Tag Archives: Books

Passing quotes (and comments)

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Memories of Ice, Steven Erikson:

And perhaps that is the final, most devastating truth. The gods care nothing for ascetic impositions on moral behaviour. Care nothing for rules of conduct, for the twisted morals of temple priests and monks. Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves – our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.

It’s a while since I’ve last written about books. I haven’t stopped nor even slowed down reading, but it’s taking time to get to a point.

I’m currently reading in parallel three books. 550 pages into Memories of Ice (halfway through), 130 pages into the Colour in the Steel of K. J. Parker and 150 pages into Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Oh yeah, I’m reading Goodkind. I decided that a lightweight interlude would be nice between the two other more demanding reads, and I also want to watch the TV series only after having read the book, so I had to do it soon.

On Memories of Ice I have mixed feelings that I’ll probably explain better if I manage to write a review when I’m done. It’s an ambitious book that packs way too many themes. It’s a paradox because you have these books that exceed 1000 pages, and instead of having a boring and padded storyline to fill the space, you have instead way too many aspects that aren’t fully used. It’s a wasteful book that throws away too many good ideas (this quote here above could lead to a deep character development, with lots of implications, but it is started and done in two pages). There’s also less “genius” in the writing. When I was reading the novellas every paragraph was a form of art on its own. It made wonderful quotes. With this book I find very hard to have quotable pieces that work as brilliant standalone. It’s convoluted in its own dimension, filled with jargon and internal references. It’s not hard because I’m well used to all of them, but I find the writing of a quality below the second book. Still enjoying it immensely though.

Colours in the Steel is a book I decided to read after I read online the excerpt from The Company, the latest standalone from the author. I thought the characterization was so well done that the book deserved to be read, and not just that, but also what came before. So I bought this one other book that is the first on a trilogy. The same author, beside the recent standalone, wrote three complete trilogies. Very, very different from the rest of the fantasy genre. It feels a bit like historical fiction, with a strong realism in setting and characterization, but the world is still entirely fictional, even with a spark of magic that still feels very “real” (it reminded me the beginning of Stephenson’s Anathem with the monks). The writing on this book is more traditional than the other excerpt I read, but the characterization is still outstanding. For theme, development and obsessive attention to technical details (it explains exactly how weapons and siege engines are made) one would think it would make for a slow, boring read. Instead it is “brisk”, never dull. Really well done on all levels and unique in style and plotting from the rest of the genre.

Finally Goodkind (Wizard’s First Rule). As I commented on a forum, it is extremely accessible. It uses all the tricks to win the reader from the first pages. It’s the average “young adult” fantasy, with added gore. I read it knowing well how it is hated by the critics, without expecting much. For now it’s easy and fun to read and as I said it is a good interlude. Here and there it gets silly and unbelievable but there were also parts that didn’t come out completely trivial. For example there are the good guys and the bad guys, but it went explaining some ambivalence that is interesting to consider. A lot of the background doesn’t make sense though. Maybe it will be explained later but for now the story is inconsistent and illogical.

Bauchelain and Korbal Broach – The Collected Stories – Steven Erikson

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This book collects at a (relatively) accessible price the three novellas that PS Publishing published separately. I didn’t know what to expect, how much they were connected to the bigger series, how relevant. If a significant effort with its own purpose or just a diversion intended for the most passionate readers who won’t miss even the minor works. Well, I don’t even know where to start with the praises because this isn’t simply a “worthy” read compared to the rest of the books, but may be as well the finest writing Erikson ever achieved. And by a good margin.

The most impressive achievement is how the writing style changes and adapts to the different form. It is the same Erikson, with the multitude of characters and crazy ideas and inventions at every page, but at the same time it feels as if the constraints to the short form fueled the already wild creativity. The stories and characters seem explode out of the pages, unrestrained. The more they are squeezed tight, the more they come alive and claiming their space. Single sentences that read like poetry and filled with meaning on multiple levels.

Not only Erikson is at ease with the short form, he excels, shines in it. He understands it fully and carves out all the potential there is. It’s not the wild creativity, the crazy characters, the usual convergences that accelerate to a mad rush toward the end. It’s not in the content itself (that has always been seen as THE strong point), it’s in the execution. Here Erikson shows sheer talent. It oozes out of the page. From the first page. From a writer who’s used to publish once a year books with more than a thousand of pages you expect a writing style that is merely functional. Something quick and cheap that gets the job done. Well, here the real protagonist is the writing itself. It’s Erikson at his very best (or worst for some detractors), talking right at the reader in this meta-narrative game:

“But what do we know? We’re no brush-stroked arched brow over cold, avid eye, oh no. We’re just the listeners, wading through some ponce’s psychological trauma as the idiot stares into a mirror all love/hate all masturbatory up’n’down and it’s us who when the time comes -comes, hah- who are meant to gasp and twist pelvic in linguistic ecstasy.”

He’s “loose” and highly pretentious. Condensed, focused awesome. Everything that makes the readers love or hate him with a passion.

I used to say that from my point of view he is among “traditional” fantasy writers the one with the most “literary” intent. For these novellas this intent is shown prominently, but not limited to this show-off I’m celebrating. There are a number of memorable characters, plot twists and plenty of humor. Even if the writing has the predominant role, it doesn’t overshadow or gets in the way of the fun of the more traditional elements. “Over the top”, excessive and raving indeed. But still a masterful execution from every point of view.

It was a pleasure. Not just about what is written, but how it is written. I developed a familiarity with it, absorbed some of it as if it were mine. I really couldn’t ask more.

Blood Follows

The novels are put in the book in the chronological order of the plot, but the second was actually written and published last. This is interesting to consider because it proves again Erikson’s growth as a writer. There’s a steady, definite improvement between the three novellas in the order they were written, so with the second representing the real peak.

With the first one Erikson seems to take confidence with the new format. He shows sparks of genius but it’s still the beginning of a journey. He sets the foundation, starts to present the characters and develop the style (along some recurring habits and quibbles of the characters) that he will fully exploit later. Here he shows an economy of writing compared to the other novels, starts to play with the words to look for an intended effect, using them more for what they evocate than their explicit meaning. Showing a contagious love for the language that shares the similar beauty and lure of poetry.

There are a few memorable scenes, like the very first encounter between Bauchelain and Emancipor Reese and a myriad of details are presented that will only make sense later, following a similar trend of the main series. The first novel is also the one more connected to the Malazan world. The relatively familiar setting isn’t a weight. There are a number of interesting informations and perspectives, but they are used as “flavor”, not as key points.

The tone is far from the realistic one used in the main series. There is still a bleak and dark atmosphere but no restraints for the humorous and excessive side of things. Characters are caricatures, exaggerated in their traits, clever and naive at the same time. In some ways he reminded me more of Abercrombie here, with scenes intended both to to give personality to the characters and to be fun in their own way. Circumscribed situations with their own (often comic) purpose, while also driving the plot.

Maybe it’s the reason why I thought the end was not completely satisfying. With so much focus on the “performance” itself, what was being performed didn’t have the best denouement possible. This worried me since also for book 1 and 2 in the main series I was partially deluded by the ending. Maybe I really had a problem with the way Erikson ended his stories. The reasons of the disappointment were due mainly to the fact that some plot threads and characters seemed to pass by without a definite aim. Or better, the novella was so rich that it built a number of expectations that lead nowhere by the end of it. There were characters and plot threads that ultimately revealed to be dead ends, or still not used fully or significant enough for the potential I saw in them. As if I saw more in what was hinted than what revealed to be the real intent.

Still, the journey was fun and I developed a lasting sympathy and fondness for the characters that is only comparable, again, to what I felt for Abercrombie’s characters.

The Lees of Laughter’s End

It represents the high peak and the one case where I can say: there are no flaws.

100 pages of condensed AWESOME. Everything and then more happens, including the assault of a god. The ending is a mad dash in typical “convergence” style, only this time the convergence all starts and ends in the limited space of a ship. You’ll be amazed at how many stories tangle there, without even an ounce of the confusion that sometimes can be found in the main series. It’s all sleek, cleverly assembled. It’s a celebration of all things Erikson.

This time all the expectations built along the way were fully realized and even surpassed. The ending is great and fitting, without leaving that feel of incompleteness. In those 100 pages he sets up the scene and wraps it up perfectly.

He even conjures an external narrator in the form of a child and her old mother, who live completely alone in the crows’ nest of the ship and observe from far away everything below. They become at times the narrators of the story, some kind of abstract, symbolic figures, playing with different tones and registers, only to have their own patterns broken in some incredible way. Nothing is safe, not even an omniscient narrator.

This sent chills down my spine and one case where Erikson surpasses Gene Wolfe at his own game. It happens in a few pages and yet is extremely powerful and not at all vague. It plays with your expectations and breaks them, turn them on their head. Whatever you take a granted, breaks apart. And then again and again.

The Healthy Dead

Erikson meets Pratchett. This novella reads like satire, with plenty of wit and paradoxical situations.

It is the least “Malazan” of the three and also the one more “over the top”. It even uses some fantastic elements that do not seem to fit or belong perfectly to the world. Its explicit intent is also more driven and specific. It isn’t “loose” like the others, it doesn’t follow its own pattern and consistence. To understand it you need to draw parallels with our “modernity”. It’s fantasy fiction but working only in direct contact with what we live every day, which is what the satire is supposed to do with its metaphorical value. This purpose is already manifest in the disclaimer in the first page (and in those quotes I extrapolated):

Warning to lifestyle fascist everywhere. Don’t read this or you’ll go blind.

The novella brings to the front a different style. How to convey the most disparate thoughts through a story made as a vehicle. The plot and characters, including our protagonists, aren’t here the ultimate destination, they are means to an end.

It also marks a structural difference compared to the more usual worldbuilding. The majority of fantasy writers shape a world around the story, so that the world is functional to the story, or the intent behind it. Erikson instead shapes his world as a frame that can contain all possible stories. It’s a “world” in the true sense because it’s not one-directional.

The world is the frame, the characters are his “voices” and the stories his meaning.

But even if in this case he has a definite purpose and thesis he wants to prove, despite the whole novella pivots around “expedients”, it’s still a gorgeous, utterly fun read. The usual trio feels almost out of place at the beginning, as if those Malazan characters finished into a different, impossible world. But that’s also what fuels it all and makes those characters even more appropriate. Both Bauchelain and Emancipor become perfect vehicles for the message as if they were created and meant just for it. And, more, they came out even richer.

—
If you expect these novellas to integrate the main series and say something vital you’ll be disappointed. If you expect them to be throwaway little-efforts, forgettable digressions, you are also absolutely, terribly wrong. This book swiped away all the reservations and doubts I had of Erikson as a writer. He may show up and lows throughout the whole main series, but I am now sure he has an indubitable talent. As James Barclay put it in the introduction to the second novella:

The Lees of Laughter’s End is a splendidly outrageous offering. It is utterly fearless and compelling. Most of all, it is hugely entertaining. Erikson in this mood is a joy to read.

The big problem I have now is that while reading the novellas I couldn’t wait to move onto Memories of Ice, considered Erikson’s masterpiece. Now that I’m 200 pages into Memories of Ice I feel… nostalgic. I’m developing a serious case of withdrawal from the novellas and the 1100 pages of this new book aren’t helping much. I’m addicted to those novellas, to the wit, the superb writing style, the memorable characters. So every time I sit down to read the new book I actually take in my hands the novellas and read some random pages. It’s like being in deeply love with someone of whom you’ve left just a photo.

The Healthy Dead quotes

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A few fantastic quotes from “The Healthy Dead”, the last of Erikson’s novellas. Next is the review of all three.

‘Ah, Mister Reese, I gather you still do not understand the threat this king poses to such creatures as you and I.’
‘Well, frankly, no, I don’t, Master. As you say.’
‘I must perforce make the linkage plain, of sufficient simplicity to permit your uneducated mind to grasp all manners of significance. Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious selfrighteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgment quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilisation.’ He slowly turned, looked down upon Emancipor. ‘And we are creatures dependent upon civilisation. It is the only environment in which we can thrive.’
Emancipor frowned. ‘The desire for goodness leads to the end of civilisation?’
‘Precisely, Mister Reese.’
‘But if the principal aim is to achieve good living and health among the populace, what is the harm in that?’
Bauchelain sighed. ‘Very well, I shall try again. Good living and health, as you say, yielding well being. But well being is a contextual notion, a relative notion. Perceived benefits are measured by way of contrast. In any case, the result is smugness, and from that an overwhelming desire to deliver conformity among those perceived as less pure, less fortunate–the unenlightened, if you will. But conformity leads to ennui, and then indifference. From indifference, Mister Reese, dissolution follows as a natural course, and with it, once again, the end of civilisation.’
‘All right all right, Master, we are faced with the noble task of confounding the end of civilisation.’
‘Well said, Mister Reese. I admit I find the ethical aspects of our mission surprisingly… refreshing.’

The man’s voice came closer. ‘Situation? Situations are frowned upon, Storkul Purge. Even a low-ranking Well Knight such as you must know this.’
‘I endeavour to promulgate conformity at every turn, Oh Purest of the Paladins.’
‘And well you should, lest by your actions you prove singular or, Lady forgive us, unique. You do not deem yourself unique, do you, Storkul Purge?’
Her voice was suddenly small. ‘Of course not. The purity of my innate mediocrity is absolute, Purest. Of that I can assure you.’

Emancipor winced, overwhelmed by a flood of guilt. ‘Can there be no second chance, Paladin?’
‘Ah, you are a saint indeed, to voice such sentiment. The answer is no, there cannot. The very notion of fallibility was invented to absolve mortals of responsibility. We can be perfect, and you can see true perfection walking here at your side.’
‘You have achieved perfection?’
‘I have. I am. And to dispute that truth is to reveal your own imperfection.’

‘It would seem,’ Bauchelain said as he led the others through the gateway, ‘that much of the present fabric of comportment has frayed in your city, King Necrotus, nay, torn asunder, and none of it through my doing. I am pleased to discover said evidence of my own cherished beliefs.’
‘What?’ Storkul Purge demanded drunkenly, ‘are you talking ’bout?’
‘Why to transform the metaphor, that piety is but the thinnest patina, fashioned sufficiently opaque to disguise the true nature of our kin, yet brittle thin nonetheless.’

The subsequent explosion was heard and felt by every citizen of Quaint, and those crews out in the bay, throwing four-finned fish from their nets, looked up in time to see the skyward pitching fireball and at least three oxen cart-wheeling above the city, before the monument of Singe dropped from sight and flames lit the dust clouds a gaudy orange.

To add to the reading list

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I was reading Pat’s blog and found an excerpt from K. J. Parker first standalone novel, The Company.

When you have no idea what a book is about, reading the first few pages and some reviews could help. But reading online is the suck and I get distracted or tired rather quickly.

This time I was intrigued instead and almost made to the middle part ;)

Mysterious female writer, probably under a pseudonym. Even the wikipedia has no clue.

Anyway, I really liked this description of an house:

Then, before he was ready, he was standing at the top of the yard, looking down the slope. Directly in front of him was the old cider house, which had finally collapsed. One wall had peeled away, and the unsupported roof had slumped sideways, the roof-tree and rafters gradually torn apart by the unsupportable weight of the slates; it put him in mind of the stripped carcass of a chicken, after the meal is over. A dense tangle of briars slopped out over the stub of the broken wall, and a young ash was growing aggressively between the stones. It must have happened so slowly, he thought; neglect, the danger dimly perceived but never quite scrambling high enough up the pyramid of priorities until it was too late, no longer worth the prodigious effort needed to put it right. There would have been a morning when they all came out of the house to find it lying there, having gently pulled itself apart in the night. They’d have sworn a bit, shaken their heads, accepted the inconvenience and carried on as before.

I like a lot the introspective, tight kind of prose. It seems that no line is outside a precise purpose. Short, precise sentences that perfectly define not just the character’s thoughts, but even the perception, mood, awareness. Carefully selected and measured words.

That’s an example of perfect characterization (I mean the whole part I read, not just this quote). Precise, insightful and yet not overwritten or unrealistically explicit.

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Books at my door – Late September

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I need to get a camera, so i can join all those book porn fetishists. But then I’m also almost done collecting the stuff I’m interested about, there’s not much left beside new releases and leftovers from long series. No more big orders or significant discoveries to be made, sigh.

Just the plain covers then:

Both books arrived a couple of weeks ago, I’m just late reporting.

Anathem – Neal Stephenson
I already bought Quicksilver, the first book of the Baroque Cycle trilogy, but whenever I decide to actually start with this writer I’ll read this standalone first, then Cryptonomicon. This book came out in early September in the US and a week or so later in UK, the cover up there is from the british edition and it’s the one I got just because I liked it better. Internally even the graphic and typeset should be the same. It is another of those huge doorstops, really impressive to see and heavy to hold. It also has good paper. A beautiful book to own.

900 pages plus forty pages or so of glossary and two appendixes explaining some sort of abstract philosophical problems. On the site I linked there are even some creepy “songs” to listen even if I can’t fathom what they are based on. I’ve read the first few pages to have an idea of the style and I like it. It seems well written even if I get a bit lost when he describes some buildings in detail. I wish I didn’t have already a huge to-read list because I’m so curious about what it is about. It seems a book that you can sink in, deep and challenging. It was first in the New York Times Bestsellers and readers seem to love it. For more insight check these two reviews.

It also seems that the WHOLE Cryptonomicon can be read online for free. I don’t know who could survive, but it seems there.

Return of the Crimson Guard – Ian Cameron Esslemont
This one to complete the Malazan collection. From what I read on the forums it seems that those who didn’t like “Toll the Hounds” (book 8) because it’s too slow and introspective, liked this one much better. The plot seems to move quickly and lots of significant stuff happens, culminating into a huge battle. But for now I can’t read it, this week I’ll finish Erikson’s three novellas, then I start “Memories of Ice” (book 3). This one is supposed to be read after book 7, so a long way to go. In the meantime I skimmed the book here and there because I wanted to see if Esslemont was a decent writer that could hold up the confrontation with Erikson. I can’t really say before I actually read it properly, but the impression wasn’t all that great. He seems to cut the prose into short “denotative” sentences and seems to have some bad habits in the form of repeating the same few sentence structures over and over and over. I really love Erikson because of *how* he writes and the way he experiments a lot with the writing itself and the style. Esslemont seems more “plain” and with less literary intent. For some readers this may be as well a quality since Erikson is seen a bit as pretentious and navel-gazing by some. For me, it’s the main reason (along with many, many others) why he’s my favorite writer in the genre.

It ended up being exactly 700 pages in the hardcover edition, written slightly bigger compared to the same edition of “Toll the Hounds”, so about 800 pages in mass market. The only map included is the one showing Quon Tali and taken from The Bonehunters, so no new stuff. While skimming through it I also got the impression that it’s heavy into references to the Malazan world without explaining much. I doubt it’s readable as standalone by someone who isn’t already familiar with the setting. I really hope it’s a good book because the series only improves by opening all these threads and complexities, like a real world.

In the meantime it’s already October and Erikson should be near the end of the writing process for book 9. When this series is complete it will be a major achievement. I hope it won’t disappoint.

Emancipor Reese to Kalgan

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This is what you get from mixing books and games in a blog.

From Erikson’s novella, this seems fitting describing WoW’s Kalgan. I only had to change two words:

And was not this zeal for fanatical “competition” an identical delusion of superiority, this time bound to moral tenets? As if “skill” was innately virtuous?
Sadly, it was part of the sordid nature of humanity, Emancipor reflected as he walked down the wide, long colonnade, to concoct elaborate belief systems all designed to feed one’s own ego. And to keep those with less obnoxious egos in check.

And this descriptions of undead is magnificent:

Emancipor suspected they would soon begin seeking out their living loved ones, since that was what the undead usually did, given the chance. Driven to utter last regrets, spiteful accusations or maundering mewling. Mostly pathetic, and only occasionally murderous.

Quotes from The Lees of Laughter’s End

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The Steel Remains made me drop completely Erikson’s novellas, the story was much more gripping. Now I’m back to finish what I started, and, oh, the writing… I love it.

This was how the world circled around itself, curly as a pubic hair, plucked and flung wayward on whatever wind happened by.

‘Panic is a common affliction when spirits awaken, Captain Sater. Like pollen in the air, or seeds of terror that find root in every undefended mortal mind. I urge you to mindfulness, lest horror devour your reason.’

‘Life is like a clam,’ Bird Mottle’s father once told her. ‘Years flitering shit then some bastard cracks you open and scrapes you into his damned mouth. End of story, precious pearl, end of story.’

Take a stick and jam it deep into the mud, just up where the waves reach on an easy day. Come back a week or two later and there’s a mound of stilts gathered round the stick on one side, and a faint shallow pit on the opposite side. Unless a storm arrives to drag yhe stick away, the mound grows, the hole slowly fills in.
That was Toll’s City.

Bauchelain paused, frowned at her. ‘You are hunted.’ Then he nodded. ‘As we suspected. What follows in our wake, Captain?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Describe your crime.’
‘That’s nothing to do with anything. It wasn’t even a crime. Not really. More like… opportunism.’
‘Ah, a short temptation to which one yelds, casting aside all fears of consequence.’
‘Exactly.’
‘A momentary failings of ethics.’
‘Just so.’
‘Expedience winning its war with duty.’
‘So would we argue, yes-‘
‘A defense based on the weakness of nature belongs to untutored children and dogs that bite, Captain. You and your cohorts are all adults and if you relinquished your honor then fierce punishment is righteous and deserves a large audience, a mob, if you will, expressing their most civilized glee over the cruel misery of your fate.’

One scream. A sudden widening of the eyes, a faint primordial shiver. The soul tenses, crouches, awaits a repetition, for it is in repetition alone that a face is painted onto the dark unknown, a face indeed frightened, frightening, wracked with pain, or -and so one wishes- in bright, startled delight. But alas, this latter entreaty is yielded upon so rarely, for such are grim truths unveiled, one beneath another and seemingly without end.

Life, as Bauchelain would well note -were he of any mind to voice comment- was ever prone to stupidity and, in logical consequence, atrocious self-destruction.
Of course he was too busy spilling an endless flood of seed into a barely sensate and in no way resisting Captain Sater down in his cabin, and this, as all well know, is the pinnacle of all human virtue, glory and exaltation.

The Steel Remains – Richard Morgan

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This book is all about the execution. Maybe you read other reviews, the common theme you find is that this novel was expected to be revolutionary or innovative, or at least overthrowing some cliches and conventions. Instead it is all about the execution. And the execution is excellent.

Richard Morgan was, to this year, known as a science fiction writer. I haven’t read any of his books yet, but know something about the reputation. He has a kind of “modern” writing style and approach. His stories aren’t of the fancy kind with space ships or alien races, they are tightly rooted to the modern world and sensibilities. Some politics, some personal character struggles. Maybe closer to cyberpunk if you want to have a vague idea (and the vague idea is all I have since, once again, I only read “of” Morgan, and not read his books myself). When you have this type of writer brought to fantasy you at least expect… something. An original note, a particular point of view, some spark of originality, of invention. Some nonconformism.

The book doesn’t exactly delude on that front. It CAN delude if you come with specific expectations, but if you let it drive you, then you’ll have a satisfying experience. In truth I don’t think Morgan here tried to be revolutionary, so I can’t even say he wasn’t successful because it’s more an expectation I see coming from the readers than the writer himself. To me this book reads a bit like a “classic”. Not a kick in the nuts of a genre. But an homage. A tribute.

There are aspects of it that clash together. While the plot and abstract themes tend to be within the genre (so it’s all already seen), it’s the execution to be brilliant and follow that “modern” thread and intent. Something like a “what if”. What if classic fantasy, with all its tropes and cliches, was invented today and written with today’s sensibility? That’s what this book is, and if it’s not about rabidly original ideas, it has a wonderful execution that makes it a wonderful book to read that I absolutely recommend.

“Fantasy”, as a genre, has its own role. Like a sociological, descriptive purpose. The way societies work, some visceral themes about humanity and its meaning. Steven Erikson said that he likes fantasy because it allows him to make a metaphor real, with all its strength. The symbolic power. So fantasy has a role today. This books just drags all of this closer. It’s “aware” of the distance there is between certain fantasy and the way we know and perceive the world today, and becomes an attempt to look at the same things that make fantasy “classic”, and see, describe them with the new set of eyes we have today. So, in a way, this book is actual. Both in the way some thematic aspects rise to the surface, and the way IT KNOWS it is entertainment, and goes for it without fears. It uses hands down all the tricks known for the effect, and absolutely succeeds. If you aren’t a purist.

I loved the book. It’s extremely readable and gripping, the kind that makes you sink in and turn the pages. You think that you are going to just finish the chapter, then read the first lines of the next and can’t put it down. It’s fun to read and really well written. The characters are good, the story mainly revolves around three protagonists, even if it always feels like the other two are a bit less prominent and less realized. Probably Morgan’s more obvious skill is also the one that could be seen as a weakness here: the dialogues. Personally it’s what made the book work for me. The dialogues are probably the less conventional part if you think of the genre, but if you accept the style it’s also where Morgan shines. The characters come trough, they become real. The way they talk to each other comes out of the page. You don’t feel like reading a book, but as if you are really there, listening to real men who really know each other. True friendship and complicity. On this particular aspect is as if you never feel that the characters are talking to the reader, but really talking on their own. Their feelings, their relationships, feel true.

On the other side the prose seems to go in the opposite direction, and probably as a choice. It’s “warmer”, there are some major infodumps here and there that feel even too heavy and clunky. The writer weighs in with comments and observations, becoming more a subject of the writing, more “talking-to-the-reader”. But it seems more a choice, as it offers the possibility to make the hidden parts more explicit and so “care” more for the characters and what they are. Morgan always seem to know exactly what effects he wants to obtain in the reader, and so uses all the tricks he knows to make it happen. Something like means to an end. Maybe, if I nitpick, too gimmicky, but it’s what I mean when I say he knows the book is also entertainment and is not ashamed of it. It’s not pretentious and comes out as better realized than most.

It also feels like he’s cooking. At various moments in the book I felt as if he was restraining. Like building things in potential. He shows you something, just the possibility of it, he hints at some crazy, unexpected twists, then steps back as if he didn’t want to rise the stakes just yet. He just shows, tells you he can do it, but not just yet. Before the book is over he already built various threads and possibilities that will flow on with the series, yet the story has its conclusion and feels realized on its own.

It’s so involving and well written that you can glide over some possible flaws. Possible because they are flaws as general rules, but I think here have an interesting role. For example the deus ex machina.

There are three HUGE ones in the book. The first is pointed by the characters themselves and laughed at, one is openly referenced, and the third comes last like a FREAKING epiphany and kept well hidden. Usually deus ex machina are proofs of a bad plot, here, similar to Erikson, the deus ex machina are subjects. In the sense that one main, but slightly shaded, theme in the book is the way all the story is piloted by some unknown hand. So not only there are deus ex machina in the book, but they are actually a part of the book, contained with it. And that probably will have a leading role for what comes next (since this is going to be a trilogy).

In particular the ending of the book is great. I actually found the “last battle” a bit underwhelming. I wouldn’t know what else to ask. It’s absolutely accomplished, but I kinda knew where it was going. I felt like I fell again in the trap. Because in the aftermath of the battle you have those ten pages left in the book, you read and expect to read just about the last salutations between the survivors. Yet, in the last FIVE pages, exactly when you don’t expect anything anymore from the book, it sends chills down your spine with a series of both implicit and explicit revelations that work a bit like Fight Club, making you revisit retrospectively the whole book under a new light. That was quite awesome and felt again as if the writer always had a very tight control on the book and the effect he wanted to have in the reader, even when you thought he missed.

It wasn’t a miss, it was a feint.

Morgan is like that. The pied piper of Hamelin. He seems to know exactly where your attention is, how you’re feeling, and so he is a successful manipulator. A trickster. He fixes your attention on one hand, while the other does the trick. As I said, sometimes this may feel gimmicky, but if you let yourself enjoy the book then it’s just a pleasure.

David Foster Wallace, why he died

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I’m pissed when people die.

Especially, I’m pissed when people die and had some true talent that goes wasted. You’ve got responsibilities in that case. Then he also died the day of my thirtieth birthday, and he is my favorite writer. His words are like a drug for the brain, they open it up, thoughts processes accelerate and meaning comes often through epiphanies. He is the only writer who (successfully) tries to write the way the brain thinks. And it sucks you in.

Now everyone in the world who recognizes his name is wondering, “why did he do that?”

I did too. In the attempt of trying to answer the question, I went and read the 50-odd pages story titled “Good Old Neon”, published in the “Oblivion” collection. I’d toss some quotes around but I read it in Italian and so it wouldn’t made a lot of sense here.

It’s a story of a suicide, written from the point of view of the suicide and it reads as a confession of the failure of his life (“my whole life I’ve been a fraud”) and the reasons that lead to the fact, one instant after the fact, or even during it. What passes through the mind in that exact moment. In the whole immanence of it. Only to reveal in the end, classic Wallace shocking way, that he, Wallace himself, is imagining the whole thing. Wondering why the man, one of his high school brilliant classmates, killed himself. What passed through his mind, imagining a possible story.

It comes out as a prison of the mind. Something that lures you in and then drags you into a bottomless, dark pit, and it’s scary. Because of meaninglessness, of redundancy. And yeah, also fascinating.

This dilemma, in which every layer of self-knowledge is nested inside yet another layer that scrutinizes it mercilessly for inauthenticity, is a Wallace trademark. When, not surprisingly, these contortions drive the narrator of “Good Old Neon” to suicide, he is revealed to be a childhood acquaintance of “David Wallace,” and the story itself an effort to imagine his inner life on the part of Wallace, who has recently “emerged from years of literally indescribable war against himself.” This, of course, suggests that all of “Good Old Neon” is merely Wallace’s solipsistic effort to attribute his own miseries to a man who might have killed himself for entirely other reasons.

I really wish I could quote because there’s a part that I think is the real core of it all. The way the actual central thought is “cliche”, and the way Wallace hated it because of it: the impossibility to communicate.

Everything Wallace-an is trapped into paradoxes. What kills Wallace is what he was talented doing. Writing, communicating. Yet, the man who could do it like no other, exudes frustration. Read the last line from the link above. “if you really think about it, how clumsy and laborious it seems to be to convey even the smallest thing.”

The way he writes, the way he thinks, can lead where he wants. He IS god in the way he can say everything and nothing. A mind so powerful that defies every kind of formal limit, and yet is trapped within strict formal limits. Everything is hyper-logical, but to the point that lacks any stability. There is no top and no bottom, no sky and ground.

Frustration and “failure”.

How irritating and pretentious can be reading things out of context. Just to prove a false theory. So lets do it again.

2005 Kenyon Commencement Address – May 21, 2005

Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education — least in my own case — is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliche about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

The writer: making the reader feel as if every character carries some pieces of himself. “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

Every man is alone. This is another cliche commented in “Good Old Neon”. But it can kinda work like a magnet. You can “align”, and somewhat make communication pass. You never really give something yours to someone else. It can’t happen for we are finished, there’s a dermatological barrier that cannot be passed. But in some ways you can be a mirror. You can imitate in your mind some state of mind that you recognize in someone else. So, hypocritically, you can pretend to know what passed through someone else’s mind. Know how he felt.

It’s a lie, but it a lie with the best approximation of Truth it’s possible to aspire to.

It’s sucks that Wallace died and I’m pissed. The most irritating, pretentious, hypocritical thing I could do to him is pretending to know what passed through his mind.

So I did it. I wrote what passed through his mind.

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