Asakiyume mita

I finished Embassytown, and I have to say, it did a thing I'm not sure any other book has done for me, which is alienate me for a good 45 percent of the book (from about the 45 percent mark until about the 90 percent mark)--such that I was writing frustrated, seething notes on Goodreads--and then, WOW, pull meaning and heart out of that mess in a way that really, really moved and impressed me. For those of you who've read the book, the thing that I loved more than anything else was Spanish Dancer's speech at the end. (So much. SO MUCH.) For everyone else, I wish I could share it, but it would spoil the book, and also it probably wouldn't mean much without the whole preceding story for context.

Some things (plot developments, character actions) that frustrated me during the story ceased to in retrospect--instead they seemed important and necessary. That's a weird feeling: as if the sensemaking reached back and made my irritation less not only in the present but also in the past. Mental time travel.

But some things still just straight out didn't work for me. For one thing, the narrator, Avice. I didn't like her very much. She would do things while dissing them--a characteristic I dislike--and she was weirdly aimless.

"It was in circles such as this," she tells us, "Embassytown society, that I met CalVin and became their lover." Okay, but why did you become CalVin's lover? What did you feel about them?

When Avice does share her feelings, I had trouble believing in them: "I had so much sadness in me. I cried, only when I was alone. I was so sorry for Hasser, silly secret zealot; and for Valdik"--but see how she calls Hasser silly? She holds herself so apart from everyone, is so cool ... I guess I would have preferred her to evince more interest in stuff, to be more warm and less detached. But that's just personal taste; other readers won't necessarily feel that way. She's portrayed consistently, and her actions and reactions feel genuine, so in that sense she's a satisfying character.

What I really loved the book for was its exploration of what it means to come up against something really, truly alien. Something truly alien might require you to change how you think, just in order to understand what it is you're dealing with. You might not even be able to articulate the change you need to make. That's how it is for the aliens in this story. (Yeah: the aliens get to do this growing, not the humans--maybe because it's pretty much impossible to show that for humans--you can fake-show it, but to really **do** it, you yourself would have to have expanded beyond our current thought limitations, and then you'd have to be able to share that in a comprehensible way--not easily done.) The aliens' learning curve is pretty harrowing (for far too long; I could have done with considerably less of the harrowing part), but--well, I liked how it ended up.

Good job, Miéville!

First, have a quote from Railsea

What, above all, about wood?

That is the key mystery. Wood makes trees trees. Wood is also what makes ties--those bars crosswise between railsea rails--ties. A thing can have only one essence. How can this, then, be?

Of all the philosophers' answers, three stand out as least unlikely.

--Wood & wood are, in fact, appearances not withstanding, different things.

--Trees are creations of the devil that delights in confusing us.

--Trees are the ghosts of ties, their gnarled & twisted & dreamlike echoes born when parts of the railsea are damaged & destroyed. Transubstantiated matter.

--China Miéville, Railsea, pp. 249-50.

Now, do you see my problem? I do love Railsea, and this quote is virtuoso storytelling fun, but I'm afraid Miéville has his logic mixed up here. If wood is the essence of trees, and wood is the essence of ties, then both those things have a single essence--namely, wood. It's an essence with two manifestations. To express this elegant confusion and not fall foul of logic, he could simply have said, "How could an essence like wood have two such different manifestations?" (but in more baroque, Railsea-esque language) and then gone on with his three great possibilities.

Still loving the story, though!

And now back to work.