Book frustration

[avevale_intelligencer]

A many years ago, prompted by friends raving about it, I tried to read Moonwise by Greer Gilman. It didn't make any sense to me. I mentioned this to various people, and got looked at funny.

Today I have tried again. I'm on page six, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be understanding from this. The language is ridiculously over-florid ("her heart dunted with amaze" about someone who doesn't know what fork to use?) and contains archaisms such as "unlethe" which are completely opaque to me. If I try hard I can tease out what is actually happening (a person is looking round a house and remembering stuff) but I'm obviously missing far too much of the associated atmosphere and overtones and undertones and so on for it to be worth going on. I got much further into it last time, but then I thought I had something to prove.

My writing is practically Asimovian in its pedestrian transparency. I sometimes think it would be nice if I could master some more individual style. But this is way over on the other extreme, so individual that it could hardly help but be (in my opinion) barely comprehensible to anyone but the author. To all those who have read and enjoyed it, I applaud your stamina and your linguistic flexibility. It's beyond me.

Back on the shelf it goes, till the next time.

EDIT: and I'd completely forgotten the faithfully phonetically rendered rustic accent and speech mode of half the characters, which made even the dialogue in large measure incomprehensible. Since by the time I'd got that far I was clinging to the dialogue as to a spar in a shipwreck, well, you can guess what happened.

Comments

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

I have books like that. "Next time" rarely comes. And on those occasions when it does, time and experience have generally made me less tolerant.

There are books that attract and books that repel, just as there are people who attract and repel. This isn't really surprising, as one's writing is often a refelction of oneself. But just as in life I find that new friends are harder to come by, but tend to be fast friends when they appear, the same goes for books. Some of the old friends have stayed with me; others visit from time to time; others still are a distant memory. Occasionally, just occasionally, one pops out of obscurity and resumes its place in my heart, but not often. I'm older - I see the faults more clearly.

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I bought the book years ago based on its blurb, and I've never been able to read it. I had a boss at the time who didn't understand it either, and she was a friend of his. ;)

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

Being out of the loop on what the Thinking SF Fan ort to rede, I went and had a look on Amazon, where someone with a pretentious username informed me that "We go to it for an experience of language that makes us feel as if the roots of psychic and telluric realities have been laid bare" - which sounds (a) rather dangerous to me and (b) altogether too much like hard work. Then someone started wiffling on about Finnegans Wake. Noooo! Once was enough!

But I do fail at being intelecksheral on oh-so-many levels, so don't take my word for it.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I keep saying that I ought to try reading Joyce. It's not that I've tried and failed, it's just that I've never got round tuit. When I retire...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

You've read FW once? You have a strange definition of the word "fail", my dear, at least when it's applied to you. I've noticed this before...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Never heard of it, but thank you for the comment because I am now never going to try to read it.

[maeve-the-red.livejournal.com]

You are not selling me on this book at all. I will not be going out and buying it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And I feel very bad about that, especially as I'm sure that there must be some on my flist (possibly you among them) who would find it a delightful repast. I know that when I first tried it there were people of my acquaintance, obviously cleverer than what I was, who couldn't understand why I was having trouble with it. (I used to get Tibs' Reading Matters; I think it may have been some people in there.)

I don't enjoy unrecommending things...but then I don't like being made to feel unnecessarily stupid. I guess this is in the nature of a cri de coeur, or possibly a cry for help.