tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post8091020456394052676..comments2024-02-05T10:41:31.777-05:00Comments on I Saw Lightning Fall: Dean on Concrete Language and Truth ClaimsLoren Eatonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-38576117598107326802011-07-22T10:32:23.281-04:002011-07-22T10:32:23.281-04:00I probably haven't read enough Mieville to go ...I probably haven't read enough Mieville to go into that much depth. In fact, I'm <i>sure</i> I haven't. He does seem to have a healthy appreciation of genre, though.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-50656292622969992672011-07-20T17:26:33.189-04:002011-07-20T17:26:33.189-04:00I'm not sure it's how little he messes wit...I'm not sure it's how little he messes with expectations, so much as his depth of character involvement (and dedication to solid, self-consistent, secondary-world plots) that keeps Mieville comprehensible. Sure The City and the City is a philosophical meditation on interstitial existence and hybridity and international communities and cultural taboos. But it's also a mystery (following the strictures where the clues are evenly distributed and come together at the conclusion), and a cop story (where the main character is a human, interesting, rather sympathetic character caught in circumstances out of his control.) The key, I guess, is love and understanding. Mieville loves and understands genre fiction, while other Pomo writers may dabble, but don't respect the expressiveness and beauty of genres' invisible rules.Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-23750650782094848532011-07-14T09:02:49.226-04:002011-07-14T09:02:49.226-04:00Mieville loves to mess with perspective and expect...Mieville loves to mess with perspective and expectation, only not to the degree that he becomes an impenitrable "pomo" writer. Have you read <a href="http://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2010/04/middle-shelf-story-china-mievilles.html" rel="nofollow">"Reports of Certain Events in London"</a>? You really should.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-37332625666476053182011-07-12T16:06:10.250-04:002011-07-12T16:06:10.250-04:00Good point.
I wonder if one can think about moder...Good point.<br /><br />I wonder if one can think about modern "fairy tales" and hardboiled detectives as residing on a scale of metaphor. Even the most grittily grounded fairy tales (such as Jane Yolen's superlative if flawed Sleeping-Beauty-in-the-Holocaust novel Briar Rose, Del Toro's superlative and unflawed Pan's Labyrinth, or Valente's darkly feminist yet surprisingly innocent The Orphan's Tale) tend to draw power from extended metaphors that seem to blossom slowly in the reader's mind before being brought down to earth either as irony or eucatastrophe. It seems a genre where authors are encouraged to think and speak abstractly, especially if those abstractions can be weighed down with the concrete of life's sorrows.<br /><br />Hardboiled prose seems to do this in fast forward. Phillip Marlowe is always drawn towards an image of himself as an ideal knight, but he seems to be constantly mocking himself for his old-fashioned abstractions before they get a chance to take him away. <br /><br />To really prove my point (even to myself) I'd need to leaf through some books that I don't have available, but I think Mieville's The City and the City is particularly interesting here. One central question involves whether or not the story is fantasy--it could either exist in a world where our realities find only metaphorical reflections via an elaborate, magical, semi-invisible agency, or it could reflect a much more literal world in which everything has a material explanation. For Mieville, that choice (which he follows Tolkien in leaving to the reader) is the choice between reading his book as a fantasy and as a detective story.Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.com