Fried Egg
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2006
- Messages
- 3,544
And presumably you've not read "Foundation and Earth" either? That concludes the story begun in "Foundation's Edge".
April’s Audacious Attempts at Assailing Avenues of Literary Adventure.
- Thread starter GOLLUM
- Start date
- Status
I’ve just finished reading The Palace Of Dreams by Imsail Kadare, Albanian’s leading novelist and a previous nominee for the Nobel Prize. I have to say I really enjoyed this book that probably falls only a little short of being a bone fide masterpiece.
The story itself is set within an Ottoman Empire that includes Albania as part of the greater Balkans. Within the Empire’s capital, looms the Palace of Dreams, a vast, labyrinthine State organ whose primary function is to co-ordinate the gathering, sifting, selection and where warranted interpretation of its citizen’s dreams without exception. From this process are derived the Master Dreams, used to predict possible plots or catastrophes against Sultan and Empire. More than this though, the Palace represents a mechanism through which the Sate may lay bare the subconscious of its own people and thereby ultimately wield a power where no-one is truly safe or above suspicion, made all the more frightening by the intangible mystery that surrounds these dreams and their interpretations as viewed by the common populace.
Into this bureaucratic nightmare then, steps the young Mark-Alem, a member of one of Albania’s and the Empire’s most powerful families, whose historical and often bitter in-fighting with the Sultanate forms the central backbone of the story’s plot. As Mark-Alem’s career is dizzyingly fast-tracked, presumably to ensure the family has an instrument by which it may both avert disaster and influence State politics, one can almost taste the growing paranoia and sense of claustrophobia the central character feels but paradoxically how what once seemed to be unreal now appears to be routine, a living hell where dreams become their own reality whilst the reality of the outside world seems more like a distant dream. In fact, Kadare’s prose, whilst highly readable, at times appears to be deliberately cold and unsympathetic, presumably to reflect the awfulness of what it must be like to live in such a regime.
Also described in some detail within the context of the story are various dream concepts that this reviewer found particularly intriguing, including how dreams may be affected by outside influences such as the weather, the interpretation of specific dream symbols that feature Kadare's apparent drawing upon Albanian mythology, how dreams may be entirely fabricated for personal gain and rumoured to often be so, how dreams of the subconscious are viewed as being in a temporary phase and will one day ultimately manifest themselves possibly even physically into every part of the conscious world, a method for measuring the insomniac index of an entire nation, particularly pertinent when following a major disaster, the initial classification of the dreams before they are assessed and their later archival classification and so on.
The final part of the novel, where the subsequent implications of Mark-Alem’s approach in analysing a particular dream, whose symbolic content ultimately refers back to the founding of the family’s emergence as a great power, gives rise to a nail-biting climax that is quite brilliantly orchestrated by Kadare that at its very heart represents an allegorical vision of what is likely be one of the more complete and indeed unsettling representations of totalitarianism and the compromising cost it can have on a Empire’s individuals and collective peoples as seen in the annals of World Literature. An especially brave and socially relevant novel too, considering Kadare was forced to endure various threats after the novel was banned in Albania upon publication in 1981 before he ultimately left his home country following the demise of the regime in the early 1990s. I’ve rated The Palace Of Dreams 9 stars out of 10 and well worth the read.
Next up I’ve decided to read another of the novels by the late Chilean firebrand Roberto Bolano entitled The Skating Rink, whose entire Oeuvre I’ve been collecting as it continues to be systematically translated into English. Here’s the blurb to help set the background:
Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink oscillates between two poles: a camp ground and a ruined mansion, the Palacio Benvingut. The story, told by three male narrators, revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in the ruined Palacio Benvingut, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene. A mysterious pair of women, an ex-opera singer and a taciturn girl often armed with a knife, turn up as well.
A complex book, The Skating Rink is not fundamentally a crime novel, or not exclusively; it’s also about political corruption, sex, the experience of immigration, and frustrated passion. And it’s an atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, its drifters, its businessmen, bureaucrats and social workers.
The story itself is set within an Ottoman Empire that includes Albania as part of the greater Balkans. Within the Empire’s capital, looms the Palace of Dreams, a vast, labyrinthine State organ whose primary function is to co-ordinate the gathering, sifting, selection and where warranted interpretation of its citizen’s dreams without exception. From this process are derived the Master Dreams, used to predict possible plots or catastrophes against Sultan and Empire. More than this though, the Palace represents a mechanism through which the Sate may lay bare the subconscious of its own people and thereby ultimately wield a power where no-one is truly safe or above suspicion, made all the more frightening by the intangible mystery that surrounds these dreams and their interpretations as viewed by the common populace.
Into this bureaucratic nightmare then, steps the young Mark-Alem, a member of one of Albania’s and the Empire’s most powerful families, whose historical and often bitter in-fighting with the Sultanate forms the central backbone of the story’s plot. As Mark-Alem’s career is dizzyingly fast-tracked, presumably to ensure the family has an instrument by which it may both avert disaster and influence State politics, one can almost taste the growing paranoia and sense of claustrophobia the central character feels but paradoxically how what once seemed to be unreal now appears to be routine, a living hell where dreams become their own reality whilst the reality of the outside world seems more like a distant dream. In fact, Kadare’s prose, whilst highly readable, at times appears to be deliberately cold and unsympathetic, presumably to reflect the awfulness of what it must be like to live in such a regime.
Also described in some detail within the context of the story are various dream concepts that this reviewer found particularly intriguing, including how dreams may be affected by outside influences such as the weather, the interpretation of specific dream symbols that feature Kadare's apparent drawing upon Albanian mythology, how dreams may be entirely fabricated for personal gain and rumoured to often be so, how dreams of the subconscious are viewed as being in a temporary phase and will one day ultimately manifest themselves possibly even physically into every part of the conscious world, a method for measuring the insomniac index of an entire nation, particularly pertinent when following a major disaster, the initial classification of the dreams before they are assessed and their later archival classification and so on.
The final part of the novel, where the subsequent implications of Mark-Alem’s approach in analysing a particular dream, whose symbolic content ultimately refers back to the founding of the family’s emergence as a great power, gives rise to a nail-biting climax that is quite brilliantly orchestrated by Kadare that at its very heart represents an allegorical vision of what is likely be one of the more complete and indeed unsettling representations of totalitarianism and the compromising cost it can have on a Empire’s individuals and collective peoples as seen in the annals of World Literature. An especially brave and socially relevant novel too, considering Kadare was forced to endure various threats after the novel was banned in Albania upon publication in 1981 before he ultimately left his home country following the demise of the regime in the early 1990s. I’ve rated The Palace Of Dreams 9 stars out of 10 and well worth the read.
Next up I’ve decided to read another of the novels by the late Chilean firebrand Roberto Bolano entitled The Skating Rink, whose entire Oeuvre I’ve been collecting as it continues to be systematically translated into English. Here’s the blurb to help set the background:
Set in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink oscillates between two poles: a camp ground and a ruined mansion, the Palacio Benvingut. The story, told by three male narrators, revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Martí. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a pompous but besotted civil servant secretly builds a skating rink in the ruined Palacio Benvingut, using public funds. But Nuria has affairs, provokes jealousy, and the skating rink becomes a crime scene. A mysterious pair of women, an ex-opera singer and a taciturn girl often armed with a knife, turn up as well.
A complex book, The Skating Rink is not fundamentally a crime novel, or not exclusively; it’s also about political corruption, sex, the experience of immigration, and frustrated passion. And it’s an atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in a seaside town, with its vacationers, its drifters, its businessmen, bureaucrats and social workers.
No, that's been sitting in my TBR pile for aeons, while I waited to get a copy of FE...
Hypnos164
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2008
- Messages
- 476
Forced myself to finish The Centauri Device by M John Harrison – it seemed very wordy considering it didn't really have much that would pass for characters or a plot.
Why write a book with an ordinary working guy as the protagonist when, as the author, you can't keep your contempt for your characters plebeian nature and limited intellect from spewing out into the text?
Maybe someone can provide the Movie Masterclass intro that explains why this is a Masterwork, as it’s really not obvious to me?
Think I'm going to take a break from the experimental and the off-beat and have a month of reading books that I'm confident of actually enjoying.
Last edited:
Fried Egg
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2006
- Messages
- 3,544
Usually, the SF Masterworks series is quite reliable so it's a shame when it lets you down like this.
Finished CE Murphy Urban Shaman, and Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead. Both are essential detective stories with Native American focus.
Urban Shaman is the first in the series - central character is a female mechanic for the local police force. Starts with her seeing someone in trouble in the streets below as her passenger flight comes into land. This has quite a lot of mystical and mythical elements as you might expect from the title. Mixes native american myth and Irish. Enjoyed it, entertaining read.
Dance Hall of the Dead - second of the Joe Leaphorn books. Joe Leaphorn is a Navaho policeman, so on reservation only. The book is a detective drama not a fantasy, but the plot involves a lot of the beliefs and mysticism of a neighbouring tribe, the Zuni. Also enjoyed it - very different style to Urban Shaman. More reserved is the best way of describing it. The main character is not going through major life changes, he is already an experienced policeman who is investigating what is going on. So much lower on the main character's emotional content. It is about the investigation.
Urban Shaman is the first in the series - central character is a female mechanic for the local police force. Starts with her seeing someone in trouble in the streets below as her passenger flight comes into land. This has quite a lot of mystical and mythical elements as you might expect from the title. Mixes native american myth and Irish. Enjoyed it, entertaining read.
Dance Hall of the Dead - second of the Joe Leaphorn books. Joe Leaphorn is a Navaho policeman, so on reservation only. The book is a detective drama not a fantasy, but the plot involves a lot of the beliefs and mysticism of a neighbouring tribe, the Zuni. Also enjoyed it - very different style to Urban Shaman. More reserved is the best way of describing it. The main character is not going through major life changes, he is already an experienced policeman who is investigating what is going on. So much lower on the main character's emotional content. It is about the investigation.
I just finished books 9 and 10 of Simon R Green's Nightside series: Just Another Judgement Day and The Good, The Bad, and The Uncanny.
I really enjoy reading the Nightside books yet I've struggled to figure out exactly why. Green has a deft touch and injects just enough humour into his books to balance out the awful things that happen in the Nightside. The plots are entertaining but not the best by far. Often I'm left feeling a little left down by the endings.
However, having given it some thought, I think the Nightside series has two saving graces:
1) Green's vivid descriptions of the place itself, brings it to life in my mind's eye
2) The characters evolve throughout the series and I, as the reader, am privy to that personal growth.
I think it's these two points that keep me coming back for more, despite the plot weaknesses. I want to know what happens to John Taylor and Suzie Shooter. I want to know if Alex Morissey will ever be free of Strangefellows, if Razor Eddie will ever have a bath and if Walker's family will at some point discover his secret life.
I really enjoy reading the Nightside books yet I've struggled to figure out exactly why. Green has a deft touch and injects just enough humour into his books to balance out the awful things that happen in the Nightside. The plots are entertaining but not the best by far. Often I'm left feeling a little left down by the endings.
However, having given it some thought, I think the Nightside series has two saving graces:
1) Green's vivid descriptions of the place itself, brings it to life in my mind's eye
2) The characters evolve throughout the series and I, as the reader, am privy to that personal growth.
I think it's these two points that keep me coming back for more, despite the plot weaknesses. I want to know what happens to John Taylor and Suzie Shooter. I want to know if Alex Morissey will ever be free of Strangefellows, if Razor Eddie will ever have a bath and if Walker's family will at some point discover his secret life.
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
I finished Bruges-la-Morte. Liked it a lot. The best parts of the book are the haunting metaphors, the pervasive atmosphere and the minute examination of subjective perceptions. The story is perhaps a little heavy-handed in its 'beats' but in a way that only underlines its lugubrious, melancholy drift. I can see how Sebald would have found much to appreciate in this novel, and in Hugues Viane I recognise a somewhat domesticated cousin of Jean Des Esseintes.
Now reading Invitation To A Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov, and The Keeper Of Ruins by Gesualdo Bufalino, which I am taking to much better than the first time I tried to read it.
Now reading Invitation To A Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov, and The Keeper Of Ruins by Gesualdo Bufalino, which I am taking to much better than the first time I tried to read it.
HMMM....that's rather an eloquent mini precis of Bruges-la-Morte J.P. I can't entirely agree with it being heavy handed in it's overall pulse viz a viz rhythm or "feel" though (if that is what you meant?) as that implies to me a lack of subtlety whereas my personal belief is that Rodenbach used this as a very deliberate technique to underscore one of the Novel's key essences. Definitely more than a touch of Huysmans in the main character and like you perhaps I really liked the way in which Rodenbach skillfully employed atmosphere and some truly haunting yet beautifully evocative applications of metaphor! I also liked the ending, which although having a certain stage-managed feel to it still displayed IMO a certain touch of Genius. I called this book at the time of reading it a "near-masterpiece" perhaps clearly one and I stick with that assessment. Highly recommended to anyone else wishing to read this novel...
It's good to see you are enjoying Bufalino's short story collection. Something else for me to look forward to then.
soulsinging
the dude abides
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
- Messages
- 2,499
I abandoned the Warded Man by Peter Brett. It wasn't bad, I just found myself losing interest for reasons I may have to make a separate thread about.
On to Waylander by Gemmell. Only a few chapters in and reminded of why his books are always so enjoyable!
On to Waylander by Gemmell. Only a few chapters in and reminded of why his books are always so enjoyable!
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
The somewhat stage-managed feel to the ending is the sort of thing I mean. From the moment Viane first finds out who the mysterious woman is, there is a certain inevitability to the plot. When the servant visits the Beguinage, for instance, I immediately anticipated what would transpire.
This is by no means a bad thing; Nabokov begins his novel Laughter In The Dark with a precis of the plot; the point of a good novel, evidently, can be in the telling, in the details and the language. Bruges-La-Morte certainly achieves a monumental cumulative effect through exquisite details and what one assumes must be wonderfully well-turned language in the original to evoke so much atmosphere and nuance even in translation.
However the heaviness of theme and mood and the slightly predictable course of events did make me feel at times like I was reading the novel Eeyore would write, were he a gloomy European writer rather than a gloomy stuffed donkey...there are moments when it seems a rather studied, excessive gloom, almost a caricature of gloom. Then again that is part of the point of the novel, isn't it, to question Viane's real motives and to plant a certain ambiguity in his real relationship with the two women, dead and momentarily living, that he hangs his existence on?
Hmmm...maybe they should give us a TV show. 'Two tech writers spend entirely too much time pondering gloomy literature'!
Wow! I'm glad I asked for clarification on that particular point of 'beats' because that definitely wasn't what I thought you meant. Having said that, it's also the reservation I had about the novel. It did seem a little contrived to be honest, at least on one plot level and the ending, without trying to give away too much, was telegraphed pretty early on for me too. In that way Rodenbach's novel seemed a little clumsy to me but in spite of that such is his ability to imbue an atmosphere of genuine melancholy and employ great metaphor and I think quite cleverly insinuate the town as an embodiment of his dead wife as it were that it was still a very, very good novel that falls only a little short from being an unequivocal masterpiece.The somewhat stage-managed feel to the ending is the sort of thing I mean. From the moment Viane first finds out who the mysterious woman is, there is a certain inevitability to the plot. When the servant visits the Beguinage, for instance, I immediately anticipated what would transpire.
This is by no means a bad thing; Nabokov begins his novel Laughter In The Dark with a precis of the plot; the point of a good novel, evidently, can be in the telling, in the details and the language. Bruges-La-Morte certainly achieves a monumental cumulative effect through exquisite details and what one assumes must be wonderfully well-turned language in the original to evoke so much atmosphere and nuance even in translation.
However the heaviness of theme and mood and the slightly predictable course of events did make me feel at times like I was reading the novel Eeyore would write, were he a gloomy European writer rather than a gloomy stuffed donkey...there are moments when it seems a rather studied, excessive gloom, almost a caricature of gloom. Then again that is part of the point of the novel, isn't it, to question Viane's real motives and to plant a certain ambiguity in his real relationship with the two women, dead and momentarily living, that he hangs his existence on?
Hmmm...maybe they should give us a TV show. 'Two tech writers spend entirely too much time pondering gloomy literature'!
I concur with you on the point of ambiguity as being a key ingredient to this novel...in fact let us not forget that the French novel of the 1960s entitled The Living And The Dead that Hitchcock so famously rendered onto the Silver Screen as Vertigo, was purportedly in part at least said to be inspired by the writer's reading of this much earlier novel by Rodenbach.
As far as a TV series goes, well the broadcasters could do worse than pay us the big bucks to talk about something we clearly enjoy.....
Fried Egg
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2006
- Messages
- 3,544
I finished "Fevre Dream" by George R. R. Martin today. A very good book with an interesting take on vampires. I enjoyed the setting of river boats on the mississippi in the 1850's. A worthy addition to the Fantasy Masterworks series.
Now I think I'm going to continue my re-read of "The Worm Ouroborous" by E. R. Eddison.
Now I think I'm going to continue my re-read of "The Worm Ouroborous" by E. R. Eddison.
Good to hear. I was pretty confident that you would like it and not even a whiff of King in there either......
I finished Market Forces by Richard Morgan the other day.
First three of lines (of the Prologue):
In a way, this book reminded my of the same author's Woken Furies in that often events just happen, and are given no less prominence than scenes that appear to be more relevant to the thrust of the book, and yet, when you get to the end, it all snaps into place. (Morgan has quite a bit of fun with this: some things are, it seems, explained but their true significance remains undisclosed.)
Speaking of fun, here's some criticism about one of Morgan's other books (unfounded, I might add) from the last part of this book:
I'm not sure that I can really recommend this book because it takes so long to start coming together (at least it did for me), there's too much unnecessary sex and a little bit too much violence. But if you like some of the items from a list that includes a lot of semi-random violence, plenty of graphic sex, heaps of intrigue, Mad Max (yes, really), no real heroes (only anti-heroes and worse) and an author who knows who to pull it all together at the end, you might like to think about giving it a try.
First three of lines (of the Prologue):
That it took six weeks of on-and-off reading to finish it should tell its own story. That I read the least third of the novel in a day should tell you it takes some time to get going, but then takes off.
In a way, this book reminded my of the same author's Woken Furies in that often events just happen, and are given no less prominence than scenes that appear to be more relevant to the thrust of the book, and yet, when you get to the end, it all snaps into place. (Morgan has quite a bit of fun with this: some things are, it seems, explained but their true significance remains undisclosed.)
Speaking of fun, here's some criticism about one of Morgan's other books (unfounded, I might add) from the last part of this book:
I'm not sure that I can really recommend this book because it takes so long to start coming together (at least it did for me), there's too much unnecessary sex and a little bit too much violence. But if you like some of the items from a list that includes a lot of semi-random violence, plenty of graphic sex, heaps of intrigue, Mad Max (yes, really), no real heroes (only anti-heroes and worse) and an author who knows who to pull it all together at the end, you might like to think about giving it a try.
j d worthington
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2006
- Messages
- 13,889
Not sure if it qualifies as "literary adventure" in this case, but I've begun reading Ernst Haeckel's The Riddle of the Universe (an English translation of his Die Welträthsel, the original of which was published in 1899, English translation in 1900). While I have long known the gist of Haeckel's argument, and have read various excerpts over the years, this is the first time I've actually read the book itself. So far, it is surprisingly easy going -- very straightforward, not overly technical, and it deals with the subjects discussed in a fascinating fashion. Yes, some of his science has been superseded in the intervening years, but a fair amount of it is still quite valid. The strangest part, though, is when he is talking about the conflicts between science and religion and the need to improve the educational criteria to truly inform all of the latest findings in science and how these affect our view of the world and the universe around us. When he discusses the claims made on both sides, and the problems with legislators and administrators who are themselves largely ignorant of science yet making decisions concerning science education (not to mention the various aspects of social interaction which a good grounding in the sciences impacts, from justice to the teaching of ethics, he could well be quoting today's headlines....
In addition, I'm reading my way through Black Wings: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, ed. by S. T. Joshi, about which more later....
In addition, I'm reading my way through Black Wings: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, ed. by S. T. Joshi, about which more later....
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Knivesout no more
The more things change, the more they stay the same? Haeckel was an interesting fellow: rationalist, humanist, scientist...racist. I'd be interested to read further updates on what you make of this book.
- Status