also people - his Minds - but that's like his one single trick. The idea a star would think, ech...nonsense. That's not science realfiktion.* I've found, on reading Banks, really entertaining and great stuff, but it doesn't always seem to cohere. So, the volcano ride in - that one about the suicide bomber - is very funny, and the ending of that book is bitterly touching (and viciously vengeful right after, incidentally, as if he needed to let his less developed readers come), but the.... well, the metaphysics is dull. The sublime - now that's interesting. No, it's just there. Maybe that's what I don't like about it - Banks is a sceptic and builds it into his narratives.
Something like that drove me nuts about Aasimov's foundation series: look, there's the hard sciences and then, oooh, the psychological sciences. Hmm...I suppose I just don't like the idea that things can be thought of in terms of our current (or a particular) categories of thought.
Anyway, this doesn't help at all in understanding Lessing, Atwood, Vonnegut et al. One thing about them as writers is they strive to be clear - except for the bit in Lessing when she was rambling about earth being a mote, but nevermind. But that's it! That's it! These authors are just good writers! Even if what they're saying is as implausible or obscure as other writers, they're trying to make it as clear as possible.
George Orwell wrote an absolutely brilliant paper on clarity. It's in a book I have called Identity and Anxiety. And he basically says: writers try to put words to things, and they struggle to find the right words. The struggle is to be as clear and simple as possible. If you want to be a good writer, that is what you should do. Bad writers think big words, complex sentences etc. make good writing. And then he quotes a load of academic papers, thereby taking the piss out of academia, which is always necessary.
I really like Iain M. Banks. I enjoy his books, but I suppose I feel he is doing something like that. It's not words so much as ideas or references to things. After reading several of his books, I get mainly the impression that the worlds he creates are only as big as the books. They don't stretch past them. Notably that huge thing - a Dark Wind or whatever it's called, where a fleet is invading a solar system and the people can see the lights of their engines in the heavens for decades before they arrive (which is a brilliant idea). It's got beautiful ideas with annoying characters, all of which disappear on finishing the page, as if one wakes from a dream...(perhaps that's the point).
*This is my moronic attempt to adapt the term 'realpolitik' to science fiction.
Shikasta was a book by Lessing that was just lying about the house in Dungarvan when I was in college. I suppose it was Winifred's, as Lessing apparently is noted for being a feminist (why? Because she doesn't write about weddings?). I was reading Gene Wolfe for a while at the time, and really liking it -
Ah, wait - right. Okay, this is what it is about Banks vs. this lot I'm mentioning. Wolfe reminds me of it: Gene Wolfe's characters are humans living in a far off future; so, pretty much, are Banks'. Yet, for much of it, they are very familiar, very, contemporary. I feel I could talk to them, to some degree. Their technology would be different, but they would be - no no no that's not it at all.
Maybe it's that the Banks' beings are unreflective - there's a sealed aspect, a cap to their questioning, or to the potential for answers. The universe is explicable, mysterious only insomuch as the complexity of process, not in terms of the categories of things in it. In Banks, particularly, I feel at least, on having read his stuff, that a star is a star, a planet a planet, a person a person; computers are also people - his Minds - but that's like his one single trick. The idea a star would think, ech...nonsense. That's not science realfiktion.* I've found, on reading Banks, really entertaining and great stuff, but it doesn't always seem to cohere. So, the volcano ride in - that one about the suicide bomber - is very funny, and the ending of that book is bitterly touching (and viciously vengeful right after, incidentally, as if he needed to let his less developed readers come), but the.... well, the metaphysics is dull. The sublime - now that's interesting. No, it's just there. Maybe that's what I don't like about it - Banks is a sceptic and builds it into his narratives.
Something like that drove me nuts about Aasimov's foundation series: look, there's the hard sciences and then, oooh, the psychological sciences. Hmm...I suppose I just don't like the idea that things can be thought of in terms of our current (or a particular) categories of thought.
Anyway, this doesn't help at all in understanding Lessing, Atwood, Vonnegut et al. One thing about them as writers is they strive to be clear - except for the bit in Lessing when she was rambling about earth being a mote, but nevermind. But that's it! That's it! These authors are just good writers! Even if what they're saying is as implausible or obscure as other writers, they're trying to make it as clear as possible.
George Orwell wrote an absolutely brilliant paper on clarity. It's in a book I have called Identity and Anxiety. And he basically says: writers try to put words to things, and they struggle to find the right words. The struggle is to be as clear and simple as possible. If you want to be a good writer, that is what you should do. Bad writers think big words, complex sentences etc. make good writing. And then he quotes a load of academic papers, thereby taking the piss out of academia, which is always necessary.
I really like Iain M. Banks. I enjoy his books, but I suppose I feel he is doing something like that. It's not words so much as ideas or references to things. After reading several of his books, I get mainly the impression that the worlds he creates are only as big as the books. They don't stretch past them. Notably that huge thing - a Dark Wind or whatever it's called, where a fleet is invading a solar system and the people can see the lights of their engines in the heavens for decades before they arrive (which is a brilliant idea). It's got beautiful ideas with annoying characters, all of which disappear on finishing the page, as if one wakes from a dream...(perhaps that's the point).
*This is my moronic attempt to adapt the term 'realpolitik' to science fiction.
