Sunday, December 14, 2008
I just read Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. Whose Fionvar Tapestry is by far the greatest fictional series I have ever read. I remember reading somewhere that the mind is... can't quite remember the word, but inelastic will have to suffice til I recall it.The mind is inelastic not in that it cannot stretch, but in that it will not, cannot, can never return to its original state once stretched. The Fionvar Tapestry is like that. Those three books are so powerful, so deep, so intriguing, that after reading them I knew I had just read something at least 5 levels above anything I had read before, and for a long time I could read nothing lesser. Not after being shown what could be.It's funny, actually. Perplexing, somehow, that the little figures of dark ink marching across the pages could illicit smiles, chuckles, even laughs and helpless tears. Could make your heart ache and yet your spirits lift. A beautiful line, and there is a burning behind the eyes. Another, and the water pools at the lids, threatening to spill over.When I was smaller, I didn't like to read in the presence of others. Oh, read I did. I was ever enraptured with my nose deep within the pages and my mind and heart deeper still within the stories woven. Someone - Camille, or Li Shan, or Jean? commented on the day we collected our PSLE results that it was the first time she'd seen me without a book in my hands.But I prefered to read alone. Because then there was no obligation to remain tethered to reality, one foot on Earth and one foot in the realm in which the story was set. No one around and no where to go, so it was not necessary to keep one eye on the stairs, one ear on the conversation. No need to pull painfully back to the present and tear away from the plot in order to stop the rising tears or the joy expanding within the chest. Alone, you can cut yourself loose and fly with the words and the tale, grinning or sobbing til your heart's content.Sounds and images hold a great power. So, too, do words on a page. Curious, how a few chosen words - not original in themselves, or even, often, in their phrasing - for it is true that the Author cannot really create but merely collate words of origins too ancient to remember - can have such power on a person's mind and heart, and so body.Merely collated. Yet woven with such skill that they could pull at one's heart and drag one's soul far away, before bringing it gently, though not slowly enough, back to the now. Great writing has great power.In the end, though, I did return back to the lower level. Did shrink back to Tamora Pierce and Eoin Colfer and Meg Cabot, because maintaining high levels are tiring, and high levels rarely bring you back to the happy endings you sometimes crave when you throw yourself into a book, to be brought a shallow relief that you know, knew, know again what would happen.It was too hard to read so much, and alone. The price of friendship and time was too high. I couldn't keep retreating into a quiet space to dive into a fantasy world. So I turned to stories less complex, writing more cheerful and less serious, so that I could read while still anchored in reality. That grew tiresome, and even lesser stories can enrapture, particularly the first time (or first three times). So slowly, by and by, I stopped reading.Books are portals to the worlds and places and peoples beyond their pages, in the stories they weave about you. The greatest books grab you and spirit you far, far away from where you are. This is what I read fiction for. It is also why I prefer fantasy books - it's easier to be happy if everything, not merely the plot, is unreal. If you are in a wholly different world, a wholly different time, you can suspend your disbelief even more, and the plots are less tainted by the pains of modern life, and so you are further away from where you are now.Imagination is a brilliant, glorious double-edged sword.
Posted by nayrakroarual at 7:02 PM
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