Edmund Woops Debut Novel REISSUED!!!!!!!!

M

mvuent

Void Dweller
Mr. Tea said:
Edmund, as the author, has of course created Anne and Gerald, so they are dependent on him for their existence.

However, Edmund as the narrator is himself anonymized or depersonalized almost to the point of ceasing to exist - a cypher, a gestalt entity, a falling tree that no-one hears - or would be, were it not for Anne and Gerald to provide some sort of anchorage point to reality.

So the two parties are mutually ontologically co-dependent.
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excellent. but still why are they, of all people, the anchors? seems to me they exemplify two contrasting modes of existence. anne is an artistic spirit, but a worldly, pragmatic sort. works with physical objects. can fix cars. not a rational agent by normal "square" social norms but a well-connected community member. whereas gerald is also anartist but his idea of what that entails compels him to live in a monk-like state of rigorous isolation. perpetually doing phd-level research for reasons no one else can comprehend. the world of ideas. naturally they hold each other in contempt. but anyways, their lives together provide a frame for that of the main character, who lives in a kind of purgatory in between those two modes. he's freer than either of them but at the price of being a kind of ghost, an eternal wanderer. so there's sort of a riffing on the idea of, as luka puts it, seeing the world through a poet's eyes going on in the book. idk, just a stray post hoc thought i had... on rereading i might realize i'm completely wrong.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Benny B said:
You should get high more often then. I only ever dare to post more hi falutin, possibly drastically off course, theoretical ideas about literature when I've got at least 5 beers inside me, like right now in fact. Time for a siesta.
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So there was someone, a high-brow celebrity chef, Hugh F-W or Nigel Slater, but it was just his head on a monstrous, draconian body (I mean actually dragonlike), writhing and coming towards the camera, emitting this terrifying roar: "YOU, THE CULTURE, HAVE CREATED ME, NIGEL SLATER. NOW ONLY YOU HAVE THE POWER TO DESTROY ME!"
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
Mr. Tea said:
draconian body (I mean actually dragonlike)
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i dont know what your on about but i do know that draconian is 0 to do with dracon, derives from the ancient legislator Dracon, who was noted for the cruelty and the unusual nature of the punishments he meted out.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
woops said:
i dont know what your on about but i do know that draconian is 0 to do with dracon, derives from the ancient legislator Dracon, who was noted for the cruelty and the unusual nature of the punishments he meted out.
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Hence the bit in brackets. In my defence I was pretty monstered.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Still got absolutely no idea what you two are on about or why I was quoted. What has it got to do with the book or have I missed something?
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
mvuent said:
excellent. but still why are they, of all people, the anchors? seems to me they exemplify two contrasting modes of existence. anne is an artistic spirit, but a worldly, pragmatic sort. works with physical objects. can fix cars. not a rational agent by normal "square" social norms but a well-connected community member. whereas gerald is also anartist but his idea of what that entails compels him to live in a monk-like state of rigorous isolation. perpetually doing phd-level research for reasons no one else can comprehend. the world of ideas. naturally they hold each other in contempt. but anyways, their lives together provide a frame for that of the main character, who lives in a kind of purgatory in between those two modes. he's freer than either of them but at the price of being a kind of ghost, an eternal wanderer. so there's sort of a riffing on the idea of, as luka puts it, seeing the world through a poet's eyes going on in the book. idk, just a stray post hoc thought i had... on rereading i might realize i'm completely wrong.
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I'm not sure if Anne and Gerald actually exist (in as far as anything in this book can be said to really exist), aren't they figments of the narrator's imagination?
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Need to give it a reread to find the quotes, but I loved the bits where the protagonist is listening to music on the radio and how his description of it sort of bleeds into the rest of what's happening at that moment.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
It's a sign that a bit of writing's good when you can invent all sorts of potentially-revealing-yourself-as-a-drugged-up-crackpot theories into it, and what's even better is no one can prove you wrong.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Benny B said:
It's a sign that a bit of writing's good when you can invent all sorts of potentially-revealing-yourself-as-a-drugged-up-crackpot theories into it, and what's even better is no one can prove you wrong.
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The thing is, I'm deadly serious. We, as a culture, *have* created Nigel Slater, and this may be our last chance to take him on and finally end this madness before he simply becomes too powerful.
 
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