Reflexion

It got there in the end

Revisado: 03-01-24

Plenty of surreal arthurian moments, including passages of which I strained to follow the logic. It’s a romance novel in the end. It felt slightly somnambulistic, however much to its detriment is up to the reader. I never felt like I ever sunk into it, though, and at times it felt like a novelization of a comic book. Sparse and weird. Never strays very deep into fantasy realism, or violence. Not bad. I completely missed the relevance of the books title.

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romancing the abyss

Revisado: 02-29-24

Ultimately a romance story, with handfuls of passages that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 70’s Better Homes and Gardens series, drawn across one of the bleakest and terrifying landscapes imaginable. You can really feel how novel thes ideas in this book are. Fearlessly weird and dreamy and scorched. I loved every minute of it. I’ll probably crack the original if I read it again, in its original tongue. I wouldn’t guess it suffers much loss in translation, though. Well worth it.

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B-Sides

Revisado: 10-17-23

There are some very new ideas in here that are maybe mostly exciting to those that have read through everything else Steven Millhauser has written. The aesthetic is pretty unforgiving- and to add to that, a handful of the stories almost verge on redundant (anonymous town has or adopts a quirk, then the quirk becomes mundane, the end). Also, more in this collection than anything else by Millhauser, is evidence that some of his writing only works on paper in a physical book. It was nice to see a poem in the collection. Well written as always.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Disappointing

Revisado: 08-08-23

Like a few others, I was looking forward to this reading. Sadly, the performance isn’t great. You can almost hear in James’ voice (and big gasps between verses) that he’s intimidated by the length of the reading and is rushing. This is also suggested by the fact that in many places the audio quality drops in and out (sometimes mid-verse) seemingly spliced together from different takes because he refused to go back and get a clean one. If this was actually functional as a reading of The Bible, this would’ve been a treasure. Instead, it’s just an artifact.

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