Author Archives: Abalieno

Reading Thomas Covenant

The first 100 pages of the Thomas Covenant series were the very last thing in the fantasy genre I read almost 10 years ago. I enjoyed what I read, even if not particularly so, then I couldn’t find anymore the book for various reasons and I abandoned entirely the genre only to return to it in the last years. These days I had no particular interest in going back and read it (while Donaldson’s GAP series is part of my ever expanding reading queue) but it became a resolution when I read that Donaldson finished writing the first draft of “The Last Dark”, the fourth and last book in the third series.

I’ve started reading Thomas Covenant from the very beginning because I’m interested in what he’s doing right at the end. I’m ready to go through the first million of words in order to get there. If this third series never came out I’d have probably never had again the interest to go back and read what I missed, but knowing that he returned once again to it, more than twenty years later, makes me curious about what places he may go and what he’ll bring along of all these years. This series of 3 + 3 + 4 books was never planned as so. When he wrote the first trilogy it was “done”, nothing else required or planned. Then he found ideas and wrote a second trilogy, which probably exists also as a dialogue with the first, but it was again a thing on its own, closed. Now he returns. I have trust in him when he says that every time he returns the stakes and ambition rise, and I want to read this because I’m interested on where it all leads.

I’m almost halfway though the first book and should be able to write down more comments soon after I’m done with Midnight Tides. Curiously enough the controversial parts of “Lord Foul’s Bane” are the strongest. My interest is held entirely by what I usually see criticized, while the more traditional and fantastic part of the journey through the land feels dull and slow.

The rape scene is probably the most discussed and criticized part of the book and yet I had no problems with it. It’s a strong scene that is perfectly excused by the context, I don’t see anything in it that feels forced or indulgent. I’d rather say that it’s one of the sporadic points that make the book worthwhile. It’s not about being edgy and subverting some canons by shocking the reader, I don’t see a “writer’s intent” in it, as if in showing a purpose, a declaration of tones and themes so the reader knows what he’s going to find in the book. The scene is not there to set a bleak mood or warn the reader. It is there because there’s no way around. It’s the consequence of what is going on.

This leads to the other aspect about it: Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. From a side it’s kind of curious how the “unbelief” of the character seems carried over (or “in”) the context. Fantasy is not serious literature, you can’t believe it. So here’s a book about a guy who finds himself in a fantasy world and… does not believe it. Literally. The other side of this argument is that the “Unbeliever” is the leading theme, embedded with it is also the rape scene and why it fits with the rest. Thomas is convinced of going through a vivid and elaborate dream. He knows he was hit by a car and now he’s hallucinating and fighting to survive. In this dream he goes through a reawakening of spirit and senses, but it is painful because he is aware it’s all fake. The more beautiful the world, the most cruel it is, because it all shows him a beauty he knows he’ll lose as soon he wakes up from this terrible hallucination. Hence the rape. He rapes Lena because Lena, to his eyes, taunts him. She speaks and moves with cruelty (but this is partially concealed to the reader). Being part of HIS dream he has all the rights to react to all this with rage. One thing I noticed while reading is that Thomas goes through a lot of states internally but communicates little of it on the outside. More than “characterization” this is the result of awareness. He does not believe in the “world”, so talking to it is kind of stupid. Does it make sense talking to your own dreams? Aren’t the dream-shapes there just to mock and play with you? This is also mirrored by the reactions of some people to him. They believe he knows, but is faking his lack of knowledge of the world because he’s testing them.

So Thomas Covenant is character locked in. The introspection is the point since he doesn’t believe in the external world. The “rape” is an accusation toward the outside. It holds on many levels. It’s even a crime if you rape someone in a dream? It is a crime if the rape was not deliberate? Donaldson, the writer, plays with all this. And this is what interests me deeply, the bold links between internal/external, between writer and character, the fantasy and the Fantasy.

Obviously I can’t avoid now to interpret all this my own way. Probably most readers were in for the Fantasy, for The Land and its weird creatures. I’m in entirely to interpret it symbolically, and that’s where the book carries some value for me. Yesterday I read a part that felt like a reference to The Matrix. Thomas Covenant and The Matrix? What should they have in common?

This:

Foamfollower stood in the stern, facing upstream, with the high tiller under his left arm and his right held up to the river breezes; and he was chanting something, some plainsong ,in a language Covenant could not understand- a song with a wave-breaking, salty timbre like the taste of the sea. For a moment after Covenant’s question, he kept up his rolling chant. But soon its language changed, and Covenant heard him sing:

Stone and Sea are deep in life,
two unalterable symbols of the world:
permanence at rest, and permanence in motion;
participants in the Power that remains.

a song with a wave-breaking, salty timbre like the taste of the sea. Think about it, how can a song have a “salty” timbre? This made me think of a world (The Land) made of language (so words, numbers). This Foamfollower is a giant whose boat moves upriver. It’s a “spell”, something breaking the natural rules. And it comes from language he uses. I don’t know how far Donaldson consciously pushes this, but it’s there.

I just can’t avoid reading this book in a sort of Kabbalist way. The whole journey is “symbolic”. I don’t know how Donaldson resolves it, but at the moment I buy into the “hallucination”, so Thomas is moving through an internal landscape. This doesn’t even need to be a “suspect” of a writing intent, because it just can’t be avoided. Donaldson HAS TO write an internal landscape, because The Land does not exist. So whether you see it as a contradiction or proper form, it is brought in the book as it is in reality. You can’t escape it, and it is what makes the book strong.

Within this context it is particularly interesting to see how Donaldson deals with the “cosmology”. “The Celebration of Spring” is a chapter he said he dreamed and he wrote exactly as it came to him. It’s about a circular dance of some flame figures that kinda fits with a Kabbalist interpretation. In another scene the giant talks about a legend on the cosmology. Most of it is formulaic and not really addressing the interesting points (there’s always a Creator that creates, but somehow some kind of flaw slips through and acquires its own deliberateness, threatening the rest), but it is good for the mirror it creates.

Essentially the giant compares the creation of the world with the legendary history of his own race. Both stranded from home. Locked away from their proper place and unable to return. Taken from within, it is interesting because you wonder whether they built their creation myth on the basis of their own history (so projecting “outside” what happened to them for real, shaping gods in their forms) or if it’s the opposite, that they wrote their own legendary history shaped around a myth that they received (if you believe in-world holiness). Ambivalent. And it all again fits with certain Kabbalistic forms, since this idea of being separated and then cut from “home” is essentially the Kabbalistic structure of men stranded in the physical world. The barrier between the physical and the concealed spirituality.

All of it then brought in the book at another level, since Thomas Covenant is also stranded and cut away from home, being trapped in this fantasy world. This game of mirrors, where the same structure repeats at different levels, is one of the truly inspired parts of the book. Sometimes it slides back into fantasy conventions (for example I think the dialogue between Thomas and Lord Foul when the two of them meet at the very beginning is dreadful) but overall I’m enjoying what I’m reading and find now things that I’d likely have missed ten years ago.

a well-established, highly successful social structure

“How does one reshape an entire society? How does one convert this impressive example of the instinct to survive into a communally positive force? Clearly, we needed to follow a well-established, highly successful social structure as our inspiration—”

“Rats.”

“Well done, Bugg. I knew I could count on you.”

Homunculus – Hideo Yamamoto

I don’t read many mangas these days but I make exceptions for those masterpieces that set themselves apart. There are certain signature works in every medium and genre, Homunculus isn’t very much “signature” because it doesn’t seem to represent any canon, but it sets itself apart as one of those rare, significant works. It is a true masterpiece, of the kind you can count on your hands. I’m writing about it also because it’s finally complete. It’s 15 volumes, the last one came out in Japan in April 2011 and translated in English two days ago. Yes, it’s not officially licensed, but it also means that there’s the possibility to read it online, all 15 volumes for free, thanks to the work of fans who did the translation. It’s not the same experience of actually having the volumes in your hands (I read most of the volumes as they were published in Italy), but believe me that this is something you can’t miss.

Considering the gruesome picture I decided to use one would expect some kind of brutal manga about violence or serial killers. While Yamamoto, the writer and artist, is the guy behind the more famous “Ichi the Killer”, that you may know for the movie adaptation by Takashi Miike, Homunculus is an entirely different thing. There’s not much violence, or action. It’s instead a deep psychological and metaphysical journey into consciousness. In that scene you see Nakoshi, the protagonist, trying to drill a hole into the girl’s skull. It’s gruesome, but he does not intend to kill her. It’s part of the metaphysical conceit the manga is based on, by drilling that hole you stimulate the brain to a different kind of activity, augmenting perception. In the specific case the hole allows the protagonist, by covering his right eye, to see the “truth”. To see demons, or “homunculus”, which are essentially symbolic constructs of the people he sees around himself.

They aren’t the demons “outside”, from the outer world, those typical in horror movies. They aren’t supernatural or magical. They are the demons inside, those who live truly within each of us, every day, and that we can’t exorcize since those demons are “us”. As real as everything you can touch and feel. Deep psychology and symbols, the stuff we live off. And it’s here that this manga reaches its apex. From the first to the last page, beside the single case of the premise of the trepanation, there’s nothing fantastic or that falls outside science. You’ll see all kinds of weird, freaky stuff, it flirts with the occult, but it will all be slowly explained in logical terms. Everything will be explained.

It is a masterpiece because of how it keeps the tension for 15 volumes straight, unrelenting. It’s an unbelievable crescendo that reaches the top right at the end. Truly ambitious works usually have problems finding a worthwhile ending that matches expectations and wraps up all mysteries and plots. This is an example of “flawless victory”. It does everything perfectly, with an ending I feel powerful. Recently I was discussing the difference between “ambiguous” and “ambivalent”. It’s a meaningful difference because I consider one satisfying and the other frustrating and infuriating. Ambiguous endings are infuriating, because you don’t get the answers you seek, the ending is open-ended, you’re left wondering what the authors wanted to say, you can’t come to grips with it. It’s not over and you can’t let it go, but you can’t do much with it either, because you feel like you can’t solve it, or that it was all a fraud, with no solution (hello LOST). Instead ambivalent endings are fine. They are still open-ended because you don’t get to know “exactly” a specific solution or truth, but at the same time you are given more than one specific solution. Each explaining plausibly what happened. You get your answers, mysteries are solved and explained, but there’s more than one single solution. You’re given more than one combination, but they all potentially open the lock. You don’t get to see the one that does it, but you know one of them will. The path is clear, the message delivered.

During the course of this manga, page after page, the protagonist will face the homunculus of other people that he needs to “solve”. Each is its own mystery, bound to the whole life of a real person. You’ll see stories surfacing and every single mystery about them slowly being explained. At the same time every chunk of these stories will go to build up the bigger picture, it will build up to the mystery of the homunculus. What these homunculi are, where they come from. The mystery will be revealed and the whole manga is built so that everything leads up to it. It’s a masterpiece because how every story exists on its own and yet builds up to that ultimate mystery. And it’s a masterpiece because how every single image, frame after frame, goes to acquire a symbolic meaning. Yamamoto is a genius, you’ll see the deep, meticulous research after every symbol, taking often hundreds of pages for the “descent into truth”.

“Truth” is what lurks deep down, in that pit that is the symbolic unconscious. You’ll get to see some of those truths, see their freaky shapes. All the while, remember, without any “magic”. This is the real thing.

It can be quite disturbing. But the truth rarely isn’t.

Midnight Tides and Lovecraftian Gods

I’ve reached a point in the book where some big sea god makes its grand entrance. I was quite in awe and decided to write a bit about it, about how I perceived the whole scene and wanted it to be more than how it appears in the book. It has quite an evocative power but I feel that Erikson understated way too much such a grandiose event. It’s one awesome idea Erikson had, but that is dismissed in the multitude of other things. Other writers could have made this a dramatic pivot of a novel, but here it is somewhat resolved in three pages or so. 3-4 pages enough to introduce the threat posed by this unknown sea god, research its mystery, see it rise on the surface wrecking chaos, conclude the first battle and solve a first mystery. Too fast!

Embedded in those three pages there isn’t just that, but a treasure of fundamental ideas that go deep down. Even if so understated they still make a fulcrum of things. So I’m going to describe what I saw, in there, knowing it’s not going to be perfectly accurate, but not my own fancy either.

When I was a kid Lovecraft was my myth. I couldn’t get E. A. Poe because he was too psychological, but Lovecraft delivered fully what I wanted. He grasped the psychological side, but at the same time also going all the way with awe-inspiring imagery. Fantastic, otherworldly landscapes, truly alien creatures. He didn’t underplay the fantastic element. Today looking at Lovecraftian mythology it all seems quite thin. Lovecraft is about atmosphere, what it suggests. Under that surface there’s chaos and uncertainty that feed on the idea of “cosmic horror”. It’s a powerful feeling, part of the unconscious and dream world, but it is abstract and undifferentiated.

The implicit rule is that when you reveal a mystery, describe how it operates, how it works internally and externally, you defuse all its power. So if Lovecraft probed and replaced the void of the “cosmic horror” with something precise, then all the magic and evocative power would be lost. The magic is about not seeing completely, the horror of the unknown, something right out the corner of the eye. And so we get a tradition of Horror where we don’t quite see, something only suggested, vaguely hinted at, the monster is a shadow, an outline.

Erikson instead, striving for other goals, goes deep into the mystery, and instead of diminishing its power he manages to not “explaining it away”, but make it stronger and even more evocative and full of implications than ever! The danger down this path is evident if you for example watched LOST, the more the mystery was revealed the more it got broken, made no sense, felt more and more contrived and annoying. In less words: the answers to mysteries weren’t satisfying. They weren’t reaching as high as the expectations. Here instead we have an occasion to see how it can become satisfying.

In the book a character starts to analyze the situation and the possible origin of this sea god that is looming and threatening his army. He comes out with three possibilities (two in the book, that’s one of the reasons why I say Erikson underplayed this too much). The first is that in this region, possibly thousands of years before, there was another population. It is explained that the land was made of limestone and, due to underground rivers and currents, the ground was eroded and shaped, and some deep, circular natural pits were formed. This population used one of these huge pits as a sacred place to their own deity. They threw into this pit bones, living sacrifices and other precious materials, till it filled up. So the sea god they are facing in current times is what this ancient population worshiped thousands of years before. The second hypothesis is that there was no original god that fed on that pit, but that another spirit or god was lured by the sacrifices, it disguised itself as their god, it became and replaced their god (and this is a pattern that returns in these books, gods that deceive and manipulate, preying onto the delusion of common people), and so its power grew and grew.

The third hypothesis is that there was… nothing. This is the most fascinating one because it took me a while to come to terms with it in these books. (opening necessary parenthesis here) One usually assumes that a god either exists or not. We either believe or we don’t. In a Fantasy novel, where gods are “tangible” and real, you assume there are no problems of faith. Gods exist, and that’s all. Yet, Erikson’s mythology is “protean”. Meaning that it is “fluid”. It’s a bit counter intuitive but let’s say that there could be some people that have their own pantheon. These gods exist and are real. Yet it’s entirely possible that on another continent there’s a different population with a completely different belief system and pantheon. They believe in different things and so their gods are different, but STILL very real. Belief, in our real world, is also protean, because it is created and is transformed. What a Christian believes is not what a Native American believes. In the Malazan world the “conceit” is that the mechanics are the same as our real world, but the gods come into being. Are made. So, going back to this third hypothesis, this means that a god may have come out of some, let’s say, “emotive or symbolic power”. The accumulation of lives sacrificed to some conceptual deity, the value of the symbols (the precious materials also thrown in the pit), all coalesced over time into something. “A creature came into being, and was taught the nature of hunger, of desire. Made into an addict of blood and grief and terror.”

Now take all these three possibilities and you’ll see that all three have significant implications. In the context the characters are preparing to fight this god in battle, so they need to learn as much as they can about it. What it is, what it can do. In the first case (a native, ancient god) the mystery becomes about what kind of god the ancient population worshiped. What its nature may be. In the second case (a spirit or a god that was attracted by sacrifices) the mystery deepens, because the ancient god is a mask and anything could have taken that position, hidden within, with its own motives and goals. What kind of creature was it? Was it maybe some other god or ancient creature? Where does it come from? What’s its true origin? Then the third case (a god was “fashioned”, from nothing), how do you fight something that is not there?

See, the mystery GROWS. It becomes filled with interesting implications, and consequences because in the context there’s a war ahead and this god is being used in it. Among all this, Erikson deepens the “import”. This is where I love what he does. It’s a fantasy story, but it has no power, no weight, if it doesn’t try to reach deep and say something that isn’t merely a clever “invention”. Take this quote:

Shorelines were places of worship the world over. The earliest records surviving from the First Empire made note of that again and again among peoples encountered during the explorations. The verge between sea and land marked the manifestation of the symbolic transition between the known and the unknown. Between life and death, spirit and mind, between an unlimited host of elements and forces contrary yet locked together. Lives were given to the seas, treasures were flung into their depths. And, upon the waters themselves, ships and their crews were dragged into the deep time and again.

Here Erikson, in a few lines, evokes a whole breadth of literature. Man and sea. All contained within that idea, then developed and shaped, “fashioned” in a myriad of stories. Thousands of books, movies, poetry, music. Ancient and modern. A theme that runs through this book, Midnight Tides, confirming that what I see in the title (the undercurrent, the subconscious, what’s hidden and unseen below the sea level) was not an illusion, but something that Erikson grasped fully (see also this and the quote about erosion).

The mythological work done in these three pages (btw, I already surpassed the wordcount of the whole scene I’m writing about, which also includes the battle itself, just saying) is not complete. The analysis continues speculating on the fact that this god should be dead.

The spirit was doomed, and should have eventually died. Had not the seas risen to swallow the land, had not its world’s walls suddenly vanished, releasing it to all that lay beyond.

The ancient population that filled the pit with gifts and sacrifices vanished at some point. Maybe they migrated somewhere else, or managed to destroy themselves (it wouldn’t be the first time in this setting). In both cases the god would be still bound to the pit, and, with the population feeding it gone, it would weaken and eventually die. Yet this was not a weakened creature, quite the contrary. What happened? That the whole land, including this pit, was in origin dry. At some point the level of the ocean rose (and this is likely as consequence of another cataclysmic event part of the mythology, opening new questions, possibly answers) and the land was submerged. Symbolically (see the quote above) and concretely, this means that the god was unbound, passed through the threshold between land and sea, known and unknown. It got unleashed onto possibilities. And unbound from the tie with its worshipers, it also got a sort of freedom. Out in the ocean ships sailed, more wars, more deaths, more to feed on. But outside of its pit survival wasn’t easy.

For all that, the spirit had known… competition. And, Nekal Bara suspected, had fared poorly. Weakened, suffering, it had returned to its hole, there beneath the deluge. Returned to die.

There was no way of knowing how the Tiste Edur warlocks had found it, or came to understand its nature and the potential within it. But they had bound it, fed it blood until its strength returned, and it had grown, and with that growth, a burgeoning hunger.

And so it rises again and is used as a tool in a war. Again and again in this series the past returns, sometime as it was, sometime disguised, manipulating and manipulated. Erikson already dealt with this sort of Lovecraftian mythology in Memories of Ice (I’m referring to the Matron buried under the plain), where he made real a line by Lovecraft I only remember in Italian, that retranslated sounds like this: It is not dead what forever can wait.

Erikson goes deep into the myth by not treating it merely as a self-serving invention. It feeds on its core, which is the anthropomorphic vision of the world and its coming to terms with reality. As the cover blurb by Glen Cook goes, I also stand slack-jawed in awe of what Erikson is doing. Yet I’ll leave a tiny, little disappointment because I sometimes feel that he doesn’t run all the way with his ideas. As if he didn’t completely believe in their strength. So much and more was contained in those three pages, that ultimately is understated as a small scene buried within a chapter. I haven’t gone further so I don’t know what this creature truly is, but I feel that too much potential was dismissed in a short run-through of hypothesis and even shorter confrontation. Which by the way was confusedly described (has the wizard somewhat shot himself into the creature? how could he see and describe what happens to his partner if one was on top of a lighthouse and the other far at the end of the docks?). I always have a problem of scale with Erikson’s descriptions, sometime he can evoke some huge setpieces filled with sense of wonder, but sometime one doesn’t “feel” this and it seems instead cramped, or not as vast as it could. Visually, it should be given some more “punch”, and it’s again something that doesn’t satisfies me fully. Give me some great imagery when you have motivations and means to do it (and what I wrote here is the foundation to make it happen, having earned it). Erikson’s creatures are sometime lost in the trivial, big dog, big wolf, green eyes. Give me something awe inspiring, huge, that also looks cool. You don’t have a budget on special effects. Ramp up the scale, make something truly grand.

I’m saying this because that’s as far I’ve read and the scene leaves me with that kind of disappointment (after having achieved and deserved all that awe). I don’t know what this creature looks like since it wasn’t shown yet. I don’t know how truly big it is. But from one side it all happened too fast, the prose not giving it enough emphasis and space compared to the rest of the novel. And from another its grandiose visual potential is somewhat lost on a minor PoV, minor battle, minor scene. On a creature that is “big”, but big as a ship or BIG, as a mountain-spanning behemoth of a beast? The writing, for how good it is and how much it packs in the economy of words, runs contrary to what the scene needed, imho.

He disappoints me on the easy parts. Yes Steve, you are too conservative and not enough EPIC.

The reader is not the message

I followed again some links from Larry’s blog to the indignant woman on a crusade.

I’m not writing this to judge, but to understand. I was analyzing my own reaction to certain claims and try to see why I perceive a difference. And so, as consequence, why I don’t often agree with her reasons and arguments.

Take this hypothetical case:
– A writer presents a book to his editor/publisher. The protagonist of this book is a black man, and the editor says the book is good and will be bought, but then asks the writer to make the protagonist white, so that the book can reach a wider public and sell more.

This case strikes me as evidently racist and would trigger a real negative response on me. I do admit that I tend to care about the illegitimate intervention on the author’s will more than the racism embedded in it. But I do notice the racism and it disgusts me.

Take this other case:
– A writer writes a book where only white people are presented, or white people in dominant roles. A reader infers the writer is racist, and so he needs to be called out for what he truly is.

In this case the reader’s reaction doesn’t seem legitimate to me. If certain extremist groups “appropriate” the work of some writer it doesn’t directly mean that what they saw in this work is what the writer truly intended, nor that he agrees with their vision. Nor, obviously, he should be prosecuted for what others read in his work, and crimes done in his name. You can’t infer a claim by its absence. One can be blamed for foreseeable consequences, but not for what he couldn’t imagine. Call him stupid or naive, but that’s all.

A work that analyzes racial problems and that gives equal importance and treatment to different races can rightly be called anti-racist. But a work that does not rise these problems can’t be called racist because it doesn’t tackles them up-front and makes its position clear of suspect.

A reader may perceive racist undertones, the writer may have unconsciously embedded racist undertones in a book, for example by deciding its hero will be white, but you can’t loudly denounce this work as “racist”, as long there isn’t an explicit, proven racist message. That is deliberate.

There are various levels and there is surely merit highlighting the predominance of certain trends that don’t promote anti-racism. And so it’s good to draw the attention and sensitize the public on these themes. As Larry said, it helps to reassess and readjust how you perceive certain things that otherwise would go unnoticed. Help you being aware of them. But not noticing doesn’t mean endorsing. In most cases I guess it’s a simple consequence: if the majority of published fiction writers were black men, then it’s probable we’d get a majority of books with black men as protagonists. A statistic, cultural fact, not an intrinsic racist one.

Tolkien’s work is evidently not particularly sensitized about racial problems and sexism. But you can’t overturn that argument by declaring Tolkien was sexist and racist. It’s an accusation only based on inference, speculation and witch-hunting (suspect).

A note on Midnight Tides reading progress

Not that anyone asked, but I’ve been “reading” Midnight Tides for MANY months and I decided to clarify a bit.

It’s not that I’m not enjoying the book and so going very slowly or making no progress at all. In part the lack of progress is due to a quirk I have. The more I “invest” my interest and expectations on something, the more I delay it. Like a pathological need to keep the best stuff last. Also meaning that I’ll likely go through lot of crap just as long I feel the very best stuff is right there waiting for me (and for better days). I’ve been systematically doing this with everything. Books, movies, games, and everything else associated with a good feeling. I’m one who finished Rhapsody, A Musical Adventure (btw, nice soundtrack) instead of the Final Fantas(ies) because these were good, and so to keep for later. So I still today have all the Final Fantasy games and a staggering PILE of other ancient but precious RPGs on my to-do list. I bought my copy of LotR when I was around fourteen and worshiped it like a holy monolith. But I couldn’t read it once I figured out that more books were connected to it, like the Hobbit and the Silmarillion, I just never settle for anything else than everything. The result was that I read LotR more than 10 years later, even if it was at the time my “favorite book I didn’t read”. Or, in general, that I can manage to read something only when I stop caring about it.

These days I know this habit of mine makes no sense and I try to fight it as much I can, but it still wins often. It’s like one of those obsessive–compulsive problems, the more you fight them the more they slip through and affect your life. Maybe one day I’ll find some great psychologist that explains it to me and fixes me. But in the meantime it’s affecting my progress with Malazan since I consider Malazan a so great work that it achieves that “holy” status that makes then hard for me to actually read and enjoy. The other aspect affecting my reading progress is still partly connected. I only read when I can achieve some perfect condition. Meaning that I’ll read the book if I don’t feel tired, mind well awake and ready, active, with a hot cup of green tea to heighten the mind and awareness, desire to read and so on. It goes without saying that reaching this ideal condition is a rare thing. So I end up reading when I’m going to sleep, I’m tired and so on. So I pick up some other book instead of Malazan. I read Pynchon, for example. I absolutely can read Pynchon while I’m sleepy. I can even manage to have nightmares about it, afterwards.

That’s all to explain this problem of mine. The more I won’t do something the more it’s because I love it. That said, I’ll also have some negative or critical things to say about Midnight Tides (and, I guess Erikson’s writing in general) that I think are worth considering. That part interests me, and I’ll probably try to discuss them. Maybe that gives me enough motivation to actually break the enchantment and finish the damn book.

One of them fools

Just noticed this link on Bakker’s blog.

Quoting:

Abstract: Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.

I was thinking that these scenarios are consistent in the direction they all point to. Life without happiness. The more you are “aware” of the world and of yourself, the more happiness is precluded to you. Happiness can only be found in consolatory lies and story-telling. The more receptive and open you are, the more you’ll suffer. True self-knowledge only leads to despair and loss. Of everything.

You have the choice between being a lie, or nothing at all.