Laith
This is a detective novel, but the detective, Lionel, has Tourette's Syndrome. It's as insane to read as it is to describe, and I mean that in the best possible way. He's ticcing in the middle of interrogations, in the middle of moments where he needs to be discrete, even in his own internal monologue, it's pure chaos.
When I frame it like that, it sounds like some sort of sophomoric writing challenge: first to write a book with a character with Tourette's and have it make any sense linguistically, and second to have that character then skulk though the shadows like he's Philip Marlowe. But it's not like that at all, it's a solid read, astoundingly so; I was skeptical at first, but as I read on it became less and less about the Tourette's and entirely about Lionel's compulsion to solve the mystery of his Boss's murder. Rather than detracting from the experience, Lionel's tics, compulsions, and general paranoia come to shape the increasingly manic and spiraling narrative.
In fact, Lionel steals the whole show; I'd say the book is less a tale of mystery and intrigue (which it certainly is chock-full of) and more an incredibly sympathetic and thoughtful character study of an orphan finding his family. As much as I love a good ol' fashion mystery-thriller, there's so much more to Motherless Brooklyn than its mystery subplot, it's truly a work of literary and linguistic genius, human in all the right places and utterly captivating.
I think I'll play this review close to the chest, if you're not interested in this book by now, feel free to skip it, but I can safely say that I've never read anything like this before and I doubt I ever will again. I'll have to find a copy for my shelf.
This is a detective novel, but the detective, Lionel, has Tourette's Syndrome. It's as insane to read as it is to describe, and I mean that in the best possible way. He's ticcing in the middle of interrogations, in the middle of moments where he needs to be discrete, even in his own internal monologue, it's pure chaos.
When I frame it like that, it sounds like some sort of sophomoric writing challenge: first to write a book with a character with Tourette's and have it make any sense linguistically, and second to have that character then skulk though the shadows like he's Philip Marlowe. But it's not like that at all, it's a solid read, astoundingly so; I was skeptical at first, but as I read on it became less and less about the Tourette's and entirely about Lionel's compulsion to solve the mystery of his Boss's murder. Rather than detracting from the experience, Lionel's tics, compulsions, and general paranoia come to shape the increasingly manic and spiraling narrative.
In fact, Lionel steals the whole show; I'd say the book is less a tale of mystery and intrigue (which it certainly is chock-full of) and more an incredibly sympathetic and thoughtful character study of an orphan finding his family. As much as I love a good ol' fashion mystery-thriller, there's so much more to Motherless Brooklyn than its mystery subplot, it's truly a work of literary and linguistic genius, human in all the right places and utterly captivating.
I think I'll play this review close to the chest, if you're not interested in this book by now, feel free to skip it, but I can safely say that I've never read anything like this before and I doubt I ever will again. I'll have to find a copy for my shelf.
I'll keep this short. I don't think you're supposed to like this book, and if you find yourself relating to any of its characters, especially if you're in your 30s, that should be a wake-up call. Time to move to Alaska and start a new life.
Reading this book is like anesthetizing yourself, like peering into Nietzsche's abyss, it erodes you. I'd say that I hated it completely, but I deeply appreciate the craft and quality. It takes real skill to make something so souless, the fact that I couldn't put it down until its pointless conclusion is another point in its favor.
Apparently, this resonated with 80s kids- it was a bestseller and the beach read of 1985, its cover peeking out from the BOGG bag of the chicest of the chic (maybe they didn't have BOGG bags back then). I find that illustration to be a perfect encapsulation of what the book is, it's a time capsule - something from the malformed youth for the malformed youth.
It does exactly what it was intended to do- a total commitment to concept, and I like the book for that artistic commitment, I just didn't like its actual substance.
I'll keep this short. I don't think you're supposed to like this book, and if you find yourself relating to any of its characters, especially if you're in your 30s, that should be a wake-up call. Time to move to Alaska and start a new life.
Reading this book is like anesthetizing yourself, like peering into Nietzsche's abyss, it erodes you. I'd say that I hated it completely, but I deeply appreciate the craft and quality. It takes real skill to make something so souless, the fact that I couldn't put it down until its pointless conclusion is another point in its favor.
Apparently, this resonated with 80s kids- it was a bestseller and the beach read of 1985, its cover peeking out from the BOGG bag of the chicest of the chic (maybe they didn't have BOGG bags back then). I find that illustration to be a perfect encapsulation of what the book is, it's a time capsule - something from the malformed youth for the malformed youth.
It does exactly what it was intended to do- a total commitment to concept, and I like the book for that artistic commitment, I just didn't like its actual substance.
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
The Duration of Hell
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much thought, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The Library of Babel
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
The Babylonian Lottery
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this collection, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
The Duration of Hell
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much thought, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The Library of Babel
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
The Babylonian Lottery
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this collection, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
This book took me two months to finish and it would have dragged on for much longer if not for the folks behind the audio.worm project, I regret only finding it after reading 90% through. Before I get into this book I want to thank that group of likely insane fans for the hundreds of hours they took to read and record this behemoth. To any potential reader, I highly recommend finding the fan-made audiobook on Apple podcasts because simply finding the time to READ this whole thing was driving me insane.
This has been a constant in my life for the last two months so I'm sorry if this review runs a little long. I think for a book like this I need to change up my review format, so I will frame this as a Q&A for potential readers.
Q: What is Worm?
A: Worm was/is a superhero web serial novel published between Jan 2011 and Nov 2013, It has 30 Volumes/arcs and was published bi-weekly at a pace of around 80 pages a week. If that doesn't drop your jaw consider it like this: Wildbow was basically publishing a complete novel a month, every month, for nearly THREE YEARS. Reading this in 2023 means reading the presumably edited epub edition (though you can read this chapter by chapter for free online) with minor changes to the original story.
Q: Okay maybe I should have been more specific smartass, What is Worm about?
A: Worm is set in a world where people start getting superpowers, usually this process occurs after some type of deeply traumatic incident. The story follows Taylor Hebert, a high school student who has recently lost her mother in a car accident and is facing a targeted campaign of bullying at school. As a result of the bullying Taylor awakens a power to control all of the bugs in her vicinity and her priorities change. With the purest of intentions, Taylor dons the tights of justice only to find out that the distinction between hero and villain isn't as clear cut as she thought.
If this sounds like every other cut-and-dried superhero premise that's because it is. But Worm is something a little more, It's not obvious from the premise or the early chapters but this is the sort of superhero story cut from the same cloth as Watchmen and The Boys. Taylor's early attempts to fit herself into the mold of a hero run into a series of setbacks that erode her faith in the establishment. She opts to cross the line, adopting the monicker “Skitter”, Taylor joins a group of up-and-coming villains called the Undersiders.
But that's just the premise and early plot, what Worm is really about is escalation. This is a story about someone making all the right decisions at the moment, only to have that decision trigger an even larger crisis, rinse, and repeat until the stakes are beyond global.
Q: What makes this special, why should I read something like this?
A: A concise answer would be the intricate world-building, well-defined characters, and expansive power system. The author delves deep into the psychological and emotional aspects of being a superhero, as well as the consequences of their actions on society and themselves. The narrative is both engaging and unpredictable, filled with twists and turns that keep readers hooked.
Worm has a lot in common with traditional superhero stories, but where it excels is where it subverts the trope and convention of the genre. Characters face realistic consequences for their actions, and there is a constant sense of danger and stakes. The story also delves into themes of identity, morality, and the blurry line between good and evil. The author's willingness to explore these themes in a thought-provoking manner sets “Worm” apart from more conventional superhero stories.
There's something to be said for the medium as well, your standard superhero story has almost always existed within the pages and the conventions of comic books. Worm trades the convenience and artistry of illustrated chapters for the depth and nuance that comes with an all-text story. Every character has a backstory that gets explored, details about the world are plainly stated, and as a reader you are made aware of all of those small things that would have traditionally been hidden in panel art.
Q: Okay you've talked pros, give me some cons, what's wrong with it?
A: I want to say clearly before I dive deep and nerdy into this that If I didn't like this series I wouldn't have stuck with it to the conclusion, I wouldn't be masocistically contemplating reading the sequel either. That said there were a number of things that bothered me enough that I almost DID put the book down, and I am not sure how much of me powering through was due to Worm's overall quality and how much it was me trying to complete a challenge I'd taken on.
The early chapters suck and I knew that going in, I am under the impression that Wildbow went back while editing the epub and strengthened some of these early chapters but that doesn't really impact how good/interesting it is at the outset. Every hero and villain needs their origin story, and at this point in the novel, the story reads like most other fan fiction. It takes a while for the narrative engine of escalation to take hold in the universe; I would wager that it's not until the introduction of Coil and Dinah (nearly 4 or 5 Volumes into the series) that the story finds the beats that will continue to run throughout.
This story was published and planned piecemeal. Wildbow has stated that he would often write himself into deadends and then force himself to write back out just to keep the tension of the narrative going; after all, if even the author doesn't know where this is going how can the reader know? I'm sure that this piecemeal approach allowed the story to benefit from reader feedback in real-time, and to his credit, there is a significant amount of tension surrounding key moments in the story so it's a partial success. But not having a planned story really fucks with the flow of this book, the pacing is all over the place, there are time skips and the additions of whole hosts of never before seen heroes, and the backstory has been delivered in donation-driven interludes that breakup this already gasping story even further.
Another consequence of working from a rough or non-existent outline is that your story runs the risk of losing the reader even at the best of times. There are whole volumes in Worm that I cannot riddle the meaning or significance of, some revelations are buried in detail-rich text and leave you scratching your head for hours of storytime. We never get a consistent villain and the world continues to evolve and confound with each twist. When Wildbow is on the ball this is the most exhilarating part of reading the book, but the quality is not consistent chapter by chapter.
Q: Anything else I need to know?
A: Worm is exciting, varied, and endlessly complex. Just reading the wiki could entertain you for hours and hours. The peaks are high and the valleys are low. I thought that reading the edited epub compilation would mean that I would skip over some of those valleys but I was wrong. Do not go into this book expecting to read something that's been run through with a fine tooth comb, expect some ends to remain loose, and for developments to be nonsensical or even cartoonish. All things told though this is a superhero book at its heart and it's okay to be all of those things.
I really wish that Wildbow had sat down, read this whole series over, and just went to town with the red pen. I see no reason why the retail publication had to be the same as the web publication, warts, and all. This could have been a 3,000-page, 4 or 5 Volume box set, and I am positive that all of these arcs could have been condensed into six 800 page books. Portions of the plot could have been reworked, interludes brought into the primary narrative, and foreshadowing could have been added retroactively. There is so much potential in here and this is not the publishing release I would have hoped for.
I want to talk about fanfic for just a second as well. There is such a City of Heroes RP vibe coming off of this book and I don't know if it's intentional or just a consequence of writing a scenario like this to begin with. I don't say that to put anyone off, but if you're thinking of picking this up you should know that there is a whole fanfic universe that surrounds Worm, lots of readers who write in this universe. Obviously, I am not a contemporary reader but some of the unexplained gaps and surprise characters seemed to be Wildbow folding in some of those fanfic stories and heroes. I could be wrong on that point so don't quote me.
I wouldn't pick this up unless you have some time to kill, all the reviews that say this is nectar from the gods are from serious nerds that have probably already read more comics than everyone you know put together and have been dying for more content. Worm is good, even great at times but there are so many better ways to spend your time. If Wildbow ever comes back to this volume I hope he really considers a partial rewrite and some serious consolidation. I enjoyed this book a lot but I would not recommend something like this to 99% of the people that I know, it just isn't in a state that invites someone to read it.
This book took me two months to finish and it would have dragged on for much longer if not for the folks behind the audio.worm project, I regret only finding it after reading 90% through. Before I get into this book I want to thank that group of likely insane fans for the hundreds of hours they took to read and record this behemoth. To any potential reader, I highly recommend finding the fan-made audiobook on Apple podcasts because simply finding the time to READ this whole thing was driving me insane.
This has been a constant in my life for the last two months so I'm sorry if this review runs a little long. I think for a book like this I need to change up my review format, so I will frame this as a Q&A for potential readers.
Q: What is Worm?
A: Worm was/is a superhero web serial novel published between Jan 2011 and Nov 2013, It has 30 Volumes/arcs and was published bi-weekly at a pace of around 80 pages a week. If that doesn't drop your jaw consider it like this: Wildbow was basically publishing a complete novel a month, every month, for nearly THREE YEARS. Reading this in 2023 means reading the presumably edited epub edition (though you can read this chapter by chapter for free online) with minor changes to the original story.
Q: Okay maybe I should have been more specific smartass, What is Worm about?
A: Worm is set in a world where people start getting superpowers, usually this process occurs after some type of deeply traumatic incident. The story follows Taylor Hebert, a high school student who has recently lost her mother in a car accident and is facing a targeted campaign of bullying at school. As a result of the bullying Taylor awakens a power to control all of the bugs in her vicinity and her priorities change. With the purest of intentions, Taylor dons the tights of justice only to find out that the distinction between hero and villain isn't as clear cut as she thought.
If this sounds like every other cut-and-dried superhero premise that's because it is. But Worm is something a little more, It's not obvious from the premise or the early chapters but this is the sort of superhero story cut from the same cloth as Watchmen and The Boys. Taylor's early attempts to fit herself into the mold of a hero run into a series of setbacks that erode her faith in the establishment. She opts to cross the line, adopting the monicker “Skitter”, Taylor joins a group of up-and-coming villains called the Undersiders.
But that's just the premise and early plot, what Worm is really about is escalation. This is a story about someone making all the right decisions at the moment, only to have that decision trigger an even larger crisis, rinse, and repeat until the stakes are beyond global.
Q: What makes this special, why should I read something like this?
A: A concise answer would be the intricate world-building, well-defined characters, and expansive power system. The author delves deep into the psychological and emotional aspects of being a superhero, as well as the consequences of their actions on society and themselves. The narrative is both engaging and unpredictable, filled with twists and turns that keep readers hooked.
Worm has a lot in common with traditional superhero stories, but where it excels is where it subverts the trope and convention of the genre. Characters face realistic consequences for their actions, and there is a constant sense of danger and stakes. The story also delves into themes of identity, morality, and the blurry line between good and evil. The author's willingness to explore these themes in a thought-provoking manner sets “Worm” apart from more conventional superhero stories.
There's something to be said for the medium as well, your standard superhero story has almost always existed within the pages and the conventions of comic books. Worm trades the convenience and artistry of illustrated chapters for the depth and nuance that comes with an all-text story. Every character has a backstory that gets explored, details about the world are plainly stated, and as a reader you are made aware of all of those small things that would have traditionally been hidden in panel art.
Q: Okay you've talked pros, give me some cons, what's wrong with it?
A: I want to say clearly before I dive deep and nerdy into this that If I didn't like this series I wouldn't have stuck with it to the conclusion, I wouldn't be masocistically contemplating reading the sequel either. That said there were a number of things that bothered me enough that I almost DID put the book down, and I am not sure how much of me powering through was due to Worm's overall quality and how much it was me trying to complete a challenge I'd taken on.
The early chapters suck and I knew that going in, I am under the impression that Wildbow went back while editing the epub and strengthened some of these early chapters but that doesn't really impact how good/interesting it is at the outset. Every hero and villain needs their origin story, and at this point in the novel, the story reads like most other fan fiction. It takes a while for the narrative engine of escalation to take hold in the universe; I would wager that it's not until the introduction of Coil and Dinah (nearly 4 or 5 Volumes into the series) that the story finds the beats that will continue to run throughout.
This story was published and planned piecemeal. Wildbow has stated that he would often write himself into deadends and then force himself to write back out just to keep the tension of the narrative going; after all, if even the author doesn't know where this is going how can the reader know? I'm sure that this piecemeal approach allowed the story to benefit from reader feedback in real-time, and to his credit, there is a significant amount of tension surrounding key moments in the story so it's a partial success. But not having a planned story really fucks with the flow of this book, the pacing is all over the place, there are time skips and the additions of whole hosts of never before seen heroes, and the backstory has been delivered in donation-driven interludes that breakup this already gasping story even further.
Another consequence of working from a rough or non-existent outline is that your story runs the risk of losing the reader even at the best of times. There are whole volumes in Worm that I cannot riddle the meaning or significance of, some revelations are buried in detail-rich text and leave you scratching your head for hours of storytime. We never get a consistent villain and the world continues to evolve and confound with each twist. When Wildbow is on the ball this is the most exhilarating part of reading the book, but the quality is not consistent chapter by chapter.
Q: Anything else I need to know?
A: Worm is exciting, varied, and endlessly complex. Just reading the wiki could entertain you for hours and hours. The peaks are high and the valleys are low. I thought that reading the edited epub compilation would mean that I would skip over some of those valleys but I was wrong. Do not go into this book expecting to read something that's been run through with a fine tooth comb, expect some ends to remain loose, and for developments to be nonsensical or even cartoonish. All things told though this is a superhero book at its heart and it's okay to be all of those things.
I really wish that Wildbow had sat down, read this whole series over, and just went to town with the red pen. I see no reason why the retail publication had to be the same as the web publication, warts, and all. This could have been a 3,000-page, 4 or 5 Volume box set, and I am positive that all of these arcs could have been condensed into six 800 page books. Portions of the plot could have been reworked, interludes brought into the primary narrative, and foreshadowing could have been added retroactively. There is so much potential in here and this is not the publishing release I would have hoped for.
I want to talk about fanfic for just a second as well. There is such a City of Heroes RP vibe coming off of this book and I don't know if it's intentional or just a consequence of writing a scenario like this to begin with. I don't say that to put anyone off, but if you're thinking of picking this up you should know that there is a whole fanfic universe that surrounds Worm, lots of readers who write in this universe. Obviously, I am not a contemporary reader but some of the unexplained gaps and surprise characters seemed to be Wildbow folding in some of those fanfic stories and heroes. I could be wrong on that point so don't quote me.
I wouldn't pick this up unless you have some time to kill, all the reviews that say this is nectar from the gods are from serious nerds that have probably already read more comics than everyone you know put together and have been dying for more content. Worm is good, even great at times but there are so many better ways to spend your time. If Wildbow ever comes back to this volume I hope he really considers a partial rewrite and some serious consolidation. I enjoyed this book a lot but I would not recommend something like this to 99% of the people that I know, it just isn't in a state that invites someone to read it.
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much thought, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much thought, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
I think this book has been around long enough to have a reputation that precedes it. In fact, the only thing I knew about 2666 was its reputation for quality among contemporary literary works. It absolutely lives up to that reputation, this book is challenging and ambitious; sprawling in scope and content, and I'm not just talking page count. This is a novel that overwhelms you, basically guaranteeing itself a reread before it's even finished.
It's a challenge just to explain what the book is about, because unlike a standard novel which delivers one linear plot, this story is fragmentary. 2666 is broken up into 5 distinct parts, which surround a series of unsolved murders in the city of Santa Teresa (a facsimile of Ciudad Juárez). The city is a nexus that draws to itself literary critics, sportswriter journalists, convicts, and dreamers; these stories of murder and mystery run tangential to the search for a reclusive German novelist, Benno Von Archimboldi (a reference to B. Traven, which is worth a Google). These parts are not genre writing, do not expect to read anything at all like a mystery novel, the mystery is the novel itself.
Those are just the broad strokes, each part tells an independent story, and it's the shared details of those minor stories which inform the larger narrative. When I first cracked this open, my intent was to review each piece independently, in keeping with the Author's last will. But that's not how something like this works. 2666 is the sum of its parts, and structured unlike anything else I've ever read. The pieces fit together however you want to puzzle it- but there are only enough pieces to give the impression of the image on the box.
This is an ambitious project, and if you're anything like me, you'll rip through the first three parts of this book grasping for anything resembling a meta-narrative to connect them. Then you'll read the fourth part, the part about the crimes, which was the literary equivalent of spending the day inside a war memorial or a holocaust museum, only for the fifth part to drag you through the horror of the Eastern front of WW2. It’s only once you're beaten down and exhausted, your expectations of what a book could be completely shattered, that Bolaño finally releases those last, crucial details to tie it all together. And then you realize that you've spent the last month reading almost a thousand pages, driven on almost solely by the brilliance of the prose and your own increasingly ravenous curiosity.
That's four paragraphs just on premise and structure alone, and we haven't even touched on prose or theme or the context of the author's life-are you starting to see the problem when it comes to reviewing this? It's a Masterpiece, like one for the canon and not just hyperbole, you could write 10,000 words on it and not even come close to paying it justice! Look at the other reviews, others have tried! This book is a deep sea of ideas and philosophy and perspective and metatextual commentary; these ideas serve as Bolaño's mark on the field of literature. I find it telling that it's only within the book itself that I can find the words to describe both the spirit and the enormity of its contents.
"Vulture of my Prometheus self or Prometheus of my Vulture self, [...] You may say that literature doesn't consist solely of masterpieces, but rather is populated by so called minor works. I believed that, too. Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wild-flowers. I was wrong. There's actually no such thing as a minor work. [...] Every minor work has a secret author and every secret author is, by definition, a writer of masterpieces [...] There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself I mean, [...] His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!"
I won't gush any further, because this book is not perfect. If you've skipped straight to the cons, then let me summarize the reading experience: exhausting and overwhelming. As novel as the structure is, and as successful as Bolaño is in delivering the narrative in spite of it, there are long stretches of the book where the reader is completely in the dark and subjected to the vicissitude of his trains of thought. If you're, someone who needs a constant sense of narrative progression, you are going to hate this book. If you are someone who cannot stand it when authors go off on long tangents that weave in and out of dialogue, you are going to hate this book. It's as simple as that.
You may also get the sense that the book is unfinished, and that's because by norms of publishing it is. Bolaño was racing the reaper by the end of the writing process, with the book only receiving one round of editing and feedback before his passing, and the posthumous release. There are gaps in quality and gaps in the narrative, but it's not clear if the final product was delivered by design or simply the clock's final result. This is my first Bolaño novel, so I can't really weigh in, people with more grounding in his body of work generally agree that what we got is very close to that hypothetical final draft.
It doesn't escape me that I've been complimenting the prose in a translation, so I must give a nod to Natasha Wimmer, I've read enough poor translations to recognize quality when I see it. While I obviously cannot compare the translation to the original, for the prose to contain so much of the author's voice and so little of the translator's interpretation speaks volumes.
For me 2666 sits up there with Moby Dick, a reading experience that I had all but forgotten until 2666 reminded me. I can recall how difficult I found Moby Dick at the start, only to read on, dictionary close to hand, and find myself transformed by the experience. Not only had I just exposed myself to something profound, but I had tested my mastery over language and redefined what I found to be a challenge. It was an eye-opening piece of literature to me, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with overcoming something challenging was just the cherry on top.
While 2666 isn't perfect, and something of a chore to read, I felt the same feeling as I did with Moby Dick when I turned the last page of this book. A feeling that the experience of reading the book was just as valuable as its content.
PS: I know this review is huge, but I have a few extra notes as I come back to edit this.
First: I’ve tried really hard not to comment directly on the themes/my interpretation of the book in this review. That’s unique to this book because a. I could probably go on for at least another thousand words and b. I think your enjoyment of this text is determined by how curious of a reader you are. Much of this book is focused on the surface level events, the banal, and the remaining elements all point away from resolution; trying to understand the why, piercing through the subtlety, that is the core of the reading experience. I feel like explaining would spoil that experience, interpretations are something best saved to discuss with other readers.
With that said, if you somehow read through this whole review and you need to know what it's actually about, I can't put it any better than phantom_fonte did in this reddit comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/1coc67d/comment/l3g1qjm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1).
Second: I managed to get through all this without ever commenting on how much I adore the cover? People say don’t judge a book by its cover but like, this must be the exception that proves the rule. It’s a just small portion of Jupiter and Semele, the painting by the symbolist Gustave Moreau, and you should really look at the entire thing of it. If you know the story of Semele, the cover becomes yet another element added to the narrative. Out of all the possible elements in the full painting, the selection of death and the white lily is not lost on me either, “At the foot of the throne, Death and Sorrow form the tragic basis of Human Life.”
I think this book has been around long enough to have a reputation that precedes it. In fact, the only thing I knew about 2666 was its reputation for quality among contemporary literary works. It absolutely lives up to that reputation, this book is challenging and ambitious; sprawling in scope and content, and I'm not just talking page count. This is a novel that overwhelms you, basically guaranteeing itself a reread before it's even finished.
It's a challenge just to explain what the book is about, because unlike a standard novel which delivers one linear plot, this story is fragmentary. 2666 is broken up into 5 distinct parts, which surround a series of unsolved murders in the city of Santa Teresa (a facsimile of Ciudad Juárez). The city is a nexus that draws to itself literary critics, sportswriter journalists, convicts, and dreamers; these stories of murder and mystery run tangential to the search for a reclusive German novelist, Benno Von Archimboldi (a reference to B. Traven, which is worth a Google). These parts are not genre writing, do not expect to read anything at all like a mystery novel, the mystery is the novel itself.
Those are just the broad strokes, each part tells an independent story, and it's the shared details of those minor stories which inform the larger narrative. When I first cracked this open, my intent was to review each piece independently, in keeping with the Author's last will. But that's not how something like this works. 2666 is the sum of its parts, and structured unlike anything else I've ever read. The pieces fit together however you want to puzzle it- but there are only enough pieces to give the impression of the image on the box.
This is an ambitious project, and if you're anything like me, you'll rip through the first three parts of this book grasping for anything resembling a meta-narrative to connect them. Then you'll read the fourth part, the part about the crimes, which was the literary equivalent of spending the day inside a war memorial or a holocaust museum, only for the fifth part to drag you through the horror of the Eastern front of WW2. It’s only once you're beaten down and exhausted, your expectations of what a book could be completely shattered, that Bolaño finally releases those last, crucial details to tie it all together. And then you realize that you've spent the last month reading almost a thousand pages, driven on almost solely by the brilliance of the prose and your own increasingly ravenous curiosity.
That's four paragraphs just on premise and structure alone, and we haven't even touched on prose or theme or the context of the author's life-are you starting to see the problem when it comes to reviewing this? It's a Masterpiece, like one for the canon and not just hyperbole, you could write 10,000 words on it and not even come close to paying it justice! Look at the other reviews, others have tried! This book is a deep sea of ideas and philosophy and perspective and metatextual commentary; these ideas serve as Bolaño's mark on the field of literature. I find it telling that it's only within the book itself that I can find the words to describe both the spirit and the enormity of its contents.
"Vulture of my Prometheus self or Prometheus of my Vulture self, [...] You may say that literature doesn't consist solely of masterpieces, but rather is populated by so called minor works. I believed that, too. Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wild-flowers. I was wrong. There's actually no such thing as a minor work. [...] Every minor work has a secret author and every secret author is, by definition, a writer of masterpieces [...] There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself I mean, [...] His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!"
I won't gush any further, because this book is not perfect. If you've skipped straight to the cons, then let me summarize the reading experience: exhausting and overwhelming. As novel as the structure is, and as successful as Bolaño is in delivering the narrative in spite of it, there are long stretches of the book where the reader is completely in the dark and subjected to the vicissitude of his trains of thought. If you're, someone who needs a constant sense of narrative progression, you are going to hate this book. If you are someone who cannot stand it when authors go off on long tangents that weave in and out of dialogue, you are going to hate this book. It's as simple as that.
You may also get the sense that the book is unfinished, and that's because by norms of publishing it is. Bolaño was racing the reaper by the end of the writing process, with the book only receiving one round of editing and feedback before his passing, and the posthumous release. There are gaps in quality and gaps in the narrative, but it's not clear if the final product was delivered by design or simply the clock's final result. This is my first Bolaño novel, so I can't really weigh in, people with more grounding in his body of work generally agree that what we got is very close to that hypothetical final draft.
It doesn't escape me that I've been complimenting the prose in a translation, so I must give a nod to Natasha Wimmer, I've read enough poor translations to recognize quality when I see it. While I obviously cannot compare the translation to the original, for the prose to contain so much of the author's voice and so little of the translator's interpretation speaks volumes.
For me 2666 sits up there with Moby Dick, a reading experience that I had all but forgotten until 2666 reminded me. I can recall how difficult I found Moby Dick at the start, only to read on, dictionary close to hand, and find myself transformed by the experience. Not only had I just exposed myself to something profound, but I had tested my mastery over language and redefined what I found to be a challenge. It was an eye-opening piece of literature to me, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with overcoming something challenging was just the cherry on top.
While 2666 isn't perfect, and something of a chore to read, I felt the same feeling as I did with Moby Dick when I turned the last page of this book. A feeling that the experience of reading the book was just as valuable as its content.
PS: I know this review is huge, but I have a few extra notes as I come back to edit this.
First: I’ve tried really hard not to comment directly on the themes/my interpretation of the book in this review. That’s unique to this book because a. I could probably go on for at least another thousand words and b. I think your enjoyment of this text is determined by how curious of a reader you are. Much of this book is focused on the surface level events, the banal, and the remaining elements all point away from resolution; trying to understand the why, piercing through the subtlety, that is the core of the reading experience. I feel like explaining would spoil that experience, interpretations are something best saved to discuss with other readers.
With that said, if you somehow read through this whole review and you need to know what it's actually about, I can't put it any better than phantom_fonte did in this reddit comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/1coc67d/comment/l3g1qjm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1).
Second: I managed to get through all this without ever commenting on how much I adore the cover? People say don’t judge a book by its cover but like, this must be the exception that proves the rule. It’s a just small portion of Jupiter and Semele, the painting by the symbolist Gustave Moreau, and you should really look at the entire thing of it. If you know the story of Semele, the cover becomes yet another element added to the narrative. Out of all the possible elements in the full painting, the selection of death and the white lily is not lost on me either, “At the foot of the throne, Death and Sorrow form the tragic basis of Human Life.”
I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.
I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would call this one of the modern classics.
Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.
This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.
That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.
The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.
I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.
I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.
TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.
I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.
I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would call this one of the modern classics.
Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.
This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.
That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.
The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.
I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.
I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.
TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.
Added to listFull Reviewswith 146 books.
Added to listFavoriteswith 54 books.
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much though, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
The Library of Babel is one of those short story collections you absolutely must read. Borges is your favorite author's favorite author and so many of his ideas have seeped their way into contemporary lit. Whether it's his inventive narratives or his remarkable use of language every story in this collection, no matter how short, will stick out in your mind and leave you thinking well after the pages are completed. You never really "finish" Borges.
What really drew me on this reading was the introductory essay- The Duration of Hell in which Borges detonates a theological hand grenade. I vividly recall Sunday school lessons where the concept of eternal damnation was introduced to me. I never really gave it all that much though, it was as if the concept tracked along with the other religious tenets (Charity, Prayer, Pilgrimage, etc). But as Borges points out the crime and the punishment are not proportional, sin is finite, but the punishment is infinite. He presents the logical problem, god is just and justice is proportional; and then he walks away resolving nothing. You can't stop thinking about it once you've read this piece.
The titular Library of Babel is of course the main draw here, it's a variation on the idea that a room full of monkeys and typewriters will eventually produce a work of Shakespeare on a long enough timeline. It's incredible, and it has gone on to inspire and influence every generation of authors that followed its publishing- if you had a good professor you've probably already read it or at least some other Borges.
Following along the themes present in The Duration of Hell, the last piece that's an absolute must read is the Babylonian Lottery. It's another Borges masterpiece and it really highlights his talent for building elegant but labyrinthine logical puzzles. This is a deceptively simple piece about a lottery in Babylon that introduces punishments, secret drawings, and then invisible administration. Eventually the lottery governs everything and nobody knows what's chance and what's by design. There are so many wild interpretations that this story invites, and the one that I personally continue to ruminate on is whether or not randomness is different from destiny, whether chaos is just another form of order. From the outset chance is presented as liberating, but as randomness comes to govern over all it really becomes indistinguishable from fate.
I loved this, and I read it right after the disappointment that was Shadows Upon Time. I wonder how much better that series could have been had Roucchio been a Borges fan (and if he is a Borges fan, I guess that's even more of a let down).
I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.
I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would call this one of the modern classics.
Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.
This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.
That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.
The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.
I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.
I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.
TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.
I first read this while traveling in the summer of 2014. I'd seen the movie, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but this book blew my socks off. Not only that, but I couldn't believe how different the book was, where was Denise Richards? The troopers wear mobile suits? Neodogs? Why did the military government have such an American ring to it? I wish I had sat down and took some notes from that first read, but I didn't. It feels weird to review on a re-read and this book already has like a million reviews anyway, so I guess this will be more like a blog entry than an actual review. If you haven't read this book, but you like SF then do yourself a favor and read it, the same goes for fans of the movie and more generally for people with pulses who like good books.
I recently read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, it's a completely opposite end of the spectrum type of book compared to Starship Troopers. But I want to note that Troopers came out just 5 years after Lucky Jim. They couldn't be more different books, but they're both classics as far as I am concerned. Somewhere in the time between them, one era ended and another began. I see the impact of the times in both of these books: In Jim we see the angst of the post-war educated and a rejection of the old ordering of society. Troopers takes that post-war influence and extrapolates it onto a galaxy-spanning human empire, the concept of a technocratic authoritarian future looming large in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I would call this one of the modern classics.
Modern? This book is 60 years old! You say.
This book is old. You'd be forgiven for seeing the publishing date and thinking that fact would reflect in the writing. Let's get one thing straight, minus the Neodogs and small traces of the Leave it to Beaver Era vocab, I thought this could have been published last week. The secret sauce here is that unlike something relatively contemporary to Troopers, something like Lucky Jim, this is genre writing. At this point in time, I get the sense that the modern tropes for the SF genre were being unveiled. The SF stories of the Golden Age started taking on a more realistic tone. The concept of a technologically advanced future was legitimized as we gained the ability to vaporize whole cities. The period in which this was published is the transition between the Golden Age and the New Wave of SF. We're talking Bradbury to Dick, books like 1984 and I, Robot, ad infinitum; these classics went on to define the genre's unique embrace of hard edged science and political philosophy.
That's the best thing about Troopers (and SF larger still), even if you find the philosophy contained therein to be a little dusty or unsound, there is a philosophy to engage with, and it's a philosophy that modern readers are more than capable of engaging with. A lot of early SF that made a mark were books that delivered this engaging blend of interstellar scenario and secret philosophy essay. But those titles which predate this period never really got the story mechanics as polished as they were by this point, compare Huxley and Burroughs to Bradbury or Asimov. To me, Troopers embodies this personal definition of modern SF, it's a philosophy dissertation masquerading (quite well) as a pulpy SF Man vs Alien story.
The philosophy is a double-edged sword here. I think the main thing that holds Troopers back for a lot of people is that the philosophy of the book is absolute blue bleeding conservative fascism. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to read this book and think that it's disgusting and perverse; this window into the possible future is heartbreaking and pessimistic. Furthermore, I think the modern worldview is in part defined by the active prevention of a Kipling tinted future. To learn the right lesson from the tragedies of both World Wars is to stand in opposition to endless war and military rule. In blowing the whistle and calling Nazi, you would in-fact be echoing the critical reception this book received from its contemporaries and from scholars in the following decades.
I say all that, so I don't sound an apologist for this next part. This book is a product of its time to its core. This is the postwar era, the president has been General Ike for the last two terms, and here comes another veteran in JFK. The America of this time is the post Korea-post McCarthy-baby boom-domino theory American Empire we're talking about. To read Starship Troopers and not see it belie the course of American politics in the 1950s is to put one's own head in the sand. Consider that Heinlein is painting with the colors of the time, and you will see that this work is not entirely self-consistent. Given a purity test, there are some elements that read as liberal, elitist, or even libertarian alongside the more apparent Fascist overtones; there's a dual-handedness to a lot of the ideas as they are presented. Women in this book are a perfect example of what I'm talking about: on one hand it's a progressive concept to have women serve alongside men, on the other hand how much of this book is antiquated machismo and paternalism directed in the female direction (a lot). There is some nuance here is my point, and I choose to take it as Heinlein inviting the reader to grapple with the philosophy rather than espousing those beliefs as right and true.
I think that invitation to grapple is the ethos that inspired the satirical nature of the movie (Of course, I have to mention the movie, name a more iconic pairing). I think that in nerddom it's rare to see a movie that strays so far from the source material wind up being the most appropriate adaptation. I don't think I would be such a fan of the movie if I wasn't also a fan of the book. Even without reading Troopers, you can see the satire in the film-it's dripping off of the poster. Once I gave this book a read I found myself appreciating the movie differently, a straight adaptation may as well just be an extended recruitment advertisement and even that remark makes its way into the film. As a satire the film manages to highlight the aspect of Troopers that dares you to disagree, it has its own magic and message and without that aspect to it, I doubt Troopers would be a definitive cult classic in either medium.
TL;DR: It's classic for a reason, and it isn't a tough or boring read either.
This popped on my radar after I finished The Secret History, with Lethem being a onetime classmate of Donna Tartt and one of the many Bennington-related authors that became the white-hot stars of ’90s and ’00s lit. The Fortress of Solitude is his semi-autobiographical opus, a loud and racially charged exploration of his childhood in ’60s/’70s Brooklyn. It tells the story of Dylan and Mingus, two friends who grew up in the shadows cast by their evolving neighborhood and their absent mothers. Dylan, the lone white face in a sea of Black, recounts his youth in pre-gentrified/gentrifying Brooklyn; Mingus is his oasis and conduit, his childhood friend and the focal point of the book. This book is huge, and I’m not just talking page count; it’s simultaneously a bildungsroman, time capsule, and social justice essay wrapped around a comic book plot.
Split into two halves—childhood and later adulthood—Dylan recounts his life after the abandonment by his mother and the arrival of Mingus and his father, Barrett Rude Jr. Mingus’s arrival heralds Dylan’s debut into adolescence as they become fast friends. Exploring music, comics, graffiti art, and their sexual identities, the boys grow incredibly close. Things change when Dylan meets the flying homeless man, Aaron X. Doily (who I can only assume is the impetus for the character of Hancock (2008)), who gives Dylan his magic ring, which he in turn gives to Mingus. Mingus learns to fly with the power of the ring, gradually becoming separate from Dylan as his cohort expands to include the neighborhood ne’er-do-wells Arthur and Robert Woolfolk, his interests diverge from comics to cocaine, and Dylan grows increasingly alienated from him.
Their separation becomes more concrete when Mingus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather, the novel transitioning to Dylan’s aimless years bouncing from the NYC punk scene to college and ultimately to Berkeley, and his eventual career writing the liner notes for Barrett Rude Jr.’s compilation album.
Dylan cannot find peace; he finds himself trapped in an existential loop that can only be resolved by breaking Mingus out of prison. So that’s exactly what he does. Armed with Doily’s magic ring, its powers having changed to grant invisibility, Dylan sets out to free his friend.
I read this and Motherless Brooklyn in advance of my first trip to New York earlier this year; ironically, I did not have the time to cross the East River, much less the Gowanus Canal. I mention this because whether you’ll like this book is make-or-break on whether you like Lethem’s highly detailed prose. As I still remain a Brooklyn virgin, I found his descriptive style captivating and illustrative—this is some of the best English written. Likewise, I could see that same attention to detail overwhelming or choking, depending on the reader. Particularly if you’re from Brooklyn, I doubt you need the four pages he seems to devote to each minor setting.
That said, this book is sprawling. Whether it’s the not-quite coming-of-age story it tells, the comic book subplot, the devotion to set and setting, or the secondary focus on music, there seems to be something for everyone. I will echo other reviews in saying the last third is underwhelming. As I hinted before, the only real complaint I have is that the characters never truly mature; Dylan’s motivations are less relatable, and it leads the final act into nonsense territory.
This popped on my radar after I finished The Secret History, with Lethem being a onetime classmate of Donna Tartt and one of the many Bennington-related authors that became the white-hot stars of ’90s and ’00s lit. The Fortress of Solitude is his semi-autobiographical opus, a loud and racially charged exploration of his childhood in ’60s/’70s Brooklyn. It tells the story of Dylan and Mingus, two friends who grew up in the shadows cast by their evolving neighborhood and their absent mothers. Dylan, the lone white face in a sea of Black, recounts his youth in pre-gentrified/gentrifying Brooklyn; Mingus is his oasis and conduit, his childhood friend and the focal point of the book. This book is huge, and I’m not just talking page count; it’s simultaneously a bildungsroman, time capsule, and social justice essay wrapped around a comic book plot.
Split into two halves—childhood and later adulthood—Dylan recounts his life after the abandonment by his mother and the arrival of Mingus and his father, Barrett Rude Jr. Mingus’s arrival heralds Dylan’s debut into adolescence as they become fast friends. Exploring music, comics, graffiti art, and their sexual identities, the boys grow incredibly close. Things change when Dylan meets the flying homeless man, Aaron X. Doily (who I can only assume is the impetus for the character of Hancock (2008)), who gives Dylan his magic ring, which he in turn gives to Mingus. Mingus learns to fly with the power of the ring, gradually becoming separate from Dylan as his cohort expands to include the neighborhood ne’er-do-wells Arthur and Robert Woolfolk, his interests diverge from comics to cocaine, and Dylan grows increasingly alienated from him.
Their separation becomes more concrete when Mingus is arrested for the murder of his grandfather, the novel transitioning to Dylan’s aimless years bouncing from the NYC punk scene to college and ultimately to Berkeley, and his eventual career writing the liner notes for Barrett Rude Jr.’s compilation album.
Dylan cannot find peace; he finds himself trapped in an existential loop that can only be resolved by breaking Mingus out of prison. So that’s exactly what he does. Armed with Doily’s magic ring, its powers having changed to grant invisibility, Dylan sets out to free his friend.
I read this and Motherless Brooklyn in advance of my first trip to New York earlier this year; ironically, I did not have the time to cross the East River, much less the Gowanus Canal. I mention this because whether you’ll like this book is make-or-break on whether you like Lethem’s highly detailed prose. As I still remain a Brooklyn virgin, I found his descriptive style captivating and illustrative—this is some of the best English written. Likewise, I could see that same attention to detail overwhelming or choking, depending on the reader. Particularly if you’re from Brooklyn, I doubt you need the four pages he seems to devote to each minor setting.
That said, this book is sprawling. Whether it’s the not-quite coming-of-age story it tells, the comic book subplot, the devotion to set and setting, or the secondary focus on music, there seems to be something for everyone. I will echo other reviews in saying the last third is underwhelming. As I hinted before, the only real complaint I have is that the characters never truly mature; Dylan’s motivations are less relatable, and it leads the final act into nonsense territory.