luka

Well-known member
What Mvuent is trying to do, bless him, is to clear away the silt of received opinion and stock response and Restage The Encounter, in the Morning of The Magicians, see very clearly in that dawn light and pay careful, doting attention to our every perception and response.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You don't need to read more than a sentence of any given writer to know everything about them
But then why read more than that? You know everything about them after one sentence, and of course as a result of that, you've learned everything they can teach you, seen all they can show, is the rest of the time you spend reading an author devoid of any value (except, possibly, for enjoyment)?
 

luka

Well-known member
It's just about deciding whether or not this is someone you want to spend time with.
 

luka

Well-known member
No. Mvuent hasn't nominated the next story one. He's dissatisfied with the standard of conversation so far. He wants to see more effort or he's giving up in despair he said.
 
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Reactions: sus

sus

Well-known member
I don't know what to say about Labyrinths so far. Garden is nice. To be honest, I had high hopes but was disappointed. My attention started trailing off somewhere after the bits about the philosophical controversies.
 

sus

Well-known member
I liked Pierre Menard though so I'm gonna continue chugging

At some point tho, fake epistemology is fake, innit? What's the payoff
 

luka

Well-known member
Dunno, you're not give us enough to work with. What's fake epistemology supposed to mean? What's real epistemology supposed to mean?
 

luka

Well-known member
I don't like it cos it's not real is a weird complaint to make about a work of fiction, no?
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't like it cos it's not real is a weird compliant to make about a work of fiction, no?
Particularly a kind of fiction that's famous for being dreamlike, surreal, fantastical, magic-realist, etc. etc.
 

version

Well-known member
I don't know what to say about Labyrinths so far. Garden is nice. To be honest, I had high hopes but was disappointed. My attention started trailing off somewhere after the bits about the philosophical controversies.
I didn't get really into it until The Shape of the Sword, but was fully sold from then on.
 

sus

Well-known member
Great I am excited

I dunno, I dunno why Tlon didn't hook me—it has everything I'm interested in—encyclopedias, fake maps and countries, references to Heraclitus, ideas about language and classification. Maybe that "right up my alley but not quite right" is the issue here, an offshoot of the narcissism of small differences. It's not saying anything to me I'm interested in re: these topics, despite my being very interested in these topics. Perhaps I'm just wanting too much.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I don't know what to say about Labyrinths so far. Garden is nice. To be honest, I had high hopes but was disappointed. My attention started trailing off somewhere after the bits about the philosophical controversies.
I remember reading ficciones and leaving certain stories feeling Id read little more than highfalutin literary shit posts. and what else could you call something like pierre menard? but like good shit posts they have magic in them that need time to gestate.
 

luka

Well-known member
Limburger you're a philistine of the highest order. You should be banned from reading literature ever again. In fact no American should ever be allowed to read any literature not sold in an airport ever again. Banned forever more.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
I remember reading ficciones and leaving certain stories feeling Id read little more than highfalutin literary shit posts. and what else could you call something like pierre menard? but like good shit posts they have magic in them that need time to gestate.
i agree. the most inventive art always verges on being a joke/shitpost. or works on the same principle or something, idk. but there’s a real connection between the two. magic jokes.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
Borges lists a Tlönic equivalent of "The moon rose above the water": hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö, meaning literally "upward behind the onstreaming it mooned". (Andrew Hurley, one of Borges' translators, wrote a fiction in which he says that the words "axaxaxas mlö" "can only be pronounced as the author's cruel, mocking laughter".[4])
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Circular Ruins was what got me hooked originally on Borges, though I didnt know too much what to take of it.

rereading now, immediate impressions are that it functions as an allegory for the artist. the struggle to form the symbiotic relationship between man and work, to make yourself a medium for the word, to navigate that near paradox of creating something without it being contrived.
The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though it was supernatural. He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality. This magical project had exhausted the entire content of his soul; if someone had asked him his own name or any trait of his previous life, he would not have been able to answer.
The magicians weary life after he releases his dreamed son reminds me of The Recognitions- 'What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology'

The final line strikes me as autobiographical: "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another." Borges sounds more resigned to this when he repeats the sentiment in a 1981 interview: “I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

 
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