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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"The Narrator" belongs to the same genre of the New Weird as Vandermeer's "City of Saints and Madmen," Bishop's "The Etched City," and Harrison's "Viriconium" (although less the Vandermeer as that work does not have an extant war subplot). These works typically present solitary narrators wandering through psychogeographic, urban environments encountering, well, weird imagery, all of which I should like. However, the urban environments are always a little too normal feeling (they could be the dark corners of any real city), and the imagery is never quite weird enough for my tastes. And beyond this there is often an underdevelopment of theme, lack of plot, and flat characterization not driven by internal, emotional conflict—these later issues being what, I think, ultimately defines the works–both in why they feel weird, but also why they don't satisfy me as stories.
Cisco's book suffers from some of these same issues—the urban exploration at the beginning evokes a morbid atmosphere, but by no means a weird one. The novel eventually does break out some excellently strange images, but only in the last third to a quarter once the characters reach the 'interior.' But beyond the vague theme/plot of 'warfare is bad' there is no real cohesive plot movement or significance to the conflict. What are the two sides after? Who knows. Who cares? Likewise with the character of Low, who doesn't want to fight in a war and occasionally thinks of a girl he left behind but only barely knew—but there is no clear, personal or deeply felt connection between him as a character and these motivations, nor is this conflict resolved or not through a thematic connection.
What is left, then, is the weird imagery. In "The Narrator" this comes so late as to not quite justify the lead-up. The sinister and hallucinatory purpose of the cemetery in the interior is really quite unique, and excellently written, but it also raised a question for me: how do flat characters realistically react to weird imagery from within an already weird world that does not explicitly state what is or is not normal? Clearly Low and the other soldiers have strong reactions to what they—this is not the acceptance found in Magical Realism—but it's a lot harder to gauge if they should be reacting, and what impact that would have on us, the reader.
Comparing the New Weird to Magical Realism may actually help understand what Cisco is trying to do, as both genres attempt to use non-real imagery and incidents to grapple with the psychological impossibility of understanding the cultural impact of such social traumas as warfare or colonialism, etc. But where Magical Realism deliteralizes and attempts t explain these horrors by putting them on a continuum with the accepted magical, the New Weird achieves the opposite effect of making reality itself unreal in the face of the inexplicable. Or at least that is part of the effect achieved in "The Narrator" regardless what else it accomplishes as a story or as an example of its genre.
Cisco's book suffers from some of these same issues—the urban exploration at the beginning evokes a morbid atmosphere, but by no means a weird one. The novel eventually does break out some excellently strange images, but only in the last third to a quarter once the characters reach the 'interior.' But beyond the vague theme/plot of 'warfare is bad' there is no real cohesive plot movement or significance to the conflict. What are the two sides after? Who knows. Who cares? Likewise with the character of Low, who doesn't want to fight in a war and occasionally thinks of a girl he left behind but only barely knew—but there is no clear, personal or deeply felt connection between him as a character and these motivations, nor is this conflict resolved or not through a thematic connection.
What is left, then, is the weird imagery. In "The Narrator" this comes so late as to not quite justify the lead-up. The sinister and hallucinatory purpose of the cemetery in the interior is really quite unique, and excellently written, but it also raised a question for me: how do flat characters realistically react to weird imagery from within an already weird world that does not explicitly state what is or is not normal? Clearly Low and the other soldiers have strong reactions to what they—this is not the acceptance found in Magical Realism—but it's a lot harder to gauge if they should be reacting, and what impact that would have on us, the reader.
Comparing the New Weird to Magical Realism may actually help understand what Cisco is trying to do, as both genres attempt to use non-real imagery and incidents to grapple with the psychological impossibility of understanding the cultural impact of such social traumas as warfare or colonialism, etc. But where Magical Realism deliteralizes and attempts t explain these horrors by putting them on a continuum with the accepted magical, the New Weird achieves the opposite effect of making reality itself unreal in the face of the inexplicable. Or at least that is part of the effect achieved in "The Narrator" regardless what else it accomplishes as a story or as an example of its genre.
Un llibre força original, se li ha de reconèixer. Dins del gènere "weird". El llibre retrata un exèrcit (des del reclutament fins a la pròpia guerra) en un món fantàstic. És original sobretot en la forma: un narrador que juga entre la 1a i la 3a persona, que no saps si està explicant la realitat o un somni, que no saps com de fiable és... Ni tan sols de si sempre és el mateix narrador. A partir d'aquí, la cosa va a gustos.
En el meu cas, m'ha costat molt connectar-hi. Tot allò que el converteix en original a mi m'ha costat. Massa confús per mi tot plegat.
Pel què fa a l'edició... He trobat molts errors (confusions entre tu/tú, verbs repetits com "en el suelo hay estan"...) i frases complicadíssimes d'entendre. Una pena, tot plegat.
En el meu cas, m'ha costat molt connectar-hi. Tot allò que el converteix en original a mi m'ha costat. Massa confús per mi tot plegat.
Pel què fa a l'edició... He trobat molts errors (confusions entre tu/tú, verbs repetits com "en el suelo hay estan"...) i frases complicadíssimes d'entendre. Una pena, tot plegat.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It's complicated can basically sum up the book. The Narrator demands your attention, and deserves it. I don't know how to explain it (that's how I always feel when I read Michael Cisco), but I enjoyed reading it even while maybe understanding a quarter of what was going on.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Until I write my own review I recommend this https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/01/06/seven-views-of-michael-ciscos-the-narrator/
Michael Cisco, The Narrator (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2010)
Every modern (along with many ancient) war on the planet has produced a definitive novel—The Killer Angels, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Thin Red Line, Purple Mountain, the list goes on. But war, especially in recent times, has gained something of a broader definition than it had during the days when heavily-armored men spent hours lining up on battlefields to charge each other with lances. Nowadays, we go to war against ideas. Few people would consider attempting a definitive novel about the war on terror. (One assumes anyone who would attempt one about the war on drugs is, well, too stoned.) But as far as I can discern, that is exactly what Michael Cisco has given us in The Narrator—an absurd book that chronicles, albeit in urban-fantasy mode, an absurd, unwinnable war. It is the very absurdity, the unwinnable-ness, if you will, of the war on terror that makes The Narrator such a strong addition to the literature of war. Well, that and Michael Cisco's narrative style.
We begin with Low Loom Column, a somewhat unassuming student, being drafted, despite having put in for a student exception. Protesting all the way, he leaves his home in the mountains, from which he has never been far, and heads for the city of Tref, where he is supposed to meet up with his regiment. While in Tref, he befriends a number of students from the local mortuary school, including the urbane, witty Jil Punkinflake, and has a whirlwind affair with a local widow known throughout the city as the Cannibal Queen. Alas, the lackadaisical nature of the army comes to an end, and Low, along with Jil and a few of the other mortuary students, set out for the coast with Makemin, their commending officer, and his regiment. While their initial encounters are lighthearted, not dangerous at all (the regiment, which is severely undermanned, picks up strength—as well as another former mortuary student in the gangly, obsessed Thrushchurl—by liberating an asylum from the enemy), once they get to the coast and prepare to set off for the island they will be defending, things start getting nasty, and Low and his friends all handle the stress in different ways. Low, being the regiment Narrator, is supposed to be the one apart from the action, the dispassionate recorder of events, the historian. But he has also been pressed into service as Makemin's translator, the only member of the regiment who understands Lashlache, the language of the enemy, as well as the company medic. It is impossible to stay dispassionate, and the strain begins to wear. Low's very capacity for language begins to break down, and we, reading this account, are left to wonder: are things really as absurd as they seem, or has Low Loom Column simply gone insane?
The jacket copy compares Cisco's language in the book to both Antonin Artaud and Alain Robbe-Grillet, “with a tinge of Thomas Ligotti.” The comparisons are warranted, and as a worshipful fan of all three of those writers, I do not make such pronouncements lightly. I would also add a comparison to the mythpunks, those writers whose depth of language is as much a feature of their work as their worldbuilding (Sonya Taaffe, Jeannelle Ferreira, Catherynne Valente, Wendy Walker, etc.). But all this aside, the novel I found myself returning to time and again was Heinrich Böll's first novel, The Train Was on Time. I had thought that comparison would wear off as Cisco's situations got more and more absurd, but instead, the opposite was the case; the farther apart the two novels grew on the fantasy vs. reality level, the closer they seemed to grow thematically (Böll's novel, after all, is an examination of what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and many of Low's symptoms as time goes on could be explained that way as well).
The novel does contain a somewhat ridiculous coda—its only weak point. It does serve to answer the question posed at the end of the plot synopsis I gave above, but that could have been done any number of ways without stretching the reader's credibility quite do far. Still, that's a very few pages at the end of what is, in every other way, a masterwork. “What one word,” Low asks himself (or us), “could I possibly write about war, as though I could pick it up and handle it like it were a sane thing?” Michael Cisco abandoned that idea from the outset, and it was the best decision he could have made in writing The Narrator. **** ½
Every modern (along with many ancient) war on the planet has produced a definitive novel—The Killer Angels, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Thin Red Line, Purple Mountain, the list goes on. But war, especially in recent times, has gained something of a broader definition than it had during the days when heavily-armored men spent hours lining up on battlefields to charge each other with lances. Nowadays, we go to war against ideas. Few people would consider attempting a definitive novel about the war on terror. (One assumes anyone who would attempt one about the war on drugs is, well, too stoned.) But as far as I can discern, that is exactly what Michael Cisco has given us in The Narrator—an absurd book that chronicles, albeit in urban-fantasy mode, an absurd, unwinnable war. It is the very absurdity, the unwinnable-ness, if you will, of the war on terror that makes The Narrator such a strong addition to the literature of war. Well, that and Michael Cisco's narrative style.
We begin with Low Loom Column, a somewhat unassuming student, being drafted, despite having put in for a student exception. Protesting all the way, he leaves his home in the mountains, from which he has never been far, and heads for the city of Tref, where he is supposed to meet up with his regiment. While in Tref, he befriends a number of students from the local mortuary school, including the urbane, witty Jil Punkinflake, and has a whirlwind affair with a local widow known throughout the city as the Cannibal Queen. Alas, the lackadaisical nature of the army comes to an end, and Low, along with Jil and a few of the other mortuary students, set out for the coast with Makemin, their commending officer, and his regiment. While their initial encounters are lighthearted, not dangerous at all (the regiment, which is severely undermanned, picks up strength—as well as another former mortuary student in the gangly, obsessed Thrushchurl—by liberating an asylum from the enemy), once they get to the coast and prepare to set off for the island they will be defending, things start getting nasty, and Low and his friends all handle the stress in different ways. Low, being the regiment Narrator, is supposed to be the one apart from the action, the dispassionate recorder of events, the historian. But he has also been pressed into service as Makemin's translator, the only member of the regiment who understands Lashlache, the language of the enemy, as well as the company medic. It is impossible to stay dispassionate, and the strain begins to wear. Low's very capacity for language begins to break down, and we, reading this account, are left to wonder: are things really as absurd as they seem, or has Low Loom Column simply gone insane?
The jacket copy compares Cisco's language in the book to both Antonin Artaud and Alain Robbe-Grillet, “with a tinge of Thomas Ligotti.” The comparisons are warranted, and as a worshipful fan of all three of those writers, I do not make such pronouncements lightly. I would also add a comparison to the mythpunks, those writers whose depth of language is as much a feature of their work as their worldbuilding (Sonya Taaffe, Jeannelle Ferreira, Catherynne Valente, Wendy Walker, etc.). But all this aside, the novel I found myself returning to time and again was Heinrich Böll's first novel, The Train Was on Time. I had thought that comparison would wear off as Cisco's situations got more and more absurd, but instead, the opposite was the case; the farther apart the two novels grew on the fantasy vs. reality level, the closer they seemed to grow thematically (Böll's novel, after all, is an examination of what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and many of Low's symptoms as time goes on could be explained that way as well).
The novel does contain a somewhat ridiculous coda—its only weak point. It does serve to answer the question posed at the end of the plot synopsis I gave above, but that could have been done any number of ways without stretching the reader's credibility quite do far. Still, that's a very few pages at the end of what is, in every other way, a masterwork. “What one word,” Low asks himself (or us), “could I possibly write about war, as though I could pick it up and handle it like it were a sane thing?” Michael Cisco abandoned that idea from the outset, and it was the best decision he could have made in writing The Narrator. **** ½