Senlin Ascends Tetrology - Josiah Bancroft

At Terra's suggestion, I recently finished the BRILLIANT 4-book Babel series by Josiah Bancroft. These were easily the most creative, exciting, and compelling books I've read in a long while. The books are set in a familiar yet distinctly different world from our own, one where the major cultural epicenter and tourist attraction in the land of Ur is the famed Tower of Babel! Pedantic and rule-loving headmaster Senlin brings his quirky and beautiful young wife to visit the Tower on their honeymoon, but swiftly discovers it is far, far different from the orderly citadel of culture he had imagined! Our unlikely hero rises to meet the occasion via the most satisfying character development I've maybe ever read. 

This book defies genre classification -- perhaps it's best seen as a swashbuckler, but this epic straddles fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, steampunk, comedy, and romance. A thrilling read for over a thousand pages! Moreover, Bancroft is so creative, and so rich in interesting observations on life, love, and friendship, that he crams within one book more insights than most authors can hope to share in their entire opus.  Destined to become a classic, and should be read by all.

Beowulf - Headley and Heaney

 "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!" - This first line of Maria Dahvana Headley's new translation seems inevitably to be the first line of everyone's review.  I certainly agree with the general consensus that Headley is fresh but not flip - her lengthy introduction shares her deep knowledge of the setting, language and implications of the poem.  And she brings to her version a strong and brilliant feminist perspective that speaks powerfully to current events. For example:

I don’t know that Grendel’s mother should be perceived in binary terms – monster versus human.  My own experiences as a woman tell me it’s very possible to be mistaken as monstrous when one is only doing as men do: providing for and defending oneself.

She also sees in Beowulf broader implications for our present society

There are also stories that haven’t yet been reckoned with, stories hidden within the stories we think we know. It takes new readers, writers, and scholars to find them, people whose experience, identities, and intellects span the full spectrum of humanity, not just a slice of it. That is, in my opinion, the reason to keep analyzing texts like Beowulf.  We might, if we analyzed our own long-standing stories, use them to translate ourselves into a society in which  hero making doesn’t require monster killing, border closing, and hoard clinging, but instead requires a more challenging task: taking responsibility for one another.

Seamus Heaney's translation (from 2000) is a masterpiece: more sober and traditional, frequently powerful and moving:

It was like the misery felt by an old man

who has lived to see his son's body

swing on the gallows. He begins to keen

and weep for his boy, watching the raven 

gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. 

The wisdom of age is worthless to him.

Morning after morning, he wakes to remember

that his child is gone; he has no interest

in living on until another heir

is born in the hall....

A great pleasure to read these two translations side by side.

Partially Finished with Infinite Jest - Preliminary Thoughts

On page 161 of the 1079-page epic Infinite Jest and figured I'd better do a preliminary post since it's taking me a while to work my through this book and I am reading other books at the same time.

I sort of like this book so far. I know that's blasphemy (especially in Colin's mind) since the consensus is that this is a masterpiece on par with Joyce's Ulysses, but so far it isn't really doing it for me. There are definitely ideas of pure genius and some parts that are uproariously funny, Hal is a compelling character, and the theme of entertainment/media is very interesting.

However, it took me til ~150 to become slightly eager to know what happens in the rest of the book. My beef: 1) the mixed up chronology is irritating since I don't know when anything happened and am having difficulty piecing together any coherent storyline. Colin says that it comes together at a certain point, but I don't see why I should have to wait this long for it to make sense. 2) I dislike that the perspective switches so frequently - most of the segments are interesting individually but the sheer number of them feels a little bit gimicky and is another distraction for me.

Hopefully I will like it better as I go along since everyone else finds it brilliant and inspired.

***Updates***
- 6/29/11: on page 185 I have hope!!! There is a reference to "anticonfluential cinema," which is described in footnote 61 as, "an après garde digital movement... characterized by a stubborn and possibly intentionally irritating refusal of different narrative lines to merge into any kind of meaningful confluence" - does this sound familiar???

I feel vindicated and more hopeful that I will ultimately enjoy this novel - I doubt it is coincidence that the description of anticonfluential cinema so closely parallels my experience of the book thus far (especially since the concept is significantly attributed to J.O. Incandenza, a central figure in the novel).

I hope that now that this underlying structure has been revealed, it will be rejected. In other words, the different narrative lines of I.J. damn well better merge into some kind of meaningful confluence.

***Links***
- http://bmackie.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallace-and-hypertext.html