Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood imposter-author here.
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)
Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.
(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)
5 comments:
Flannery O'Connor (one the few noted Christians who wrote literary fiction) beleived that sometimes the grotesque was more realistic than realism. Sometimes, she thought, people are so dulled to what is beautiful and uggly that exageration or unusual context is the only way to display its true nature. The grotesque can help us see our own, more "normal" lives as they ought to be seen. The caveat, of course, is that one can say a lot of things with any style of writing and not all those things are right.
An intriuging post and a good reminder of my literary training.
P.S. I got Lamplighter recently. Now I just need to find a copy of Factotum with a decent cover.
-Ben
I suppose this isn't the most appropriate place to be posting my comments, but since I just stumbled upon your blog and discovered you have very recently created a new blog entry that does admit you read all the comments, I figure…what the heck.
Thanks for the Monster-blood Tattoo books.
I find myself caught up in them more so than most books I've read. :)
I'm halfway through Factotum. Wonderful! I'm losing myself in them. ^_^
Thank you again.
Pamela
Dear Pamela,
I cannot believe you dared to post such an inappropriate comment in so inappropriate a place *JKS!!
This is the PERFECT place to be posting such comments! I am not fussy at all about who says what when, and most certainly not when they (you) are being so encouraging.
So thank you for taking the risk: it was well worth it.
Excellent writing at Lobster & Canary. Thanks for recommending.
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