Status Updates From Appleseed by John Clute (20...

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I've been struggling through this for 8 months - the whole pandemic so far. The writing in this book is fascinating to me. There's a famous contest - the Bulwer-Lytton contest - in which contestants compete to write the worst first sentence to an imaginary novel, usually with outrageous prose.
"Appleseed" is like Clute took the parody language of the Bulwer-Lytton contest and said "I can do that for a whole novel!"

This book is fascinating to me, in the meta sense of analyzing the writing (rather than the typical sense of the subject matter or plot). There's a famous contest - the Bulwer-Lytton contest - in which contestants compete to write the worst first sentence to an imaginary novel.
"Appleseed" is like Clute took the parody language of the Bulwer-Lytton contest and said "I can do that for a whole novel!"

Loved how dense this book was

Clute's prose thus far incredibly sustains a maniacal vitality - like PKD w/ an expanded vocab sans info dumps.

dammit Insort Geront arks sound v much like an idea i thought was my own that i could never get to work. it's Virtuosity* all over again. *you had to be there.

Good book!

Flitting from the stories that held them, other masks exfoliated themselves for the nonce to become memes, hiked themselves through the grouting slots, janiform and doppenganger-pale from the prison of the dance of tiles, and into the gimbal-shot free space of Glass Island, where they loured over the scene from fittings atop brass herms, shot antic bat glances around toggles . . . [can't quote anymore, char limit]

Didn't like the non-ending

It's like Gormenghast in outer space.

It is weird that the most physically alien creature (I've ever heard of) was the easiest to understand.

It's like reading a marriage of Clockwork Orange and Neuromancer in space. My head hurts.

This is some bizarre business.