There once was a man from Wabash
Mar. 14th, 2007 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleThere once was a man from Wabash,
But the brain eater got him when he was young,
So the world will never know what his limerick might have been.
Friday night at Boskone, I was talking to a friendly group in the hallway about _The Princess Bride_, and how the frame story changes the tone of the adventure story. Someone (who might have been Kate Nepveu, but I don't remember) mentioned reading it from the library as a child, without any frame story, and asking if it had ever been published that way. We talked a bit about how the story existed with the original frame of Billy Goldman and his father who could barely read English, reading him "the good bits" in 1941, and in the movie frame with a sick boy in the 1980s and his grandfather reading to him. We talked about skipping boring introductions and prefaces to jump right to the story...and maybe a kid who was very focused on the adventure story itself could have failed to notice that the first 30 pages of _The Princess Bride_ are setting up an interesting and relevent frame story, not just introducing the author and the context in which he wrote the book.
Then last week I read Dan Simmons' _Ilium_. I also read the introductory material, without which I would have returned the book to the library much, much, sooner (with a strong temptation to throw it against the wall first.) There is a dedication to Wabash College. I have never actually been to Wabash College, and only know it from its alumni--but how better can a school be known?
But the brain eater got him when he was young,
So the world will never know what his limerick might have been.
Friday night at Boskone, I was talking to a friendly group in the hallway about _The Princess Bride_, and how the frame story changes the tone of the adventure story. Someone (who might have been Kate Nepveu, but I don't remember) mentioned reading it from the library as a child, without any frame story, and asking if it had ever been published that way. We talked a bit about how the story existed with the original frame of Billy Goldman and his father who could barely read English, reading him "the good bits" in 1941, and in the movie frame with a sick boy in the 1980s and his grandfather reading to him. We talked about skipping boring introductions and prefaces to jump right to the story...and maybe a kid who was very focused on the adventure story itself could have failed to notice that the first 30 pages of _The Princess Bride_ are setting up an interesting and relevent frame story, not just introducing the author and the context in which he wrote the book.
Then last week I read Dan Simmons' _Ilium_. I also read the introductory material, without which I would have returned the book to the library much, much, sooner (with a strong temptation to throw it against the wall first.) There is a dedication to Wabash College. I have never actually been to Wabash College, and only know it from its alumni--but how better can a school be known?
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There once was a man from Wabash,
But the brain eater got him when he was young,
So the world will never know what his limerick might have been.
Friday night at Boskone, I was talking to a friendly group in the hallway about _The Princess Bride_, and how the frame story changes the tone of the adventure story. Someone (who might have been Kate Nepveu, but I don't remember) mentioned reading it from the library as a child, without any frame story, and asking if it had ever been published that way. We talked a bit about how the story existed with the original frame of Billy Goldman and his father who could barely read English, reading him "the good bits" in 1941, and in the movie frame with a sick boy in the 1980s and his grandfather reading to him. We talked about skipping boring introductions and prefaces to jump right to the story...and maybe a kid who was very focused on the adventure story itself could have failed to notice that the first 30 pages of _The Princess Bride_ are setting up an interesting and relevent frame story, not just introducing the author and the context in which he wrote the book.
Then last week I read Dan Simmons' _Ilium_. <lj-cut text="Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."> I also read the introductory material, without which I would have returned the book to the library much, much, sooner (with a strong temptation to throw it against the wall first.) There is a dedication to Wabash College. I have never actually been to Wabash College, and only know it from its alumni--but how better can a school be known? <lj-tag=TheRCK> and <lj-tag=jss1113> know the same Wabash alumnus I do, so they might know what I mean: I can read something that makes no sense in consensus reality, and think, "What would it mean if [Wabash alumnus] were saying it? Oh yes! It would make sense then!" The other critical piece of introductory material is the author's note about "When my kid brother and I used to take our toy soldiers out of the box, we had no problems playing with our blue and gray Civil War soldiers alongside our green World War II guys." This is the level of realism and continuity Simmons is working for. Or possibly _Heroes in Hell_ as a role-playing template, only where the players have out-of-story agendas (including having political axes to grind, or wanting an excuse to say, "I don't think we're in the Iliad anymore, Toto.")
I read with a sense of watching a game, knowing the players were having more fun than I was. That was true of _The Princess Bride_, but it didn't feel uncomfortable there, because the players in _The Princess Bride_ are having so MUCH fun. There's plenty to go around. I had a hard time with some of the political grandstanding. Not because it *was* political grandstanding, per se, because polemic was obviously the point of the book. I stopped at one point, marvelling at an interlude of praise for modern warfare. Is that the character or the author saying modern total war is quick and efficient. None of this single combat nonsense. No heroes trying to stand forth and claim glory. Just years of trench warfare, cities bombed to rubble, paging Wilfred Owen. A lot of chapters are desperately short of perceptible irony, and they only become readable if I read them out loud in the Wabash voice (it would probably help to be playing with toy soldiers.)
I gave up on it in the second segment discussing how the future humans (not really viewpoint characters) who have been established as lazy and contemptible though perhaps worthy of salvation, are literally fatherless bastards. Sex never conceives a child. When a woman wants to have a baby, she chooses her child's genetic material from that of all the men she has ever fucked, and the child is conceived without any further input from a man. Everyone thinks this is perfectly ordinary, until, one of the future human male characters has a problem with it, and tells the woman he loves that HE wants to father her child. This was set up in a really strained attempt to make him look more heroic. I couldn't swallow it. Suspending a judgement about what makes someone look heroic feels different from suspending disbelief. It's easier to encapsulate it and carry it through the book. Anyhow, when the great hero Odysseus started talking about the importance of knowing the face of one's father, I put down the book and went to hide under the covers with _Strong Poison_.</lj-cut>
But the brain eater got him when he was young,
So the world will never know what his limerick might have been.
Friday night at Boskone, I was talking to a friendly group in the hallway about _The Princess Bride_, and how the frame story changes the tone of the adventure story. Someone (who might have been Kate Nepveu, but I don't remember) mentioned reading it from the library as a child, without any frame story, and asking if it had ever been published that way. We talked a bit about how the story existed with the original frame of Billy Goldman and his father who could barely read English, reading him "the good bits" in 1941, and in the movie frame with a sick boy in the 1980s and his grandfather reading to him. We talked about skipping boring introductions and prefaces to jump right to the story...and maybe a kid who was very focused on the adventure story itself could have failed to notice that the first 30 pages of _The Princess Bride_ are setting up an interesting and relevent frame story, not just introducing the author and the context in which he wrote the book.
Then last week I read Dan Simmons' _Ilium_. <lj-cut text="Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."> I also read the introductory material, without which I would have returned the book to the library much, much, sooner (with a strong temptation to throw it against the wall first.) There is a dedication to Wabash College. I have never actually been to Wabash College, and only know it from its alumni--but how better can a school be known? <lj-tag=TheRCK> and <lj-tag=jss1113> know the same Wabash alumnus I do, so they might know what I mean: I can read something that makes no sense in consensus reality, and think, "What would it mean if [Wabash alumnus] were saying it? Oh yes! It would make sense then!" The other critical piece of introductory material is the author's note about "When my kid brother and I used to take our toy soldiers out of the box, we had no problems playing with our blue and gray Civil War soldiers alongside our green World War II guys." This is the level of realism and continuity Simmons is working for. Or possibly _Heroes in Hell_ as a role-playing template, only where the players have out-of-story agendas (including having political axes to grind, or wanting an excuse to say, "I don't think we're in the Iliad anymore, Toto.")
I read with a sense of watching a game, knowing the players were having more fun than I was. That was true of _The Princess Bride_, but it didn't feel uncomfortable there, because the players in _The Princess Bride_ are having so MUCH fun. There's plenty to go around. I had a hard time with some of the political grandstanding. Not because it *was* political grandstanding, per se, because polemic was obviously the point of the book. I stopped at one point, marvelling at an interlude of praise for modern warfare. Is that the character or the author saying modern total war is quick and efficient. None of this single combat nonsense. No heroes trying to stand forth and claim glory. Just years of trench warfare, cities bombed to rubble, paging Wilfred Owen. A lot of chapters are desperately short of perceptible irony, and they only become readable if I read them out loud in the Wabash voice (it would probably help to be playing with toy soldiers.)
I gave up on it in the second segment discussing how the future humans (not really viewpoint characters) who have been established as lazy and contemptible though perhaps worthy of salvation, are literally fatherless bastards. Sex never conceives a child. When a woman wants to have a baby, she chooses her child's genetic material from that of all the men she has ever fucked, and the child is conceived without any further input from a man. Everyone thinks this is perfectly ordinary, until, one of the future human male characters has a problem with it, and tells the woman he loves that HE wants to father her child. This was set up in a really strained attempt to make him look more heroic. I couldn't swallow it. Suspending a judgement about what makes someone look heroic feels different from suspending disbelief. It's easier to encapsulate it and carry it through the book. Anyhow, when the great hero Odysseus started talking about the importance of knowing the face of one's father, I put down the book and went to hide under the covers with _Strong Poison_.</lj-cut>
