Miévillians discussion

Here are some possible starting points for discussion when the group read formally commences:

1. Note the epigraph from Bruno Schulz's book "The Cinnamon Shops":

"Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets, doppelganger streets, mendacious and delusive streets."

As far as I can tell, this is an English translation of the title of the book that was subsequently translated and published as "The Street of Crocodiles".

I have a copy, but haven't read it yet.

The book was a big influence on another recent novel by an American woman. Anybody know who, and have you read it?

Any thoughts on the significance of the epigram?

2. The dedication is in loving memory of CM's mother.

Remember the discussion of sexism in PSS?

3. The first part starts in Beszel.

4. The novel is narrated in the First Person.

Any thoughts on why CM might have made this choice, given its genre?

5. What do you think of the first sentence?

"I could not see the street or much of the estate."

Return to it later as the novel progresses, and see if your interpretation changes.

6. There is a large element of police procedural in the first Part.

Would anyone with a background in crime fiction like to comment on its veracity or how it flows?

7. Any thoughts on how Borlu pulls his team together and its composition?

8. The end of chapter 1 contains a statement that "I should not have seen her".

Compare this with the first sentence.

9. The second chapter uses the word "crosshatching" a number of times.

What significance do you attach to it, based on what you have read so far?

10. Also, note how and when the words "breach" and "total" are introduced.

11. The word "unsaw" is used.

12. In chapter 3, CM uses the word "machicolation":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machicol...

13. Borlu does not "stare" into the train carriages. CM uses "unsaw" again.

What do you think so far about the subject matter of "crosshatching" and "unseeing"?

#5,8,9,11,13: in my first reading, I was totally confused and after continuing a few chapters I had to restart the book. Had no bloody idea, it was very unsettling.
Now I wonder if this was an aim of the author? Disorientation?

I wondered whether CM/Borlu was planting clues for us to find and add up, one by one, to an understanding, like evidence of a crime?

Yes, good point! So we start the book with so much not understood. A mystery within a mystery!

This is just speculation on my part.

It has to do with the choice of the first person as the structure of the narrative, too.

If it was narrated in the third person, would the omniscient narrator just have explained everything upfront?

In the first person, there would have been that same opportunity, but CM/Borlu elected not to tell their story that way.

As you ask, the question is why? To disorient us?

My speculation is a literary reason for CM. But it doesn't really explain the reason of Borlu the narrator.

If he was talking to us in a bar, we would have said, "hang on, what does crosshatching mean? What does unseeing mean?"

Perhaps, this is an element of CM's unique approach to genre and genre-bending, which is why it would be great to get some input from crime fiction readers.

I haven't read any Chandler and Hammett for over 25 years.

As you say about a mystery within a mystery, if my speculation is correct, we learn about the City and the City at the same rate as Borlu solves his crime/mystery.

But this is a literary conceit.

I read a lot of crime, and it is usually third person, but first person enough of the time not to be particularly remarkable. Here, for me, I felt as if I was personally in a situation I didn't understand at all ie the unseeing etc. So for me, the book began as more of a mystery than just whodunnit, it was more like wtf???

Does anybody have any thoughts on whether this novel is filmable?

There is an element of "The Name of the Rose" and "The Da Vinci Code" in it for me.

But how would you portray the "unseeing" aspect?

If they can film Cloud Atlas and make people feel it works, they can do this too.

Filters? As in, color perception differences between the cities? Not quite A Man and a Woman level, with b/w alternating with color to enhance viewer perception of their emotional states. Just...maybe one bluer, one more sepia-toned?

Thanks, Richard. After my original post about film, I started looking for video on YouTube.

There are actually some animations inspired by TC&TC.

I have put links to some of them in Introduction to Reading and the folder for the Coda to the novel, because I was a little bit concerned that they dealt with issues that were later in the book than this thread.

If anyone else finds any useful info, please post it.

Richard, I'm really interested in your colour differentiation solution.

I wrote an impressionistic review of the novel based on my first reading a few years ago.

There is a spoiler section at the end of the review, where I discuss my impressions of the "colour" of the two cities.

Speaking of colors - on my first read, once I got to the mention of Borlu walking out of the area lit by Beszél grey lamps and into the foreign orange light, I kept mentally seeing - pretty much for the rest of this book - the Cities in different color schemes; the greyer and bluer for Beszél, the warmer hues for the other one.

I can imagine trying to portray unseeing on film as people starting a 'regular' color for that city and then fading into the other color scheme as the viewer realizes the need for unseeing. But that probably would look cheesy as hell.

I can easily imagine it being filmed; what I can't see is filmmakers succeeding with the ending and the resolution of what the cities are and how they are kept that way - and keep that in any way satisfying. I think they would go with any possible way for separation of the two than the one CM went with.

As for the lack of proper understanding of what's going on for a while - I love tat Miéville chose this approach, letting the reader slowly figure it out piece by piece, clue by clue. It works in a mystery story - but it seems to be largely the approach he takes in his books: immersing the reader into the world right away and letting us figure it out as we move along with the story.

I figured that, if CM chose the grey/orange dichotomy in the book (as Doc points out), then the natural adaptation would be to blue/sepia. I can't see, Ian, that this would do well as an animated film, anime (where there are some decent serials) is still ghettoized and this is about as similar to Avatar as chocolate is to olives.

Coming to the realization of What Is Going On Here was one of my main pleasures in reading the book! Slow reveal works well. And I felt the first-person choice made the solution of coming to awareness inevitable, to me. After all, how often do you, in narrating your life to yourself, say "...and here in Australia's scorching hot summer, I find myself looking out over England's green and verdant landscape and enjoying its cool spring breezes"? (Assuming this was even faintly possible, that is, and assuming you're bonkers, but that debate was settled some time ago so never mind).

Great comments, everybody.

This slow release fertiliser approach effectively turns us, the readers, into detectives as well.

I wasn't that impressed by the animation I looked at on YouTube, but I think it was all very much a first draft.

I agree. Figuring out unseeing "clue by clue" is what made the book intriguing to me, both as a mystery within a mystery and also because it allowed to really be there, transport myself there to experience it. I think a mainstream novelist would have introduced the word unseeing, then spent a whole chapter telling me what it meant, why it has to be done, some history, maybe even a personal anecdote of a family member's past, etc. By treating it like a subject I should already know, the unseeing makes the story's world even more realistic - like someone saying, "you know, unseeing" then, rather than admit we're clueless, we nod in agreement and go Google it first chance we get. It builds excitement through discovery.

Is it a trait of crime fiction? Perhaps. I don't remember Marlowe ever being that keen on explaining his personal history or too much of others. Just observations, casual references in shifty dialogue. So yes you would uncover facts later that made earlier references make better sense. Makes you keep going.

I also enjoyed the Chandler-esque use of, I don't know the right term, but dramatic chapter end lines. At the end of Chapter 3, he writes after they find the van, them standing there ... "Corwi sat rather stiff, waiting for me to say something. All the rubbish had done was roll into the dead woman and rust her as if she, too, were old iron." Cue dramatic music, close up on the detectives eyes. A similar effect from The Big Sleep at the end of Chapter 5 ... "I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it."

And I love the staccato descriptions, almost like you can hear the click-clacking of of typewriter keys forging the manuscript: "Blood marked her front, dark as dirt. Flash flash of cameras." Or, "A bunch of kids sat on a wall before standing officers. The gulls coiled over the gathering." Not a wasted word. A manual typewriter keeps you from it.

As you can tell I really like the way this is written. It may be coloring my perspective :) Speaking of colors, I'm loving the change in hues between cities. I didn't do that the first read through but will from now on! Always imagined the unseen as grayed out, black and white scenes.

Allen, I really like your point about "treating it like a subject I should already know".

It's almost like CM is giving us credit for being omniscient readers. He doesn't have to explain too much.

Can I ask whether anyone knows whether he read a lot of crime noir before writing TC&TC?

He certainly seems to have got the style down pat.

It's such a change from my recollection of PSS.

I read TC&TC first, and I think I was more forgiving of any excesses in PSS, because I already knew the quality of what he would go on to create.

Ian, you're eighth question intrigued me, and I was surprised I didn't catch it even this second time through ... I read it just now and realized he could have been talking about unseeing at the very first, as well as not seeing because the buildings blocked the view. Anybody else read it that way?

And is anybody reading the "unseeing" as more supernatural and other-worldly, something the city natives evolved into rather than learned or just decided to do? Truthfully, I never thought of it the first time I read it. I just assumed it was other worldly and enjoyed learning about it. But if you think about it, the magic of a child learning to string strange meaningless sounds into complex sentences in just a few years, it could be a learned behavior. Pretty hard when I tried it in the grocery store, though :)

When I was re-reading it, I had just come back from a holiday in Paris, and I equated "unseeing" to the way you train yourself not to see or notice or acknowledge beggars or touters or people selling newspapers like "The Big Issue".

I still feel guilty about it, but you can train yourself to be oblivious.

The link between the first and last sentences was what got me thinking that these simple little words like seeing (everyday) and unseeing (less familiar) might be strategically placed in the text, almost like easter eggs.

Allen, I like your comment about meaning acquisition.

It's also like trying to learn a foreign language by listening to words in context or trying to work out what hieroglyphics mean by comparison.

We have to work hard on comprehension.

Ian wrote: "Can I ask whether anyone knows whether he read a lot of crime noir before writing TC&TC?"

There's a great interview with him on the Tor.com web site specifically on TC&TC where he mentions both Chandler and Hammett. He also mentions The Davinci Code and representations of cities in film ... Link here but be warned, there could be some spoilers if this is your first time reading.

Good point about being forgiving in PSS. I did somewhat the same thing ... unlike Schrodinger, you already knew what was happening in the box.

(view spoiler)[I think there will be more about Schrodinger later. Nice bit of foreshadowing. (hide spoiler)]

Has anybody thought about my questions in #1?

For anyone who has read the book who is interested in the issues of colour and single focus theory, have a look at the painting in the spoiler section of my review.

Then imagine the two sides of the street walking in opposite directions, one brown, the other blue, not seeing each other.

Allen wrote: "There's a great interview with him on the Tor.com web site specifically on TC&TC where he mentions both Chandler and Hammett. "

Damn, I put on my headphones in anticipation of hearing his lovely voice and then clicked on the link...

Note his comments about the depictions of cities in film, too.

Ian wrote: "Allen, I really like your point about "treating it like a subject I should already know".

It's almost like CM is giving us credit for being omniscient readers."

Perhaps, but go back to your conversation in a pub. I've just flown into Beszel on business, and I really know very little about it, except that they don't speak English and it's one of a pair of twin cities with an international border between them (having lived most of my life in Ontario, Canada, I'm used to those). I'm having a drink with a business contact in the hotel bar. I would probably think (a) "unseeing" must just be an artifact of an imperfect translation; and (b) I really don't understand their odd relationship with their neighbours, but I'm sure it will become clear. otoh, I don't recall just how much indoctrination visitors from elsewhere get, but I think it actually comes up later.

And yes, I've been thinking about question #1, and I haven't a clue...

Derek wrote: "And yes, I've been thinking about question #1, and I haven't a clue..."

Maybe I should leave that question until some of the first time readers show. It should be soon.

Re: Your point 5, Ian. I think most of that area was Beszel territory with only a bit of crosshatching there - but wow, I have never even thought about interpreting it this way.

(view spoiler)[We learn later that a structure has been built on this land, but that it wasn't on the map used by the driver of the van.

I wonder whether it obscured the view?

Note the importance of maps and their reliability.

Could somebody who is re-reading the novel keep an eye on information about this site, the new skate park and where the van was supposed to go after it crossed over. Why did the skate park cause a problem? (hide spoiler)]

I love Allen's typewriter allusion. Fits perfectly with the noir atmosphere.

You also have to wear a visor and a pencil behind one ear. Visor facing the right way, too, none of this Hip Hop/Red Hot Chilli Peppers/Leighton Hewitt backwards visor stuff.

Ian wrote: "Has anybody thought about my questions in #1?"

I will randomly take a stab at it - Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente? Because it sounds similar to that sentence in the epigraph. Did I get it? Did I? Did I??

That's not it, sorry. I won't say what it is, in order to give others a chance to work it out.

But I'll give you another clue or two.

The author is married to another author who wrote a book on a similar topic at the same time as her.

I have read and reviewed hers, but you (Nataliya) haven't got it on your list.

I don't read (or watch) much crime fiction/drama, but this group read is a good opportunity for me to give Mieville another chance (an author I want to like, but didn't entirely at my first attempt).

The first person narration, with noirish tones and police procedures certainly reflected my expectations of the genre. If anything, I expected this to be MORE unconventional than it is thus far.

The fact that some concepts were a little puzzling at first (unseeing, crosshatching), merely added to the intrigue (make the reader a sort of detective), which I'm enjoying. In fact, I prefer that to when he clunkily spells out what some things mean (gudcop/badcop, mectec).

The underlying concept, especially the seeing/unseeing, reminds me of a John Wyndham short story, "Pawley's Peepholes" (published in "The Seeds of Time"). Worth a quick read, if you can.

I've reached the end of chapter 5, and so far, my reaction is similar to when I read "The Scar": some aspects are wonderful, but there are others that I find annoying and distracting, particularly his tendency to throw in convoluted sentences that make me do a double-take. Some of the authors he loves (Kafka, Peake) also wrote long convoluted sentences, but they managed to do it in a way that doesn't make me stumble.

Thanks, Cecily. I must admit I didn't react adversely to sentence length, and normally I'm pretty sensitive to that sot of thing.

Reading it so soon afer PSS, I'm actually conscious of how tight his writing is in TC&TC.

Anybody else want to make any comments about this issue or any other negatives so far?

In stripping out the more verbose style of PSS, has he stripped out the presence of the CM many of us know and love?

Ian wrote: "In stripping out the more verbose style of PSS, has he stripped out the presence of the CM many of us know and love?"

This was the first non-Crobuzon Miéville that I read, and I was surprised at how toned down and bare his writing is compared to those, especially PSS. It did not lessen my enjoyment - it actually made me appreciate the ability of CM to write so comfortably in such different styles. The language may be stripped down, but the brainy intelligence still shines through.

Much as it did in Kraken, eh Doc?

*skedaddles*

There is still the odd word I have to look up, so yes its still CM!

Richard wrote: "Much as it did in Kraken, eh Doc?

*skedaddles*"

Richard!!! You have just enriched my vocabulary with the word 'skedaddle' and I'm forever grateful for that ;) (Hey, I'm a foreigner! I have a legit accent and everything)

Kraken will forever remain a nasty stain on the otherwise shiny and spotless Miéville writing landscape. Stupid squiddity oddness...

Hang around, Doc, I got a million of 'em. BTW, I liked Kraken a lot better than you did (like that's tough, huh?), but was still not terribly impressed. The City and the City is streets (!) ahead of it in style, complexity, and sheer imaginitive bravery.

Andrea wrote: "There is still the odd word I have to look up, so yes its still CM!"

"Machicolation" (Ian's point #12) is the prime example here.

Andrea wrote: "There is still the odd word I have to look up, so yes its still CM!"

I like looking up odd words.

It's not sentence length or vocabulary per se, but combining those with insufficient punctuation and unusual phrase order.

Just one example:
He came to Ul Qoma, from where he went to Beszel, managed I do not know how to go between the two of them - legally I assure you - several times, and he claimed to have found Orciny itself.

Good example. It bobs around all over the ocean, perhaps though, like real conversation? Except that it has punctuation to guide us between the rocks.

But in real conversation, you have intonation, pauses and body language to help.

Ian wrote: "Good example. It bobs around all over the ocean, perhaps though, like real conversation? Except that it has punctuation to guide us between the rocks."

Agreed. It does sound like a real conversation to me, with punctuation serving as a natural conversational pauses here. It sounds like a good dialogue piece to me.

But he DOESN'T include all the punctuation to serve as the natural conversational pauses. Just taking the section in bold, wouldn't it be hugely improved with a couple of commas, thus?

"...managed, I do not know how, to go between the two of them ..."

That said, I don't actually want to derail a general discussion into an proofreading exercise of one sentence, but it is an example of an aspect of Mieville's writing style that annoys me. Or perhaps I should blame his editor?

Ok, I see. I would have punctuated it the same way as you did - but I always assumed I tend to overpunctuate because I learned my grammar/syntax in a different language and then tried to adapt it to English. When I read books written (and proofread) by native English speakers, I often notice quite fewer commas than I would have used. I assumed the fault was with me, now I see that other people may like the commas just as I do.

Now I will try to pay more attention to the punctuation in this book to see if that's the rule here.

Cecily, I think your point is a good one, well made, and a guide to an issue to look for as others read the rest of the book.

Of course, I'm a total over-punctuator.

My fullstop key is a shortcut for a paragraph break.