I started Aegypt, but lost interest. It struck me as too formulaic, cutting
backwards and forwards between a rather dully imagined Elizabethan England
and a rather sub-Pynchon American setting. It seemed to me that he was
trying to get up the courage to start the magic, and was taking rather a
long time over it. I did enjoy his disquisition on the 'three wishes'
theme - but subsequently I read Robert Irwin's utterly brilliant treatment
of the same theme in the interlude to The Arabian Nightmare (it's a short
story embedded in the novel, and is worth including in anyone's anthology of
great short stories).
I have to admit that, while I love fantasy, I'm slightly wary of Fantasy. I
need to enter into some fairly complex negotiations before I'm willing to
suspend my disbelief. The books I'm most likely to fall for are those which
Clute and Grant, following Robert Scholes's terminology, call fabulations,
and it's a category which includes such non-cult names as Borges, Garcia
Marquez, Grass etc. I don't like the term myself, because it implies that
such writings are fables, ie a kind of allegory, reducible to a single
meaning.
Just back from seeing Unbreakable. Not as good as The Sixth Sense, to which
it's very closely related by all sorts of leitmotivs, but I was gripped by
it eventually
Best wishes
Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 17 January 2001 02:55
Subject: Re: Supernatural
>And thanks to Candice, Matthew and Douglas for their picks and their
advice.
>I've chased up a lot of it now and have written the recommended books down
>for seeking out. I won't get started on any lists of my own but suffice to
>say although I haven't read John Crowley's Little, Big, I have read Aegupt
>and found it strangely fascinating. I think there was supposed to be a
>follow-up but I've never seen it.
>
>Cheers,
>Jill
>
>_________________________________
>Jill Jones
>50 Ruby Street
>Marrickville NSW 2204
>AUSTRALIA
>
>[log in to unmask]
>http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
>
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