My Global Reputation
My global reputation is pretty skimpy, but I do merit my own entry in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, and it's been put together with great thoroughness.
It includes a list of some of the things dealt with in the CHRONICLES OF AN AGE OF DARKNESS series, the series of ten fantasy novels of which THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER is the last.
Reading it, I thought it was a very impressive list, and I felt proud of my achievement. The list is as follows:-
"At different times, the novels portray or allude to murder, bestiality, female circumcision, cannibalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, abortion, masturbation, mutation, incest, inbreeding, constipation, assassination, gambling, drunkenness, brawling, diarrhoea, capitalism, leprosy, castration, slavery, evolution, patricide, regicide, venereal disease, forgery, treason, dwarf tossing, torture, orgies, incontinence, suicide, disembowelment, capital and corporal punishment, drug use, religious fraud, bribery, blackmail, animal cruelty, disfigurement, infanticide, the caste system, democratic revolutionary movements, rape, theft, genocide, transvestitism, premature ejaculation, prostitution, piracy, and polygamy."
Did Charles Dickens touch on evern half of these vital themes? Somehow, I don't think so.
A good start, then, but I've been pushing on further.
In my latest novel, TO FIND AND WAKE THE DREAMER (available now from lulu.com/hughcook) I expand my range by dealing with suicide bombing, the theft of corpse organs and thermonuclear terrorism. Plus there's an eye-gouging incident, the inspiration for which was Shakespeare's KING LEAR, a violent girlnapping, an involuntary branding with red-hot iron, more drugs, more cruelty to animals (jellyfish get dynamited, though, to be honest, this happens off stage), an extended interrogation scene and at least two (I say at least because it's such a long book that it's hard to keep track of everything) involving torture, one scene featuring high-voltage electricity and the other featuring a flesh-stripping whip.
To close out this entry, a snippet from THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER which perhaps (or perhaps not -- there's a lot to choose from) contributed to the list which features in my Wikopedia entry:-
"Whatever the truth of the matter, it is certain that Guest, having been abstracted from the Greater Teeth by the villainous Poulaan, ended up in Sung, a dismal land of bogs and rockdumps in Ravlish East, where peasants with provincial mudpuddle minds dedicate themselves to the practice of obscure yet hideous abominations. The inhabitants of this depraved place eat offal (in addition to pork), rape sheep, commit vile abominations with toads, and abominate themselves also with liquid dung. Nor is this the limit of their delinquencies, for the people of Sung have disgraced themselves down through the generations by systematic inhospitality, the worst manifestation of which is that they frequently mistake wandering scholars for lepers and endeavour to stone them to death. They further display their debased iniquity by giving houseroom to the skavamareen, an instrument of aural obscenity which has long been outlawed in every civilized nation from Tang to Chi'ash-lan. It must also be said that a debasement equal to that of their morals has from time to time afflicted their coinage; and from this great injury has been suffered by innocent persons."
This diatribe against the land of Sung features late in the text of THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER, in Chapter Four.
Who is the speaker here? That is nowhere stated, but, if you have read one of the earlier books in the series, THE WORDSMITHS AND THE WARGUILD (something it is not necessary to do to absorb, understand and appreciate THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER) is the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
His take on Sung is unjust, because he is speaking out of his own limited experience of the place, which has been unhappy. He is locked in his own subjectivity, as indeed are the other characters we encounter.
Typically, the books of the series tend to be narrated from a perspective which is trapped inside someone's subjectivity. This, after all, is how we perceive the world.
I, for example, during my first sequence of cancer treatment back in 2006, found myself, on occasion, wondering why the hospital was cluttered up with people whose urgencies had nothing to do with cancer. People with broken legs, heart attacks, that kind of thing -- what were they doing here?
Logically, I could see that this take on reality was absurd, the stress of the situation refocusing the entire world until the city, the state, the planet Earth, the solar system, the local galaxy and the totality of the larger-scale catastrophe beyond became, from my point of view, nothing more than the setting for the experiment which the poison chemists (the chemotherapists) were running on my disease.
If the focus was always (implicitly or explicitly) with Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, then we would end up with a very distorted view of things. But fortunately it is not. Often it is with Guest Gulkan himself, ready to take on the world and conquer it.
He is, of course, a barbarian, as is stated explicitly in the opening chapters, and the world he lives in is barbarous, a world of wars, violence, no-holds-barred political struggles, torture, murder and catastrophe.
Which makes it, in my modest opinion, apt reading for the modern age.
Battle, struggle and jeopardy. Almost everything included. But no acid baths, which is a pity. I never thought of acid baths. When it comes to the realms of the no-holds-barred, I hate to get outdone by the daily newspaper, but, over the last couple of years, all too often I have been.
It includes a list of some of the things dealt with in the CHRONICLES OF AN AGE OF DARKNESS series, the series of ten fantasy novels of which THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER is the last.
Reading it, I thought it was a very impressive list, and I felt proud of my achievement. The list is as follows:-
"At different times, the novels portray or allude to murder, bestiality, female circumcision, cannibalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, abortion, masturbation, mutation, incest, inbreeding, constipation, assassination, gambling, drunkenness, brawling, diarrhoea, capitalism, leprosy, castration, slavery, evolution, patricide, regicide, venereal disease, forgery, treason, dwarf tossing, torture, orgies, incontinence, suicide, disembowelment, capital and corporal punishment, drug use, religious fraud, bribery, blackmail, animal cruelty, disfigurement, infanticide, the caste system, democratic revolutionary movements, rape, theft, genocide, transvestitism, premature ejaculation, prostitution, piracy, and polygamy."
Did Charles Dickens touch on evern half of these vital themes? Somehow, I don't think so.
A good start, then, but I've been pushing on further.
In my latest novel, TO FIND AND WAKE THE DREAMER (available now from lulu.com/hughcook) I expand my range by dealing with suicide bombing, the theft of corpse organs and thermonuclear terrorism. Plus there's an eye-gouging incident, the inspiration for which was Shakespeare's KING LEAR, a violent girlnapping, an involuntary branding with red-hot iron, more drugs, more cruelty to animals (jellyfish get dynamited, though, to be honest, this happens off stage), an extended interrogation scene and at least two (I say at least because it's such a long book that it's hard to keep track of everything) involving torture, one scene featuring high-voltage electricity and the other featuring a flesh-stripping whip.
To close out this entry, a snippet from THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER which perhaps (or perhaps not -- there's a lot to choose from) contributed to the list which features in my Wikopedia entry:-
"Whatever the truth of the matter, it is certain that Guest, having been abstracted from the Greater Teeth by the villainous Poulaan, ended up in Sung, a dismal land of bogs and rockdumps in Ravlish East, where peasants with provincial mudpuddle minds dedicate themselves to the practice of obscure yet hideous abominations. The inhabitants of this depraved place eat offal (in addition to pork), rape sheep, commit vile abominations with toads, and abominate themselves also with liquid dung. Nor is this the limit of their delinquencies, for the people of Sung have disgraced themselves down through the generations by systematic inhospitality, the worst manifestation of which is that they frequently mistake wandering scholars for lepers and endeavour to stone them to death. They further display their debased iniquity by giving houseroom to the skavamareen, an instrument of aural obscenity which has long been outlawed in every civilized nation from Tang to Chi'ash-lan. It must also be said that a debasement equal to that of their morals has from time to time afflicted their coinage; and from this great injury has been suffered by innocent persons."
This diatribe against the land of Sung features late in the text of THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER, in Chapter Four.
Who is the speaker here? That is nowhere stated, but, if you have read one of the earlier books in the series, THE WORDSMITHS AND THE WARGUILD (something it is not necessary to do to absorb, understand and appreciate THE WITCHLORD AND THE WEAPONMASTER) is the wizard Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin.
His take on Sung is unjust, because he is speaking out of his own limited experience of the place, which has been unhappy. He is locked in his own subjectivity, as indeed are the other characters we encounter.
Typically, the books of the series tend to be narrated from a perspective which is trapped inside someone's subjectivity. This, after all, is how we perceive the world.
I, for example, during my first sequence of cancer treatment back in 2006, found myself, on occasion, wondering why the hospital was cluttered up with people whose urgencies had nothing to do with cancer. People with broken legs, heart attacks, that kind of thing -- what were they doing here?
Logically, I could see that this take on reality was absurd, the stress of the situation refocusing the entire world until the city, the state, the planet Earth, the solar system, the local galaxy and the totality of the larger-scale catastrophe beyond became, from my point of view, nothing more than the setting for the experiment which the poison chemists (the chemotherapists) were running on my disease.
If the focus was always (implicitly or explicitly) with Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, then we would end up with a very distorted view of things. But fortunately it is not. Often it is with Guest Gulkan himself, ready to take on the world and conquer it.
He is, of course, a barbarian, as is stated explicitly in the opening chapters, and the world he lives in is barbarous, a world of wars, violence, no-holds-barred political struggles, torture, murder and catastrophe.
Which makes it, in my modest opinion, apt reading for the modern age.
Battle, struggle and jeopardy. Almost everything included. But no acid baths, which is a pity. I never thought of acid baths. When it comes to the realms of the no-holds-barred, I hate to get outdone by the daily newspaper, but, over the last couple of years, all too often I have been.
posted by Hugh Cook at 4:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home