omg everybody look i actually read a book on paper with pages and everything

[esmenet]

So I finally finished Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad!

It was amazing, and you should read it.*

Spoilery thoughts:

It's really interesting how the whole plot is sort of split into white/Nordic myth and black/Egyptian myth sides, and the white/Nordic side is SUPER GROSS (accurate to real life) and pretty much based on stomping on everybody except themselves, while justifying themselves with philosophical rationalizing. (Cannibalism is super interesting in theory! In practice, you should probably not kill people and eat their brains to give yourself superpowers, because that is a dick move.)

I do not have enough brain or knowledge right now to go over Heinz Meaney and his academic theorizing --> justification of the weird-ass ubermensch stuff he's going for, but suffice to say it is super interesting and also makes me go 'really? really? really? Especially in the appendix, where he goes on about Auschwitz researchers and Unit 731 and their great gains for human knowledge.

And then compare that to Sherem's Sudanese mystic Lord Usir, who remembered what the universe itself knew. Presumably without eating a whole bunch of people.

—SHEREMNEFER. I remember when I announced I was going to start this book, one of y'all said they had some caveats/reservations regarding her, which I didn't ask for bc I wanted to try reading something (for once) without spoilers. I'm curious now, though, because although as a white lady I may be missing something, she and her character arc (and her narrative voice!) were far and away my favorite things about this book.

Sherem, who lies and lies and lies, who is everything Yehat suspects of her and more, who was first forced to and then willingly gave up the life she wanted and deserved for a slim chance of bringing the world eternal joy. I love her. (and I 100% believe she is not dead and instead is busy ascending into godhood or whatever you do when you stick your hand in a magic Jar.)

I walk upon this sundered earth in darkness, beneath the dome of distant stars perhaps long dead, beneath the neon glare of artificial spirits pulsing with electron blood. I walk in darkness upon this sundered earth, its schism into soilworld and asphaltworld, my roots in one, my leaves in the other.

I am home, in a home no longer home.

There are fourteen men and seven women upon the street of the four blocks visible to me. Among them, thieves, hustlers, whores, homeless, hopeless.

Mmmm. Now that's writing you can sink into for days.

Especial thanks to kaigou, without whom I would probably never have heard of this book, and who particularly recommended it as the antidote to Lev Grossman's The Magicians, a book I am still angry at today.


*unless you're not good with violence/body horror. then probably not.

Comments

[yifu]

Lev Grossman's The Magicians

Too much privilege? I didn't read it but I did read the sequel, The Magician King, and I spent most of my time being annoyed at the characters.
ETA: I have a sneaking feeling I've already asked you this. #forgetful

[esmenet]

I don't think you have, actually! (this got long, whoops)

I hear The Magician King is less bad, which fills me with relief because I doubt anything could be worse. On the one hand, the characters of The Magicians are practically drowning in privilege, and on the other they spend their whole time lamenting that they have nothing interesting to do. With unlimited money and, oh yeah, magic. You know what I could do with unlimited money? A HELL OF A LOT MORE INTERESTING THINGS THAN DRUGS AND BOOZE.

Also basically every single character was a terrible person and I wanted to punch them in the face. (Quentin, I hope you fall down a hole and stay there.)

..but what got to me the most was that they didn't. care. about. anything. I had to read SO MUCH shounen manga to recover from that book. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FEELINGS, CHARACTERS. DID THEY ACCIDENTALLY FALL DOWN THAT HOLE I WANTED TO SHOVE YOU INTO. Like, Quentin sometimes cared about Fillory for 0.5 seconds, and for those 0.5 seconds I was kinda interested in him. And then they went to Fillory, and they hated it, and I hated them. Like, oh no, our childhood fantasyland is actually twisted and awful! YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELVES BY BEING PRETENTIOUS AND DISENCHANTED AND UNWILLING TO SEE LITERALLY ANYTHING IN A POSITIVE LIGHT

it is not that the world is dull and dreary and awful *YOU* ARE THE REASON YOU THINK EVERYTHING SUCKS

none of this would have happened if you were better people

or if you'd watched Princess Tutu

...like, I know people have argued that this book is a good portrayal of depression, and I wouldn't know because my brainweasles are of a rather different sort, but I'm pretty sure Lev Grossman could have put in *one* character who had working feelings and compassion and maybe the occasional good time and it wouldn't have changed the plot. Or someone who wasn't just a pretentious douchebag, that would have worked too.

The only character I actually *liked* was Julia, and she was on-page for about five paragraphs.

It's supposed to be 'literary fiction' rather than genre fiction, and I have read enough 'literary fiction' to know that 'literary fiction' consists almost entirely of white dudes staring at their own navels and wondering why their lives are so boring (hint: it's you. you are the boredom.) and why drinking alcohol does not magically make them likeable or happy. It's like the authors looked at a high-school 'classics' reading list and decided the all-star winning formula was white dudes + pretentiousness + failure to learn. 'Literary fiction' as a genre is the product of surgically removing anything fun or interesting from a work and replacing it with extra grimdark bleakness and white dudes. (Similar to the modern American comics industry.)

[yifu]

In The Magician King they're marginally more interested in the events. Unfortunately, the author decides that rape + friend dies + woman = strong female character. Because, you know, there are very few ways through which a women can grow strong. Yes, said woman is Julia. Who's moody and aloof throughout the book, and I can tell that's supposed to make her mysterious/appealing, and it.just.doesn't.

[esmenet]

Man, I was kinda hoping he'd get better after making Alice do a heroic sacrifice for Quentin. I guess not.

...these books are an exercise in OH LEV GROSSMAN NO.

[quadruplify]

I'm saddened to hear The Magicians turned out to be one of Those Novels™ to you -- the kind where upper-middle-class people with little to worry about (because even the most privileged people in the world have something they worry about that's legitimate, and if it's depression then it's 50,000,000 times more so) wander around completely bored for the entire length of the book. :/

I've been meaning to give it a shot for a while now, because the plot sounded interesting -- young adult finds reality dreary and boring, their only escape being the world of a fantasy book series they enjoyed since childhood (to the point where they wish they could live in said world, the kind of thing GRRM and tons of immature people in fandom express publicly or on their Tumblr blogs almost every day), main character actually does get transported to said fantasy world, and at first things are as wonderful as they expected it to be, but then they go through a series of events where they realize the fantasy world they idolized all throughout their life is actually really fucked up, and that the "real world" they came from is not nearly as bad and boring as they thought it was, and that one can find wonder in anything if they know where and how to find it, leading the protagonist to reject outright escapism in favor for a more nuanced relationship with fiction and media, all the while fighting bad guys and doing magic and stuff. (If any of this makes sense; I'm writing this at 3 in the morning so I might not entirely be coherent.)

But if it turns out it's not the case -- well, I'll still give it a shot and maybe I'll tell you what I thought of it, but now it's not sounding too good. ._.,

You're absolutely right about "literary fiction," though. After a while, there's only so much "wealthy white dude wallows in existential ennui briefly punctuated by sex, drugs, parties, and bad quasi-folk music for 500 pages" I can really swallow in one go. (Okay, Adam Haslett's Union Atlantic is something you might find fairly decent. If only for the gloriously fucked-up m/m relationship and the talking dogs.) I guess that's why sci-fi, fantasy, and anything that falls under the broad "speculative fiction" category (would Haruki Murakami count?) has been more and more attractive to me recently.

I can't say I like the quote from the book you just read, though; I'm not saying this to be rude because you obviously enjoyed it and that's awesome, but that excerpt felt a little too purple and melodramatic for my liking. :|

[esmenet]

It did sound super exciting! But everyone being a pretentious douchebag at wizard school is such a giant part of the book, and then Quentin and his friends being rich and bored and hating each other in New York City with unlimited money and alcohol is a big part of the book, and there's so much gratuitous 'surprise! everything you thought might be cool and fun is actually dreary and awful' that Fillory being also dreary and awful is just more of the same. Which, come on. The whole point of that sort of thing is the tone change.

And then Quentin goes back to the real world, and finds it even more boring and dreary than it was before, and I was just so . . . ugh. Like, Lev Grossman is a good writer on the word-to-word level, but I think he missed the point.

Also the whole book came off as kinda sexist (for spoilery reasons) and I was super not in favor of that.

Which is to say, I get what you mean! That is the sort of thing I particularly love myself, where the story points out that wizards and monarchy and 'fantasyland' all actually kind of suck, but you know what's awesome? Everything else!


Hah, I posted that quote mostly because it both stands out from the rest of the text and is an example of my favorite type of melodramatic prose. ;) kaigou has a more coherent rec/quote sample, if you want to give it a second look. (if not, hey, we have different tastes.)

From what I've heard of Murakami, he definitely counts as a speculative fiction writer (though I haven't read enough of his work myself yet to make a clear judgement; let you know if/when I get more into Wild Sheep Chase).

[quadruplify]

That is the sort of thing I particularly love myself, where the story points out that wizards and monarchy and 'fantasyland' all actually kind of suck, but you know what's awesome? Everything else!

If you ever find anything that you think actually does this well, could you please let me know? I like the idea, but I can't remember if I've ever read anything that actually pulled that off convincingly.

The other quotes you linked seem okay; mostly it's just a style I'm not used to. I'm curious as to how you found out about this book in the first place. ^_^;