the problem with gaiman, mieville, and pullman

stilskin · 29 Nov 2004, 16:42 · from 2004-November.txt.gz

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From: acronus at yahoo.com (stilskin)
Date: Mon Nov 29 16:42:34 2004
Subject: (urth) the problem with gaiman, mieville, and pullman
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370411291507453b8f3e at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20041130004231.8283.qmail at web20025.mail.yahoo.com>

Mieville's new novel almost suffocates under all the
political baggage, and it is constructed as a series
of flashbacks . . .

Paul

--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 13:11:17 -0800 (PST), Nathan
> Spears
> <spearofsolomon at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > I just wanted to interject a quick comment. 
> Having read several
> > interviews with Mieville, I think that he is very
> interested in how
> > his worlds function, and specifically, how the
> politics work.  
> 
> That much is clearly true. In fact, there are times
> when he comes
> parlously close to Poughkeepsie, to borrow Le Guin's
> trope.
> 
> 
> > I might be getting myself in trouble, because I
> can't remember
> > how much intelligent discussion of M's work I've
> actually read
> > on this list, but here's what I remember:
> > 
> > He doesn't like the fantasy tradition of having an
> aristocratic
> > society living on air; for instance, in Tolkien,
> he would be wary
> > of the inhabitants of Minas Tirath. What do they
> do?  How do
> > they get food, support an economy, etc?  
> 
> That's a common and rather false criticism of
> Tolkien and _tLotR_. 
> It isn't emphasized, but Tolkien does in fact
> mention the farming 
> communities of Gondor in several places. Minas
> Tirith supports 
> itself much the way, say, Imperial Rome or medieval
> Paris did - 
> by being a center of trade and governance, and a
> military capital.
> 
> 
> > I think I remember reading about how he laid out a
> whole 
> > economic and political (ecopolitical?)
> 
> Politico-economic, usually...
> 
> > foundation for his world before he started setting
> the story.  In
> > fact, I read some comments which made a pretty
> strong case for
> > the idea that M's world, and the creatures that
> inhabit it, are
> > more interesting/important that the stories he
> tells there.  
> > I have a feeling someone said that on this list.
> 
> It probably wasn't me, but I agree with whoever said
> it. The
> stories are actually fairly kludgey. Reading _PSS_ I
> remember
> thinking "There isn't a single character in this
> book I like, let
> alone identify with." While this is not true of _The
> Scar_, it's 
> badly imbalanced in terms of pacing - the first half
> of the book 
> drags on, the second half rips along; it took me
> less time to read
> the entire last half than any fifty pages of the
> first half. The first
> hundred pages or so could easily (and imio should
> have) been
> cut by a sympathetic editor to about twenty, as much
> of it is just
> moody stage setting; in fact, the first part could
> have been done
> away with easily, and the few bits that remained
> significant for
> the rest of the book worked in as flashbacks.
> Mieville is a
> relentlessly _linear_ storyteller; I don't recall a
> significant 
> flashback in either of the two books I've read.
> 
> > [...] the person you were responding to is (might
> be) pretty
> > close to the mark with his summary of Mieville,
> especially from
> > Mieville's own viewpoint.
> 
> He might well. I'm not saying that there is no
> serious political
> content; I'm saying that I'm not finding it. The
> internal politics
> of Bas-Lag seem sufficiently alien that I don't find
> much, as 
> Tolkien called it, _applicability_ - let alone
> allegory! - to the
> "real" world. 
> 
> --Dan'l
> 
> -- 
> www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
> "Saddam would still be in power if he were the
> President
> of the United States, and the world would be a lot
> better off."
>      -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04
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> 


=====
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