Undulating Ungulate

Sometimes lately I have been feeling like the practitioner of a dying art. (Of course, on a long enough scale, I surely am.) What with all the talk of publishing collapsing, attention spans fraying while the total amount of material vying for attention curves ever up, and the general dominance of other entertainment mediums – games and films – among the young (whose attention spans are apparently ever decreasing) it is all a bit depressing for the unknown authors out there.

The other day though, something occurred to me. People always say the book was better.

They don’t say, the film was an excellent rendition of the same story in another medium.

They say “the book was better”.

The experience of reading a book, as an immersive delivery medium, is actually awesome, and in some important sense, better, than other mediums.

The book is better.

Books can survive as they offer a tangibly awesome experience.

Filed by billy at 2:05 am under culture,reading,the moose
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Right. So now the craze has died down, and we have some distance on it, I have two questions re: the Harry Potter series.

1. Is it actually any good? Is it worth sinking the hours into in and of itself, rather than just as a means of taking the temperature of mass culture?

I read the first one, and it was well done; sharp, funny, well delivered. But it wasn’t anything more than a well done version of that type of young adult story, and it didn’t inspire me to read further at that time. I also saw the film of the first one, and it was a reasonable adaptation, I guess, though lesser, as is the way of things.

But that is it. And since then I have paid as little attention as possible in a culture that went all frothing at the mouth over it for a while.

2. While assuming the books are better: are the films good enough?

Like, can I just watch the films and not really miss that much of whatever the point is? (And the story itself – the later books seem like doorstops, are the adaptations functional?)

This is all prompted by seeing the trailer for the 7th one, which made me kind of curious.

Oh, and if possible, comment without spoilers

Filed by billy at 3:07 pm under culture,reading
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Had my first play on an e-reader the other day.

It was shit. Really starkly shit.

I mean, proof of concept and all, but it has a loooong way to go.

Filed by billy at 3:41 am under reading,technology
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Sleepless – Charlie Huston

Good shit. One of the most compelling near future slides into awfulness I’ve seen, both in the denseness of its detail, and its humanity. Set in a future where a highly contagious disease stops people sleeping; after months of pain, and roaming around sleepless, they die. Society collapsing into a broken police state, and rumours of a suppressed cure. Excellent characters, particularly Park, the cop, and Jasper, the highly aesthete assassin. And way more emotionally resonant than one might expect.

The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick

Collection of Dick’s non-fiction writings, from the autobiographical, to the SF related, to flat out philosophical essays, and material related to his exegesis and related experiences. Excellent and necessary for anyone seriously interested in the man. Most of my favourite stuff I had already read, but the essays on schizophrenia and hallucinations were exceptional, and the summary of the insights of the exegesis was pretty interesting, though saddening – the confusion and pain comes through.

The Little Black Box – Philip K Dick

A volume of his collected stories, browsing it made an interesting counterpoint to the above. Faith of our Fathers is an incredible, and disturbing, story.

Nevada – Steve Gerber

6 issue comic about a showgirl, her ostrich, a dude with a lava lamp for a head, and interdimensional ruptures. Not even slightly normal; highly wonderful. Gerber’s weird was his own.

Cyclonopedia: Complicity With Autonomous Materials – Reza Negarestani

This should get its own post at some point, and a detailed review, as my reaction to it is complex. It is a fascinating artifact. However, one that doesn’t live up to its blurbs.

A general description runs along the lines of “the middle east is a sentient entity, and oil is a Lovecraftian Elder God manipulating the world.” Reads like a gaggle of grad students heavily into Deleuze and Guattari spent 6 months smoking dope and reading Babylonian mythology and middle eastern politics while constructing labyrinthine theoretical frameworks linking all sorts of shit, that are simultaneously vast in jokes and an occultural critique of petropolitics. It is certainly very clever, and has moments of yawning understanding as you internalise the deranged systems of relations put forward and realise that it actually has a point sometimes. But mostly it is more work than it is worth. Sort of like if the book within the book of House of Leaves was written in an unreadable french postmodernist philosophical style.

The silk road: two thousand years in the heart of Asia – Frances Wood
Research. Not what I was looking for.

What I did on my holidays: essays on black magic, satanism, devil worship and other niceties – Ramsey Dukes

Collection of essays over a decade; thus less focused than his other books. The same extraordinary mind and insight at play, however. The essays on Spare, and the Book of the Law, are exceptional.

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi

Afghani writer who just won the Prix Goncourt.

Novella length story of a grandfather, traveling with his grandson, to see his son and tell him that the rest of their family was killed in a Russian bombing raid, and kind of freaking out since he assumes that his son will then, for the sake of honour, have to go off and get himself killed. Simple, beautiful, brutal.

Burma Chronicles – Guy Delisle

Cartoon diary of a dude who spends a year in Burma/Myanmar looking after his baby while his wife is on a doctors without borders mission. Pretty fascinating glimpse into life under a military junta, as well as the whole NGO sphere. Good shit.

Shenzhen – Guy Delisle

Same dude, on a three month contract in Shenzhen, China. He doesn’t have much fun. Alright but easily the least of his books. Read his Pyongyang instead.

The Photographer – Didier Lefevre and Emmanuel Guibert

Fairly fascinating narrative mix of comics and photos. Lefevre went along as a photographer to document a doctors without borders mission into Afghanistan in 1986, during the war with the Soviet Union. The account is based on his diaries and photos. The story is pretty mind-blowing and heart-wrenching. Unique and really excellent.

The invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares

Apparently the film Last Year at Marienbad was based on or inspired by this. (Last Year at Marienbad being pretty fucking strange and wonderful, that was enough reason to track it down.)

Anyway. TIOM is a short latin american science fiction novel from 1940. It is pretty stunning. A fugitive alone on a most unusual island – containing nothing but a “museum” – really more like a hotel – a chapel, and a swimming pool – is inexplicably intruded on by people who seem not to notice him, one of whom he falls in love with. I really enjoyed everything up until the explanation – just a total surreal ride into what seems like madness but is something else, written from a jagged obsessive point of view. (Oddly, in terms of feel, it reminded me of Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue. A fragment from another world of possibility.)

Filed by billy at 12:55 am under reading
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Didn’t do a lot of reading while working and on the road…

God’s Mountain – Erri De Luca

Picked this up quite at random from the library. A delightful light coming of age fable, gorgeously written; sort of warm and fuzzy without sucking.

Save the Cat – Blake Snyder

Pragmatic practical book on screenwriting for commercial success. Both a map of everything that is wrong with a Hollywood movie, and a description of why they are that way (they work, and make $$). Both loved and hated it, and would definitely and strongly recommend it to screenwriting types. It certainly changed the way I think about movies, and to an extent, stories.

Neuromancer – William Gibson

A rare re-read. Was probably at least 13-15 years since I read it the first time. At that time, it didn’t have much impact – I read it after Count Zero and Burning Chrome, and it all blurred together, diluting the originality of vision. I didn’t get why the legend status.

This time, I was surprised by how fresh it felt. A lot of the detail and references that would have washed over my younger self made sense, and the curve it was way ahead along at the time stands out. I enjoyed the first half a lot, the characters, setting and setup – the Straylight run itself was just the working out of things, and less interesting. Its influence on SF and culture since becomes clear, as do its influences – Alfred Bester looms heavily in the background.

But yeah. Good shit. Think I still prefer Pattern Recognition as a novel, but now I ‘get’ Neuromancer. (And what the hell was Gibson on when he wrote this?)

Shadows in the Sun – Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire by Wade Davis.

Wade Davis is fucking amazing. Have been binging on him lately, because it is just so good. I highly recommend his 2009 Massey lectures and TED talks.

This collection so far contains the best essay I’ve ever read on Haiti/voodoo, one of the best essays on shamanism I’ve ever read, and a pretty excellent one on psychedelics…

Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky

The intersections and evolution of social media, communications tools, and group behaviour. Skimmable but brilliant and necessary if you are interested in this area. (Looking at you, Morgue.)

Filed by billy at 6:50 pm under culture,reading,research,technology
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“How does one fashion a book of resistance, a book of truth in an empire of falsehood, ora book of rectitude in an empire of vicious lies? How does one do this right in front of the enemy?

Not through the old-fashioned ways of writing while you’re in the bathroom, but how does one do that in a truly future technological state? Is it possible for freedom and independence to arise in new ways under new conditions? That is, will new tyrannies abolish these protests? Or will there be new responses by the spirit that we can’t anticipate?”

- Philip K Dick, in interview, 1974

“The basic premise dominating my stories is that if I ever met an extraterrestrial intelligence (more commonly called a “creature from outer space”) I would find I had more to say to it than to my next-door neighbor. What the people on my block do is bring in their newspaper and mail and drive off in their cars. They have no other outdoor habits except mowing their lawns. I went next door one time to check into the indoor habits. They were watching TV. Could you, in writing a sf novel, postulate a culture on these premises? Surely such a society doesn’t exist, except maybe in my imagination. And there isn’t much imagination involved.

The way out of living in the middle of an under-imaginative figment is to make contact, in your own mind, with other civilisations as yet unborn.”

- from ‘afterthought by the author’, the best of philip k dick

Filed by billy at 2:10 pm under culture,quotes,reading,the world
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Norman Spinrad survives cancer at 70 and comes out pulling no punches about the state of the publishing industry, writing, and their future. Parts One and Three are *required reading* for any writers reading this. Part Two is interesting and salutary, but not essential.

Filed by billy at 12:22 pm under culture,language,reading,research
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is the man.

I blogged one of his TED talks a while back, and since then have explored further. Last year he gave the 2009 Massey Lectures in Canada. They are fucking awesome, and if you snoop around you will probably find the audio available somewhere online (Not sure if it is legit, so not linking; his SALT talk on the same themes is here.) (EDIT: actually, the talks seem I am on about seem to be here fairly legally )The lectures are collected into the book The Wayfinders.

His fundamental message – that the diversity of world-views adds to the collective wonder of humanity, and that each of these world-views has astonishing depth and richness and makes a unique contribution to that collective – comes at an incredibly relevant moment in time.

We are facing a cultural mass extinction, and a corresponding impoverishment of the human collective. We face a linguistic catastrophe – around half the languages spoken in the world are going to be dead in a generation. With each language we lose a world-view, a way of understanding and being, a unique set of answers to the questions posed by humans – who are we? what are we? why are we? how do we survive? what does our existence mean?

His grasp of diverse cultures and ability to express them is second to none. His talks are a hell of a ride. Appreciating what is at stake through his examples is literally mind-blowing. The diversity of human belief and behaviour is staggering.

I find it flat out inspiring. There is a massive convergence with my own work on consciousness, belief, and world-views, though from a really different point of entry; and I can see potentials that excite the heck out of me. There is something hugely important here.

Filed by billy at 12:53 pm under consciousness,culture,language,oblivion,reading,research,the world,utopia
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Uncle Ramsey’s Little Book of Demons – Ramsey Dukes
Fairly fascinating argument for anthropomorphising life’s troubles as demons and engaging with them, from one of modern magic’s great philosophers. Hilarious slaying of any number sacred cows. Incidentally contains the most virulent and vicious offhand Thatcher bashing ever. (eg dropping occasional bombs like “British society is on its deathbed thanks to the Thatcherite cancer rotting its organs while maggots like Blair gorge themselves on the gangrenous residue of her destruction. It is probably too late to save our country, or the world, but this book can at least teach you how to put on a condom and hold your nose before you fuck the corpse.” in what is an another wise witty and genteel ride. )

Don’t Sleep, there are snakes! – Daniel Everett
Missionary/linguist went to the Amazon, discovered the tribe he was with were a) unconvertable due to their language/consciousness and b) their language has features which defy Chomskyian grammatical theory.

Hands on Chaos Magic – Andrieh Vitimus.
Best practical book on magic I’ve ever encountered. By miles. To the point that I’d recommend reading some more theory oriented stuff first, just to have more grounding.

The Eight Circuit Brain: Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body – Antero Alli

20 years on, Alli updates his take on Timothy Leary/Robert Anton Wilson’s 8CB model. The bulk of the book is a practical course dedicated to gaining experiential understanding of the circuits. His key notion of development of the lower circuits being necessary to anchor energetic shocks/experiences on the higher circuits rings true, and accords with my experience. Good shit.

Daemonomania – John Crowley

I am in utter awe at what he is doing. Dude is an absolute master. With this he is now elevated to my pantheon of favourite authors ever, and the Aegypt Quartet (of which this is book 3 (books one and two reviewed back here)) seems like a defining literary event of the age. Of course, it feels like he wrote this just for me…

The Aegypt Quartet is a novel of staggering ambition, split over four novels, that has taken about 24 years to complete (despite the action so far taking up less than a calendar year.) The characterisation and quality of the prose is simply astounding.

This book has given me chills, blown me away intellectually, and scared the crap out of me. For starters. I don’t really have the words to express how impressed I am with what he has achieved; I suspect that will wait until after the final book is read, and I have let it all settle in. But ultimately, what it deals with is the fundamental nature of the mystery of existence, how we create meaning, and the stories we tell ourselves. And it does these things better than anything else I have encountered; uncannily well.

I have the final volume lying around, but am a little afraid to start it.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K Dick

Felt an urge to read a PKD novel. It happens every now and again. Fun but sort of a let down. Easily one of the weakest of his I’ve read, along with Radio Free Albemuth. The ideas are pretty wild/interesting, and he is using them to explore his usual post-Valis themes, but it somehow didn’t work so well as a narrative – a bit half assed and disinterested.

Filed by billy at 12:24 am under language,reading
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Went on a tear reading a bunch of very short novels to flush something else through my head after writing the new non-fiction book, then was a bit brain-zonked for a week following the wisdom teeth coming out, so  there’s a general dearth of heavy thinking stuff in this pile…

Change Your Life in Seven Days – Paul McKenna
Picked this up from the library on a whim. Found it mildly surreal that it was basically an extremely cleverly packaged selection of watered down NLP techniques. The hypnosis CD it comes with is pretty epic though. And it made a fascinating counterpoint to the draft I was writing.

Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
Short novel in which an old writer goes to Venice and falls obsessively in love with a young boy. From that literary era which seems to take for granted a complete classical education that no longer exists, and without which it seems a touch futile. I would however quite like to read Mann’s Magic Mountain.

The God Engines – John Scalzi
A short novel. Gave it a go ‘cos it was that guy from that blog. Didn’t think much of the writing or characters, but some of the ideas and delivery were striking, and some parts have stayed with me in a surprising way. Uniquely twisted.

Sun After Dark – Pico Iyer
Almost meta-travel writing, delving into the psychology of places, exploration and travel as much as it focuses on the places he goes. Pretty choice. Beautiful, brilliant, some of the most relevant coming to terms with the modern world going.

Eeeee Eee Eeee – Tao Lin
Extremely minimalist, fairly bizarre exploration of loneliness, depression and pointlessness, with many dolphins and bears. Struck me as the author actually being a bit fucked up and coping through his writing (which it turns out was much how he viewed it on his blog). A fast read. Fun in its own way. Definitely nothing else quite like it.

A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood

Brilliantly observed and realised short novel about a gay man coping with the death of his partner in a socially restricted 60s America. Hard to imagine a film of it, since it is so internal to the character’s head, and so much resides in the descriptions of the narrative voice. My first Isherwood. Won’t be the last.

The City and the City – China Mieville.

Haven’t read anything of his since Perdido St Station, which I remember being a lot of fun. Anyhow, the city… was cool, and probably  deserves the awards it is collecting left right and centre. A straight thriller in a far from straight urban fantasy setting – the tale of two conjoined cities – coexisting in space and time in an otherwise contemporary Europe – which socially and politically cannot acknowledge each other’s existence, to the point that they must Unsee each other. The occasional clunker of a sentence, but the ideas are awesome. The reveal of the Breach was cute. Reflecting on it today, enjoying what it says about the power of the human mind, and what we don’t let ourselves see, and all the unspoken rules that constrain us. Good shit.

The Carpet Makers – Andreas Eschbach

German SF writer. Amusing, heartbreaking, demented; uses a series of tangentially connected short stories to tell a minor tale of an empire beyond appeciable scale. Inventive, fun. Also: best emperor ever.

Was hankering for something for my brain after all that, so started (and am currently most of the way through) the mammoth

Philosophies of India – Heinrich Zimmer

which is pretty much the best conceivable introduction to the subject, and is unspeakably brilliant and amazing. In the course of explaining the philosophy he explains the culture out of which it sprang, since they cannot be separated. Highlights so far are illustrating thousands of years old political philosophy with reference to the then contemporary WWII, and managing to make the practice of suttee (widows throwing themselves on their husband’s funeral pyres) explicable and logically inevitable. Deals with the tangled interrelations of the various streams of Indian philosophy and generally makes everything very intelligible, though it is a certain amount of work. On the whole it is a little hard to grasp how a cultural mindset so different from ours is going to interact with the coming century; a fascinating grounding anyway. Hugely recommended if you want a book on Indian philosophy. And frankly, in general, if you like to think:  the opening line is “We of the Occident are about to arrive at a crossroads that was reached by the thinkers of India some seven hundred years before Christ.”

Somewhere in the middle of it I took a break and read

Song Of Kali – Dan Simmons

A world fantasy award winner from way back; girding that line between fantasy and horror. Tight, gripping, dense with the otherworldiness of India. Couched in terms of the stuff I have read about India, it felt grounded and real. Exotic, nasty, satisfying. Good shit.

Weird to read so much fiction in a burst. Fun but a little empty. HAve ordered some mind-bending stuff off the interwebs though…

Filed by billy at 11:58 am under reading
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