tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post4642092715200783570..comments2024-03-29T14:45:32.326+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: Craig Harrison (2): The Quiet Earth (1981)Dr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-2176514814155109732019-09-15T23:12:17.797+12:002019-09-15T23:12:17.797+12:00Yes. That, thinking of the worst thing, which for ...Yes. That, thinking of the worst thing, which for Sartre was a Hell (a "real" Hell, it almost is): a kind of moral existential Hell. Otherwise, it seems, people could make excuses, such as their subconscious etc. For him it seems there were to be no excuses, no exits. I think that derives via Nietzsche. But it makes me wonder. Kafka I can handle, and Flann O'Brien of 'At Swim Two Birds', but some of the other things...<br /><br />But even if the genetic research for something (one theory I thought of was it was the thing that allowed some of us to avoid all the horror, then another was as the novel progressed to the end, that it was some kind of mysterious message). I think Harrison's book is not unbearable though. It is a good eat. In Rapatahana's 'TOA' the pretty dysfunctional world the character is in is a bit Kafkaesque with even a 'reference' to 'Once Were Warriors' (satirical) which ('Once Were...') could be argued was written about a reality per se (though some Maori I have met felt it was not balanced in its focus on Maori): but it has a message about a wrong and wrongs. Harrison's does also in a veiled way. <br /><br />But is it self-hate they write some of these really awful things? I think also humans, as well a comedy, like those dark fairy stories. Something like that.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-88479194559413534882019-09-15T07:43:51.786+12:002019-09-15T07:43:51.786+12:00Is there a kind of self-hatred in writers that lea...Is there a kind of self-hatred in writers that leads them to concoct such hells for themselves? I guess there must be. Perhaps it's the principle of trying to think of the absolute worst thing, in the hopes that nothing that *actually* happens can be as bad as that?Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-27950172449103800962019-09-14T21:23:14.449+12:002019-09-14T21:23:14.449+12:00Hi Jack. Reporting in. I read 'The Quiet Earth...Hi Jack. Reporting in. I read 'The Quiet Earth' (and purchased Broken October). It is an incredible book. In the end it is indeed like that eternal recurrence and it reminded me of my reading of a book of essays by Terry Eagleton on Evil. It might be called Evil. The book is absolutely absorbing and I have to agree with the 'No Exit' idea. Although it is readable on other levels. For example, the character, Hobson, slowly emerges as dubious (but you are right about the intensity of Harrison's writing and the uniqueness). Thus my suspicions of Hobson. What does the reader believe in what is almost a mise en abyme? Did he actually find those terrible photographs. In suspending belief I can do this take: that Hobson IS, but possibly the others are fictions (they are indeed Other to use a worn term)...but within that doubt Hobson gets less and less likeable so my recollections of No Exit (which is frightening like 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien and 'Pincher Martin' by Golding (indeed also Ambrose Bierce's 'Incident at Owl's Creek...'): it is a great but almost traumatic novel (two other examples 'Cotter's England' by Christina Stead and 'Ethan Frome' by Edith Wharton)* As that happened, and his use of 'The Maori' and so on makes the No Exit reading a good one. But "evil"? And at the level of Pakeha vs Maori in NZ (or overall Coloniser vs Colonised) it has a point. Perhaps the key is what he finds written about himself. It is as if there are some things he might or can invent but others he cant evade.<br /><br />But it is certainly worth a read. It is close to one of our (or the) great books. I must read some more of his. <br /><br />I have been absent without leave and haven't caught up with the other posts here yet. I can produce a Doctor's note! My abject apologies as the Chief Commentator...<br /><br /><br />*Why are their so many great but awful novels like that? But Harrison's is a great read also like them.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-51158449439685149582019-09-03T00:11:31.491+12:002019-09-03T00:11:31.491+12:00I am getting more interested in King although to d...I am getting more interested in King although to date only his movies, Vic has read a few of his books...<br /><br />Vic saw 'The Quiet Earth' and felt for him it didn't work or keep working but started well. I am getting Harrison's book as, having reviewed Rapatahana's two novels and read your novellas! ... It sounds interesting. <br /><br />In your novella it is amusing your 'interlocuter' or Overseer keeps commenting on your divagations into Swedenborg via H. James senior and later you get to Henry James himself, then Nabakov of Lolita (?) is (almost) implied and James's story of a kind of struggle with himself, which is what is possibly happening through colonialism. But Senior James is affected, Harrison's character sees a similar (vastation?) and so on. Clever the way you envelope these narratives in 'erudite' references...Leicester would be annoyed at your snobbishness (!!) and amused also by the cleverness of it all. And you still have a foot in Borges's camp and de Bergerac etc etc...<br /><br />And you dare to have a cat in your story! A cute one (they are the worst and full of plots). And a dead wife...It is all too tragic and your 'helper' woman? Does she succeed in her devilish plot of getting a cat to you, and then she...or were they supernatural voices Jack on the phone? Come on Jack! Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-83306563096664362922019-09-02T07:45:49.343+12:002019-09-02T07:45:49.343+12:00Stephen King makes a great thing of the 'monst...Stephen King makes a great thing of the 'monster' cat in his novel <i>Pet Sematary</i> - for myself, I'm afraid that that's completely out-of-bounds, I'm afraid.<br /><br />I do think the book is richer than the movie, though the latter has many impressive features also. They're really more like parallel works than 'versions' of one another. Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-64607702309996066722019-09-02T00:23:21.895+12:002019-09-02T00:23:21.895+12:00Having read this I read your story Jack. The secon...Having read this I read your story Jack. The second of the ghost stories I have read. Very good indeed! I think he interconnects a number of things. The white man meeting the Maori is to do with colonialism etc -- and the strange beast he sees is a nightmare of the Other which is the self, the misanthropy is general and the man's -- but it is more than a metaphor of NZ-Maori history (although it seems the book must show that powerfully -- it also connects to recurrence and even maybe via Camus to a kind of Sisyphean thing (but how can one "triumph" in Nietzsche's or Camus's or even Sartre's worlds? The idea seems slightly mad to me. Although I know it is metaphorical. It is stark.<br /> Your story "cheats" as I know you have a soft spot for cats...and it could have been revealed, surely, the cat was an incarnation of the "monster" seen in Harrison's story or something. <br /> 'Wittgenstein's Mistress' is another of those existential things (a woman is alone in the world) although the significances are complicated by "referring" to the Tractatus, and in my copy there is a good afterword by David Foster Wallace. <br /> In any case, I liked your story, and want to read those works by Harrison. It sounds as if the book is 'better' than the movie. In any case the book and the film are always different regardless how the movies are presented.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.com