posted
I posted this in the other forum, but thought I'd put it here too.
I just re-read Songmaster by our own OSC. WOW!! I can do nothing but sing it's praises. Songmaster is now in my top ten favorite books of ALL TIME. I read the first 2/3 of it a couple years ago when I was on vacation in New Orleans. During the day its usually too hot to do much so we would just lounge around my friend's house. They had a copy and I started reading it. It was my first experiance with OSC. DAMN. Awesome.
I didn't get to finish it until this week. I went on to eventually buy all his other books and read them... and finally I bought Songmaster.
SO POWERFUL. I really like OSC's earlier works. They speak more to me for some reason.
*SPOILERS*
With this one... the struggles of Ansset. Wow. His battle with Control touched me deeply since that is how I tend to deal with stress and the world... raising my shields so nothing gets in and I show nothing. But what about the demons inside the walls?
And the beauty and power of music and the human voice. That's what I live for as a singer my self. And I could see some influences from DUNE and the Bene Gesserit with the ability to read people.
And Ansset's love with Josif.... Damn. Cried my eyes out. I mean, I cried all through this book but this was especially potent for me. Whatever OSC's political views on gay folk and gay marriage he treated that homosexual relation with such tenderness and passion.
And the scene where Ansset destroys the Emperor and the Ferret with his voice... and how the Ferret kills himself because of it... the writing is so powerful I was feeling physically ill. Only a handful of writers can do that...
LONG LIVE OSC!!!
Damn... my heart is racing just thinking about the book... wow...
[ September 03, 2004, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, I definitely felt the same. Back in 92 and 93, I read everything I could find by OSC and one after the other, Songmaster, Wyrms, Treason, Worthing Saga, Harts Hope, the Ender Series (up to Xenocide), Tales of Alvin Maker (up to Prentice Alvin) they just floored me. I learned so much. It was an emotional rollercoaster that left me breathless.
Songmaster was so beautiful. OSC wrote with such compassion and understanding. I too loved Josif and his relationship with Kyaren and Ansset, his love for his children and his fear of hurting Kyaren. What was done to him at the end just ripped my heart out, the casual cruelty. And when Ansset confronted Riktors and condemned him with his song, it was glorious revenge. But the punishment to the Ferrett was even greater, as he clawed open his belly to rip out his bowels to achieve the release from his guilt that Ansset's song showed him, a guilt he could not escape except through his own personal destruction.
And Ansset's returning to the Songhouse and finally, finally, being able to share his experiences and through those experiences, remake the songhouse into something deeper and truer was the perfect denoument.
Again, as I have said, OSC's works resonated with mythic overtones. Things happened that, consciously or not, felt true and right and necessary. Again and again, I found myself nodding and saying, yes, that is the way the universe is, that is how people are and why they do things- the three major desires OSC once described- love, sex, death. They are 'universally true'. The events that occurred seemed of cosmic import, even when they concerned minor matters. They were about everything important in life.
It's worth noting that here, and in the Homecoming series, particularly the Ships of Earth, we can see OSC's practical treatment of and feeling for homosexuals, versus his own personal views of it. "Ships of Earth" I found particularly moving as Zdorab struggled with his homosexuality in a very small (no more than 15 people, at the beginning) whose primary purpose was to, as instruments of the Oversoul, reproduce and to repair the ships. In such a setting, as opposed to larger communities which can absorb certain reproductively ineffective lifestyles with little direct damage, how would Zdorab, a GOOD man, conduct himself in the face of his own tendencies? His sacrifices and his kindness and serving of others, and his willingness to give the greatest gift to his companion, Shedemai, spoke volumes of personal sacrifice for the good of all.
I have no doubt, no question in my mind, that OSC of then and now loves people, all kinds of people, whether they are gay or not, because the people they try and intend to be, the good and caring people they try to be, by building, not tearing down, is what is important.
He may not approve of their lifestyle, especially those that, from his standpoint, cut people off from "the great web of life", from being fuller members of the community whose main purpose is to ensure stable places for children to be raised (see "Teacher's Pest"). He feels this way especially about those groups who develop "competing" communities celebrating and pursing to the exclusion (and often arrogance over "normal" human sociey) those differences when it is those differences that "lessen" the foundational elements of human civilization. He talks about this in his afterward to "Closing the timelid" in Maps in the Mirror. He mentions, IIRC, that there have always been small communities that devote themselves to celebrating and propagating their differences exclusively, even compulsively and competitively, so that, to a certain extent, they end up tearing down the foundations of society- stable relationships with others, specifically, those between husbands and wives for their children, as well as those between friends. He mentions groups that are founded on the celebration of various pleasures, such as drug use (in the story, the analog is a group dedicated to exploring the pleasure of death by use of a time machine that sends a simulacrum back that allows the user to feel death but not actually die, if used properly), to the exclusion of all others.
But even so, he does not condemn them as somehow less than human. He acknowledges their hungers and desires while still believing (obviously because of his religion, but also because of his own studies of human societies) that such lifestyles are not the ideal.
I'm not trying to start a whole thing, here. I just anticipate that some people might wonder why the perceived shift in OSC's compassion when he can write such beautiful works like Songmaster and still be against gay marriage. Anyone who thinks that has not read his works in their entirety. You can never know what someone believes merely by looking at one or two of their works (as people do with the Apostle Paul in regard to mysogony, for example, which irks me, no end). I don't think there is a dichotomy, simply two sides of a very complicated coin.
Anyway, I loved this book and am glad you did too.
(I've got to start writing shorter posts. Sheesh!)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Cry]](graemlins/cry.gif)
![[The Wave]](graemlins/thewave.gif)
