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PIRANESI (2020) by Susanna Clarke
The
book's title refers to the ”Imaginary Prisons” artwork by
Giovanni Piranesi (see image).
The protagonist of the novel
PIRANESI lives almost completely alone, in a dreamlike, alternate
reality he calls ”the House.” It is a self-contained universe of
classical architecture – an endless building of halls, statues and
staircases.
Our protagonist is the unreliable
first-person narrator of this story.
The reader will quickly
figure out that the protagonist has lost his memory and perhaps his
mind. The narrative follows his quest to figure out how and why he
got into the House, and the reader is often one step ahead of the
protagonist.
The style of Clarke's writing in PIRANESI feels
”classical” – restrained, observing, reminiscent of late
19th-century / Edwardian literature. When modern language suddenly
sneaks into the narrative, the effect is jarring – intentionally so
– and you get a sense that the House has somehow altered the
protagonist's personality – this must also be intentional.
This style evokes a certain ”detached,”
yet unreal mood – reinforcing the effect that the narrator has lost
connection with himself.
This may sound unpleasant, but the
narrator seems quite happy living in this strange, depopulated world. (In an interview, Susanna Clarke herself said the novel is
supposed to offer a positive vision.)
I think PIRANESI can be read as an
allegory about recovering from a mental breakdown, or perhaps an
allegory of the human mind as an ”imaginary prison.” The
protagonist's interior life is turned into the ”landscape” of the
House, which he navigates on his journey back to connecting with
other people.
You may of course just read PIRANESI as a
beautifully composed fantasy novel. It is perhaps not the most
original or ”edgy” story I've read, but the craft of the writing
and story is impeccable. You enjoy the novel not only for the story
and the setting, but also the ease of reading it.
(And that's no
small compliment! There is so much fantasy I can't stomach because
it's badly written.)
PIRANESI is warmly recommended for
readers who enjoyed AMERICAN GODS, or Susanna Clarke's previous novel
JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL.
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Jag har blivit intervjuad på Håkan Carlssons bokblogg:
HORRORSTÖR (2014) by Grady Hendrix
As
this review is being written (November 2020), the horror novel
HORRORSTÖR is being developed into a TV series, which is a
good idea – it was made for a movie or a series.
HORRORSTÖR
is a satirical horror tale about a haunted ”big-box” furniture
superstore, suspiciously similar in design to IKEA (though under a
different name).
The protagonists are low-wage workers in the
haunted store. They're trapped in limited means, feeling lonely,
frustrated and exploited. Their employer corporation condescendingly
calls them ”partners” – only one example of the mind-numbing
corporate jargon this novel pokes fun at.
These working-class
protagonists are very human and relatable; none of them turns into
a comic-book hero or disposable moron. When faced with
supernatural terrors, they react and behave in a credible manner.
Parts of the book
(including the hilarious cover design) are direct graphic parodies
of an IKEA catalogue – with furniture names like ”Kjërring”
and ”Arsle” (check what they mean in Swedish!). The book is worth
having for these pages alone.
Anyhow, I look forward to the TV series. HORRORSTÖR is recommended for horror and satire lovers – and anyone who ever got sick of wandering around in an IKEA store without finding the exit.
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Warning: Spoilers ahead
In order to make sure this review of
the Netflix series DARK was accurate and fair, I had to watch (and by
”watch” I mean ”endure”) all three seasons, beginning to
end.
How do I describe that experience in a few words...
To
quote Leslie Nielsen in one of his comedy movies: ”Do any of you
understand how a man can hurt inside?”
The
plot of DARK can be summed up as ”Back to the Future in
Germany” – which also sounds like the premise of a hilarious
parody sketch. Picture this hypothetical sketch as a send-up of the
crudest German cultural stereotypes.
It would include the following
features:
1. The entire
story must take place in a single German town, surrounded by a forest
so vast and dense, it seems the land has never been cultivated or
farmed.
Why? Because a huge forest is ”mysterious” and ”laden
with secrets,” just like EVERY DAMN FOREST IN EVERY DAMN TV SERIES
EVER MADE SINCE TWIN PEAKS.
2. The atmosphere must be
consistently dour, and overdone to the point of pomposity. The color
scheme should be mainly gray.
3. Somber fatalism must control every single character. They will try to change the past and future,
but it will always prove impossible. That point must be repeated, and
repeated and repeated ad nauseam.
None of the
characters are allowed to resist being manipulated and pushed around
by a ridiculously convoluted plot, because ”follow orders” is the
underlying philosophy.
4. Everyone must stare at each
other in a very drawn-out, angsty way most of the time. It's called
”Serious Acting.” Stare, stare, stare...
Did I hear
someone in the audience titter...? What are you tittering about?
5. What was a joking subplot (or dark undercurrent) in
Back to the Future – that hopping back and forth in time
might lead to someone becoming one's own parent – must be turned
into a vast, dead-serious incest scheme.
Everyone must become
everyone's father, mother, uncle, son, daughter... so that in the end
there is really just one person ”effing around” with itself –
figuratively and literally. Never mind the natural genetic
consequences of all this inbreeding!
6. And remember, no
laughing. Around the fifth or sixth time a character is
”revealed” to be related to another character through-time
travel... or meets his/her own self from another time... this must
still be presented as a surprise shocker, with the utmost
seriousness.
This is serious drama! I will have no
tittering in the audience!
7. The characters must increasingly
act and talk in the same way, and since they are all biologically
related due to the time-travel plot, there are no ”foreign races”
in the story. None of Germany's real ethnic minorities seem to exist
in this claustrophobic, incestuous Aryan microcosm – no Jews,
Blacks, Muslims etc.
(Perhaps you can have one of the
characters say out loud, without a trace of irony: ”Life in this
town sucks – but at least there's no racism!”)
8. Heavy-handed
references to Nietschze (the ”Eternal Return”) and other dour,
very German philosophers should be everywhere to be found. None of
them must offer a sliver of optimism.
9. Don't
mention the war! There's time travel in Frickin' Germany –
and not once must anyone be allowed to say out loud, ”What if we
tried to stop Hitler?”
10. Is the whole edifice starting to
collapse under the weight of its own pretentiousness? Is the plot
getting so repetitive, the audience risks falling asleep?
Quick
– play a pop song over the soundtrack to make things seem ”deep”!
And a ”meaningful” montage. Sprinkle with some unnecessary
slow-motion – the hallmark of a pretentious hack.
11. Uh-oh
– it looks like people in the audience are so bored out of their
minds, they're starting to think... about how convoluted and
ridiculous the plot has become. Time for some distracting
”tell-don't-show."
Play a ponderous voiceover –
accompained by a soundtrack sounding like mewing cats – that
”explains” how there is no free will, and the characters must
obey the increasingly idiotic plot because...
Because...
...because we're saying, over and over, that they have
no choice. (Yeah! Just repeat your big, bold bullshit until it is
believed! That's writing advice straight from... I forgot who said it
first.)
12. Throw in a passing reference
to Back to the Future... but
otherwise pretend that time-travel is something utterly new and
totally incomprehensible, as if neither the characters nor the
audience have ever heard about such a thing before.
Not one
person in the series is allowed to read science fiction, watch
science fiction, or be familiar with it. (This
”We-have-just-invented-the-Wheel-isn't-it-amazing?”
attitude is a typical fallacy of mainstream writers who try their
hand at speculative fiction.)
13. Finally, wrap up the
third season... oh, but you can't wrap it up! All the
time-hopping has destroyed any sense of a coherent, meaningful
narrative. All you have is a dreary, depressing, meaningless tangle
of puppet characters robbed of all agency.
(I mean literally robbed
of agency; there's a ludicrous scene where a gun refuses to work
only because the script – sorry, ”Fate” – says so.)
So
just bail out of the whole mess. Burn it all down. And let the
audience breathe a great sigh of relief that at long last, the
pointless suffering is over – mainly for them, but also for the
characters.
[Deep
breath.]
So, have I picked every bone I had to pick with DARK?
What the hell, let's twist the knife in all the way... It's
tempting to suspect that this painfully turgid drama is really about
what isn't being said.
The proverbial dog that didn't
bark in the DARK: World War II is never mentioned or even alluded to.
Characters travel back in time to several periods in Germany's
history – except the period 1933 - 1945.
What if one of the
characters in this series did propose to use the available
time travel devices to stop Adolf Hitler's rise to power? Following
the basic premise of the whole narrative, that every event must
happen the way it does, we'd get into some ”dark” waters indeed:
Angstful, Grave
DARK Character #1: ”We could travel back in time to the 1920s
and stop Hitler. We won't even have to kill him! Just cripple his
capacity for speech. Damage his vocal chords or his tongue.”
Angstful, Grave
DARK Character #2: ”No. We cannot prevent Hitler, nor any of
all the horrors he caused, for it is predestined by Time. All of it.
The mass hysteria, the war, the concentration camps, the gas
chambers, the destruction, the death of millions, had to happen. If
we try to prevent the Holocaust, we will only cause it to
happen. We are merely following the orders of our supreme Fuehrer,
fate itself... or we wouldn't exist. We are destiny... and that
absolves us of all moral responsibility.”
One might respond that Germany's
history has nothing at all to do with this fictional story – but
that is simply not credible. This story is explicitly about about
the impossibility of changing history, through repeated time travel,
in a country that is very explicitly Germany.
If the scriptwriter had had
the nerve to go that far – to really shock the audience by spelling
out that these Germans wouldn't try to stop Hitler even if they
could – then I would've been a bit impressed, perhaps enough to scrap
this scathing review.
Instead, the ”Hitler is Fate”
subtext (which, by the way, is bullshit) lies hidden between the
lines. Where others might see ”intellectual” art, I see a piece
of prententious art that poses as ”dark” but is actually a
cop-out. If it hadn't cranked up the ”dark” posture to eleven, I
wouldn't have been so harsh on it.
If the series had offered a morsel
of humor, a crumb of irony, all would have been forgiven.
And
let me disprove any idea that DARK had to be so humorless because
”Germans have no sense of humor." Before DARK, I watched a German
movie on Netflix titled LOOK WHO'S BACK (2015) , wherein Adolf Hitler
magically reappears in modern-day Berlin, and immediately continues
his career as a dangerous demagogue.
That movie is not only a
successful, timely satire, but quite funny – which proves that of
course Germans are capable of dealing with difficult subjects and can
even joke about them. The ”edge” in LOOK WHO'S BACK is
that there's no diversionary talk about ”fate.” The
responsibility for the rise of a demagogue is pointed squarely at his
followers and those who did nothing to stop him.
To sum up: I would argue – and I'm
only half joking – that the plot of DARK could be much simplified
(and shortened – God, yes!) if it only involved a single snail
(snails being hermaphrodites) that traveled back in time,
impregnated its younger self... and then let that younger snail hatch
the egg that would later become itself.
A snail would also
make a superbly condensed character metaphor, bringing out the
very essence of what the DARK scriptwriter apparently was striving for.
It is slimy to the touch... and it has no spine.
All done. I'll pull the knife out
now.
But let's be nice – just a little: DARK wasn't the
originator of the ”pretending-to-be-deep” TV series as a
phenomenon. Before DARK there was LOST (as in ”We lost the
plot and couldn't find it”)... and other shows built around hyping
up a ”mystery” that in the end amounted to a big meh.
Like
Rorschach tests, these ”blots-on-a-paper” stories mean very
little except what we read into them. So what is their appeal? I
have a hypothesis: Perhaps such TV shows exist to try and fill the
spiritual needs that used to be satisifed by religion?
The
medieval Catholic mystery play has been resurrected as the secular
mystifying TV drama. It promises a revelation that will bring back
spiritual mystery to modern life – except that for some reason (which you will have to figure out) it can't deliver.
Sic tedium creatus est.
EMBASSYTOWN (2011) by China
Miéville
I struggled to finish this novel, as it tended to
drag... and also because of my doubt that its central premise might
possibly be wrongheaded.
When I finally got to the end, I felt
reassured that EMBASSYTOWN wasn't a dud, and there were some really
enjoyable parts.
EMBASSYTOWN
deals with linguistics and consciousness – i.e. how language itself
shapes our awareness of the world and ourselves in it.
”Embassytown”
is a human settlement on a planet where humans try to co-exist with
an indigenous alien species, the Ariekei. These aliens have a concept
of language that is radically different from all human communication.
The Ariekei way of speaking is difficult to explain – and because
of this complexity, I soon started to doubt: Are these aliens really
credible?
At times, I wondered whether the Ariekei would end
up like the aliens, robots and computers in 1960s TV shows that break
down if you tell them a paradox or just ask ”Why?” It didn't turn
out that way, fortunately, and the Ariekei were allowed to evolve to
an impressive depth.
Stylistically, EMBASSYTOWN is slick and
has an original ”writer's voice” which I like. There are neat typographic tricks to convey alien speech (and which probably
can't be translated to an audiobook). The imaginative depiction of
alien environments and characters are the best parts of this
book.
But then comes that nagging doubt... are the Ariekei
possible?
Of course science fiction should present aliens that
are ”different” – it's just that these particular aliens are
given such a glaring weakness, and at the same time have advanced
biotechnology.
(Okay, we humans have our own glaring
weaknesses, so who are we to say that a fictional alien intelligence
is ”inconsistent” or ”too vulnerable”?)
I'm still not
entirely convinced the alien language in EMBASSYTOWN really is
logically possible. Perhaps a professional linguist could analyze it
and explain.
(Side note: I had similar issues with Peter
Watts' novel BLINDSIGHT (2006), but that one was worse. It proposed an alien species I struggled to
find credible, because the author claimed something very important
about these aliens but then couldn't prove it. BLINDSIGHT resorted to a
”straw-man” argument to prove its premise, which unfortunately
undermined the premise itself – seriously, vampires as an example
of alien intelligence? In a science fiction novel? – but that's the
subject of another review. End of side note.)
There is also the problem that
the novel meanders. It could have benefited from tighter
plotting and fewer secondary characters. I skimmed several passages,
something I rarely do. But it arrived at a satifying
conclusion.
Criticisms aside: I admire the author's skill, and
his daring exploration of language, and that made the novel worth
reading.
EMBASSYTOWN is recommended for lovers of ”highbrow”
science fiction, and for readers who want stories about strange alien
cultures.
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THE PRESIDENT HAS A TIME MACHINE. BUT DON'T PANIC.
The born-again religious, recovering alcoholic, not-too-bright U.S. President Prescott "Pres" Walker is desperate. He fears he will end his presidency as a failure, and needs a miracle to turn things around...
Then he learns that the military has secretly developed the world's first time machine.
His Vice President, the sinister and secretive Zack Cutter, convinces Prescott to seize the time machine and "set history straight" -- all he has to do is go back in time and make a few small alterations, and all the problems of the present will go away!
That's the plan, anyway. But even the smallest alterations of the past can have unforeseen consequences... especially when you're as clumsy as "Pres" Walker. The greatest misadventure of all time begins. And history... is history!
The novel THE TIME IDIOT is available on Amazon.
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THE RAW SHARK TEXTS (2007) by Steven Hall
This is a very, very unusual novel. I like it.
