So, in the vein of complaining about things that established writers do just to annoy us readers (and not as established writers) I have to say that Gibson is a genius...so much so, that he can waste most of his genius on devising and implementing ways to make it harder for a reader to plow through his story, but still have plenty left over to create a truly insightful, compelling work about people with utterly meaningless lives.
The first thing I noticed on opening his book was that he chose to write it entirely in a relentless present tense that is constantly jerking you out of the narrative, the second that the main character had the most utterly shallow life path I could imagine, the third that he deliberately threw the tokens of her utterly empty and meaningless existance in the reader's several times in every paragraph...and so it goes, till at the end of the story you get a resolution so contrived it almost causes pain.
But somewhere along the way, you can't help but notice that Gibson is a genius, both in the literary sense (which isn't worth much) and in the storytelling sense (i.e. the reason we read stories at all). In fact, the very meaninglessness of the life path of his chosen protagonist serves a purpose, because it frames and informs a very deep adventure into the profound meaning of lives that embrace suffering.
It is unfortunate that Gibson should be so self-conscious of his own genius, though, because he spends so much of it posing for the benefit of those that can only recognize the thing when it has been pressed flat and drained of all vitality...in other words, when it is made indistinguishable from idiocy.
quote:If I had to be that inspired in order to write, I would have had a heart attack by now.
LOL Oh, you don't know how I needed that! <rolling on the floor, laughing>
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited September 09, 2003).]
Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :
quote:There is not much point in changing direction if you don't know where you are going.
<still rolling> This is rich! LOL
Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :
<pulls herself together> Thanks, Kligson. That article was worth the time. And it was fun. Posted by Kligson (Member # 1726) on :
No problem. Glad you enjoyed it! There's lots of good articles and stuff at http://www.sfwa.org. Under "Writing: The Craft" they have more articles like the one above. They also have writing business stuffage like contract templates and the like....
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Ah. This could be helpful. Is there some giveaway that an article is name tagged? Or are they all? So just add number sign and one of the words immediately after the number? Had there been no numbers in the text, then name tag not possible? (Why don't they call it number tag if that's the case?)
It's been a while since I checked out sfwa, Kligson. Thanks for reminding me about it.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited September 09, 2003).]
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
If you use the view|source from the menu, you can search the source code of a web page (using the notepad window that pops up). Search for <A NAME= (case insensitive) to find all the name tags. To add a name tag to the URL, copy the nametag as it appears in quotes after <a name= (case insensitive) and paste it to the end of the page URL, separated by a # sign.
Actually, th e above proceedures can be rather...fiddly. Usually, when a page has name tags, there are hyperlinks on that page that--rather than leading to another page--lead to another part of the same page. When you click one of those links, your address bar will display the page URL with the name tag, and you can simply copy it from there.
Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :
I know that'll make more sense when I actually try it. As soon as I get a clear-headed moment, I will. Thanks, Survivor.
LOL 