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BarnerCobblewood
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Hi @RichardAbbott would be happy to do so, but can't commit a 100%. Not sure what my situation is right after the holidays is yet. Kindly follow up with me in late November? Thanks, BC
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Didn't see anything systematic that I would use. Seemed quite random to me - or rather entirely driven by plot. That's a good way to build a thing (mosaic), but not as good a way to guide what is or should be built. I wouldn't be surprised to see th…
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I suppose self-hypnosis is a case where an imperative functions to restore agency. It's a pretty stark question of world-view though as to whether such creation is actually possible.
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(Quote) Good point. Maybe I've been thinking about this wrong: Sasha, and presumably the rest, are not words, but phrases. However I think this idea goes beyond the authorial intent.
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(Quote) The password is an oblique substantive, as is the verb in imperative when parsed (I command you = Sit!), so we can go down a rabbit-hole here, but I have little doubt that imperatives are a speaker's effort to strip other agents of their ag…
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Seems to me that a password is a response to an imperative (I command you to say! /what is required/), so a password has no verbal functions necessary to it. They are the subordination of speech to another's command, completely substantive, and thus…
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(Quote) I think this is an idea they were playing with - this is how I understand the discussion of Sasha being in the imperative mood. And it just occurred to me that a password might be construed as a command to open something (Sesame!), but it ac…
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(Quote) Sorry didn't mean to suggest Frodo was a Christ-character, just that the sins of the father are to be visited on the son. That is not a universal cultural position.
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I thought this was both a missed opportunity, and a problem. I agree with @RichardAbbott that the hypertext thing seemed stuck on to me, although I guess the idea was that there is a source for how the word appears in the world is another controlli…
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(Quote) Point taken. I wasn't saying that the children were offspring of Words, but that our two main characters didn't know their dad growing up, and weren't impressed with him either. Step-children. And the nurture of that situation didn't get rid…
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(Quote) I feel that (like the Golden Compass) that is different, even though there is something about absent parents in a lot of these stories. I'd say the same about Frodo who discovers his doom given by his parent. Old Testament.
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Although I am not impressed with the premises of the book, I too thought the characters were well drawn. It took a while to get going, but once they got to school it settled down for me, and I could see the students and teachers very well. Everythin…
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I found this historical Sufi mystic illuminating when thinking about this book (cognate with Farit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Farid I was a little disappointed by the discussion of language. Very essentialist reading based on words rat…
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I saw more connections with Harry Potter than @Apocryphal and @RichardAbbott mostly because I think that a lot of the excitement that drives the first novel is about his discovery that he wasn't a loser due to birth (orphan) but a winner (wizard). T…
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(Quote) I think this is a really interesting question, but as I said in the other post I would rephrase the question as to why stories of coming of age being discovery of doom (Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Sasha) are popular rather than struggles f…
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I agree there was a coming of age story, but it was one of a child who is unaware of their true nature by blood from the father, like Moses, or Jesus, or any lost king. In this case the speculation is that that they have a genetic predisposition to …
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I think you're right in the importance of the musical form as the text's explanation of itself. Music of course has no conceptually objective content, unlike narrative, but music (for people educated in the particular tradition) elicits emotion and …
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(Quote) I'm not sure either. It's a good book, and I expect I will read it again in a little while. But there have been some works I have been re-reading for years, and they change as I do. I'm not sure CA will prove capable of that. I think that s…
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I found @NeilNjae 's quote confirmation that there is a misanthropic aspect to the book. Mitchell thinks there is a fixed human nature, which cannot be changed. This is strong (and hateful) moral stance with which I strongly disagree.
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I think the ring structure was actually too important. Highlighting that form is completely dominant over function, as Mitchell did at the end of the first chapter with it ending mid-sentence, seems to me to indicate to the reader that neither the s…
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I guess for me simply having several different narrative voices is enough to create a possible tabletop RPG. We don't all talk at the same time when playing either. However the journal and letter format is for a group of two. The interrogation and s…
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(Quote) Or its own book. I think each of the stories would have made a good novel, and I think that I would have appreciated the expansion. But did the combining of the stories add something better than different books? And if so, what couldn't have…
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(Quote) I had much the same sentiment. I understand from the internet that he has written a least a couple of interlocking narrative books, so I assume he likes it. Speaking cinematically, it reminds me of some of Christopher Nolan's story tellings…
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(Quote) Agree with you totally here. There were those little happenstances that @RichardAbbott mentioned, but I never got the sense that there was an overarching plot connecting the stories in the book. Instead there was the theme that @NeilNjae men…
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(Quote) I felt in this book that mostly it was the author touching us, rather than the characters, but that's probably better discussed while focusing on each individual story.
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(Quote) I'm with you there. I kept going, but I wondered how much I would be able to keep in mind when I got back to the story later. And I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't already been told that there was a repetitive structure. But th…
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(Quote) For the most part Buddhist previous life narratives start in the present with a question as to why something happened, go back in time to tell a story of some people in the past, which more (or less) maps onto the people in the present or ev…
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(Quote) I was expecting to find something about re-incarnation (influence of explanations of the movie I guess) but found there was very little that seemed re-incarnational to me. All I picked up on were repetitions across some characters (like the …
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Hi everyone, I've posted 2 starter questions for the discussion. I'd like to go over these before presenting my thoughts about particular stories - I see it as talking about the forest before we get to the trees, and also an effort to not post too m…
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Hope everyone is having a good end to summer. A quick reminder to encourage anyone who might like to join that our discussion will begin Labour day. Cheers! BC