Thanks, that was a great summary and completely agree. I'm in two minds about whether it's good for divisive writers to win literary prizes. On the one hand it's maybe better for those who know to keep it to themselves, but I've really enjoyed hearing him talked about today!
Good point about Banks. Was amazed that MJH got this exposure--I believe Climbers which is more literary fiction outsold the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, and was reissued with the prestige preface etc. WRT the divisiveness (and I'm his number one fan) some of this is surely because he does go out of his way to be divisive. The nice 81 year old man wins the Booker Prize story is nice but the whole point of Viriconium was that fans of the previous instalment were stabbed in the back, and the overall recognition that people and events aren't internally or externally consistent is normally pushed to the point of provocation.
Love Climbers. I'd strongly recommend Wish I Was Here, which has stuff about the climbing and fell running and is quite interesting "about" Climbers--he calls it an "Anti-Memoir" but it's kind of warmer than the vibes that gives and there's lots of interesting stuff about writing. It is a very dense read but also really funny.
"A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium" is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Especially when you read it alongside Climbers, and spot that the same bit of text is being used to mean two completely different things, to do completely different work.
It really doesn't. It doesn't say anything at all about fake news or global institutions and there certainly isn't any cynical anti-establishment mood. Your politics are probably broken, but please don't drag M John Harrison into this. What did you make of Hampson? You thought he was a cypher for some US political figure I suppose. How does Hampson link to characters like Yaxley or Kearney?
Youre confusing an argument about the political implications of the books worldview with a claim that its characters are american political allegories. The book can reject Trump's mindset while at the same time inadvertently reinforce his rhetoric via undermining confidence in the institutions and experts that are supposed to counter it
Completely agree. The whole spoilers thing is relatively recent and I think there's a strong argument that people who object to discussion of the narrative in any discussion of works of narrative art probably need to just avoid reading about anything. If you really don't want to know about a film or book because you're reserving judgement that's fine, but online communities these days seem fine with censoring discussion these days based on lazy spoiler grounds.
I think I would have had this position prior to seeing the movie. After seeing it last night, I'm 100% inclined to do everything in my power to not spoil the experience. It's truly, truly that wild.
To others out there wondering, I offer the counter-perspective that this “twist” is not nearly as profound or even unexpected as folk are making it seem.
I appreciate this point of view, but I think people who are religiously adhering to "spoilers" to censor aesthetic discussion need to be honest about highlighting what they are doing. A proper discussion about this would have been explicit about what was being discussed. We are not children.
I have revisited this thread, after having originally left despairing of the weird conversation. Thanks so much for clarifying what's going on! I hadn't followed this film and assumed people were afraid of being picked off the streets by the government if they spoke articulately about it. It's the "spoilers" problem then--online people who aren't used to how creative works are discussed thinking they have to use tradecraft. Ze beef iz in ze butchers!
British jews are some of the most scared and under threat in the entire world. Please open any newspaper, pretty much every single day there's another piece explaining how scared Jews are. In Golders Green for example, the Jewish segregated ambulance service was antisemitically targeted.
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