It's a remarkable novel, and its concerns about the differences between fantasies and reality are still relevant. Much of Beagle's oeuvre deals with this regardless of how long the story is- he is a fantasy writer constantly in negotiation with the rules of his game.
Great reflection, Mark. Yes, there’s a permanent cadence between breathing and diving with no accounting for taste. Publishing later on similar theme - be interested in your thoughts. Speaks to previous convo on post/modernism. I think it was one of McCarthy’s criticisms of Beckett’s fiction that it was all too knowing - too much toying with the reader. I think the heart of it is ‘empathy’. Immersives critique the character distancing that results when writers wilfully interrupt the dive. Disrupters critique the immersion as puerile or ostrich-like and therefore falsely empathetic. I actually agree with both. Suspect it all stands or falls in the execution itself, but that sure is a dark art.
This is a brilliant review. I haven’t read the book, but the exploration of the appeal of cleverness over sentiment for the young is terrific. Here are some quotes I like, “[A]s I grow older, I have simply come to value cleverness less and sentiment more . . .. The old are thought to be less clever and more sentimental than the young, though it is the young who think so. I prefer to think that my growing preference for sentiment over cleverness is a symptom of increasing wisdom. Except that I am as distrustful of sentiment as I am of cleverness, so perhaps wisdom is something else altogether."
It's a remarkable novel, and its concerns about the differences between fantasies and reality are still relevant. Much of Beagle's oeuvre deals with this regardless of how long the story is- he is a fantasy writer constantly in negotiation with the rules of his game.
Great reflection, Mark. Yes, there’s a permanent cadence between breathing and diving with no accounting for taste. Publishing later on similar theme - be interested in your thoughts. Speaks to previous convo on post/modernism. I think it was one of McCarthy’s criticisms of Beckett’s fiction that it was all too knowing - too much toying with the reader. I think the heart of it is ‘empathy’. Immersives critique the character distancing that results when writers wilfully interrupt the dive. Disrupters critique the immersion as puerile or ostrich-like and therefore falsely empathetic. I actually agree with both. Suspect it all stands or falls in the execution itself, but that sure is a dark art.
This is a brilliant review. I haven’t read the book, but the exploration of the appeal of cleverness over sentiment for the young is terrific. Here are some quotes I like, “[A]s I grow older, I have simply come to value cleverness less and sentiment more . . .. The old are thought to be less clever and more sentimental than the young, though it is the young who think so. I prefer to think that my growing preference for sentiment over cleverness is a symptom of increasing wisdom. Except that I am as distrustful of sentiment as I am of cleverness, so perhaps wisdom is something else altogether."