Freckles & Doubt (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
freckles_and_doubt) wrote2010-01-13 01:33 pm
freckles_and_doubt) wrote2010-01-13 01:33 pm
Entry tags:
double, double, toil and trouble
Gah. You'd think there was nothing worse than insomnia, in the sense of lying awake for hours trying to get to sleep in the first place, except that in fact it's possibly worse from the other end. This morning I woke up randomly at 3.45am with my feet in cramp (again!) and couldn't get back to sleep, which is a whole new order of horrible. I was at work by 6.30 and cleared out my entire inbox in a virtuous glow which lasted only until I realised that ceaseless, unremitting attention to it and the telephone from my first phone call at 7.30am onwards (and what's with that? 7.30am is my personal work-getting-done-uninterrupted time, bug off!) was only just sufficient to keep up with the new queries as they came in. Advice at this time of year is a full-time job, which is unfortunate, since I'm also running orientation and that's an 11-hour day in itself. I need to be two people, at least, possibly three, on the "Four six-foot Nubian guards with scimitars" principle. And a pit-bull. If I was three people and a pit-bull maybe someone would occasionally read and obey the notice on my door which says I'm NOT AVAILABLE!
I could be one person several times, or in two cities at once. I'm now going to babble enthusiastically about China Miéville's new novel, The City and the City, on the grounds that (a) it was bloody brilliant and completely did my head in, and (b) after all this admin I really need to demonstrate to myself that I still have something resembling an intellect. I'm also going to cut it, because the aspect I want to enthuse about will really spoil your enjoyment if you haven't read it.
So, cities. He does them well, he has a real feel for their complexity and humanity and grime, and their basic construction, even in reality, as fantastic, improbable spaces. I love the random, organic, essentially real way the two cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma are crosshatched and alternated and doubled on top of each other - that's very much how cities grow, with a logic that has nothing to do with urban planning. Besźel comes across as slightly grimly Eastern European and post-Communist, particularly in comparison with more Westernised and prosperous Ul Qoma, and its police-procedural focus has a bit of a noir feel; this all works rather more than well. The fierce - and fiercely enforced - divide between the cities obviously recalls the Berlin Wall, but make no mistake, this is no mere allegory.
See, I thought I knew what was going on here. I thought this was going to be one of those Neverwherish, UnLunDunish narratives which played with slippage and alternate realities and eddies in the space-time continuum. In short, I expected a fantasy novel, and it bloody well isn't. Here's the thing: there is no dimension-warping here. The two cities are absolutely separated, but solely as the result of an act of wilful, political perception: in a completely bizarre sort of way, this is a deeply realist novel. It explores, gleefully and slightly sadly, the enormous power of identification and belief, its ability to warp the world, to impose perception on the actual to the extent that it does rewrite reality, if only to say that the two people standing side-by-side on the same paving stone are actually in different countries and cannot see each other. This essential fact dawned on me only slowly over the first few chapters, through which I waited for the magical shoe to drop: when I finally realised it wasn't going to drop, my head exploded. Get yer mind-expanding narratives while they're fresh, they're luvverly!
This is also China Miéville, so of course it's a political novel: if there's any lasting testament to the skill of this man, it's in the fact that I love his work despite my usual tendency to shy away from political writing like it's a maggot-infested corpse (which, come to think of it, too often it actually is). This book might be about perception, but it's also about fascism and control; nationalism and the nature of tribal identification; history and memory. Breach fascinated me, as the part of it all that seems most supernatural, but in fact they aren't, and their liminal, unnoticed omnipotence can be deconstructed in perfectly realist terms. If nothing else I love this novel because it's a giant up-yours to the vampires and fairies and werewolves of the paranormal romance which currently infests vast tracts of the popular f/sf terrain. Genuine wonder, children, is in the writing.
If you're reading this presumably you've read the book and don't need me to tell you how good it is; I'd be interested to know if the expectation of fantasy slippage worked the same way with you? It's making me realise how seldom I manage to be genuinely surprised by literature, and that's sad.
Of course, I've now spent half an hour lovingly constructing this post, and I really don't have the time, but I'd like to see it as an essentially political gesture of rebellion and self-definition, and stuff the bloody venue allocations. Being an administrator is an act of wilful perception. I should do something about that.
I could be one person several times, or in two cities at once. I'm now going to babble enthusiastically about China Miéville's new novel, The City and the City, on the grounds that (a) it was bloody brilliant and completely did my head in, and (b) after all this admin I really need to demonstrate to myself that I still have something resembling an intellect. I'm also going to cut it, because the aspect I want to enthuse about will really spoil your enjoyment if you haven't read it.
So, cities. He does them well, he has a real feel for their complexity and humanity and grime, and their basic construction, even in reality, as fantastic, improbable spaces. I love the random, organic, essentially real way the two cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma are crosshatched and alternated and doubled on top of each other - that's very much how cities grow, with a logic that has nothing to do with urban planning. Besźel comes across as slightly grimly Eastern European and post-Communist, particularly in comparison with more Westernised and prosperous Ul Qoma, and its police-procedural focus has a bit of a noir feel; this all works rather more than well. The fierce - and fiercely enforced - divide between the cities obviously recalls the Berlin Wall, but make no mistake, this is no mere allegory.
See, I thought I knew what was going on here. I thought this was going to be one of those Neverwherish, UnLunDunish narratives which played with slippage and alternate realities and eddies in the space-time continuum. In short, I expected a fantasy novel, and it bloody well isn't. Here's the thing: there is no dimension-warping here. The two cities are absolutely separated, but solely as the result of an act of wilful, political perception: in a completely bizarre sort of way, this is a deeply realist novel. It explores, gleefully and slightly sadly, the enormous power of identification and belief, its ability to warp the world, to impose perception on the actual to the extent that it does rewrite reality, if only to say that the two people standing side-by-side on the same paving stone are actually in different countries and cannot see each other. This essential fact dawned on me only slowly over the first few chapters, through which I waited for the magical shoe to drop: when I finally realised it wasn't going to drop, my head exploded. Get yer mind-expanding narratives while they're fresh, they're luvverly!
This is also China Miéville, so of course it's a political novel: if there's any lasting testament to the skill of this man, it's in the fact that I love his work despite my usual tendency to shy away from political writing like it's a maggot-infested corpse (which, come to think of it, too often it actually is). This book might be about perception, but it's also about fascism and control; nationalism and the nature of tribal identification; history and memory. Breach fascinated me, as the part of it all that seems most supernatural, but in fact they aren't, and their liminal, unnoticed omnipotence can be deconstructed in perfectly realist terms. If nothing else I love this novel because it's a giant up-yours to the vampires and fairies and werewolves of the paranormal romance which currently infests vast tracts of the popular f/sf terrain. Genuine wonder, children, is in the writing.
If you're reading this presumably you've read the book and don't need me to tell you how good it is; I'd be interested to know if the expectation of fantasy slippage worked the same way with you? It's making me realise how seldom I manage to be genuinely surprised by literature, and that's sad.
Of course, I've now spent half an hour lovingly constructing this post, and I really don't have the time, but I'd like to see it as an essentially political gesture of rebellion and self-definition, and stuff the bloody venue allocations. Being an administrator is an act of wilful perception. I should do something about that.