mutterwingwhirr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-05-21 08:05 am
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-05-21 08:05 am
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piranesi -- 71% review
i tried to read piranesi by hand in the latter part of 2022, but it went poorly for me. i remember getting so bogged down, trying to keep track of the calendar system and just general navigation, that i lost my way in the story many times.
but i'm trying again, at camarata's behest (and audible account). one of my many points of appreciation of audiobook narrators: they know where the story is going, and what not to get caught up in.
i really love the way that piranesi makes sense of the world he's in. his vast appreciation for the world paints it as a beautiful, treacherous place to live, with much to do to keep on living within it, and with much to be grateful for. gratitude for suffering is functional to him just as much as gratitude for delights is functional. the horrors of survival and the transcendence of interpreting meaning from it is what powers the engine of his understanding. in the same way that minecraft has appeal, even though night always brings monsters, through all the little chores that let you make the world a little more your own, this world of halls/rooms in an endless house battered by the sea at regular intervals is... enticing. it encompasses the sublime, the horror so large and unfathomable that your view of the world, of life, is changed; it does so and simultaneously beckons you further in. :"will you not, for a little while, contemplate the statues you might see were you to walk down these many halls? with stone and seawater and rain, what would you be able to make and survive on? for how long?" what a fantastic way to build a deep sympathy and appreciation for the narrator and his understanding of the world.
and then there is the other part of this book. the one indicated by the epigraph at the beginning of the book. the one that tells us that this is a scientific investigation into amnesia. that this is being carried out by one so revolutionary a thinker as to make themself... a wizard?
i'm not far enough into the book to really make sense of what this part of the book is getting at. i understand that the labyrinth that the book takes place in is something akin to a parallel dimension, into and from which doorways can be cut or found. i understand that all but the narrator have known and remembered the world they came from. i understand that the Other has a means of leaving and returning, and that others still have been imprisoned here. i believe the narrator is imprisoned here, at least in part, but i'm not certain why. i know he and the Prophet have spoken before, or at least, the Prophet was aware of him, presumably because of his journalism and investigative activities. i know he was trying to find out information into this... cult of parallel dimensions? but the rest is muddy. i'm not sure why this is happening so close to present day, or what it means exactly that the narrator's journals account for events spanning 2012 to 2019. i don't know the labyrinth's function, besides prison.
in many ways, i feel like this book has done an excellent job of showing me two very different sides of a story and challenging me to make sense of them. this completely foreign concept of a world, this investigative journalism plot into... what was it called? irrational thinking? the name eludes me. anyway, there's certainly strength here in how long we lingered in the labyrinth before we started learning the other half of the story. the lavish, inscrutable world of the labyrinth is enticing and mysterious, and the narrator can do so much in this space to make sense of it, keenly. he is the sole interpreter between the alien world he occupies and the reader, much as we eventually become the interpreter between our world and the story of his past journal entries. i think the author was right to name us as "You." to engage with us the audience as active members in visiting these journal entries denoting things that happened in the past, and to make sense of everything.
i'm really excited to see how the story resolves. i'm scared to stop reading here, knowing how little is left in duration despite how many questions are yet unanswered. i can't imagine how this book will conclude at all, but i'm here for the ride.
for everything that's being established in this book, let's start the rating scale at an 8, for complexity and reader engagement tactics and just general story appeal. and let's tentatively rate it at 7/8 because i truly feel that at this point in the novel, more has been established or foreshadowed than it possibly feels can be adequately resolved.
also, ketterley is TOTALLY an ipad kid.
but i'm trying again, at camarata's behest (and audible account). one of my many points of appreciation of audiobook narrators: they know where the story is going, and what not to get caught up in.
i really love the way that piranesi makes sense of the world he's in. his vast appreciation for the world paints it as a beautiful, treacherous place to live, with much to do to keep on living within it, and with much to be grateful for. gratitude for suffering is functional to him just as much as gratitude for delights is functional. the horrors of survival and the transcendence of interpreting meaning from it is what powers the engine of his understanding. in the same way that minecraft has appeal, even though night always brings monsters, through all the little chores that let you make the world a little more your own, this world of halls/rooms in an endless house battered by the sea at regular intervals is... enticing. it encompasses the sublime, the horror so large and unfathomable that your view of the world, of life, is changed; it does so and simultaneously beckons you further in. :"will you not, for a little while, contemplate the statues you might see were you to walk down these many halls? with stone and seawater and rain, what would you be able to make and survive on? for how long?" what a fantastic way to build a deep sympathy and appreciation for the narrator and his understanding of the world.
and then there is the other part of this book. the one indicated by the epigraph at the beginning of the book. the one that tells us that this is a scientific investigation into amnesia. that this is being carried out by one so revolutionary a thinker as to make themself... a wizard?
i'm not far enough into the book to really make sense of what this part of the book is getting at. i understand that the labyrinth that the book takes place in is something akin to a parallel dimension, into and from which doorways can be cut or found. i understand that all but the narrator have known and remembered the world they came from. i understand that the Other has a means of leaving and returning, and that others still have been imprisoned here. i believe the narrator is imprisoned here, at least in part, but i'm not certain why. i know he and the Prophet have spoken before, or at least, the Prophet was aware of him, presumably because of his journalism and investigative activities. i know he was trying to find out information into this... cult of parallel dimensions? but the rest is muddy. i'm not sure why this is happening so close to present day, or what it means exactly that the narrator's journals account for events spanning 2012 to 2019. i don't know the labyrinth's function, besides prison.
in many ways, i feel like this book has done an excellent job of showing me two very different sides of a story and challenging me to make sense of them. this completely foreign concept of a world, this investigative journalism plot into... what was it called? irrational thinking? the name eludes me. anyway, there's certainly strength here in how long we lingered in the labyrinth before we started learning the other half of the story. the lavish, inscrutable world of the labyrinth is enticing and mysterious, and the narrator can do so much in this space to make sense of it, keenly. he is the sole interpreter between the alien world he occupies and the reader, much as we eventually become the interpreter between our world and the story of his past journal entries. i think the author was right to name us as "You." to engage with us the audience as active members in visiting these journal entries denoting things that happened in the past, and to make sense of everything.
i'm really excited to see how the story resolves. i'm scared to stop reading here, knowing how little is left in duration despite how many questions are yet unanswered. i can't imagine how this book will conclude at all, but i'm here for the ride.
for everything that's being established in this book, let's start the rating scale at an 8, for complexity and reader engagement tactics and just general story appeal. and let's tentatively rate it at 7/8 because i truly feel that at this point in the novel, more has been established or foreshadowed than it possibly feels can be adequately resolved.
also, ketterley is TOTALLY an ipad kid.