posted
I see now that commentary intended as neutral is taken as polemic. One hang up -- fifth grade as a lower limit for a narrative's reader age excludes only younger readers. If older is as old as eighty or a hundred, that excludes only an eighth to a tenth of all potential readers, and if mainly male, perhaps doubled to a fourth or fifth and leaving three-fourths to four-fifths as potential audience. Is that snobbery?
Also a moral hang up about age-appropriate censorship. How many parents really care? Though surveys will yield socially expected responses, in actuality probably a nonquantifiable value; some would feel at least the youngsters are reading, others that youths can handle some adult content, others apathy altogether, others moral outrage. Which one or ones is a majority and which might be snobbery?
Also a hang up about toxic sarcasm, mockery, and ridicule as negative emotional charge. Sarcasm is a time-honored and noble literary tradition, evidenced by the ancient Greeks naming the rhetorical expression type sarcasmus. Modern sensibilities project negative emotional charge onto sarcasm, also a snobbery. And my intent was not snobbery -- an unequivocally emotionally charged comment -- rather specificity that's been misapprehended and drawn misplaced ire.
posted
Read "Jarmo" yesterday---been on my pile awhile now, and I've been on vacation, so I had more time. Fairly impressive...seems like a more violent Mervyn Peake work...confusing use of familiar names...and somewhere along the way I lost the thread that had the fate of the characters involved. Not bad, could use some improvement---maybe some copyediting, too.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you have the time, leave a review on Amazon.
JARMO is definitely a weird, hyper-violent book. There are several scenes which will stay with me for their vivid and disturbing content.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Robert Nowall: Read "Jarmo" yesterday---been on my pile awhile now, and I've been on vacation, so I had more time. Fairly impressive...seems like a more violent Mervyn Peake work...confusing use of familiar names...and somewhere along the way I lost the thread that had the fate of the characters involved. Not bad, could use some improvement---maybe some copyediting, too.
Well, Robert's comments interested me enough to download and read the Amazon excerpt of JARMO, and I can see what he means.
There's a kind of careless vivacity to the writing that's almost pulp fiction in its effect. The pages are splattered with purplish prose and overwrought metaphors that don't bear close examination, and that either charms you or leaves you cold. If it charms you, that covers a multitude of sins. If it doesn't you see every little fault (e.g. a screen door in an obviously pre-industrial society? Really?)
This just shows how in fantasy it's crucial to recruit the reader as an accomplice in imagination, because the whole point is to believe the unrealistic. If the reader is antagonistic, or even less than fully onboard, the impression of incongruity adds up fast.
I wouldn't characterize the excerpt as "violent" so much as ironic in tone. What the author is going for seems to be a kind of mixture of horror and humor; I think he succeeds somewhat more on the humor front.
Horror is a species of fascination; a contradictory urge to look away and stare at the same time. And it's tricky to get that effect. One of the most sublime pieces of horror I've ever read is a scene in John Bellairs' comical THE FACE IN THE FROST in which the protagonist goes down to his own cellar to draw some beer; Bellairs manages to transform a cloak hanging on a peg into an object of dread.
I've seen a lot of manuscripts like this one that try to create horror with unpleasant and disturbing images; the problem with that strategy is that if the reader doesn't find the imagery disturbing he doesn't get the horror effect. I find the idea of desecrated corpses unpleasant, but not actually disturbing, so this kind of horror doesn't work for me. And the sexual nature of the desecration adds no particular revulsion as far as I'm concerned. But I don't doubt that the combination of corpse mutilation and homosexual imagery does the trick for some readers.
So like anything else corpse desecration doesn't act on all readers the same way. Personally I find it the corpse thing a bit un-subtle, but that's a matter of taste I guess. Overall the prologue was a bit broad and on-the-nose for my taste. This at least is very un-Peake-like.
Spielman does somewhat better on the humorous characterization front, and I'd say this is the strongest point of the manuscript. It's a bit undisciplined, though; he could do a better job of identifying the POV character at the top of each scene, and scenes though genuinely humorous have a tendency to run on just for their own sake. In that way it reminds me just a bit of TWILIGHT; I remember when reading that I kept thinking, "This could easily be so much better with an assertive editor."
Denevius is right, I think; there's serious writing talent evident here. But Robert is right too: it sure needs an editor.
Posts: 1459 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, a lot of it was disturbing, all right...ultimately, it came down to a trio of sympathetic characters getting into terrible situations (willingly, unwillingly, intentionally, unintentionally), some of which I lost track of before any came out the other end.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
