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ironymaideni am sick with something (i suppose it's the same crap ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
weezlgrrrl has. ugh.) and stumbled home early thursday to crawl in bed, where i finally polished off Perdido Street Station and then fell into a fitful sleep. it's not like that book lets you sleep well. why i've never heard anyone else refer to it as a horror novel is beyond me. i enjoyed it, and will be ready to look into The Scar and Iron Council soon. i finished it with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, though. everything happened as it should, couldn't have been restructured, yet i felt that all the events of the book were completely pointless and preventable...now that we've gone to all the trouble over that proverbial horse, we'll just shut the barn door and forget it all happened. i suppose that i believe in a sort of Golden Mean of storytelling, and the book didn't resolve into a harmonious proportion. this is not the same as a happy ending. i know a good story is all about the journey but i continue to work on how to articulate it properly.
i was particularly disturbed at my response since earlier i had been thinking about how i had little appreciation for the work of Grant Leier and
Thomas Kinkade. i think of that stuff as something that makes a nice notecard, not nice to buy for a thousand bucks and put on my wall. (i do want to start purchasing more original art. it's important to buy the work and support the artists as much as i can.) do i just think perky themes are less valid? i'm saying no for now, since i note that the artists referenced above seem to create works perfectly designed to fit into some decorator scheme, and are about as indistinguishable to me as the houses in the development where C's units live - he can see the individual touches, but i only see five houses in a row built from the same plan painted in neutral colors and i have to look for the familiar cars parked out front to go to the right one.
this is in my living room. while i appreciate the style and the detail, what i've always liked about it better than any other image i've seen in pre-Raphelite art is that it captures a moment and a feeling. (the pictures are often pretty, but they rarely spark my imagination about what might have happened just before or just after.) there's a story being told in that one image, and it is bittersweet.
well, there it is. nothing is satisfying without a little contrast, but if i have to, i like the dark.
weezlgrrrl has. ugh.) and stumbled home early thursday to crawl in bed, where i finally polished off Perdido Street Station and then fell into a fitful sleep. it's not like that book lets you sleep well. why i've never heard anyone else refer to it as a horror novel is beyond me. i enjoyed it, and will be ready to look into The Scar and Iron Council soon. i finished it with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, though. everything happened as it should, couldn't have been restructured, yet i felt that all the events of the book were completely pointless and preventable...now that we've gone to all the trouble over that proverbial horse, we'll just shut the barn door and forget it all happened. i suppose that i believe in a sort of Golden Mean of storytelling, and the book didn't resolve into a harmonious proportion. this is not the same as a happy ending. i know a good story is all about the journey but i continue to work on how to articulate it properly.i was particularly disturbed at my response since earlier i had been thinking about how i had little appreciation for the work of Grant Leier and
Thomas Kinkade. i think of that stuff as something that makes a nice notecard, not nice to buy for a thousand bucks and put on my wall. (i do want to start purchasing more original art. it's important to buy the work and support the artists as much as i can.) do i just think perky themes are less valid? i'm saying no for now, since i note that the artists referenced above seem to create works perfectly designed to fit into some decorator scheme, and are about as indistinguishable to me as the houses in the development where C's units live - he can see the individual touches, but i only see five houses in a row built from the same plan painted in neutral colors and i have to look for the familiar cars parked out front to go to the right one.
this is in my living room. while i appreciate the style and the detail, what i've always liked about it better than any other image i've seen in pre-Raphelite art is that it captures a moment and a feeling. (the pictures are often pretty, but they rarely spark my imagination about what might have happened just before or just after.) there's a story being told in that one image, and it is bittersweet.
well, there it is. nothing is satisfying without a little contrast, but if i have to, i like the dark.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 12:46 am (UTC)a number of the interviews i've read with China talk about his tendency for genre-mangling, and when they do, PSS is always described as fantasy/horror. if i'm bored later this evening, i'll toss some links at you. (similarly, the Scar is fantasy/pirate and Iron Council is fantasy/western.)
the book didn't resolve into a harmonious proportion. this is not the same as a happy ending.
on some level, this may be a side-effect of China's politics. i can't say i felt the ending was unsatisfying - no, the Bad Guys™ aren't prevented from doing similar things again, but that makes it feel a little more realistic to me. Our Heroes™ accomplish as much as they can (and, given the horror aspect, it's surprising that so many of them even survive), but ultimately there're limits to how much they can change The System™. (fwiw, repercussions of the events spill over into the Scar, and apparently into Iron Council as well.)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:14 am (UTC)you're misinterpreting my dissatisfaction. to avoid spoiling the novel, i'll instead spoil a fine Thai dark comedy called 6ixtynin9 - our heroine finds a box of money on her doorstep. she decides to keep it, and then its owners show up. she accidentally kills them. and then she keeps killing people to survive and hide her trail. after a lot of horrible shit happens, SHE THROWS THE MONEY AWAY. so the whole thing would not have happened if she didn't pick up the money, but rather than finally running off with it after all the trouble, she throws it away. it makes sense, but at the same time she's just made the carnage rather pointless. any clearer?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 01:30 pm (UTC)ah, ich verstehe.
yeah, i can't argue with that. i'm not sure that it bothers me as much, but that is an aspect of the story.
More Original Art
Date: 2005-10-09 01:24 am (UTC)I'm also looking at supporting artists and buying a couple originals sometime. Maybe we could organize a "First Thursday" expedition to the galleries sometime?
Re: More Original Art
Date: 2005-10-09 05:20 am (UTC)artwalk? absolutely. we almost did the Ballard one tonight (they run second Saturdays) except for the part where it was cold and rainy and we were feeling wussy. i'm sure A Plan would make me bolder.
Re: More Original Art
Date: 2005-10-09 01:30 pm (UTC)and rightly so. i think i'm with you on that boat.
Re: More Original Art
Date: 2005-10-09 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 01:43 am (UTC)As for a genre identity, I usually go with 'grotesquerie' or 'dark urban fantasy', but I'm not really a horror reader so I only have the negative-stereotype associations with the word (which I should probably fix at some point).
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 02:39 am (UTC)i'm not either, and yet partway through PSS, i found myself going "wait a minute, this is..."
and somehow, it didn't stop my reading :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:44 am (UTC)i've read some writing about how dark fantasy is what people say when they think a book's too literary to be called horror. then again, i'd certainly call American Gods a dark urban fantasy, but i wouldn't call it horror.
grotesquerie, i like that. i want to have a bookstore with a grotesquerie section. think i could get some kind of Microsoft grant for that?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 01:51 am (UTC)Speaking of which, Geoff Ryman's "Air" is really freaking good.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:33 am (UTC)i couldn't read The Scar previously because the prose i slogged through was so overblown i choked. one of the characters in PSS thinks in prose so purple that i can barely stand it; the only writer who has ever carried off that kind of style for me is Ray Bradbury, and that always requires a breaking-in period before i stop feeling distanced.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:12 am (UTC)and I hope you feel better.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 01:08 pm (UTC)