beginnings middles ends

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Beginnings, Middles, Endings

I started reading George R. R. Martin’s The Game of Thrones yesterday.

There’s nothing like beginning a new book. In this case, with all the hype behind this particular title, it has a lot to live up to. I’ve never seen the TV show and don’t really have a good idea who the characters are. I’ve avoided the series up to now because George Martin is getting old and he hasn’t finished writing it yet. I didn’t want to commit to that many pages of reading with no guarantee there’ll never be an ending to it.

But then I had a dream some months ago in which I was reading Game of Thrones, so I decided, okay, that must mean something good. I bought a copy of the ubiquitous Volume One and saved it for the summer. Now it’s summer, and it’s time to read long books …

But the thing is — maybe even more so with a series like this — I’ll never have the experience again of meeting and learning all the characters and crises and drama. Introducing myself to a huge new world already such a prominent and popular part of the common consciousness. I’m not concerned with catching up with everyone else, but I am determined to have the experience of being personally engaged by the book in my own right. And you can only do that by actually starting the book. And you can only have the experience of being enchanted by starting a book for the first time once. It’s great.

Something like …

I passed the halfway mark in David Peace’s first novel in the Red Riding Quartet, 1974, yesterday. There’s nothing like being in the middle of a good book.

There’s a startlingly accurate blurb from the New York Times on the cover of that novel. “A bundle of spastic nerves and jumpy tempos, hard to hold in your hand but harder to put down.” I would only recommend David Peace to certain people as a good read, as the world he presents is that bleak and visceral. But the way he experiments with narrative to fling the story at you like mud at a window you foolishly left open is maddeningly compelling. And like the NY Times says, the excitement of holding a narrative in your hands that you just can’t put down is so exceptional, you’ll put up with a lot. Even the unremitting blood and guts of a Yorkshire you can only hope isn’t quite as real as David Peace makes it seem. And that keeps you coming back for more, and more, and more, the deeper you get into it, until …

I finished The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope on Sunday morning. Not only completing the novel itself, but his six-book series The Palliser Novels as well. Some 4,200 pages worth of reading in total.

There’s nothing like finishing a good book. Coming to that moment which, if successfully carried out, establishes a sense of order and resolution to a world of infinite possibilities that you never get in real life. Finding out how it all works out for a change! Some people get what they deserve, some don’t, but in every aspect if the book is a good one, each ending for each character and situation provides a sense of aesthetic satisfaction with how the artist has drawn his conflicting lines into a single coherent picture. Even better if you don’t see things coming.

And Anthony somehow manages to end this magnum opus with one single sentence that sums up so much of the spirit of the entire series, even though referring specifically to a character unique to that last novel. But a good writer will do that.

Because there’s nothing like picking up a good book and reading it right through, really.

*****

Photography by Renee Beaubien, at Beyond the Prism

on Flickr, at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Grand Finale! Episode 17, Chapter 17 of The Electric Detective, posts Monday, July 27th, in which the final two Contestants battle it out to a finish! And then, on Friday, July 31st … the Winner is declared! Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition concludes at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

With special continuing guest appearances by Jason Midnight and his Cousin Caroline.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy

Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena

Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …

Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine

Episode Ten: Shakespeare-Ish — Hamlet the Barbarian

Episode Eleven: Poe-Ish — The Usher Motel

Episode Twelve: Kafka-Ish — Metamorphos-Ish

Episode Thirteen: Finney-Ish — The Invasion of the Hotel Detectives

Episode Fourteen: Miller-Ish — Tempering the Cauldron

Episode Fifteen: Stevenson-Ish — Dr. Coffin’s Kindly Concoction

Episode Sixteen: Shelley-Ish — Prometheus, the Hard Way

Episode Seventeen: Baillie-Ish — The Electric Detective, Chapter Seventeen

As illustrated by the author.