Michael G. Chivers: Clever Writer!
I'm reading a fascinating, frightening tale - "The Squalling Terror" - told by Michael G. Chivers in Emanations: 2 + 2 = 5, and in a single sentence, he ties a sight gag to a pun that shows why the object described can never be of practical use to anybody:
One of the items looked like an ivory d*ldo of unfeasible proportions, covered in impenetrable script. (page 246, bowdlerizaton mine)The writing here is very clever (I chuckled aloud on the subway) and implies a control over wording that goes deep into the sentence. I refer mainly to the term "impenetrable," which can suggest that the d*ldo does not function properly - as we already know from the other significant term, "unfeasible." One has to misread, of course, to impart this meaning to "impenetrable" - i.e., 'not penetrate able' - but let's be generous with our man.
Anyway, I'm still reading, and enjoying the story . . .
Labels: Literary Criticism
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 7:48 AM
18 comments
18 Comments:
"...goes deep into the sentence."
I see what you did there.
Your eyesight is more penetrating than mine.
Jeffery Hodges
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Cool, I'm currently reading the Squalling Terror, too!
If you finish first, I'll know that I can survive.
Oh, wait . . . this is fiction, isn't it? I need not worry, right?
Jeffery Hodges
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Glad to see this terrific story getting some attention.
The political satire is spot on. I think his posture on such matters is the shape of things to come. That is, this is how the pendulum is going to (or perhaps should) swing the other way.
I like his parody of Lovecraft, too. Beautifully done.
As fictitious as today's headlines, bub!
Thanks, Anon 1, for the key to the reading.
Jeffery Hodges
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Anon 2, now, I'm paranoid again!
Jeffery Hodges
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypsltm5zNCU
Let me link that: YouTube.
Jeffery Hodges
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What do you think of "The Squalling Terror"? Does it contribute to the 2 + 2 = 5 theme? (And just what is that?)
Also, what came of your reading of the Robert Meadley story?
The Meadley story was interesting for me because I enjoy stories of encounters with the Devil, but I can see that some readers might find the story a bit thin.
The Squalling Terror is a really good story, a sort of Lovecraftian satire of the Marxist Revolutionary Party as a religious cult that gets more than it bargained for.
I don't understand the 2 + 2 = 5 either. Except this anthology is the fifth one. And it deals with the irrational. Maybe that's all it means.
Jeffery Hodges
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As it happens, there is a 2 + 2 = 5 connection to The Squalling Terror through George Orwell's 1984:
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it."
I would love to say that this was intentional, but the reality is that TST was written over a period of four years, and I had no idea that it would ever be published, let alone where. I am glad that you enjoyed it.
I had forgotten the Orwellian statement. That's perhaps the meaning in the Emanations subtitle.
I did enjoy the story. It was so good that I almost set it aside for fear of nightmares, but I steeled myself and read on.
Jeffery Hodges
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Compare Orwell's statement to the Benjamin Franklin epigraph. There is a tie-in, too, with the Chivers story. That is, us boomers threw the baby out with the bath water when we embraced "postmodernism" as the road to Utopia (Mike, please find that pic of the guy in the Yes T-shirt with the soiled shorts). Well... maybe we learned a thing or two in the past fifty years, and 2 + 2 = 5 isn't, ahem, one of them! And perhaps Robert Meadley's story fits in to this as well because it underscores the the idea that the errors of the past will find greater permutations with the increase in population... "The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, you think 5000 years of human karma is sticky? Har! Har! Har! Boy, just wait till you see the nanobots!"
Those nanobots are scary to think about!
Jeffery Hodges
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Hkavanagh6@gmail.com
What's the email for?
Jeffery Hodges
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