Weird Fiction discussion

This is the topic for discussions of the book by people who have already read it. Warning: spoilers are allowed in this discussion topic. Read at own peril.

I’m posting in here because although I’ve only read 4 chapters I just want to say::

Omg is this basically a Weird Golem story but the Golem can also fly in a Golem Body Horror twist??

Because I have never read a Weird Golem story before and this is a really cool concept... and the surrealism works really well. Also:: word finders, where have I heard that concept before? It feels really familiar? It reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth or something very Terry Pratchett-esque, it’s got that kind of a whimsical feel to it. That, but also a less depressing Gormenghast feel. It’s that sort of a job.

I always knew cars were evil.

C. M. wrote: "... I have never read a Weird Golem story ..."

I have! It was Heraclix & Pomp by Forrest Aguirre. It was only so-so for me, but if Golems are your thing, you might like it more.

My library has this Cisco book, so I may start it soon. I usually don't like what the vandermeers like, but I'm willing to try this.

Thank you for the rec!

Okay, I'm 26% the way in. I can see why some might be excited about the writing style. They are nice sentences with sophisticated word senses that often mean more than they say. What that might be, who can say?

Is there a point to being in a storm, dying, being stuffed with paper, and waking in a hospital? Or to having a hammock fifty feet above ground? Or to not being able to get along with (or trust, same difference) one's fellow students and so treating them arrogantly?

What I want to know is where's the beef? I mean plot. Are we seriously supposed to be excited that some seminary divinity student just became employed as a wordfinder? Hasn't this wordfinder ever heard of a thesaurus?

Here's hoping things pick up soon.

I found the answer to my main question last message. According to the review here, http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/c... "About halfway through [the book] in an almost electrifying scene (more so than being struck by lightning, though that's pretty strong writing as well), Cisco introduces the plot. It's like a hint of melody in a minimalist piece of music."

This book was the winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999. So, I'm a gonna stick with it.

I'm at the 20% mark, and at the moment my feelings about the book are the inverse of Dan's: I hate the writing style, but I'm engaged by the story.

I think the prose is overwritten. Too many adjectives and adverbs. Yes, I get that it's a deliberate style choice ("word finder" and all that), but that doesn't mean it's not awful. For the first couple of chapters I felt as if I was wading through treacle, and I would probably have given up if C. M. hadn't dangled the promise of flying golems in front of me like a big Gothic carrot.

But once the narrative got into the city, things got interesting enough for me to persevere despite the bad writing. I enjoyed the flying scene, and I'm intrigued by the mysterious Woodwinds.

So like Dan, I'm sticking with it and waiting to see where it takes me next.

I am REALLY enjoying this, it’s like the book equivalent of staring at an aquarium. I find the style so relaxing, weirdly, (lol, Weirdly) and I don’t need to concentrate on the plot either so it’s just what I want at the moment.

I’m about 70% done.

I quite like the whole Golem thing, I think for me it’s a really interesting way of reflecting on words/texts that inform my own life, growth, thoughts, that have shaped my life &c.

I like the dream-like way the narrative is written in, the merging of dreams/waking, the formaldehyde omg what the hell

Preservative fluid as a way of preserving memory and getting lost in ... I don’t even know ?..? It’s that addictive, opiate, knife-edge of madness thing that I find really intriguing to read.

I also like the relationship with Miss Woodwind, kissing her throat (where the [spoken] words come from) and little details like that.

It just reads like an abstract love affair with words, and hiding things within yourself and from yourself, and preserving memories of words, lost words, the changing, dynamic nature of language, etc.

(My mother & my husband are into linguistics so that’s where a lot of this perspective is coming from...)

Described it to husband who said it reminded him strongly of Borges & his stories, that sort of magical realism, and maybe his story set in an infinite library which I haven’t read but really want to now...

Borges wrote in a fantastical magical realism version of Buenos Aires, so I can see that parallel as well, and I do like the unreliable narrator technique in that genre where dreams/reality get mashed together.

Oh, one more thing, my mother-in-law is doing her MA in theology & culture and one of her topics she was looking at was the concept of an individual’s own “canon” of “sacred texts” when she was dissecting what constitutes “canon” and the process of putting canonical books together in a sacred/religious context.

So that’s what the Divinity Student made me think about from the start: that idea of being stuffed with someone else’s sacred or “canonically important” texts, and then being birthed into a consciousness of your own & going off to find out what your own Golem words are, what *actually* gives you life, and how to deal with the texts that are now part of your cultural, psychological, emotional makeup.

And that goes back to questions like, “what is canon anyway”, “whose canon”, “What texts do you think of as foundational to your own life, what has shaped you as a person, if you had to put a ‘canon’ of texts together that you considered fundamental to you, what would they be?”

And I really enjoy those kinds of questions, and chatting about her essays and stuff with her, so I think that’s another reason I’m enjoying this book.... I think I’m already in that sort of headspace for it.......!

You are making it sound very much like something I would enjoy, so I'll give it a go later this month, assuming I survive my encounter with 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, which is at least 20,000 words too long.

I am 57% done. I find that writing three or four sentences to summarize what happened in the chapter (there have been eleven so far) as I read helps me. Otherwise the events would seem a random concatenation, blend into fuzziness, and I'd lose the thread completely. The reviewer was right that at the 50% point the Divinity Student / word-finder's purpose clarifies, which helps the plot. How this electrified the reviewer though mystifies me. I find reading this book more chore than pleasure so far.

Thank you, C.M., for sharing what you're liking about the book. I'll try to see if I can find enjoyment in some of the same things too.

I do have a couple questions. This oro spirit in the tree that supplied words, that had porcelain lips or some such. Did you get the significance of that? Also, this water that master word-finder Miss Woodwind wanted the Divinty Student to drink of ... why was that so important and why was he reluctant?

Keeping on....

I’m not sure about all the images... I get the feeling there’s some folkloric elements and maybe some historical/literary/cultural associations I’m not getting.

I really loved the oro tree spirit things, they make it more man-against-machine with the demonic cars... and the monitor lizards with reflective eyes like stars in the desert was an absolutely gorgeous visual.

...the water I think is a contrast to the formaldehyde... and that’s why she has her own name & her own voice, but he doesn’t. He gets stuck in preserving & obsessing over the List words of the past, while she’s living in the present & future with her own sense of who she is, etc.

I wrote a review on the kindle app but it takes up to 48hrs to be visible?? Mew.

I don’t even know if I took the same things from it that other people did and I don’t know if I’m on the right track with it, but I really enjoyed it anyway

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm afraid I lost patience with it.

I've made to page 50 out of 150 and I'll probably stop there. It just isn't working for me. I like the "atmosphere" of the story, but not enough to continue.

I have the first edition, from Buzzcity press. Inside the front matter they "thank" the press "Ministry of Whimsy" which got me thinking about The Troika by Stepan Chapman which was published by that press. It won a PKD award when it first came out, and the bizarre description of it intrigued me. So I kept looking and looking for it but could never find it. I finally broke down and ordered it and it was great, but couldn't live up to my expectations because I'd been anticipating it for so long.

Sadly, Chapman died before creating another novel.

"Beneath the glare of three purple suns, three travelers - an old Mexican woman, an automated jeep, and a brontosaurus - have trudged across a desert for hundreds of years. They do not know if the desert has an end, and if it does, what they might find there. "

Yeah, yeah, I went off topic. So sue me!