Vandertron

I'm going to partially rescind the Vander-Bash I had in the last post, because after finishing the book, I realize he does have some strengths in his storytelling ability. However, I still have a problem with his language, as in pretty much every sentence, he's goes just far enough over the line between eloquent and flowery to where it cements his mediocrity as a writer: if he just pruned his metaphors a little bit, his stuff would be much more tolerable. And while the faux-academic pieces like A Brief History of Ambergris are fun and entertaining (not to mention, suited to his voice,) they get kinda old after a while, I think you have to be a hardcore fan of the VanderMeer universe to really appreciate them.

BUT. But but but. He's damn good at establishing mood, I'll give him that. And he seems to favor protagonists that are one or both of the following: a) arrogant as hell, or, b) insecure and uncertain. (in terms of personality, the two pretty much go together). So, since he's good at writing that character, he's also very good at establishing dread, anxiety and paranoia on a really self-directed, personal level. This is most apparent in 'The Cage,' a story in which an enterprising merchant gets devoured by fungus (pretty sweet imagery too).

Since CoSM is the only book I've read by VanderMeer, I don't really know whether his favoring of the above mentioned elements reflects any limited singularity for him as a writer, but I think this combination of moods/characters says something greater about the city he's created in the work (a bustling, westernized metropolis whose original native inhabitants were historically killed off by its current residents), in that the selfish, arrogant character reflects the conquistador persona, while the guilt, insecurity, and fucked up situations that his characters end up in reflect some kind of karmatic justice, or at least on a personal level, the collective guilt of a nation that's killed off a people it didn't fully understand, while at the same time, pompously embracing its own history.

Maybe I'm just fulla shit. In other news, summer is looking pretty fine this year:





This was at the Nine Inch Nails/Jane's Addiction concert a few weeks ago, which was spectacular. There was actually a pretty varied age group, as opposed to when I saw them in August, which was brimming with the young'uns, and the most extreme minority of light-haired people I have ever seen in the south.

I hope you're all memorializing well.