mark’s Comments (group member since Jan 15, 2015)

mark’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Traveller wrote: "Oh, that's interesting, Mark!(About you joining that group.) I've always thought more of you as a horror/SF/fantasy type person!.."

@ 2007, after joining Goodreads, my interests started to move away from literary fiction (in particular post-modernist works) and back to the genres I loved as a teen. I completely blame the groups Beyond Reality and Horror Aficionados for luring me back with all sorts of interesting recommendations. but there's still the 1 out of around 4 or 5 books I read that isn't a genre novel. I like to mix it up.

Traveller, thanks for your work on this thread!

I've always found this list to be equal parts fascinating and frustrating. so many strange inclusions and exclusions. the Goodreads group named after this list was the first group I joined here, so many years ago.

this is a fascinating theory and not one that I have even remotely considered. much food for thought. thanks for writing it up in such detail!

I loved Teatro Grottesco.

I am not. it was included in The Mammoth Book of Terror. an uneven but still valuable collection.

I just read a story that references a lot of Chambers, from character names to the dread play itself: Karl Edward Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreaming". brilliant story.

I just found that site a couple days ago! I'm excitedto go through it.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Is the Darkover series good?..."

there are several novels that I've found to be pretty good. but because the series was written over the course of a long period of time, the quality of the novels really varies depending on when Bradley wrote them.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I don't think there is a title story, but the first four stories are the ones concerned with "The King in Yellow" (the play in the book). I don't think the rest of the book really matters that much.

Edited to add: That would be "The Repairer of Reputations," "The Mask," "In the Court of the Dragon," and "The Yellow Sign" ..."

I find the first story in the collection, "The Repairer of Reputations", to be the strongest and most intriguing story in the collection.

here's mine:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Cecily wrote: "Without wanting to go too far off topic or into negativity, do you remember which others were/are less favourite? ..."

it was so long ago... I remember this was one of my least favorites and I also remember particularly liking Garden of Forking Paths and Death and the Compass. I'm looking forward to gauging the difference in my reactions for the latter two, if there is any.

I can't believe this was one of my less-favorite stories back when I first read this collection, many years ago. re-reading it tonight, all I have are positive feelings. this felt like Borges at his most playful and relaxed. I was surprised, but after some thought, eventually appreciative of the not-so-gentle mockery at the idea that people can truly find themselves - let alone the answers to life's mysteries - within the pages of a book.

a truly wonderful story! the idea of city condescending to country, urban putting rural up on a pedastal, could have been trite because it is such a common theme. but Borges makes something strange and poetic and dreamily fatalistic about such attitudes and dichotomies. loved in particular the inclusion of One Thousand and One Nights. Dahlmann himself has made a grand story out of the South, a personal fantasia.

as far as what the truth of how Dahlmann died... I don't know. I don't even know if that is relevant to me. I liked how the ending left it up in the air. there's a something both romantic and darkly ironic about Dahlmann going ecstatically to his death because of his romanticized, almost fetishistic view of the South. but I like that being left up to my imagination.

Traveller wrote: "I think I prefer incoherent and vertiginous to senseless and dizzying... ..."

I think I prefer the latter. sounds more enjoyable!


the gift wrote: "about the translation, to the extent it renders Borges perhaps awkward or gives distorted metaphors- I suggest this possibly captures his intent not to make dreaming, creating, sensing, into a fluid..."

I love this perspective. and yet I do find something quite fluid about Borges' prose. it's pleasurable to just go with it, let the dream-like narrative move you along. and just as pleasurable to work over and contemplate each phrase as well.

that makes perfect sense. and I'm vaguely humiliated because it seems so obvious now! I should have just looked up "coining" - a word I don't think I've seen before - instead of trying to search for a deeper meaning due to it being such a lovely and also odd phrase.

Traveller wrote: "Hmmm... the Andrew Hurley might be a bit more poetic, though?"

agree.

a phrase I was perplexed by: "coining the faceless wind". googling the phrase led me to a variety of blog posts that connected the ideas in this story to films like The Matrix and virtual reality experiences like Second Life. interesting! and then I realized a connection between the story and another book I'm reading now, Ready Player One.

although I still don't know what that phrase means, got too lost in reading the blog posts on virtual reality...

I don't think Valente's prose is quite purple. It might be bordering on aubergine, but there's a bit of a contradiction in making an accusation, because colour is in the eye of the beholder, and yet purpleness implies intent---something which cannot be independently verified with absolute certainty. One person's purple prose is another's masterpiece (a fact of life I have more than once encountered in my life as a reader, from both ends), so is it? Who knows. Is it for me? Nah.

just wanted to say... great comment! agree 100%.

personally, I don't call anything "purple prose" unless the prose is actually risible in its ornateness. I never feel like laughing at Valente's prose. instead I am in awe at its beauty.

I have a bunch that may qualify.

Dirck Van Sickle: Montana Gothic behold the pale horse

John Buell: The Pyx weird noir is the best noir

Macdonald Harris: Mortal Leap a man leaps into himself, finally

Michael Cisco: Secret Hours amazingly written horror short stories by a seriously underrated author

Terry Andrews: The Story of Harold I read this book and it was like reading all about myself. how mortifying!

Richard Calder: Malignos bizarre and wonderful science fantasy

John Crowley: The Deep fantasy templates made mysterious and dreamlike

Mojmir Drvota: Triptych Czech surrealism

Elizabeth Jenkins: Harriet quasi-Victorian era murder + class analysis + The Evil That Men (And Some Women) Do

Leon Garfield: The Golden Shadow gorgeous retelling of Greek myths & legends

Tanith Lee: Elephantasm India and the underclasses get some phantasmagorical payback in an England manor.

Paul Scott: The Corrida at San Feliu bullfighting as metaphor

Mervyn Peake: Boy in Darkness Peake says fuck it, Imma make up my own fable. includes a sinister Lamb!

Michel Tournier: Gemini French postmodernism is the best postmodernism. or do I mean plain ole modernism? I dunno

Opal Whiteley: The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley Opal Whiteley: odd "natural" or cunning conwoman?

Colin Wilson: The Glass Cage psychopaths make the worst friends, although they can be inspiring in their own way

Anderson Prunty: The Sorrow King an awesome slice of Young Adult horror from the worst modern genre yet, "Bizarro"

Kenzaburo Oe: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels moving and grotesque and morbid and heart-warming

Tidhar & Yaniv: The Tel Aviv Dossier the apocalypse comes to Israel

Thomas Ligotti: Teatro Grottesco the world is a dead, dead place

Teresa Denys: The Silver Devil Romance = Horror

Yolande wrote: "No, Hawksmoor is the only Ackroyd I've read so far, thanks for suggestion..."

First Light is also pretty interesting.

great list, Wastrel, and an amazing write-up of these novels.