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Jul. 9th, 2009 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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crack_van: The King and His Sorceror, Merlin/Arthur, Merlin, by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tarayith
***
Hikago stuff:
hng_deathmatch is a fanworks challenge... thing? More info and sign-up here
Search for meta on Hikago. I don't read much meta, but there're a number of interesting links in the comments.
***
So, discovered that my sister's borrowed one of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, Micah (I stopped reading the series after Obsidian Butterfly because it stopped making sense), picked it up and goodness... is the text double-spaced? *compares with another paperback* About 1.5 space at least. Is she padding out the novels or something now?
Title: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Author: Angela Carter
So, after reading lots of fairytale stuff last couple of weeks, I went back to re-read Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", which is a retelling of Bluebeard's castle, and discovered that Carter is a lot more entertaining now than when I read her ten years ago.
So, I picked up another of her books at the library, and was this a trip. Surreal doesn't even begin to describe it. Basically, the novel is about Desidero narrating what happened when a mad scientist, Hoffman, unleased some weird energy (erecto-energy?!) and turned reality upside-down, and how after some adventures, Desidero killed the scientist (and his daughter). A lot of violent sexual images and sexualised descriptions, first person POV, oddly compelling--by which I mean the book sucked me in, so that right now (24 hours later) I'm still boggling at the book... I finished reading this?!
I don't read such books! I read light and frothy stuff!
But the language is enthralling:
[The Bestial Room]
They had employed a taxidermist instead of an upholsterer and sent him a ride of lions with instructions to make a sofa out of each pair. At both ends of the sofas, flamboyantly gothic arm-rests, were the gigantically maned heads of these lions. Their rheumy, golden eyes seeped gum and their cavernous, red mouths hung sleepily ajar, gaping wider, now and then, in a sleepy yawn or to let out a low, rumbling growl. The serviceable armchairs were brown bears who squatted on their haunches with the melancholy of all the Russias in their liquid eyes. When a girl sat on his shaggy lap, the bear grunted, leaned back and spread her legs out wide apart with his blunt forepaws. The occasional tables ran about, yelping obsequiously; they were toadying hyenas and on their brindled backs were strapped silver trays containing glasses, decanters, bowls of salted nuts and dishes of stuffed olives....
The soft, dazed, soft-eyed head of a giraffe swayed on two feet of dappled neck above the furred, golden shoulders of one girl and another had the striped face of azebra and a cropped, stiff black mane bristling down her spine. But, if some were antlered like stags, others had the branches of trees sprouting out of their bland foreheads and showed us the clusters of roses growing in their armpits when they held their hands out to us. One leafy girl was grown all over with mistletoe but, where the bark was stripped away from her ribcage, you could see how the internal wheels articulating her went round. Another girl had many faces hinged one on top of the other so that her head opened out like a book, page by page, and on each page was printed a free expression of allure.
You know what? China Miéville can only dream of writing like this.
Suddenly thought of Miéville because his characters are also surreal and grotesque, but for some reason his books just put me to sleep after the first twenty minutes of shock. (And because the plots peter out.)
This one, every other page just made my eyes widen.
There's more to this novel than just bombarding you with perverse or shocking descriptions (notwithstanding the above excerpt). There's also a fascinating exploration at what happens when nightmares and desire are turned inside out, with attempts at metaphysical explanations. Along with strange journeys and landscapes. (Hey, I don't pretend to understand all that is explained by the characters. I'm looking forward to re-reading this book.)
And near the last part, there a riff on Houyhnhnms, where Desidero and his girlfriend Albertina stumble upon a country of centuars, except these centuars have never seen humans before. They rape Albertina and then the couple lives among them, for lack of better place to go, until Albertina's rescue team (long story) comes along for them. And then they go to her father Doctor Hoffman's place, where he shows them how erecto-power is derived (basically, people being forced to have sex) and then Desidero kills him, ending the mad scientist's reign of terror.
Riveting stuff.
Must blog on a frothy book next time.
crack_van: The King and His Sorceror, Merlin/Arthur, Merlin, by tarayith***
Hikago stuff:
hng_deathmatch is a fanworks challenge... thing? More info and sign-up hereSearch for meta on Hikago. I don't read much meta, but there're a number of interesting links in the comments.
***
So, discovered that my sister's borrowed one of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, Micah (I stopped reading the series after Obsidian Butterfly because it stopped making sense), picked it up and goodness... is the text double-spaced? *compares with another paperback* About 1.5 space at least. Is she padding out the novels or something now?
Title: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Author: Angela Carter
So, after reading lots of fairytale stuff last couple of weeks, I went back to re-read Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", which is a retelling of Bluebeard's castle, and discovered that Carter is a lot more entertaining now than when I read her ten years ago.
So, I picked up another of her books at the library, and was this a trip. Surreal doesn't even begin to describe it. Basically, the novel is about Desidero narrating what happened when a mad scientist, Hoffman, unleased some weird energy (erecto-energy?!) and turned reality upside-down, and how after some adventures, Desidero killed the scientist (and his daughter). A lot of violent sexual images and sexualised descriptions, first person POV, oddly compelling--by which I mean the book sucked me in, so that right now (24 hours later) I'm still boggling at the book... I finished reading this?!
I don't read such books! I read light and frothy stuff!
But the language is enthralling:
[The Bestial Room]
They had employed a taxidermist instead of an upholsterer and sent him a ride of lions with instructions to make a sofa out of each pair. At both ends of the sofas, flamboyantly gothic arm-rests, were the gigantically maned heads of these lions. Their rheumy, golden eyes seeped gum and their cavernous, red mouths hung sleepily ajar, gaping wider, now and then, in a sleepy yawn or to let out a low, rumbling growl. The serviceable armchairs were brown bears who squatted on their haunches with the melancholy of all the Russias in their liquid eyes. When a girl sat on his shaggy lap, the bear grunted, leaned back and spread her legs out wide apart with his blunt forepaws. The occasional tables ran about, yelping obsequiously; they were toadying hyenas and on their brindled backs were strapped silver trays containing glasses, decanters, bowls of salted nuts and dishes of stuffed olives....
The soft, dazed, soft-eyed head of a giraffe swayed on two feet of dappled neck above the furred, golden shoulders of one girl and another had the striped face of azebra and a cropped, stiff black mane bristling down her spine. But, if some were antlered like stags, others had the branches of trees sprouting out of their bland foreheads and showed us the clusters of roses growing in their armpits when they held their hands out to us. One leafy girl was grown all over with mistletoe but, where the bark was stripped away from her ribcage, you could see how the internal wheels articulating her went round. Another girl had many faces hinged one on top of the other so that her head opened out like a book, page by page, and on each page was printed a free expression of allure.
You know what? China Miéville can only dream of writing like this.
Suddenly thought of Miéville because his characters are also surreal and grotesque, but for some reason his books just put me to sleep after the first twenty minutes of shock. (And because the plots peter out.)
This one, every other page just made my eyes widen.
There's more to this novel than just bombarding you with perverse or shocking descriptions (notwithstanding the above excerpt). There's also a fascinating exploration at what happens when nightmares and desire are turned inside out, with attempts at metaphysical explanations. Along with strange journeys and landscapes. (Hey, I don't pretend to understand all that is explained by the characters. I'm looking forward to re-reading this book.)
And near the last part, there a riff on Houyhnhnms, where Desidero and his girlfriend Albertina stumble upon a country of centuars, except these centuars have never seen humans before. They rape Albertina and then the couple lives among them, for lack of better place to go, until Albertina's rescue team (long story) comes along for them. And then they go to her father Doctor Hoffman's place, where he shows them how erecto-power is derived (basically, people being forced to have sex) and then Desidero kills him, ending the mad scientist's reign of terror.
Riveting stuff.
Must blog on a frothy book next time.