Iain Banks, A Song of Stone
Peter D. Tillman
Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
intended audience is.
I'll make no attempt to avoid SPOILERS in the following.
In a future, post-apocalyptic Britain, wrecked by gang-wars, a band of
irregulars led by a female Lieutenant hole up in an old castle. They
make the Lord and his mistress into half-prisoners, half-pets. The Lord
has endless, pointless, boring, amazingly windy memories/internal
monologues of what went before. He (strict first person) addresses the
memoir to Her, in second person, which works about as well as this
usually does, which is to say, a weak, poor and distracting device. Did
I mention the brutal, pointless killings, there to demonstrate that
post-apocalyptic Gangwar is Hell?
The Loot and her soldiers slaughter a rival gang, and take their Big
Gun. This is symbolic. The soldiers have a big victory party, get drunk,
rape the girls, wreck the Lord's castle, and humiliate him. The Loot has
sex with Her Mistresship, a mute, milquetoast boring cardboard 'person'.
The Loot shoots the Lord, but he gets away, and (sort of) kills her. Her
troops tie him to the Big Gun: in the Lord's words, "For I too am tied,
in Mezentian hyperbole, a puppet of [sic] before the cannon's mouth."
You know, a little Mezentian hyperbole goes a long, long way, but it's
here by the hundredweight, page after page after page... "It is my
estimation that, unless one's involvement is peripheral, nobody survives
a war; the people who come out the other side are not those who went
in." Good God.
It's hard to believe that this sad, purple, preachy, windy book was
written by our beloved, Orbital-smashing, Drone-riding Iain M. Banks --
but I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
If you'd like a *good* book about post-apocalyptic Britain with castles
and gang-wars (kinda), I recommend Edward P. Hughes' fine, underrated
Master of the Fist
<http://isfdb.tamu.edu/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Edward_P._Hughes>, which will run
rings around this sorry POS. Trust me.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
Eric Swartz
and, oddly enough, Complicity) and found this book boring and pointless,
whereas I have really liked all his other stuff. He is one of my favorite
authors.
Oh, and I really liked The Bridge.
Eric
"Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message
news:tillman-79D3B3...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>
> Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
> intended audience is.
>
>
> It's hard to believe that this sad, purple, preachy, windy book was
> written by our beloved, Orbital-smashing, Drone-riding Iain M. Banks --
> but I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
> violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
> well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
> guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
> you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
>
> Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Richard Puchalsky
news:Awg3b.32305$081....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
> Yeah, I agree.
[...]
> Oh, and I really liked The Bridge.
> "Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message
> news:tillman-79D3B3...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> > Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
> >
> > Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
> > intended audience is.
[...]
> > well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
> > guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
> > you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
Well, if anyone on alt.books.iain-banks can claim to enjoy literary analysis
of Banks' work, it's me, and I don't see how you class The Bridge with A
Song of Stone. A Song of Stone is indeed a rather bad book. The Bridge is
one of Banks' best.
There seems to be an assumption that if you don't like a non-SF book, and it
uses big words, the problem must be that it is "literary", especially if
your literary judgment is shaky. (Frankly, yours must be if you disliked
The Bridge). I don't think that A Song of Stone is particularly literary,
and its problems do not make it somehow paradoxically enjoyable by those who
like literary works.
If you're looking for a literary SF work by Banks, try Use of Weapons.
Riboflavin
> your literary judgment is shaky. (Frankly, yours must be if you disliked
> The Bridge). I don't think that A Song of Stone is particularly literary,
Yes of course, people with different tastes in literature than you are just
inferior. Thanks for clearing that up!
--
Kevin Allegood ri...@mindspring.com
"Personally, I hold by the Clarke - Sturgeon law:
90% of any sufficently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from crap." - Larry Lennhoff
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> It's hard to believe that this sad, purple, preachy, windy book was
> written by our beloved, Orbital-smashing, Drone-riding Iain M. Banks --
> but I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
> violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
> well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
> guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
> you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
Speaking as somebody who had much the same reaction to SoS (but I don't
rule out the possibility that there was something I Didn't Get) there
are some very good non-Sf Iain Banks books; starting with, of course,
The Wasp Factory (perhaps his best book of all, sf included), and
including at least Espedair Street and Crow Road. I did like Canal
Dreams as well, though I seem alone in this. The Business, though
slight, was entertaining, and a lot of people will tell you the same of
Whit, though I didn't have much fun with it. I would not recommend Dead
Air.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan - ada...@despammed.com - this is a valid address
homepage: http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
English blog: http://annafdd.blogspot.com/
Blog in italiano: http://fulminiesaette.blogspot.com
Peter D. Tillman
ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> Peter D. Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>
> > It's hard to believe that this sad, purple, preachy, windy book was
> > written by our beloved, Orbital-smashing, Drone-riding Iain M. Banks --
> > but I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
> > violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
> > well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
> > guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
> > you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
>
> Speaking as somebody who had much the same reaction to SoS (but I don't
> rule out the possibility that there was something I Didn't Get) there
> are some very good non-Sf Iain Banks books; starting with, of course,
> The Wasp Factory (perhaps his best book of all, sf included), and
> including at least Espedair Street and Crow Road. I did like Canal
> Dreams as well, though I seem alone in this. The Business, though
> slight, was entertaining, and a lot of people will tell you the same of
> Whit, though I didn't have much fun with it. I would not recommend Dead
> Air.
[saves note] Thanks, Anna. I have been on the lookout for Espedair St,
which doesn't seem to have a US ed?
I'm relieved that others had similar reactions to SoS, which (imo)
sucked, bigtime.
FWIW, I didn't care for The Business either -- finding it dull, trite
and slight, I gave up after a few chapters.
But "Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> There seems to be an assumption that if you don't like a non-SF book, and it
> uses big words, the problem must be that it is "literary", especially if
> your literary judgment is shaky. (Frankly, yours must be if you disliked
> The Bridge). I don't think that A Song of Stone is particularly literary,
> and its problems do not make it somehow paradoxically enjoyable by those who
> like literary works.
Umm. Irony seldom propagates well on Usenet, though I would have thought
the "the literariate" would have been a clue....
Fatuous condescension, however, comes through loud and clear.
That aside, I'll stand by my judgement of The Bridge, with the caveat
that it's based on just that part (half?) I read before setting it aside.
Mine does seem a minority opinion.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
"Without science fiction, we would lack a crucial imaginative resource
for grappling with the promise and peril of technology, and without
comic books we would have fewer heroes, fewer monsters, and thus
a poorer idea of what it is to be human."
-- AO Scott, NY Times film critic
Richard Puchalsky
> Umm. Irony seldom propagates well on Usenet, though I would have thought
> the "the literariate" would have been a clue....
>
> Fatuous condescension, however, comes through loud and clear.
>
Tillman previously wrote:
"I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?"
Oh great ironist, I understood you quite clearly. It was just another
varient of "non-SF equates to literary, and literary equates to dull and
wordy". But of course you were writing it *jokingly*, which makes it ever
so different than the million and one other times that fanboys have written
it.
> That aside, I'll stand by my judgement of The Bridge, with the caveat
> that it's based on just that part (half?) I read before setting it aside.
> Mine does seem a minority opinion.
Thank God for that last coincidence. Otherwise I'm sure I'd be hearing lots
more about how I must be wrong because majority opinion determines how good
a book is -- just like that survey that proves that Lord of the Rings is the
best book ever.
Adrian Tupper
news:0bp3b.14893$jY2....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net:
> "Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
>> your literary judgment is shaky. (Frankly, yours must be if you
>> disliked The Bridge). I don't think that A Song of Stone is
>> particularly literary,
>
> Yes of course, people with different tastes in literature than you are
> just inferior. Thanks for clearing that up!
LOL!
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
>
> Thank God for that last coincidence. Otherwise I'm sure I'd be
> hearing lots more about how I must be wrong because majority opinion
> determines how good a book is -- just like that survey that proves
> that Lord of the Rings is the best book ever.
>
>
>
Funny you should bring that up. I was just thinking along those lines
myself :-)
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
79D3B3.231...@news.fu-berlin.de:
> Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>
> Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
> intended audience is.
I think it was IB doing something different. Serious. Experimental.
But I agree it was not a good read. Perhaps a short story would
have been a better medium for a piece of work like this?
>
> I'll make no attempt to avoid SPOILERS in the following.
/snipped/
You missed out the background to the the "lord" and "lady"
relationship which was pretty depraved anyway. Not that that
makes the book any better to read.
Oh, and if I do decide to read the book you recommend please excuse
me if you don't get the Amazon commission directed to you!!!
--
Adrian
Beeblebear
"Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message
news:tillman-79D3B3...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>
> Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
> intended audience is.
>
>
It was truly dire. The only one of his books that I have so far totally
detested.
You might like Walking on Glass. It is fairly difficult to describe without
spoilers, but it is my favourite book by Iain Banks.
(If you don't like it, it is mercifully short)
--
--
Chris Lyth (CL...@ifis.org.uk)
Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Fatuous condescension, however, comes through loud and clear.
I'm with you on that count, as well. I reached the same conclusion a
long time ago. :-)
Nikolaus Maack
>>
>>Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
>>intended audience is.
I have to agree.
A friend of mine was gungho for Iain Banks and loaned me a couple of
books. They were okay. Banks strikes me as a very "strategic" author
-- that is, his books read like very complicated machines, or an
elaborate game of chess. They can be interesting, but they strike me as
lacking an organic, human quality. All head, no heart -- it puts me to
sleep.
I've got a copy of "Complicity" sitting on the book shelf. I started to
read it a few years ago, and gave up. It's funny to read the blurbs on
the back, as they're positive versions of my negative comments:
"Tightly plotted", "superbly crafted", "stylishly executed and well
produced". All the critics seem very aware that a Banks' book is a MADE
thing. I had to laugh -- I just opened the book to read on the front
page, "An ingeniously constructed tale..."
"Complicity" seems the most overly constructed book of all. Here's the
opener:
"You hear the car after an hour and a half. During that time you've
been here in the darkness, sitting on the small telephone seat near the
front door, waiting."
So posed, so strangely silly.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> A friend of mine was gungho for Iain Banks and loaned me a couple of
> books. They were okay. Banks strikes me as a very "strategic" author
> -- that is, his books read like very complicated machines, or an
> elaborate game of chess. They can be interesting, but they strike me as
> lacking an organic, human quality. All head, no heart -- it puts me to
> sleep.
That's the strangest categorization of Banks I've ever heard. They seem
to me very much visceral, though, yes, they are also tightly plotted.
But I've never been taken but the guts and punched hard as it's happened
to me with a couple of Banks books. Complicity is one, but not the
hardest. For real internal emotional shakeup, I would line up Use of
Weapons, Player of Games, The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street and Canal
Dreams.
Arthur Green
<adrian...@totalise.co.uk> wrote:
>"Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in news:tillman-
>79D3B3.231...@news.fu-berlin.de:
>
>> Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>>
>> Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
>> intended audience is.
>
>I think it was IB doing something different. Serious. Experimental.
>But I agree it was not a good read. Perhaps a short story would
>have been a better medium for a piece of work like this?
Dull, wordy and pointless is probably the best concise description of
ASoS that I can think of. I managed to finish it, a re-reading (to see
if there was actually a point to it) expired not too far from the
beginning.
To be honest, I have a suspicion that Banks is perhaps losing his
touch. His early stuff (IMB up to and including "Use of Weapons", "The
Wasp Factory", "The Bridge", "Espedair St" and "The Crow Road") is
excellent, but recent books have left me going "ehhh". "Complicity"
had pale echoes of TWF but wasn't nearly as good - it shared a similar
vibe with "Against A Dark Background". "The Business" and "Whit" both
strike me as fluffy (when the most depraved act in a book is wanton
torture of a Ferrari you know there must be something wrong :-) and
"Dead Air" seems to be pretty much a rehash of "Complicity".
On the SF side, "Feersum Enjinn" was patchy and "Excession" was not
particularly coherent. AADB was to a certain extent pointless (so was
"Consider Phlebas", but I think it read better). I can't remember much
about "Inversions", but I plan to re-read it as soon as I can find my
copy.
>> I'll make no attempt to avoid SPOILERS in the following.
>/snipped/
>You missed out the background to the the "lord" and "lady"
>relationship which was pretty depraved anyway. Not that that
>makes the book any better to read.
As if depravity is anything unusual in either IB's or IMB's work :-)
- AG
The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I think he's from the CIA
Nikolaus Maack
> That's the strangest categorization of Banks I've ever heard. They seem
> to me very much visceral, though, yes, they are also tightly plotted.
> But I've never been taken but the guts and punched hard as it's happened
> to me with a couple of Banks books. Complicity is one, but not the
> hardest. For real internal emotional shakeup, I would line up Use of
> Weapons, Player of Games, The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street and Canal
> Dreams.
The Wasp Factory, which I did manage to read, is plotted in such a way
that you can almost see the stitches holding the chapters together in
the shape of a book. I don't know why people seem to find that book
such an emotional whirlwind. It struck me as pretty dry and bland.
The one thing that stays with me is the main character describing
repeatedly how he picks his nose clean every morning.
Richard Puchalsky
> A friend of mine was gungho for Iain Banks and loaned me a couple of
> books. They were okay. Banks strikes me as a very "strategic" author
> -- that is, his books read like very complicated machines, or an
> elaborate game of chess. They can be interesting, but they strike me as
> lacking an organic, human quality. All head, no heart -- it puts me to
> sleep.
I agree with your basic categorization, though not with the "no heart"
part -- Banks' political convictions supply that. Of course, as someone
who likes elaborate constructions, I like that element of Banks' work. His
best books, like The Bridge or Use of Weapons, have formal chapter
structures that are quite well used.
>
> I've got a copy of "Complicity" sitting on the book shelf. I started to
> read it a few years ago, and gave up. It's funny to read the blurbs on
> the back, as they're positive versions of my negative comments:
>
> "Tightly plotted", "superbly crafted", "stylishly executed and well
> produced". All the critics seem very aware that a Banks' book is a MADE
> thing. I had to laugh -- I just opened the book to read on the front
> page, "An ingeniously constructed tale..."
Well, a book *is* a made thing, and too much of an attempt to hide that can
be annoying in itself. Is it that you'd like greater realism, or greater
romanticism? From your "All head, no heart" comment I'd guess the latter.
>
> "Complicity" seems the most overly constructed book of all. Here's the
> opener:
>
> "You hear the car after an hour and a half. During that time you've
> been here in the darkness, sitting on the small telephone seat near the
> front door, waiting."
>
> So posed, so strangely silly.
I think Complicity is one of his poorer books. The people who write about
the emotional impact of Banks' violent scenes tend to ignore the fact that
those scenes are, once you're read a few of his books, the most predictable
of all. So much so that a worthwhile shorthand for writing about Banks is
the concept of the ODV, "Obligatory Deadly Vengeance", scene. Most Banks
books have a scene that is basically straight out of a bad American cop
movie: "you killed my partner -- now prepare to die slowly." Except that
the revenge is often taken, as within_Complicity_ , on society's behalf.
tejas
"Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:NHw3b.119091$3o3.8...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> "Nikolaus Maack" <nikm...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > A friend of mine was gungho for Iain Banks and loaned me a couple of
> > books. They were okay. Banks strikes me as a very "strategic" author
> > -- that is, his books read like very complicated machines, or an
> > elaborate game of chess. They can be interesting, but they strike me as
> > lacking an organic, human quality. All head, no heart -- it puts me to
> > sleep.
>
> I agree with your basic categorization, though not with the "no heart"
> part -- Banks' political convictions supply that. Of course, as someone
> who likes elaborate constructions, I like that element of Banks' work.
His
> best books, like The Bridge or Use of Weapons, have formal chapter
> structures that are quite well used.
I've read some Banks, but I'd rather read Jeff Noon. He's a lot more
entertaining.
Ted
Nikolaus Maack
> I agree with your basic categorization, though not with the "no heart"
> part -- Banks' political convictions supply that. Of course, as someone
> who likes elaborate constructions, I like that element of Banks' work. His
> best books, like The Bridge or Use of Weapons, have formal chapter
> structures that are quite well used.
I'm confused. To me, saying someone expresses their emotions through
their political convictions is like saying a rock is soft because it's
all pointy and jagged. What are Banks' politics and how do they express
feelings? I am genuinely curious.
> Well, a book *is* a made thing, and too much of an attempt to hide that can
> be annoying in itself.
To "hide" it is annoying, yes. But there are different kinds of "made
things". I am far too aware of the "pieces" in Banks. It's the
difference between saying something clever and saying something apt,
between a cut piece of stone and a mossy stone in a garden. I'd rather
read a book that grew and evolved and was pruned, than read a book
that's planned like a bus tour.
> Is it that you'd like greater realism, or greater
> romanticism? From your "All head, no heart" comment I'd guess the latter.
The best parts of realism are make-believe. Mobsters didn't know how to
behave until Mario Puzo explained it to them.
I prefer romanticism, but of a cynical nature. I'm a big fan of
Somerset Maugham and D.H. Lawrence and Richard Brautigan.
(Living authors? What are those?)
Richard Puchalsky
news:3F4EAAEA...@sympatico.ca...
> Richard Puchalsky wrote:
> > I agree with your basic categorization, though not with the "no heart"
> > part -- Banks' political convictions supply that. Of course, as
someone
> > who likes elaborate constructions, I like that element of Banks' work.
His
> > best books, like The Bridge or Use of Weapons, have formal chapter
> > structures that are quite well used.
>
> I'm confused. To me, saying someone expresses their emotions through
> their political convictions is like saying a rock is soft because it's
> all pointy and jagged. What are Banks' politics and how do they express
> feelings? I am genuinely curious.
His politics motivate the way he writes certain scenes, and in many cases
motivate his characters. He's one of the European type of
anarcho-socialists, and as a result there is almost nothing about our
current societies that he approves of. This translates into a lot of rage
at injustice, and in many cases a feeling of self-doubt. His best-known
books within SF are set in the "Culture" universe, one in which the (mostly)
good guys are in a sort of anarchistic utopia, and the reason they work is
that his characters have a reason for conflict beyond the standard SF power
seeking.
>
> > Well, a book *is* a made thing, and too much of an attempt to hide that
can
> > be annoying in itself.
>
> To "hide" it is annoying, yes. But there are different kinds of "made
> things". I am far too aware of the "pieces" in Banks. It's the
> difference between saying something clever and saying something apt,
> between a cut piece of stone and a mossy stone in a garden. I'd rather
> read a book that grew and evolved and was pruned, than read a book
> that's planned like a bus tour.
>
> > Is it that you'd like greater realism, or greater
> > romanticism? From your "All head, no heart" comment I'd guess the
latter.
>
> The best parts of realism are make-believe. Mobsters didn't know how to
> behave until Mario Puzo explained it to them.
>
> I prefer romanticism, but of a cynical nature. I'm a big fan of
> Somerset Maugham and D.H. Lawrence and Richard Brautigan.
>
> (Living authors? What are those?)
You might like James Branch Cabell. He was a champion, in the 1920s and
30s, of romanticism as opposed to the taste in realist novels that was
growing at that time. If he's not the best fantasy writer ever, he's
certainly somewhere near the top. And he was certainly cynical enough.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
> > That's the strangest categorization of Banks I've ever heard. They seem
> > to me very much visceral, though, yes, they are also tightly plotted.
> > But I've never been taken but the guts and punched hard as it's happened
> > to me with a couple of Banks books. Complicity is one, but not the
> > hardest. For real internal emotional shakeup, I would line up Use of
> > Weapons, Player of Games, The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street and Canal
> > Dreams.
>
> The Wasp Factory, which I did manage to read, is plotted in such a way
> that you can almost see the stitches holding the chapters together in
> the shape of a book. I don't know why people seem to find that book
> such an emotional whirlwind. It struck me as pretty dry and bland.
Well, it could well be that if you are too aware of plotting mechanics,
this disturbs your sense of involvement in a book. I can easily see it.
Me, I usually am totally blind to the off-stage machinery of plot, so I
can enjoy books like that.
It's a bit like what style is for me: I can't enjoy or even follow badly
written books, because the bad style interferes too much, it's too much
in my face.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On the SF side, "Feersum Enjinn" was patchy and "Excession" was not
> particularly coherent. AADB was to a certain extent pointless (so was
> "Consider Phlebas", but I think it read better). I can't remember much
> about "Inversions", but I plan to re-read it as soon as I can find my
> copy.
I thought _Excession_ rewarded a re-read, and so did _Inversions_, for
that matter (I translated both). And I thought _Look to Windward_ was
excellent, apart from one minor detail.
Peter D. Tillman
<NHw3b.119091$3o3.8...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
"Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote, inter alia:
> The people who write about
> the emotional impact of Banks' violent scenes tend to ignore the fact that
> those scenes are, once you're read a few of his books, the most predictable
> of all. So much so that a worthwhile shorthand for writing about Banks is
> the concept of the ODV, "Obligatory Deadly Vengeance", scene. Most Banks
> books have a scene that is basically straight out of a bad American cop
> movie: "you killed my partner -- now prepare to die slowly." Except that
> the revenge is often taken, as within_Complicity_ , on society's behalf.
Or, even more explicitly, the windup vengeance scene in Look to Windward.
[copies RP's summation to the Banks clipping file]
Nicely put -- I'd noticed this, but never articulated it.
Anyway, formulaic though they may be, I've always enjoyed the "Vengeance
is Mine" scenes in IMB/IB.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Richard Puchalsky
news:tillman-3A0658...@news.fu-berlin.de...
I don't tend to enjoy them, given their now-formulaic quality, and given
that they conflict so gratingly with the rest of the politics in his
books -- torturing bad people to death isn't really a core part of European
anarcho-leftism, is it? And they are often preceded by god-awful scenes
intended to make the bad guy(s) look *really* bad, inhumanly bad, so that
the ODV will appear justified. I don't think that Banks really examines his
urge to write these scenes quite enough. Given that we agree that it's a
pattern, why is it there? I can only think of a few probable reasons
offhand:
1) It's a reflection of the rage that Banks feels against social injustice
in the world, expressed through his fiction;
2) He thinks that the shock of a sudden ultra-violent scene is what his
readers are looking for -- i.e. it will sell books;
3) He thinks that the shock of a sudden ultra-violent scene provides
catharsis, and is part of good writing;
4) It's simply a writing habit, a part of his style that he can't change.
I guess I'm most sympathetic to the fourth of these possible reasons.
Certain writers produce certain kinds of works, and it's no use as a critic
wondering whether they could write something else.
The second of these reasons is also pretty understandable. Banks' first
published book (and great success), The Wasp Factory, was known primarily
for its use of "innocent" violence, the child protagonist who is also a
murderer. These days I still see many comments on alt.books.iain-banks from
people who suggest that they like Banks' violent books and not his
non-violent ones. Banks has to make a living, and maybe he feels that this
is a large part of his audience.
The third reason fails -- in execution if not in theory -- because the
violent scenes aren't really catharsis, they are all too often just spliced
in. Look To Windward, for example, has a sudden ODV at the end that doesn't
really answer any emotional buildup. I can't think of any books where I've
thought the technique really worked -- in Use of Weapons the buildup works,
but that's because it's *not* an ODV.
The first reason is the one that I consider most likely. But that's so
futile. In the real world, a certain kind of reluctance to take deadly
vengeance on the killers is now not only not unusual, it's almost required
for what people think of as successful, leftist social change. And it
really has been clear ever since the French Revolution, clearer still since
the final failure of the Russian one, and clearest in whatever modern
triumphs there are -- unless you think that South Africa, say, would be
better off with mass executions of whites than with a Truth and
Reconciliation commission. Banks' books are inherently political, so this
continued exploration of the if-only-we-could-kill-the-oppressors theme just
comes off as a kind of failure of political imagination.
Adrian Tupper
>
> I think Complicity is one of his poorer books. The people who write
> about the emotional impact of Banks' violent scenes tend to ignore the
> fact that those scenes are, once you're read a few of his books, the
> most predictable of all. So much so that a worthwhile shorthand for
> writing about Banks is the concept of the ODV, "Obligatory Deadly
> Vengeance", scene. Most Banks books have a scene that is basically
> straight out of a bad American cop movie: "you killed my partner --
> now prepare to die slowly." Except that the revenge is often taken,
> as within_Complicity_ , on society's behalf.
Partly agree. The intention, according to IB, was to shock. Perhaps
this impaired his other talents? Without the violence to distract the
reader, it would not be an especially interesting plot.
--
Adrian
James Angove
news:1g0g1x2.knjey71bdmrmmN%ada...@spamcop.net:
> Arthur Green <ajg...@REMOVE.iol.ie> wrote:
>
>> On the SF side, "Feersum Enjinn" was patchy and "Excession" was not
>> particularly coherent. AADB was to a certain extent pointless (so was
>> "Consider Phlebas", but I think it read better). I can't remember much
>> about "Inversions", but I plan to re-read it as soon as I can find my
>> copy.
>
> I thought _Excession_ rewarded a re-read, and so did _Inversions_, for
> that matter (I translated both). And I thought _Look to Windward_ was
> excellent, apart from one minor detail.
>
What was the detail? Its now been a couple of years since I read it, and I
remember thinking it was oddly structured, but not noticing any one thing
that I objected to.
--
James Angove
This is a usenet post. It is likely you will be eaten by a grue.
Richard Puchalsky
news:Xns93E6B...@194.247.47.119...
Me:
Well, whenever someone writes something about serial killers, the intention
is to shock. But as the only ingredient, shock quickly becomes schlock.
There are *multiple* American TV shows that, every episode, have another
serial killer killing multiple people. Without any additional element of
interest, an attempt to shock in this way becomes nothing more than yet
another piece of commercial trash.
So what does _Complicity_ have beyond its serial killer shock value? Well,
it has a not particularly interesting sudden plot twist at the end, of the
type that Banks favors. But that's more of a last structural element.
There is a little bit of not-too-bad characterization, but it's hard to
really notice it when murders are going on. Mainly what _Complicity_ has is
the concept of serial killing as social justice, a sort of vigilante revenge
not for individual murders of loved ones, but for general bad behavior that
leftists disapprove of. I don't think that Banks really does much with
this idea, or really confronts its implications, beyond giving it an
underlying patina of approval that is only emphasized by the main character
having the same ideas as the killer but, one suspects, not carrying them out
only because he is always presented as being feeble and corrupt.
Nikolaas Maack is basically right, at least about Complicity. Underneath
the carefully planned shock value, what's going on is, paradoxically, a
novel of ideas about morality. (Think about why the title of the book is
_Complicity_, for instance. Complicity of who with what?) If you don't
like novels of ideas, you won't like whatever's left of the book after the
dripping blood scenes. And they aren't particularly well thought through
ideas.
Adrian Tupper
The revenge is against killers (or those unfortunate enough to
be in a position of responsibility) of loved ones. It is also
revenge against sick criminals (irony) and establishment figures.
Yes, the morality theme is there if you want to follow it. But
if you treat it as a suspense thriller it is pretty slow going.
--
Adrian
Richard Puchalsky
> The revenge is against killers (or those unfortunate enough to
> be in a position of responsibility) of loved ones. It is also
> revenge against sick criminals (irony) and establishment figures.
> Yes, the morality theme is there if you want to follow it. But
> if you treat it as a suspense thriller it is pretty slow going.
Here we get into the kind of thing that I apparently can't say without
subsequent claims of "fatuous condescension", but I don't think that you've
understood the book. The acts of revenge in _Complicity_ are never against
killers of "loved ones" in the usual sense of that phrase; i.e. people loved
by the person taking revenge. On the contrary, revenge is being taken for
victims that were never known by the vigilante. And the whole list of
people to take revenge against in the book was taken from a particular
source, and that source was the expression of a particular political
ideology. The morality theme is inescapable.
Rex Gatch
> "Peter D. Tillman" <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote in message
> news:tillman-79D3B3...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> > Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
> >
> > Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
> > intended audience is.
> >
> >
>
> It was truly dire. The only one of his books that I have so far totally
> detested.
> You might like Walking on Glass. It is fairly difficult to describe without
> spoilers, but it is my favourite book by Iain Banks.
> (If you don't like it, it is mercifully short)
> --
I absolutely loathed "A Song Of Stone " and "The Business" and several
others though loved a lot of his M and non M stuff. The High point of
"Complicity" for me was the main charatcers obsession with playing
"Civilisation" - called something else in the book, an obsession Banks
suffered from too I believe
Gerry Quinn
>I absolutely loathed "A Song Of Stone " and "The Business" and several
>others though loved a lot of his M and non M stuff. The High point of
>"Complicity" for me was the main charatcers obsession with playing
>"Civilisation" - called something else in the book, an obsession Banks
>suffered from too I believe
That's what I liked in 'Complicity' too.
I thought 'The Business' was pretty slight but okay. I am not so anti
'A Song of Stone' as most posters - it was difficult to understand just
what it was about, but some books are like a nightmare, they leave you
slightly puzzled about something for a long while. Which I guess is a
species of 'making you think'. 'Canal Dreams' might be the closest
other to it, but that was explicit about Bad Americans Destroying The
Planet.
I though 'Look to Windward' was by far the worst of his Culture books,
but 'Inversions' was pretty good.
- Gerry Quinn
Adrian Tupper
> "Adrian Tupper" <adrian...@totalise.co.uk> wrote:
>> The revenge is against killers (or those unfortunate enough to
>> be in a position of responsibility) of loved ones. It is also
>> revenge against sick criminals (irony) and establishment figures.
>> Yes, the morality theme is there if you want to follow it. But
>> if you treat it as a suspense thriller it is pretty slow going.
>
> Here we get into the kind of thing that I apparently can't say without
> subsequent claims of "fatuous condescension", but I don't think that
> you've understood the book.
Appreciate the disclaimer, but don't assume too much.
> The acts of revenge in _Complicity_ are
> never against killers of "loved ones" in the usual sense of that
> phrase; i.e. people loved by the person taking revenge. On the
> contrary, revenge is being taken for victims that were never known by
> the vigilante. And the whole list of people to take revenge against
> in the book was taken from a particular source, and that source was
> the expression of a particular political ideology. The morality theme
> is inescapable.
Yes I know that. But two (or three if you cound the burned body) were
selected for personal reasons. You can't escape the "don't mess with
me 'cos I'm omnipotent" theme behind the vigilante character.
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
news:VJ%3b.29774$pK2....@news.indigo.ie:
> In article <b7735024.03082...@posting.google.com>,
> rexg...@yahoo.co.uk (Rex Gatch) wrote:
>>I absolutely loathed "A Song Of Stone " and "The Business" and several
>>others though loved a lot of his M and non M stuff. The High point of
>>"Complicity" for me was the main charatcers obsession with playing
>>"Civilisation" - called something else in the book, an obsession Banks
>>suffered from too I believe
>
> That's what I liked in 'Complicity' too.
>
> I thought 'The Business' was pretty slight but okay. I am not so anti
> 'A Song of Stone' as most posters - it was difficult to understand
> just what it was about, but some books are like a nightmare, they
> leave you slightly puzzled about something for a long while. Which I
> guess is a species of 'making you think'. 'Canal Dreams' might be the
> closest other to it, but that was explicit about Bad Americans
> Destroying The Planet.
IB stated that Canal Dreams was the only book he felt failed to
reach his high standards.
>
> I though 'Look to Windward' was by far the worst of his Culture books,
> but 'Inversions' was pretty good.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
I liked LtW although not as much as some of the earlier ones.
Inversions didn't work for me but I still preferred it to SoS
and CD.
--
Adrian
Steve Brooks
> "Richard Puchalsky" wrote
>> "Adrian Tupper" wrote:
>>> The revenge is against killers (or those unfortunate enough to
>>> be in a position of responsibility) of loved ones. It is also
>>> revenge against sick criminals (irony) and establishment figures.
>>> Yes, the morality theme is there if you want to follow it. But
>>> if you treat it as a suspense thriller it is pretty slow going.
>>
>> Here we get into the kind of thing that I apparently can't say
>> without subsequent claims of "fatuous condescension", but I don't
>> think that you've understood the book.
>
> Appreciate the disclaimer, but don't assume too much.
>
>> The acts of revenge in _Complicity_ are
>> never against killers of "loved ones" in the usual sense of that
>> phrase; i.e. people loved by the person taking revenge. On the
>> contrary, revenge is being taken for victims that were never known by
>> the vigilante. And the whole list of people to take revenge against
>> in the book was taken from a particular source, and that source was
>> the expression of a particular political ideology. The morality
>> theme is inescapable.
>
> Yes I know that. But two (or three if you cound the burned body) were
> selected for personal reasons. You can't escape the "don't mess with
> me 'cos I'm omnipotent" theme behind the vigilante character.
I can't remember the names of the characters - But to me all the killings
were in some way personal because they in part initiated by the fact that he
was raped as a child. And in fact the only reason he doesn't kill the main
character is that he came back to help him; this is explicitly stated.
(Long suppressed childhood trauma is another recurring Banks theme.) IMO
the 'political' motive for the killing is a self-deluding rationalisation by
the murderer.
--
SB
Richard Puchalsky
I didn't remember the ones selected for personal reasons -- other than the
guy who was killed for making investments the vigilante didn't like -- so
it's probably simplest just to say that you're right and I'm wrong. But, in
addition, (spoilers ahead):
the majority, at least, of the victims were selected from an
if-only-we-could-get-rid-of-so-and-so rant published by the main character.
As with everything the main character does, he wrote it without the
expectation that anyone would take it seriously, but the rant is still an
expression of what might be called popular leftism in the U.K. The most
apparent meaning of the title is that the "complicity" is between the main
character, who carelessly published this rant, and the killer who actually
carried out the rant as a judgment. Given that, I still think that your
list of those killed is inappropriately disconnected. The judgment of the
rant was that the categories "killers of someone's loved ones", "sick
criminals", and "establishment figures" were connected -- in other words,
that establishment figures are mostly really sick criminals who are
indirectly responsible for killing people, and that sick criminals and
indirect killers are really part of the establishment. That's the second
major meaning of "complicity" that I think is intended.
Parenthetically, I thought that a lot of the "don't mess with me because I'm
omnipotent" bit was supposed to be because the killer thought he had nothing
to lose because he had AIDS. That at least gave Banks a reason for adding
to the ranks of fictional homosexual serial killers.
Adrian Tupper
news:biq5gi$bf03c$1...@ID-109455.news.uni-berlin.de:
And the fact that he was comatose and on the verge of death after
falling through ice. The suggestion is that this brought about
the coldness in his personality.
> And in fact the only reason he
> doesn't kill the main character is that he came back to help him; this
> is explicitly stated.
Yes. But he was still a marginal case as he ran away on two occasions
but did come back to help his friend on the second. This is presumably
why he was chosen as the fall-guy rather than as a victim. Although
he was only a child when these things happened.
> (Long suppressed childhood trauma is another
> recurring Banks theme.) IMO the 'political' motive for the killing is
> a self-deluding rationalisation by the murderer.
>
Probably. But in the character's own mind his convictions are clear,
--
Adrian
Martin Wisse
<til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>
>Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
>intended audience is.
I agree with you that it was pointless and not very good, however I
think you missed something in your plot description below.
>I'll make no attempt to avoid SPOILERS in the following.
>
>In a future, post-apocalyptic Britain, wrecked by gang-wars, a band of
>irregulars led by a female Lieutenant hole up in an old castle. They
>make the Lord and his mistress into half-prisoners, half-pets. The Lord
>has endless, pointless, boring, amazingly windy memories/internal
>monologues of what went before. He (strict first person) addresses the
>memoir to Her, in second person, which works about as well as this
>usually does, which is to say, a weak, poor and distracting device. Did
>I mention the brutal, pointless killings, there to demonstrate that
>post-apocalyptic Gangwar is Hell?
First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in any
recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
Second, this isn't a post-apocalyptic setting, with all its overtones of
MAD MAX and survivalist fiction and what not as it is a fictionised
reaction to what had happened and was still happening in the breakup of
Yugoslavia. The senseless violence, the mass killings of civilians and
plundering by paramilitary groups, it immediately made me think of
Bosnia in particular.
Which might be a bit less obvious to non-European readers. When the war
in Croatia and later Bosnia and Kosovo was raging, it was on the news
almost every day, was it the same way in the US?
Martin Wisse
--
The character of Shadow was an amazing tour de force. It was left up
to the reader to decide whether he didn't care FOR him, or didn't care
ABOUT him. For me, it was both.
-Joe Slater, on _American Gods_.
Adrian Tupper
Please refer to [1] after the spoilered text.
> -- other than
> the guy who was killed for making investments the vigilante didn't
> like -- so it's probably simplest just to say that you're right and
> I'm wrong.
What?
> But, in addition, (spoilers ahead):
Ah. I thought there would be a "But"...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> the majority, at least, of the victims were selected from an
> if-only-we-could-get-rid-of-so-and-so rant published by the main
> character. As with everything the main character does, he wrote it
> without the expectation that anyone would take it seriously, but the
> rant is still an expression of what might be called popular leftism in
> the U.K. The most apparent meaning of the title is that the
> "complicity" is between the main character, who carelessly published
> this rant, and the killer who actually carried out the rant as a
> judgment. Given that, I still think that your list of those killed is
> inappropriately disconnected. The judgment of the rant was that the
> categories "killers of someone's loved ones", "sick criminals", and
> "establishment figures" were connected -- in other words, that
> establishment figures are mostly really sick criminals who are
> indirectly responsible for killing people, and that sick criminals and
> indirect killers are really part of the establishment.
Fair enough.
> That's the
> second major meaning of "complicity" that I think is intended.
>
You know, sometimes I wonder if you arrive at conclusions which
IB himself didn't even consider. Readers' prorogative?
> Parenthetically, I thought that a lot of the "don't mess with me
> because I'm omnipotent" bit was supposed to be because the killer
> thought he had nothing to lose because he had AIDS. That at least
> gave Banks a reason for adding to the ranks of fictional homosexual
> serial killers.
I don't recall the AIDS bit. Didn't he have an infected needle
or something?
[1] The doctor and the army general were both complicit, he reckoned,
for the deaths of his sister and his comrades (respectively). Again,
IIRC.
--
Adrian
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
The "Don't Mess With The Culture Because We Are Mean Sadistic Bastards"
scene. That wasn't consistent with the picture so far.
Adrian Tupper
@news.demon.nl:
> On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:12:15 -0600, "Peter D. Tillman"
> <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>
>>Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
>>
>>Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no idea who the
>>intended audience is.
>
> I agree with you that it was pointless and not very good, however I
> think you missed something in your plot description below.
>
>>I'll make no attempt to avoid SPOILERS in the following.
>>
>>In a future, post-apocalyptic Britain, wrecked by gang-wars, a band of
>>irregulars led by a female Lieutenant hole up in an old castle. They
>>make the Lord and his mistress into half-prisoners, half-pets. The
Lord
>>has endless, pointless, boring, amazingly windy memories/internal
>>monologues of what went before. He (strict first person) addresses the
>>memoir to Her, in second person, which works about as well as this
>>usually does, which is to say, a weak, poor and distracting device.
Did
>>I mention the brutal, pointless killings, there to demonstrate that
>>post-apocalyptic Gangwar is Hell?
>
> First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in any
> recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
> Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
I agree. I can't even place it in the world I know. Castles are
bastions of the past not the future. It reminded me more of one
of the planets in the Culture books or from the latter part of The
Bridge. Or even Feersum Enjinn at a push. I think Banks likes
writing about these dark places.
>
> Second, this isn't a post-apocalyptic setting, with all its overtones
of
> MAD MAX and survivalist fiction and what not as it is a fictionised
> reaction to what had happened and was still happening in the breakup
of
> Yugoslavia. The senseless violence, the mass killings of civilians and
> plundering by paramilitary groups, it immediately made me think of
> Bosnia in particular.
What does Bonzi think?
>
> Which might be a bit less obvious to non-European readers. When the
war
> in Croatia and later Bosnia and Kosovo was raging, it was on the news
> almost every day, was it the same way in the US?
>
> Martin Wisse
From what I remember, "world news" in the US is mainly news from the US.
But maybe things have now changed.
While I'm being anti-media, has anyone in the UK noticed how much
US news we're getting these days?
--
Adrian
Karl M Syring
>
> The "Don't Mess With The Culture Because We Are Mean Sadistic Bastards"
> scene. That wasn't consistent with the picture so far.
But why do you think so? This was a highly symbolic act of revenge
and nobody did bomb the planet into the stone age.
Karl M. Syring
David T. Bilek
Dal Dan) wrote:
>James Angove <ja...@ospf.net> wrote:
>
>> ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote in
>> news:1g0g1x2.knjey71bdmrmmN%ada...@spamcop.net:
>>
>> > Arthur Green <ajg...@REMOVE.iol.ie> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On the SF side, "Feersum Enjinn" was patchy and "Excession" was not
>> >> particularly coherent. AADB was to a certain extent pointless (so was
>> >> "Consider Phlebas", but I think it read better). I can't remember much
>> >> about "Inversions", but I plan to re-read it as soon as I can find my
>> >> copy.
>> >
>> > I thought _Excession_ rewarded a re-read, and so did _Inversions_, for
>> > that matter (I translated both). And I thought _Look to Windward_ was
>> > excellent, apart from one minor detail.
>> >
>>
>> What was the detail? Its now been a couple of years since I read it, and I
>> remember thinking it was oddly structured, but not noticing any one thing
>> that I objected to.
>
>The "Don't Mess With The Culture Because We Are Mean Sadistic Bastards"
>scene. That wasn't consistent with the picture so far.
You know, I still disagree; I think it's absolutely completely
consistent with the Culture as depicted by Banks. What it isn't
consistent with is your picture of what the Culture *should* be.
There are numerous examples of parts of the Culture acting like mean,
sadistic bastards.
-David
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I'd say there are numerous examples of the Culture acting like
completely ruthless bastards because of carefully thought-out and
totally cold reasons. There are lots of examples of rogue Culture
members acting in a highly emotive way and being explicitly chastened by
the rest of the Culture (Sma's drone, the Meatfucker).
Richard Horton
Wisse) wrote:
[A Song of Stone]
>First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in any
>recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
>Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
Not necessarily in Europe, if you ask me. This gives me a chance to
trot out my favorite _Song of Stone_ theory, which is that it is set
on Zakalwe's home planet from _Use of Weapons_.
(I was delighted to notice somebody else suggesting this same thing,
as far as I can tell completely independently, some time recently.
Sadly, I don't remember who just now.)
As for my opinion of _A Song of Stone_, I liked it better than most in
this thread. It was too short to be quite "boring", though I admit I
couldn't have taken too much more. It held my interest, it was pretty
well written. It's by no means among his best books, but I thought it
OK.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
David T. Bilek
Dal Dan) wrote:
>David T. Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 22:23:00 +0200, ada...@spamcop.net (Anna Feruglio
>> Dal Dan) wrote:
>> >
>> >The "Don't Mess With The Culture Because We Are Mean Sadistic Bastards"
>> >scene. That wasn't consistent with the picture so far.
>>
>> You know, I still disagree; I think it's absolutely completely
>> consistent with the Culture as depicted by Banks. What it isn't
>> consistent with is your picture of what the Culture *should* be.
>> There are numerous examples of parts of the Culture acting like mean,
>> sadistic bastards.
>
>I'd say there are numerous examples of the Culture acting like
>completely ruthless bastards because of carefully thought-out and
>totally cold reasons. There are lots of examples of rogue Culture
>members acting in a highly emotive way and being explicitly chastened by
>the rest of the Culture (Sma's drone, the Meatfucker).
"Don't think you know how we'll react; you don't" *is* a very
carefully thought-out and cold reason. Being seen to kill an enemy in
a bloody and painful manner (at least once) could a good thing, in
terms of realpolitik. Makes you less predictable to potential
adversaries.
-David
Anthony Cerrato
message
> news:tillman-79D3B3...@news.fu-berlin.de...
> > Iain Banks, A Song of Stone (1997)
> >
> > Verdict: Dull, wordy, pointless. Not for me. I have no
idea who the
> > intended audience is.
> >
>
so far totally
> detested.
While I have the chance, let me add my enthusiastic
agreement to yours and the others who voiced this viewpoint.
(Last time I did that here about this book, I was lambasted
so fiercely I had to retreat into silence. :) )
ASoS is one the worst books I ever _tried_ to read--managed
to get as far 1/2 to 2/3 thru it before putting it aside 2
years ago approx. and never picking it up since. Perhaps
someday I will
again, though I doubt it--life's too short and this book way
too long! And it is truly a horror. Those who love it may
call me a non-intellectual, or unable to appreciate great
literature...that's fine with me. The book is clichéd,
derivative, pretentious, and dull--it
stinks and that's that! :) I like all of IMB's SF and am
mad about Culture books. I also modestly enjoyed The
Bridge, loved The Wasp Factory, and probably will someday
get to the other non-science fiction classics, but I'm
trying to forget the SoS crap (hmm, appropriate acronym.)
...tonyC
> You might like Walking on Glass. It is fairly difficult to
describe without
> spoilers, but it is my favourite book by Iain Banks.
> (If you don't like it, it is mercifully short)
> --
> --
> Chris Lyth (CL...@ifis.org.uk)
> Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.
>
>
>
>
Richard Puchalsky
> "Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
> news:1d14b.121275$3o3.8...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > That's the
> > second major meaning of "complicity" that I think is intended.
> >
>
> You know, sometimes I wonder if you arrive at conclusions which
> IB himself didn't even consider. Readers' prorogative?
Reader's necessity. A reader is supposed to be more than a passive receptor
for whatever the author wants to jam into their head. A good author
generally writes works that are susceptible to a wide range of reader
interpretations.
And this kind of thing is even more important for a critic. What use is a
critic who doesn't bring something new to the work? I vaguely remember AFDD
disparaging what I wrote for being "inventive", as if that were bad;
personally I think it's far better for a critic to be inventive than not.
After all, what's the hazard? That the author will say that the
interpretation isn't what they intended? Well, that sometimes happens, but
the author's own claim for what a work means is no longer regarded as
definative. That the reader will be "fooled"? Let the reader take whatever
is useful for them from the critic's work.
But let's see if you can't play critic here. Why, then, do you think that
Banks titled the book _Complicity_? Your memory of the book is demonstrably
better than mine. The most obvious answer, that the main character is
directly complicit with the killer, seems to me to fail because the main
character doesn't really do anything to aid the killer. Sure, he doesn't
turn him in at the end, but that's after the fact. The whole end of the
book is a moral argument about whether everyone is guilty or not; don't you
think that a double or mutliple meaning is indicated?
>
> > Parenthetically, I thought that a lot of the "don't mess with me
> > because I'm omnipotent" bit was supposed to be because the killer
> > thought he had nothing to lose because he had AIDS. That at least
> > gave Banks a reason for adding to the ranks of fictional homosexual
> > serial killers.
>
> I don't recall the AIDS bit. Didn't he have an infected needle
> or something?
Well, after not remembering part of the book right, I shouldn't depend on my
memory for this part either. Maybe I just thought that that was the easiest
explanation for how he'd get an infected needle, and why he chose this
particular time to start his killing spree.
Richard Puchalsky
> too long! And it is truly a horror. Those who love it may
> call me a non-intellectual, or unable to appreciate great
> literature...that's fine with me. The book is clichéd,
> derivative, pretentious, and dull--it
> stinks and that's that! :)
There it goes again. Why do people seem to assume that a phantom
intellectual is hiding behind a bush somewhere, ready to jump out and defend
this book?
Emanuel Brown
<rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>There it goes again. Why do people seem to assume that a phantom
>intellectual is hiding behind a bush somewhere, ready to jump out and defend
>this book?
Experience?
Emanuel
--
http://home.att.net/~epbrown01/1966-rolls.jpg
http://home.att.net/~epbrown01/1983-porsche.jpg
Martin Wisse
wrote:
>On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 19:51:55 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
>Wisse) wrote:
>
>[A Song of Stone]
>>First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in any
>>recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
>>Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
>
>Not necessarily in Europe, if you ask me. This gives me a chance to
>trot out my favorite _Song of Stone_ theory, which is that it is set
>on Zakalwe's home planet from _Use of Weapons_.
At times it indeed reminded me of the opening scenes of _Use of
Weapons_, when Zakalwe was drinking himself to death in a besieged
castle.
Gerry Quinn
Probably because the book may appear somewhat nihilistic and despairing,
and 'intellectuals' of a certain type are invariably excited by such
things...
Actually I'm surprised a few *haven't* popped out!
- Gerry Quinn
Steve Brooks
> "Steve Brooks" wrote
[Complicity]
>> (Long suppressed childhood trauma is another
>> recurring Banks theme.) IMO the 'political' motive for the killing
>> is a self-deluding rationalisation by the murderer.
>>
>
> Probably. But in the character's own mind his convictions are clear,
Agreed. Maybe I misread the thread but I got the impression people were
associating the killer's ideas with Banks' own political views. That would
seem to me to be unsafe.
--
SB
tejas
"Emanuel Brown" <epbr...@att.net> wrote in message
news:pt03lvoe2bs18f63i...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 01:11:27 GMT, "Richard Puchalsky"
> <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >There it goes again. Why do people seem to assume that a phantom
> >intellectual is hiding behind a bush somewhere, ready to jump out and
defend
> >this book?
>
> Experience?
Bwaa-haha! No one expects The Phantom Intellectual....
<smirk> * </smirk>
ObBook: THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW
--
Ted Samsel
tbsa...@infionline.net
http://tbsamsel.home.infionline.net
John F. Carr
Steve Brooks <ste...@postmaster.co.uk> wrote:
>
>[Complicity]
>
>Agreed. Maybe I misread the thread but I got the impression people were
>associating the killer's ideas with Banks' own political views. That would
>seem to me to be unsafe.
It's certainly possible that Banks thinks differently, but the
extrinsic evidence is consistent with the killer having similar
opinions to Banks.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Richard Puchalsky
news:n%i4b.29843$pK2....@news.indigo.ie...
This is an international discussion, so the following recommendation may be
partially irrelevant -- but American culture is widespread now anyway, so I
recommend _Anti-intellectualism in American Life_, by Richard Hofstadter.
It's necessarily a bit dated, since it was published in 1966, but it's a
classic.
So, with the quotes around 'intellectuals', did you mean that only false
intellectuals are invariably excited by nihilistic and despairing works, no
matter how badly written? Because that does seem like an odd belief to hold
if you consider literary and "well written" to be similar terms if not
synonyms. Do you think that there are few enough nihilistic and despairing
books in the world so that intellectuals must get excited and defend each
one, and can't tell the difference between the well written and poorly
written ones?
Or is it that you distrust your own judgment? After all, the people
complaining seem to think that the book is very bad, not just
the-kind-of-book-I-don't-like bad. If intellectuals like this book, then
either they must have a very odd value system for liking books, or the
person who thinks it's really bad must be wrong. In my experience, the two
of these tend to go together, with people distrusting their own judgment and
having strange ideas about literary judgment at the same time. Probably
that's because they are unfamiliar with literary standards and they know it.
A Song of Stone is a great bringer-out of this kind of thing. I guess I'd
class it as a failed experiment by Banks; from what I've heard, he
incorporated an old essay or poem or something he'd written about the four
medieval elements, and associated them with the four major characters in the
book: fire with the Lieutenant, water with the noble, air with the noble's
sister, earth with the castle. I'd say that's the main source of a lot of
the bad philosophizing, as well as the one-dimensionality of the
characters -- Banks was trying to write something influenced by a certain
kind of historical literary *style*, which is what happens when you base
your book on an idea of this type. Unfortunately, this literary style in
the hands of an author who doesn't write well in it is one of the surest
roads to a lack of literary *quality*, which is what people who appreciate
literature are really concerned with.
Dragi Bonzi Raos
news:4ua4b.1861$hG3....@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com...
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 19:51:55 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
> Wisse) wrote:
>
> [A Song of Stone]
> >First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in
any
> >recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
> >Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
>
> Not necessarily in Europe, if you ask me. This gives me a chance to
> trot out my favorite _Song of Stone_ theory, which is that it is set
> on Zakalwe's home planet from _Use of Weapons_.
I think it happens (that is, could be happening) very much here and now.
>
> (I was delighted to notice somebody else suggesting this same thing,
> as far as I can tell completely independently, some time recently.
> Sadly, I don't remember who just now.)
>
> As for my opinion of _A Song of Stone_, I liked it better than most in
> this thread. It was too short to be quite "boring", though I admit I
> couldn't have taken too much more. It held my interest, it was pretty
> well written. It's by no means among his best books, but I thought it
> OK.
Bonzi
Dragi Bonzi Raos
news:3f575ba3.391352204
> @news.demon.nl:
>
> > On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:12:15 -0600, "Peter D. Tillman"
> > <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in
any
> > recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
> > Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
>
> I agree. I can't even place it in the world I know. Castles are
> bastions of the past not the future. It reminded me more of one
> of the planets in the Culture books or from the latter part of The
> Bridge. Or even Feersum Enjinn at a push. I think Banks likes
> writing about these dark places.
>
> >
> > Second, this isn't a post-apocalyptic setting, with all its
overtones
> of
> > MAD MAX and survivalist fiction and what not as it is a fictionised
> > reaction to what had happened and was still happening in the breakup
> of
> > Yugoslavia. The senseless violence, the mass killings of civilians
and
> > plundering by paramilitary groups, it immediately made me think of
> > Bosnia in particular.
>
> What does Bonzi think?
I mostly agee with Martin, though castle, aristocrat protagonist and
other details give it a bit of 'what if Bosnia happened here' taste. I
seem to be the only one who felt the novel's atmosphere of chaos an
hopelesness strongly, though I do agree that writing is strained and not
to Banks' standards. (Of course, Banks treats war much more successfully
in UoW and tB, my favourites.) I did not notice much of 'four elements'
theme untill it was pointed to somewhere here.
Bonzi
Richard Puchalsky
> > On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 19:51:55 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
> > Wisse) wrote:
> >
> > [A Song of Stone]
> > >First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place in
> any
> > >recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in Europe".
> > >Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
> >
> I think it happens (that is, could be happening) very much here and now.
There is one thing that is particularly British about it: the depiction of
nobility. I think that only a contemporary leftist Briton could come up
with the particular characterization of a noble class that is not really in
power, yet is still protected by some remnant of custom and wealth, and is
wholly and disgustingly decadent. Leftists in previous ages might have
agreed with the decadence, yet added the malicious power to actively do
evil, and leftists in other countries in the modern day would regard the
nobility as a relic of a dead past, not much worth bothering about.
Dragi Bonzi Raos
news:4Ts4b.122753$3o3.8...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > I think it happens (that is, could be happening) very much here and
now.
>
> There is one thing that is particularly British about it: the
depiction of
> nobility. I think that only a contemporary leftist Briton could come
up
> with the particular characterization of a noble class that is not
really in
> power, yet is still protected by some remnant of custom and wealth,
and is
> wholly and disgustingly decadent. Leftists in previous ages might
have
> agreed with the decadence, yet added the malicious power to actively
do
> evil, and leftists in other countries in the modern day would regard
the
> nobility as a relic of a dead past, not much worth bothering about.
>
I agree.
Adrian Tupper
>
> But let's see if you can't play critic here. Why, then, do you think
> that Banks titled the book _Complicity_?
From the start, the reader is placed in the part of the murderer.
The reader is disgusted by the actions of the murderer. But by the
end of the book, does the reader want him to get away?
I think the clever bit by IB is that a part of us sees the murderer
as a kind of folk hero, no matter how vile and depraved he is being.
To still have these feelings after all of that makes the reader complicit.
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
Well, he very much sides with the old-left anti-establishment agenda.
But the point is that the victims, at least the first five and even
the chap in the burned hotel were all people with blood on their
hands, perhaps indirectly. The first five were establishment
figures who, in the killer's mind, have escaped natural justice.
I think that part fits in with IB's view.
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
@ID-72093.news.uni-berlin.de:
Thanks. It is quite plausible that IB did use a Yugoslav-British hybrid
as a model for his SoS world, then.
> I did not notice much of 'four elements'
> theme untill it was pointed to somewhere here.
>
> Bonzi
>
>
Me neither.
--
Adrian
Steve Brooks
> "Steve Brooks" wrote
>> Adrian Tupper wrote:
>>> "Steve Brooks" wrote
>>
>> [Complicity]
>>
>>>> (Long suppressed childhood trauma is another
>>>> recurring Banks theme.) IMO the 'political' motive for the killing
>>>> is a self-deluding rationalisation by the murderer.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Probably. But in the character's own mind his convictions are
>>> clear,
>>
>> Agreed. Maybe I misread the thread but I got the impression people
>> were associating the killer's ideas with Banks' own political views.
>> That would seem to me to be unsafe.
>>
>
> Well, he very much sides with the old-left anti-establishment agenda.
> But the point is that the victims, at least the first five and even
> the chap in the burned hotel were all people with blood on their
> hands, perhaps indirectly. The first five were establishment
> figures who, in the killer's mind, have escaped natural justice.
> I think that part fits in with IB's view.
Maybe you - and Mr Carr - know something I don't. I have never met Iain
Banks nor anyone who knows him well. I have read a couple of interviews with
him. If they were reasonable representations of what he said then I'd agree
that his political convictions lie to the left of centre. Possibly even to
the left of my own.
I do know that he is a skillful writer and I am quite happy to believe that
he could write about a character whose views were far more extreme than (or
diametrically opposed to ) his own.
If you are talking about the killer's choice of targets alone then I would
say that they were not specifically left-wing. I'm sure we could all come
up with a list of people we think the world would be better off without. And
every one of those lists would be different - which is another facet of the
story.
In case anybody hadn't realised ;-) I quite like this book. It filled in a
couple of idle days on a holiday in Spain a few years ago.
--
SB
--
SB
Martin Wisse
Good point. There certainly isn't any concept of aristocracy here in the
Netherlands anymore; what aristocrats we have left is slowly dying out
(by losing titles and not granting any new ones).
Martin Wisse
--
Gordon Brown, texture like sun.
Gerry Quinn
>"Gerry Quinn" <ger...@indigo.ie> wrote in message
>> >There it goes again. Why do people seem to assume that a phantom
>> >intellectual is hiding behind a bush somewhere, ready to jump out and
>defend
>> >this book?
>>
>> Probably because the book may appear somewhat nihilistic and despairing,
>> and 'intellectuals' of a certain type are invariably excited by such
>> things...
>>
>> Actually I'm surprised a few *haven't* popped out!
>
>So, with the quotes around 'intellectuals', did you mean that only false
>intellectuals are invariably excited by nihilistic and despairing works, no
>matter how badly written? Because that does seem like an odd belief to hold
>if you consider literary and "well written" to be similar terms if not
>synonyms. Do you think that there are few enough nihilistic and despairing
>books in the world so that intellectuals must get excited and defend each
>one, and can't tell the difference between the well written and poorly
>written ones?
There should probably *always* be quotes around 'intellectuals'.
And I don't think the term, with or without quotes, is synonymous with
"one able to judge whether a book is well-written". An 'intellectual'
usually means someone attracted to 'ideas', and the 'ideas' they are
most attracted to tend to be the ones that stink the most.
>Or is it that you distrust your own judgment? After all, the people
>complaining seem to think that the book is very bad, not just
>the-kind-of-book-I-don't-like bad. If intellectuals like this book, then
>either they must have a very odd value system for liking books, or the
>person who thinks it's really bad must be wrong. In my experience, the two
>of these tend to go together, with people distrusting their own judgment and
>having strange ideas about literary judgment at the same time. Probably
>that's because they are unfamiliar with literary standards and they know it.
Ah, the 'intellectual' is familiar with 'literary standards'. We can
look up - what would it be, BS101? - and determine whether a book is
good or bad?
As for my judgement, I trust it well to tell me what I like, but I would
not consider it the determinant of whether the book is good or bad. It
seems to me that people could like or dislike a book, and even disagree
on its quality, without the matter necessarily being amenable to
objective evaluation. We can make certain evaluations, but they are
always contingent, and dependent on the reader's history and the
cultural furniture of the day. Like food, it's either poisonous, or
it's probably just what somebody wants right now. But then again,
perhaps I'm not being sufficiently respectful of the Standards.
>A Song of Stone is a great bringer-out of this kind of thing. I guess I'd
>class it as a failed experiment by Banks; from what I've heard, he
>incorporated an old essay or poem or something he'd written about the four
>medieval elements, and associated them with the four major characters in the
>book: fire with the Lieutenant, water with the noble, air with the noble's
>sister, earth with the castle. I'd say that's the main source of a lot of
>the bad philosophizing, as well as the one-dimensionality of the
>characters -- Banks was trying to write something influenced by a certain
>kind of historical literary *style*, which is what happens when you base
>your book on an idea of this type. Unfortunately, this literary style in
>the hands of an author who doesn't write well in it is one of the surest
>roads to a lack of literary *quality*, which is what people who appreciate
>literature are really concerned with.
A failed experiment sounds about right to me, though his elements did
not come across in my reading. The book worked a little as a puzzle
and as a horror story for me, and therefore by my reckoning cannot be
entirely bad. As for 'people who appreciate literature', I believe the
correct word is 'literary' or a derivative thereof.
- Gerry Quinn
Richard Puchalsky
> As for my judgement, I trust it well to tell me what I like, but I would
> not consider it the determinant of whether the book is good or bad. It
> seems to me that people could like or dislike a book, and even disagree
> on its quality, without the matter necessarily being amenable to
> objective evaluation. We can make certain evaluations, but they are
> always contingent, and dependent on the reader's history and the
> cultural furniture of the day. Like food, it's either poisonous, or
> it's probably just what somebody wants right now. But then again,
> perhaps I'm not being sufficiently respectful of the Standards.
Let's see:
a) Your judgement tells you what you like. Well, there's a surprise.
b) Evaluations are always contingent on the reader's history and culture.
So, books have no inherent quality, it's meaningless to describe them as
good or bad. All you can say is that books by Danielle Steele and Tolstoy
are equally -- good for somebody.
c) What's good is "just what somebody wants right now". Books as McDonalds
Happy Meals.
Feh.
Richard Puchalsky
A pretty good interpretation. I wouldn't have come up with it, since I
never felt this kind of folk hero identification with the guy.
Sebastiaan
> a) Your judgement tells you what you like. Well, there's a surprise.
> b) Evaluations are always contingent on the reader's history and culture.
> So, books have no inherent quality, it's meaningless to describe them as
> good or bad. All you can say is that books by Danielle Steele and
Tolstoy
> are equally -- good for somebody.
> c) What's good is "just what somebody wants right now". Books as
McDonalds
> Happy Meals.
Books as hamburgers is actually quite an apt analogy. Whether you like it or
not, literature is, in a sense, just another commodity. It's all about the
quality of the meat then ;-)
It would be very nice considering it 'pure art', but we all know that's not
the complete story...
And there are examples, Rich, of literary merit being dictated exactly by
'just what somebody wants right now'. If you'd have told any critic before
TS Eliot that John Donne was worth reading, he would have laughed in your
face. It took an establishment figure (with a agenda of his own in the back
of his mind) to remodel Donne as one of the Worthies... Also, the Booker
judges right now are deciding what will definitely hit the top 10 sales
lists after the prize has been awarded. Of course the prizes are awarded on
the basis of 'literary merit', decided upon by a bunch of 'intellectuals',
but the result is very much 'what's good is just what somebody wants right
now' (a Booker winner elected by the judges, pushed by the publishing
company, etc.).
As point b) is concerned, I am not quite sure I agree with you. The inherent
quality of a book only exists through reader-text interaction. It's very
much the 'if a tree falls down does it make any sound if there's no one to
hear it' argument, but I have major issues with something like 'inherent
quality'. It is only by the mercy of the reader that it comes into
existence: and yes, that reader's opinion will be informed by his own
history, culture, education, etc. Period. You may then judge the reader's
capabilty for evaluation of a work of literature (as you are very fond to do
;-)), but that's all there is. Would you say it exists somewhere 'out there'
in its own private universe? Or like Plato, does literary quality have its
own abstract, sublimated existence?
I do, however, agree with your criticism of the following type of remarks:
> And I don't think the term, with or without quotes, is synonymous with
> "one able to judge whether a book is well-written". An 'intellectual'
> usually means someone attracted to 'ideas', and the 'ideas' they are
> most attracted to tend to be the ones that stink the most.
This of course is an absolutely nonsense-argument, based on personal taste,
or a deep mistrust of whatever is intellectual. Although the word is
much-loaded, it is not a bad thing. No offense, but the argument is about as
unrewarding as you think the 'ideas' are...
> Ah, the 'intellectual' is familiar with 'literary standards'. We can
> look up - what would it be, BS101? - and determine whether a book is
> good or bad?
This is a never-ending story, and an easy argument to fall back on if you
want to discredit anything like literary merit. There is no easy answer, and
I don't feel courageous enough now to go into it. Maybe later...;-)
Sebastiaan
Anthony Cerrato
news:3Xb4b.120301$0v4.8...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att
.net...
Mea culpa. That was not my intent at all--indeed, I should
have placed quotes around "intellectual" since, of course, I
really meant that the majority of so-called intellectuals
today are really pseudo-intellectuals, i.e., pretenscious
non-intellectuals. This is maiinly due to the pretenscious
pop media today, and is not meant to denigrate "true"
intellectuals with proper credentials.
While I certainly can't single out anyone specifically
claiming to be an intellectual critic on this board, there
have definitely been some who have felt secure in claiming
that ASoS did have certain "literary" merit...which I find
similar enough to at least some claim for intellectualism on
the part of the writer. All I am saying though is, I do not
at all mind being criticized for my opinion on the book, and
I still stand by it whether the book has true literary merit
or not. Also, while I may not have explicitly noted that any
review of mine was purely intended IMO, it is only since I
think that with books, obviously YMMV. My only purpose was
to provide some guidance on the OP's question on what books
to read first. I think that this I did, at least to some
extent. :) ...tonyC
Richard Puchalsky
news:biur73$ent$1...@reader10.wxs.nl...
Me:
> > a) Your judgement tells you what you like. Well, there's a surprise.
> > b) Evaluations are always contingent on the reader's history and
culture.
> > So, books have no inherent quality, it's meaningless to describe them as
> > good or bad. All you can say is that books by Danielle Steele and
> Tolstoy
> > are equally -- good for somebody.
> > c) What's good is "just what somebody wants right now". Books as
> McDonalds
> > Happy Meals.
>
>
> Books as hamburgers is actually quite an apt analogy. Whether you like it
or
> not, literature is, in a sense, just another commodity. It's all about the
> quality of the meat then ;-)
But the whole point of fast food hamburgers is that there is no individual
quality to the meat -- good or bad. A McDonalds hamburger is simply a
McDonalds hamburger, and there isn't supposed to be any way of
distinguishing any one of them from any other. Surely that has to be a bad
model to apply to literature.
Not even publishers really consider books to be a commodity. That's why
they have star systems where authors with a good first book get signed up
for big advances for their succeeding ones. It's much more like Hollywood
than like Burger King.
>
> It would be very nice considering it 'pure art', but we all know that's
not
> the complete story...
Publishers and authors can't consider it as pure art, because they have to
make a living off of it. But why shouldn't we? We're evaluating books that
are already published, and we have no financial inducement to modify our
judgement.
>
> And there are examples, Rich, of literary merit being dictated exactly by
> 'just what somebody wants right now'. If you'd have told any critic before
> TS Eliot that John Donne was worth reading, he would have laughed in your
> face. It took an establishment figure (with a agenda of his own in the
back
> of his mind) to remodel Donne as one of the Worthies... Also, the Booker
> judges right now are deciding what will definitely hit the top 10 sales
> lists after the prize has been awarded. Of course the prizes are awarded
on
> the basis of 'literary merit', decided upon by a bunch of 'intellectuals',
> but the result is very much 'what's good is just what somebody wants
right
> now' (a Booker winner elected by the judges, pushed by the publishing
> company, etc.).
Unless someone is really never discovered, all such events are transitory.
If you believe that quality is inherent in a work then that implies that
eventually, people with literary judgement will come to general agreement
about the worth of a work. Emily Dickinson never made a top 10 sales list;
if I remember rightly, she never had any sales during her lifetime. In the
long run that didn't matter.
>
> As point b) is concerned, I am not quite sure I agree with you. The
inherent
> quality of a book only exists through reader-text interaction. It's very
> much the 'if a tree falls down does it make any sound if there's no one to
> hear it' argument, but I have major issues with something like 'inherent
> quality'. It is only by the mercy of the reader that it comes into
> existence: and yes, that reader's opinion will be informed by his own
> history, culture, education, etc. Period. You may then judge the reader's
> capabilty for evaluation of a work of literature (as you are very fond to
do
> ;-)), but that's all there is. Would you say it exists somewhere 'out
there'
> in its own private universe? Or like Plato, does literary quality have its
> own abstract, sublimated existence?
OK, here's the problem; starting from the ignorant remarks that I criticized
in the post that you're replying to is a bad way of setting out a general
critical theory. It really should be done from first principles. I ended
up coming up with a list of those first principles for someone else on
alt.books.iain-banks not too long ago; I'll give you a very abbreviated
version.
Basically, humans have a biologically determined ability to use language. I
believe that something in the part of our brains that lets us use language
responds to especially skillful and subtle use of language. That means that
good literature really is a universal, because human brain structure is
universal. If someone cares enough about literature to spend some time
studying it, they will develop the ability to tell good literature from bad.
Certainly individuals will disagree to some extent, but the general trend of
readers who have educated themselves in this way will tend to converge on an
authoritative judgement of literary value. (Which is not to say that the
opinions of readers without literary judgement are worth anything.) It's
pretty easy to tell whether any specific person has educated themself in
this way, if they say that they care about literature, then they generally
have.
Literature may become inaccessible through changes in language and culture.
But its inherent quality is still there; if someone learns the language, and
immerses themselves imaginatively in the culture, they can still understand
why a work was considered to be great.
>
> I do, however, agree with your criticism of the following type of remarks:
>
> > And I don't think the term, with or without quotes, is synonymous with
> > "one able to judge whether a book is well-written". An 'intellectual'
> > usually means someone attracted to 'ideas', and the 'ideas' they are
> > most attracted to tend to be the ones that stink the most.
>
> This of course is an absolutely nonsense-argument, based on personal
taste,
> or a deep mistrust of whatever is intellectual. Although the word is
> much-loaded, it is not a bad thing. No offense, but the argument is about
as
> unrewarding as you think the 'ideas' are...
Yeah, I didn't even bother with that one. Textbook anti-intellectualism.
>
> > Ah, the 'intellectual' is familiar with 'literary standards'. We can
> > look up - what would it be, BS101? - and determine whether a book is
> > good or bad?
>
> This is a never-ending story, and an easy argument to fall back on if you
> want to discredit anything like literary merit. There is no easy answer,
and
> I don't feel courageous enough now to go into it. Maybe later...;-)
I didn't bother with this one either. It's characteristic of someone with
no feeling for quality that he thinks that quality can only be found through
looking up a standard.
Richard Puchalsky
news:RpC4b.78112$yg.25...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
>
> "Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
> message
> news:3Xb4b.120301$0v4.8...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att
> .net...
> > "Anthony Cerrato" <tcer...@optonline.net> wrote:
> > > too long! And it is truly a horror. Those who love it
> may
> > > call me a non-intellectual, or unable to appreciate
> great
> > > literature...that's fine with me. The book is clichéd,
> > > derivative, pretentious, and dull--it
> > > stinks and that's that! :)
> >
> > There it goes again. Why do people seem to assume that a
> phantom
> > intellectual is hiding behind a bush somewhere, ready to
> jump out and defend
> > this book?
>
> Mea culpa. That was not my intent at all--indeed, I should
> have placed quotes around "intellectual" since, of course, I
> really meant that the majority of so-called intellectuals
> today are really pseudo-intellectuals, i.e., pretenscious
> non-intellectuals. This is maiinly due to the pretenscious
> pop media today, and is not meant to denigrate "true"
> intellectuals with proper credentials.
I don't quite get this distinction. How are pop media falsely convincing
people that they are intellectuals? And in the intellectual tradition, as
I understand it, credentials are not really determinative; you can have a
degree yet not be an intellectual or vice versa.
> While I certainly can't single out anyone specifically
> claiming to be an intellectual critic on this board,
I claim to be an intellectual critic.
> there
> have definitely been some who have felt secure in claiming
> that ASoS did have certain "literary" merit...which I find
> similar enough to at least some claim for intellectualism on
> the part of the writer.
[...]
Can anyone find a quote from groups.google.com or something? Every time
I've seen people say they liked A Song of Stone, they've just said they
liked it; I haven't seen anyone defend its literary merit. Of course I
could have missed such a post. Did I?
My contention is that people tend to be defensive about disliking A Song of
Stone because they can see that it's written in a certain style which, for
historic reasons, has been called "literary". From this, they tend to
assume that people who like literature will defend the book. But people who
like literature like literary *quality*, not simply works written in this
particular style; it's actually much harder to write a good book in this
style than in many other styles because it easily can become pretentious,
dull, or long-winded. Confusing style with actual literary quality is
annoying because it plays into a number of tired old anti-intellectual
stereotypes.
Peter D. Tillman
"Dragi Bonzi Raos" <bo...@email.hinet.hr> wrote:
> "Adrian Tupper" <adrian...@totalise.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:Xns93E7D...@194.247.47.119...
> > mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin Wisse) wrote in
> news:3f575ba3.391352204
> > @news.demon.nl:
> >
> > > First off, I'm not sure this is actually supposed to take place
> > > in any recognisable country, other than "a country somewhere in
> > > Europe". Nothing struck me as particularly British about it.
> >
> > I agree. I can't even place it in the world I know. Castles are
> > bastions of the past not the future. It reminded me more of one
> > of the planets in the Culture books or from the latter part of The
> > Bridge. Or even Feersum Enjinn at a push. I think Banks likes
> > writing about these dark places.
> >
> > >
> > > Second, this isn't a post-apocalyptic setting, with all its
> > > overtones of
> > > MAD MAX and survivalist fiction and what not as it is a
> > > fictionised reaction to what had happened and was still happening
> > > in the breakup of
> > > Yugoslavia. The senseless violence, the mass killings of
> > > civilians and plundering by paramilitary groups, it immediately
> > > made me think of Bosnia in particular.
> >
> > What does Bonzi think?
>
> I mostly agee with Martin, though castle, aristocrat protagonist and
> other details give it a bit of 'what if Bosnia happened here' taste. I
> seem to be the only one who felt the novel's atmosphere of chaos an
> hopelesness strongly, though I do agree that writing is strained and not
> to Banks' standards. (Of course, Banks treats war much more successfully
> in UoW and tB, my favourites.) I did not notice much of 'four elements'
> theme untill it was pointed to somewhere here.
>
First, the reasons I thought aSoS was set in a post-apocalyptic Britain
was a) that the Lord's castle seemed an almost perfect representation of
an English country-house; b) that the characters, especially the
soldiers, seemed British, to me anyway; and c) that a Brit-setting (even
unintentional) is, surprise, the default from Banks. He did blur it a
bit, so perhaps he intended a more generic-European background, but what
came through (AL for me) was British. Caveat: I certainly didn't read
the thing closely, and fersure I ain't rereading it!
And thanx to RP for the "four elements" theme, which I hadn't noticed
either, but which makes sense. aSos is still an embarrassingly bad book,
imo, but I suppose being a failed experiment makes it a bit more
respectable <g>...
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
"It's a sin to waste the reader's time" -- Larry Niven
Dragi Bonzi Raos
news:tillman-315F3F...@news.fu-berlin.de...
I agree, except for "post-apocalyptic" part (well, depending what you
consider "apocalypse", but not in Mad Max sense of it, as somebody here
put it). ASoS does seem ot be set in something not very unlike Britain,
IMO partly to say that such unpleasantnesses are not necessarily
confined to faraway savage lands such as Balkans, and don't require
prior all-out nuclear war or asteroid impact.
>
> And thanx to RP for the "four elements" theme, which I hadn't noticed
> either, but which makes sense. aSos is still an embarrassingly bad
book,
> imo, but I suppose being a failed experiment makes it a bit more
> respectable <g>...
>
> Cheers -- Pete Tillman
>
> --
> "It's a sin to waste the reader's time" -- Larry Niven
Bonzi
Peter D. Tillman
"Dragi Bonzi Raos" <bo...@email.hinet.hr> wrote:
I wrote:
> >
> > First, the reasons I thought aSoS was set in a post-apocalyptic
> > Britain was a) that the Lord's castle seemed an almost perfect
> > representation of an English country-house; b) that the characters,
> > especially the soldiers, seemed British, to me anyway; and c) that
> > a Brit-setting (even unintentional) is, surprise, the default from
> > Banks. He did blur it a bit, so perhaps he intended a more
> > generic-European background, but what came through (AL for me) was
> > British. Caveat: I certainly didn't read the thing closely, and
> > fersure I ain't rereading it!
>
> I agree, except for "post-apocalyptic" part (well, depending what you
> consider "apocalypse", but not in Mad Max sense of it, as somebody here
> put it). ASoS does seem ot be set in something not very unlike Britain,
> IMO partly to say that such unpleasantnesses are not necessarily
> confined to faraway savage lands such as Balkans, and don't require
> prior all-out nuclear war or asteroid impact.
>
Well, in aSoS, something Really Bad has happened, resulting in a
pretty-much total collapse of civilisation, AL in the region we're
shown. That seems close enough to a Big A for me. YMMV.
Incidentally, as the OP, thanks to all for an interesting, civil,
on-topic discussion. Across 3 NGs, even!
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
"There seems to have been considerable damage here."
-- Emperor Hirohito, on seeing Hiroshima, 1945 [WSJ 3-31-99]
Adrian Tupper
You probably second-guessed the author's intentions in that case!
--
Adrian
Adrian Tupper
>
> Maybe you - and Mr Carr - know something I don't. I have never met
> Iain Banks nor anyone who knows him well. I have read a couple of
> interviews with him. If they were reasonable representations of what
> he said then I'd agree that his political convictions lie to the left
> of centre. Possibly even to the left of my own.
I have seen him speak twice, once to a theatre of about 300, once on
a more intimate TV show. He comes across with the sort of left wing/
anarchist type of politics which I probably had when I was a student.
Except he can probably justify his views better than I ever could!
>
> I do know that he is a skillful writer and I am quite happy to believe
> that he could write about a character whose views were far more
> extreme than (or diametrically opposed to ) his own.
Yes, but we often find that his main characters are socially conscious
libertarians in some way.
>
> If you are talking about the killer's choice of targets alone then I
> would say that they were not specifically left-wing. I'm sure we
> could all come up with a list of people we think the world would be
> better off without. And every one of those lists would be different -
> which is another facet of the story.
Not left wing, but anti-establishment. No, that's still unfair. The
targets represented a class of people who through their position or
their wealth were able to avoid social and moral justice.
>
> In case anybody hadn't realised ;-) I quite like this book. It filled
> in a couple of idle days on a holiday in Spain a few years ago.
>
Yes I enjoyed reading it. But unlike some of his books I didn't feel
I wanted to read it again.
--
Adrian
Richard Puchalsky
> "Steve Brooks" <IDontHave...@hotmail.com> wrote
> > Maybe you - and Mr Carr - know something I don't. I have never met
> > Iain Banks nor anyone who knows him well. I have read a couple of
> > interviews with him. If they were reasonable representations of what
> > he said then I'd agree that his political convictions lie to the left
> > of centre. Possibly even to the left of my own.
>
> I have seen him speak twice, once to a theatre of about 300, once on
> a more intimate TV show. He comes across with the sort of left wing/
> anarchist type of politics which I probably had when I was a student.
> Except he can probably justify his views better than I ever could!
>
> >
> > I do know that he is a skillful writer and I am quite happy to believe
> > that he could write about a character whose views were far more
> > extreme than (or diametrically opposed to ) his own.
>
> Yes, but we often find that his main characters are socially conscious
> libertarians in some way.
U.S. readers should note that Adrian Tupper is almost certainly using the
European meaning of libertarian, which approximates to anarcho-socialist,
rather than the American meaning, which approximates to libertine
capitalist.
I don't think there can be any argument that Banks is personally fiercely
libertarian (in the European sense) -- it comes through in every interview,
in the beliefs of most of his main characters, and in the way his villains
tend to be right-wing monsters. The conflict that you're supposed to feel
in Complicity is one about how far you should go in bringing forth the
left-wing ideals that the major characters hold, not whether they are
basically correct.
Gerry Quinn
If all other books were Tolstoy clones, Danielle Steele would win
literary prizes.
>c) What's good is "just what somebody wants right now". Books as McDonalds
>Happy Meals.
I didn't identify that with "what's good". I said that "what's good" is
not amenable to objective evaluation.
- Gerry Quinn
Gerry Quinn
>"Sebastiaan" <sj.ve...@planet.nl> wrote in message
>news:biur73$ent$1...@reader10.wxs.nl...
> Me:
>> > a) Your judgement tells you what you like. Well, there's a surprise.
>> > b) Evaluations are always contingent on the reader's history and
>culture.
>> > So, books have no inherent quality, it's meaningless to describe them as
>> > good or bad. All you can say is that books by Danielle Steele and
>> Tolstoy
>> > are equally -- good for somebody.
>> > c) What's good is "just what somebody wants right now". Books as
>> McDonalds
>> > Happy Meals.
>>
>>
>> Books as hamburgers is actually quite an apt analogy. Whether you like it
>or
>> not, literature is, in a sense, just another commodity. It's all about the
>> quality of the meat then ;-)
>
>But the whole point of fast food hamburgers is that there is no individual
>quality to the meat -- good or bad. A McDonalds hamburger is simply a
>McDonalds hamburger, and there isn't supposed to be any way of
>distinguishing any one of them from any other. Surely that has to be a bad
>model to apply to literature.
There isn't (supposed to be) any way of distinguishing one copy of a
book by Steele or Tolstoy and another. I don't believe most
restauranteurs would claim that one customer's steak differs from
that of another. One can however distinguish between a Big Mac and a
Whopper (or Sorbet, or Pate de Fois Gras).
>Unless someone is really never discovered, all such events are transitory.
>If you believe that quality is inherent in a work then that implies that
>eventually, people with literary judgement will come to general agreement
>about the worth of a work. Emily Dickinson never made a top 10 sales list;
>if I remember rightly, she never had any sales during her lifetime. In the
>long run that didn't matter.
Emily Dickinson will continue to come into and out of fashion, as tastes
change.
>Basically, humans have a biologically determined ability to use language. I
>believe that something in the part of our brains that lets us use language
>responds to especially skillful and subtle use of language. That means that
>good literature really is a universal, because human brain structure is
>universal.
Actually, the structure of every brain is different. And people get
more from books than language. Indeed, I got the impression originally
that you were interested in the 'ideas' expressed in a book. Then there
are the questions of whether a book tells an exciting story, teaches
some useful facts, or delineates a character accurately or
interestingly. These and many other qualities surely must be part of
any theory of literary worth?
>If someone cares enough about literature to spend some time
>studying it, they will develop the ability to tell good literature from bad.
>Certainly individuals will disagree to some extent, but the general trend of
>readers who have educated themselves in this way will tend to converge on an
>authoritative judgement of literary value. (Which is not to say that the
>opinions of readers without literary judgement are worth anything.) It's
>pretty easy to tell whether any specific person has educated themself in
>this way, if they say that they care about literature, then they generally
>have.
So it's an averaging process - quality is in fact determined by
popularity. But to be worthy of a vote, one must display the right
attitude!
>> > And I don't think the term, with or without quotes, is synonymous with
>> > "one able to judge whether a book is well-written". An 'intellectual'
>> > usually means someone attracted to 'ideas', and the 'ideas' they are
>> > most attracted to tend to be the ones that stink the most.
>>
>> This of course is an absolutely nonsense-argument, based on personal
>taste,
>> or a deep mistrust of whatever is intellectual. Although the word is
>> much-loaded, it is not a bad thing. No offense, but the argument is about
>as
>> unrewarding as you think the 'ideas' are...
I'm expressing a deep distrust of those who think of themselves as
'intellectuals'. I also note a distinction between 'intellectualism'
and 'literary criticism', which seems to be falling on deaf ears...
>Yeah, I didn't even bother with that one. Textbook anti-intellectualism.
If you like. But doesn't that just mean you think my ideas stink?
>> > Ah, the 'intellectual' is familiar with 'literary standards'. We can
>> > look up - what would it be, BS101? - and determine whether a book is
>> > good or bad?
>>
>I didn't bother with this one either. It's characteristic of someone with
>no feeling for quality that he thinks that quality can only be found through
>looking up a standard.
You might note that I am burlesqueing YOUR reference to '"literary
standards", and that I am claiming that no such objective standards
exist.
- Gerry Quinn
Richard Puchalsky
> In article <soI4b.123592$3o3.8...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
"Richard Puchalsky" <rpuch...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >But the whole point of fast food hamburgers is that there is no
individual
> >quality to the meat -- good or bad. A McDonalds hamburger is simply a
> >McDonalds hamburger, and there isn't supposed to be any way of
> >distinguishing any one of them from any other. Surely that has to be a
bad
> >model to apply to literature.
>
> There isn't (supposed to be) any way of distinguishing one copy of a
> book by Steele or Tolstoy and another. I don't believe most
> restauranteurs would claim that one customer's steak differs from
> that of another. One can however distinguish between a Big Mac and a
> Whopper (or Sorbet, or Pate de Fois Gras).
You just stated that there is no basis for saying that one work is better
than another. According to you, you can distinguish between one and
another, but only in the same sense as one can distinguish between Happy
Meals with different toys inside.
>
> >Unless someone is really never discovered, all such events are
transitory.
> >If you believe that quality is inherent in a work then that implies that
> >eventually, people with literary judgement will come to general agreement
> >about the worth of a work. Emily Dickinson never made a top 10 sales
list;
> >if I remember rightly, she never had any sales during her lifetime. In
the
> >long run that didn't matter.
>
> Emily Dickinson will continue to come into and out of fashion, as tastes
> change.
BS. Emily Dickenson has never "gone out of fashion", in the sense of people
no longer thinking that her works show literary genius, since her works went
into wide distribution.
>
> >Basically, humans have a biologically determined ability to use language.
I
> >believe that something in the part of our brains that lets us use
language
> >responds to especially skillful and subtle use of language. That means
that
> >good literature really is a universal, because human brain structure is
> >universal.
>
> Actually, the structure of every brain is different.
Humans have an inbuilt ability to pick up language in early childhood. The
structure of that part of people's brains must be very similar, because
almost everyone manages to do it.
> And people get
> more from books than language. Indeed, I got the impression originally
> that you were interested in the 'ideas' expressed in a book. Then there
> are the questions of whether a book tells an exciting story, teaches
> some useful facts, or delineates a character accurately or
> interestingly. These and many other qualities surely must be part of
> any theory of literary worth?
Of course. But ideas poorly expressed do not make literature, nor does an
exciting story poorly told, or a interesting character described in language
that does not bring them to life. Therefore these elements add to
literature but do not define it. Books that teach useful facts are
certainly useful, but it that is their primary purpose, they usually aren't
literature.
>
> >If someone cares enough about literature to spend some time
> >studying it, they will develop the ability to tell good literature from
bad.
> >Certainly individuals will disagree to some extent, but the general trend
of
> >readers who have educated themselves in this way will tend to converge on
an
> >authoritative judgement of literary value. (Which is not to say that the
> >opinions of readers without literary judgement are worth anything.) It's
> >pretty easy to tell whether any specific person has educated themself in
> >this way, if they say that they care about literature, then they
generally
> >have.
>
> So it's an averaging process - quality is in fact determined by
> popularity. But to be worthy of a vote, one must display the right
> attitude!
Quality is not determined by popularity. Quality is inherent in the work.
What I'm describing are the reasons why this quality will eventually be
reflected in the general attitude towards the work of people with literary
judgement.
>
> I'm expressing a deep distrust of those who think of themselves as
> 'intellectuals'. I also note a distinction between 'intellectualism'
> and 'literary criticism', which seems to be falling on deaf ears...
You know nothing about intellectualism, so I'm not going to bother
explaining why literary critics tend to be a subset of the group of
intellectuals.
>
> >Yeah, I didn't even bother with that one. Textbook anti-intellectualism.
>
> If you like. But doesn't that just mean you think my ideas stink?
No. It means that your ideas conform to an easy recognizeable pattern with
certain defining characteristics. Since there is no factual basis for the
opinion you expressed, that intellectuals are attracted to those ideas that
"stink the most", your opinion is merely a prejudice. The history and
pattern of this prejudice has been described quite well in the book that I
already brought up in this thread.
>
> >> > Ah, the 'intellectual' is familiar with 'literary standards'. We can
> >> > look up - what would it be, BS101? - and determine whether a book is
> >> > good or bad?
> >>
> >I didn't bother with this one either. It's characteristic of someone
with
> >no feeling for quality that he thinks that quality can only be found
through
> >looking up a standard.
>
> You might note that I am burlesqueing YOUR reference to '"literary
> standards", and that I am claiming that no such objective standards
> exist.
I believe that if you search through my prior posts in this thread, you will
not find the phrase "literary standards". You introduced it as a strawman
which you could then attack. Nothing in my argument implies that there is
an objective set of literary standards, which could be in principle be
codified or looked up.
Richard Puchalsky
> I believe that if you search through my prior posts in this thread, you
will
> not find the phrase "literary standards". You introduced it as a strawman
> which you could then attack. Nothing in my argument implies that there is
> an objective set of literary standards, which could be in principle be
> codified or looked up.
As soon as I sent this, I realized that this is one of those claims that you
should always look up before making. I did indeed use the phrase "literary
standards" earlier in this thread, but not in the sense that Quinn uses in
his reply.
Anthony Cerrato
The pop media and a large proportion of their putative
"cultural" reviewer/critics _are_ the "pseudo-intellectuals"
I speak of, and today, they are the ones who lead _the major
portion_ of the unwashed masses to literary and general
cultural
"enlightenment" in today's world. Yes, there are legitimate
intellectuals and literary critics in the world today also,
but they do not dominate the field in influence amongst the
masses.
Through the doublespeak and psycho-jargon wielded by the TV
and other pop mavens, the masses are indoctrinated into
learning the complexities of being new pseudo-intellectuals
and "literary experts." Such cultural influences result in
the lowest common denominator becoming preferring things
like mtv, rap, and Jo Lo movies to reading _any_ kind of
book, let alone, literary ones. :)
>And in the intellectual tradition, as
> I understand it, credentials are not really determinative;
you can have a
> degree yet not be an intellectual or vice versa.
>
> > While I certainly can't single out anyone specifically
> > claiming to be an intellectual critic on this board,
Did I even mention a degree? No! The standard definition,
is:
credentials n. (1) That which entitles one to confidence,
credit, or authority. (2) Evidence or testimonials
concerning one's right to credit, confidence, or authority
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition
Neither of these necessarily entail a degree, nor in fact,
any physical evidence at all--I primarily meant the word in
the sense of "testimonials" (e.g., acceptance by the expert
or intellectual _community_ in a given field,) and/or, long
experience/learning
history. (BTW Rich, you may be surprised to hear that I find
your
reviews and critiques quite intellectual, and themselves,
quite literary. :) )
> I claim to be an intellectual critic.
>
> > there
> > have definitely been some who have felt secure in
claiming
> > that ASoS did have certain "literary" merit...which I
find
> > similar enough to at least some claim for
intellectualism on
> > the part of the writer.
Here again, claims are always relative to personal
views--and as I said originally, YMMV. :)
I though ASoS did more than "play into" a number of
stereotypes--it was full of some very tired ones...and
displayed them far too long for my taste. YMMV. :)
...tonyC
Richard Puchalsky
convincing
> > people that they are intellectuals?
>
> The pop media and a large proportion of their putative
> "cultural" reviewer/critics _are_ the "pseudo-intellectuals"
> I speak of, and today, they are the ones who lead _the major
> portion_ of the unwashed masses to literary and general cultural
> "enlightenment" in today's world. Yes, there are legitimate
> intellectuals and literary critics in the world today also,
> but they do not dominate the field in influence amongst the
> masses.
Hmm. Are you writing about the U.S.? In the U.S., at least, I'd guess that
the only pop cultural reviewer/critics that most people pay any attention to
are movie critics, plus possibly pop music critics. (You specifically
mentioned "mtv, rap, and J. Lo movies"). I've rarely seen either movie or
music critics
make any great pretensions towards literary enlightenment; they generally
seem to accept their role as the kind of pseudo-critic who just tells the
public whether they will like something or not. There is such a limited
market for reviews of books that most book reviews, even of pop culture
books, occur within publications that seem to be generally written by real
intellectuals.
I've seen people be convinced by the critical atmosphere in the U.S. that
they know a lot about movies, possibly falsely, but I don't know enough
about movies myself to really judge. I don't think that I've ever met
someone who thought that they were a literary intellectual who wasn't.
And I don't see why people in the U.S. or U.K. would *want* to pretend that
they are intellectuals or literary critics. Either term is practically an
insult, in the U.S. due to the prevailing anti-intellectualism, and in the
U.K. due to the same response to classism that has people faking lower-class
accents.
[lots deleted]
> (BTW Rich, you may be surprised to hear that I find your
> reviews and critiques quite intellectual, and themselves,
> quite literary. :) )
Thanks.
Anthony Cerrato
news:r6K5b.128326$3o3.9...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att
.net...
Just three words: Oprah Book Club! Also of course, are the
morning TV shows which periodically run book "reviews"
(true, by the same "culture" reporter who usually does
everything else, including movies, music, etc.) These are
usually very short pieces which are basically nothing more
than part of the publicity tours for new books--they are
typically pop books , many in the mystery/romance/exposé
genre, many for "summer" reading. And then there are the
myriad internet mavens (including ng ones) who tout the
praises of their favorites. All of these reviewers do create
a pervasive atmosphere of perceived "intellectualism"
(i.e., read, pseudo-) which is surprising influential I
believe.
> I've rarely seen either movie or
> music critics
> make any great pretensions towards literary enlightenment;
they generally
> seem to accept their role as the kind of pseudo-critic who
just tells the
> public whether they will like something or not. There is
such a limited
> market for reviews of books that most book reviews, even
of pop culture
> books, occur within publications that seem to be generally
written by real
> intellectuals.
Do you mean "credentialed" ones? :) You sound as though
you never watch TV, read pop magazines, or surf the
internet--which I am certain you actually do. The
publications you speak of are not read by the masses of
course, and are rather isolated in their influence today.
This is the 21st century (sadly!)
> I've seen people be convinced by the critical atmosphere
in the U.S. that
> they know a lot about movies, possibly falsely, but I
don't know enough
> about movies myself to really judge.
It is true that movies are the most influential cultural
genre of today--led by the US, but certainly a worldwide
phenomenon.
>I don't think that I've ever met
> someone who thought that they were a literary intellectual
who wasn't.
>
> And I don't see why people in the U.S. or U.K. would
*want* to pretend that
> they are intellectuals or literary critics. Either term
is practically an
> insult, in the U.S. due to the prevailing
anti-intellectualism, and in the
> U.K. due to the same response to classism that has people
faking lower-class
> accents.
I generally agree--but it is not necessarilly a conscious
thing. As I said above, it is the perceived pervasive
atmosphere generated rather than specifically conscious
"pretense." This is what influences the masses today.
> [lots deleted]
>
> > (BTW Rich, you may be surprised to hear that I find your
> > reviews and critiques quite intellectual, and
themselves,
> > quite literary. :) )
>
> Thanks.
>
You're quite welcome. ...tonyC
Steve Simmons
> [saves note] Thanks, Anna. I have been on the lookout for Espedair St,
> which doesn't seem to have a US ed?
Keep looking. I loved it.
--
"The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's
absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard."
-- Bill Gates, 1995 interview in Focus Magazine (Germany)
John F. Carr
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>Peter D. Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>
>> It's hard to believe that this sad, purple, preachy, windy book was
>> written by our beloved, Orbital-smashing, Drone-riding Iain M. Banks --
>> but I've had pretty poor luck with his non-SF novels. There was a
>> violently-nihilistic spy thriller (Complicity??) that I liked pretty
>> well, but I found The Bridge dull and tendentious, and now this... So I
>> guess I'll stick to the Star Smashers of Special Circumstances, thank
>> you very much, and leave the literary stuff to, well, the literariate?
>
>Speaking as somebody who had much the same reaction to SoS (but I don't
>rule out the possibility that there was something I Didn't Get) there
>are some very good non-Sf Iain Banks books; starting with, of course,
>The Wasp Factory (perhaps his best book of all, sf included), and
>including at least Espedair Street and Crow Road. I did like Canal
>Dreams as well, though I seem alone in this. The Business, though
>slight, was entertaining, and a lot of people will tell you the same of
>Whit, though I didn't have much fun with it. I would not recommend Dead
>Air.
I rank _Espedair Street_ as his best non-SF, and with _Use of Weapons_
as his best overall. (Neither is sufficiently clearly superior for me
to justify trying to rank books in different genres.) It is one of the
few books I have liked enough that I felt compelled to write a book
review. A story of accidental success, failure, death, loneliness,
and second chances. It _felt_ realistic.
_Crow Road_ was very good, but too long. Like _Espedair Street_ it
managed not to annoy me despite having characters whose politics are
opposite to mine. Some writers could take lessons from this.
_Wasp Factory_ was good but not great.
_Complicity_ was good but not great.
I liked _Canal Dreams_ but not especially much, and there didn't seem
to be much point to it. Put it in with _Walking on Glass_ in this
respect. I'll reread it someday.
_The Business_ was lightweight.
Maybe I should mention _The Bridge_ too. It's at the bottom of this
list because even though parts of it were interesting and among Banks'
best work it never lived up to its promise.
I'll try again to read _Song of Stone_ and _Whit_ which I couldn't get
into the first time.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Adrian Tupper
@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu:
I actually enjoyed Whit although I seem to be alone in this respect.
--
Adrian
Peter D. Tillman
j...@mit.edu (John F. Carr) wrote:
>
> I rank _Espedair Street_ as his best non-SF, and with _Use of Weapons_
> as his best overall. (Neither is sufficiently clearly superior for me
> to justify trying to rank books in different genres.) It is one of the
> few books I have liked enough that I felt compelled to write a book
> review.
URL please? Or post it here?
A story of accidental success, failure, death, loneliness,
> and second chances. It _felt_ realistic.
>
[moves ES higher in the desiderata list]
Best SF novel? I'd be hard-pressed to choose among Weapons, Phlebas,
Dark Background, & Windward. All wonderful, top-notch books, with others
close behind. Thanks, Mr. Banks -- keep 'em coming!
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Book Reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3GHSD9VY8XS4Q/
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/iplus/nonfiction/index.htm#reviews
http://www.sfsite.com/revwho.htm
Don Aitken
<adrian...@totalise.co.uk> wrote:
>I actually enjoyed Whit although I seem to be alone in this respect.
Not quite. Me too.
--
Don Aitken
Steve Smoot
; I actually enjoyed Whit although I seem to be alone in this respect.
;
Oh, I did too. In a sort of fun over the top way.
Loved _Crow Road_, the length didnt bother me.
And I seem to have liked The Business more than most, I agree that its
lightweight, but fun. There was a certain amount of 'so what was the
point?' at the end. Of course the same could be said of _Three men in a
Boat_ and that sold millions....
-s
Adrian Tupper
@gumby.cs.berkeley.edu:
That, coincidentally, is the book I have just read. There was no
point as such. It was written in a humourous journalistic style
and the pleasure was in the narrative not the plot. I think that
IB's books have an element of that, especially The Business.
--
Adrian