3 ms·

Nope you’re not off. I chose McCarthy’s earliest novel because it is him at his most “impressionistic” and indeed many sentences require multiple read through t

by scop 3y ago

Nope you’re not off. I chose McCarthy’s earliest novel because it is him at his most “impressionistic” and indeed many sentences require multiple read through to determine what’s being said. But that’s the artistic pleasure in it: a scene is painted slowly in my mind’s eyes that, once fully formed/comprehended, is hard to find elsewhere in literature. This being art, you are completely free to find it off putting and completely ignore it. But I’ve found beauty in McCarthy that is, well, hard to put into words. His writing, much like technical documentation, can require many readings to get the picture.

logicprog 3y ago
You know, I think I can actually dig what you're getting at! :) It's not really for me, I like a lot more immediate clarity in the individual sentences of my fiction books, because for larger works like novels having to reread sentences feels more to me like being tripped up then getting a chance to admire a line of poetry or something, but I can totally see where you're coming from
- ethbr1 3y ago
  >> On the mountain the limestone shelves and climbs in ragged escarpments... The interesting twist to me is the mental back-rewrite on "limestone shelves" I initially read it as the more common {adjective}{noun}, before hitting "and climbs" and having to backtrack and reclassify as {noun}{verb}. And indeed, there is such a verb definition for "shelve": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shelve https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shelve I was a huge William Gibson fan in my youth though, which generally meant I figured out what the hell the author was talking about 3 sentences or pages later.
  - logicprog 3y ago
    Interestingly, I'm actually a huge fan of Gibson's prose (reading Idoru rn, finished the Sprawl Trilogy and Burning Chrome last year), and even though I've been reading his stuff with the same neurological disorder I have now, I've never felt like I struggled to understand what he was saying.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      I believe he's on record as saying Idoru was his favorite of his older books. :) To be fair too, Gibson/cyberpunk is probably more conceptually deferred than linguistically deferred. I.e. it'll toss out new words, then backfill definitions, versus simply combining English in complex ways
      - logicprog 3y ago
        That's a really interesting tidbit of information about Idoru! It's certainly an interesting book so far, although I've been having trouble being truly sucked into books lately thanks to various life circumstances. I will say though, out of all the books of his I've read so far, I actually most prefer the writing style of Neuromancer. His writing style is much more sleek and refined in his later Sprawl trilogy books and Idoru, but there was something special about the hallucinogenic verve of the descriptions he used in Neuromancer and Burning Chrome that, in spite of the jank or perhaps because of it, made me much more jealous as a fiction writer myself. I deeply wish I could achieve that style, but I unfortunately have a pretty solidified authorial voice already — something in the latent space of styles between Lovecraft and Alistair Reynolds :P
        ethbr1 3y ago
        You probably don't want to read his post-Sprawl/Bridge books, then. ;) In response to the fan complaining, he said something to the effect of 'I wrote Necromancer when I was a young man, and that sort of thing doesn't interest me anymore.' His later work is far more subtle, sort of about the pervasiveness of dystopian corporate cyberpunk themes underneath modern culture and style? If you do want more Neuromancer, I'd recommend Richard K. Morgan's trilogy [0] (for god's sake, the books, not the TV series), Ian M. Banks' Culture books [1] (although maybe start with Excession, and read the others if you like it), or go retro for the original cyberpunk short story collections [2]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades Do you have a link to where I can find your work?

by scop 3y ago

logicprog 3y ago

You know, I think I can actually dig what you're getting at! :) It's not really for me, I like a lot more immediate clarity in the individual sentences of my fiction books, because for larger works like novels having to reread sentences feels more to me like being tripped up then getting a chance to admire a line of poetry or something, but I can totally see where you're coming from

ethbr1 3y ago
>> On the mountain the limestone shelves and climbs in ragged escarpments... The interesting twist to me is the mental back-rewrite on "limestone shelves" I initially read it as the more common {adjective}{noun}, before hitting "and climbs" and having to backtrack and reclassify as {noun}{verb}. And indeed, there is such a verb definition for "shelve": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shelve https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shelve I was a huge William Gibson fan in my youth though, which generally meant I figured out what the hell the author was talking about 3 sentences or pages later.
- logicprog 3y ago
  Interestingly, I'm actually a huge fan of Gibson's prose (reading Idoru rn, finished the Sprawl Trilogy and Burning Chrome last year), and even though I've been reading his stuff with the same neurological disorder I have now, I've never felt like I struggled to understand what he was saying.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I believe he's on record as saying Idoru was his favorite of his older books. :) To be fair too, Gibson/cyberpunk is probably more conceptually deferred than linguistically deferred. I.e. it'll toss out new words, then backfill definitions, versus simply combining English in complex ways
    - logicprog 3y ago
      That's a really interesting tidbit of information about Idoru! It's certainly an interesting book so far, although I've been having trouble being truly sucked into books lately thanks to various life circumstances. I will say though, out of all the books of his I've read so far, I actually most prefer the writing style of Neuromancer. His writing style is much more sleek and refined in his later Sprawl trilogy books and Idoru, but there was something special about the hallucinogenic verve of the descriptions he used in Neuromancer and Burning Chrome that, in spite of the jank or perhaps because of it, made me much more jealous as a fiction writer myself. I deeply wish I could achieve that style, but I unfortunately have a pretty solidified authorial voice already — something in the latent space of styles between Lovecraft and Alistair Reynolds :P
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        You probably don't want to read his post-Sprawl/Bridge books, then. ;) In response to the fan complaining, he said something to the effect of 'I wrote Necromancer when I was a young man, and that sort of thing doesn't interest me anymore.' His later work is far more subtle, sort of about the pervasiveness of dystopian corporate cyberpunk themes underneath modern culture and style? If you do want more Neuromancer, I'd recommend Richard K. Morgan's trilogy [0] (for god's sake, the books, not the TV series), Ian M. Banks' Culture books [1] (although maybe start with Excession, and read the others if you like it), or go retro for the original cyberpunk short story collections [2]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades Do you have a link to where I can find your work?