Since we're on the subject of lit and genre again, I'll share some quotes I really liked from Mary Gaitskill's introduction to Dickens' Bleak House which specifically addresses the power of his language vs. the occasional silliness (or melodrama or unlikely coincidence) of his stories.

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"...a story is the outer weave, or conscious personality of a novel, but its numinous unconsciousness -- which the reader can feel if not so easily see -- is in the secret life that glimmers in the margins or bleeds out from the core."

"But what is particularly striking in Dickens is the contrast between his melodramatic narrative tropes and the protean force that infuses them with a kinetic, dreamlike power more fully dimensional than psychological realism."

"But on a more subtle level Dickens is not repeating. He is deepening, rapidly taking you through layers of images and movement that develop your sense of the character and his world almost nonverbally -- an extraordinary thing to do in a verbal medium. Dickens accomplishes this by using words to make concepts into visceral pictures, as eloquent and fluid as dream images...The images made of words transcend words to become something more primal in their affect and the apparently simple characters become conduits for essential forces that we can just glimpse in these rushing images."

"...these outsize images and antics do not increase our understanding of Smallweed --rather they saturate the scene with him, like heavy paint crosshatching a canvas."

"In those fever visions and in those sunny, silvery pools there is a hint of a world unknowable not only to the chracters but to the reader and even to the writer. This world and the tingling peculiarity of its inhabitants can be briefly revealed in moments and images that may be amusing or beautiful or terrible that are finally mysterious."

Must read Dexter

Have you read the first two books? I think I'm staying away from the books so I can enjoy the series; I feel like I'd concern myself too much with the differences if I read the books now.

Hate James Patterson

I went through a James Patterson phase in high school. It was pretty good times, though I'm not sure I ever forgave him for what I saw as a big narrative cheat in The Midnight Club. He must be really tired of writing now if he keeps pairing with authors I've never heard of just to finish his books.

Susan a shirt you need.

[link]

look at the Sept 29th entry - unshelved has a couple of new shirts Read irresponsibly is the best

Have you read the first two books?

Nope. I figure I can read them now, though, since the first season was book 1, and they say they'll diverge from the book canon with season 2 (and people who've read it say they're not sure how it could be done anyway).

It'd make perfect beach reading for my vacation next week, so I hope the first two come quickly--one paper, one audio.

"But on a more subtle level Dickens is not repeating. He is deepening, rapidly taking you through layers of images and movement that develop your sense of the character and his world almost nonverbally -- an extraordinary thing to do in a verbal medium. Dickens accomplishes this by using words to make concepts into visceral pictures, as eloquent and fluid as dream images...The images made of words transcend words to become something more primal in their affect and the apparently simple characters become conduits for essential forces that we can just glimpse in these rushing images."

I'm not feeling it. For one thing, anything liable to transcending needs to be grabbed back down to earth toot sweet, as transcendence in literary discussion tends to turn out to mean "stuff I think is cool and can't explain why". For another, using words to push primal buttons is considered bad writing as often as it is considered good.

For a third, that last sentence is a crime against punctuation, to say nothing of the nested clause.

I figure I can read them now, though, since the first season was book 1, and they say they'll diverge from the book canon with season 2 (and people who've read it say they're not sure how it could be done anyway).

Oh, yeah, I know about most of the major changes from the book, so I know that season 2 != book 2 at all, but it's still the same characters, and there's always the chance they could pull things from the books in other ways.

It'd make perfect beach reading

Buffistas are different from other people.

For another, using words to push primal buttons is considered bad writing as often as it is considered good.

Since when? I think primal button pushing is an entirely legitimate aesthetic function.

Obviously, David, you do not read fanfic.

Obviously, David, you do not read fanfic.

It is true that I have yet to make the proper critical appreciation of Dickens through the lens of SGA wingfic.

However, much art has been designed to fuck with those buttons either through a clever manipulation of them (like say...Hitchcock) or by total sensory overwhelm (like say...the Velvet Underground live in 1967).

"Transcendent" is suspect but I do think she's correct in diagnosing the weird vitality in Dickens language and his imagery which is larded on and on and on until I do think it works on you in an atypical fashion.

Buffistas are different from other people.

My last beach vacation involved watching Dexter on my video iPod, so I'm gonna low-tech it a bit this time.