The City and the City, Part Two

[ritaxis]

I have other reading to do before the weekend and I knew the day would be a wash for writing anyway because of dental work, so I finished The City and the City. I am relieved to say it's actually pretty good most of the way through despite the kneejerk women-fridging. I have a lot of thoughts about it, but one thought is that the unfortunate interview and frankly bizarre discussion questions packaged in this edition aren't doint the book any favors. I do feel sorry for Mieville, because in the interview he sounds like he knows that everything he says in this is going to come off pompous and inflated, and he wishes he could do it differently and can't figure out how. And the questions -- suffice to say if I joined a book club and somebody thought we ought to structure our discussion around those questions, I'd quit. They sound just like the very worst study questions ever foisted on K-12 students.

But the book itself. I love the premise. The protagonist's fate is the only one possible from the very beginning of the book, which is slightly disappointing, because when I realized that was going to happen early on I was fairly confident that Mieville would take another path as he did when it became obvious what was going on with the third city and that was not it. And I wasn't satisfied with the particulars of some of the politics. But I did love the richness of detail, the fine distinctions between the cities that are nested in the same geography, stuff about material culture, and so forth. I suspect the metro system in Ul Qoma is based on the one in Prague, which is pleasant for me because it's the only really foreign city I know at all and I'll talk your ear off about the amazing metro stations. And even though it's jolting and hurts the brain, the way that he has more cultural hints pointing at the Central Asian end of Europe, while at the same time giving a Baltic feel to the landscape and the architecture, is actually more satisfying, at least to me, than it would have been if it felt like he was rendering a specific real region. It felt more real to me, as if instead of being an imperfect shadow of a real thing, it was its own thing with its own gravity and solidity.

As usual when a Westerner writes in an Eastern setting, there was a hint of condescension also. It may be unavoidable.

I'm a bad audience for crime fiction. All of its conventions annoy me. It's just how it is: some people like to read high fantasy, some people like crime fiction, some people like Regency romances, and here lately I'm kind of a grumpy old lady about everything. But I've never been a good audience for crime novels, and to be fair to everyone I usually just stay away. Most of my biggest complaints about this book derive from exactly this fact. And then most of the things I like about it derive from its complicated reality and its thickly layered detail.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Eastern? It's in eastern Europe, with people of that ethnicity, yes... which means it could have been set in Manhattan, except that in the book I don't recall any people wishing the Cold War had come out different.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It could not have been set in Manhattan, unless Manhattan is very different from how I remember it. The cities bear no more resemblance to New York than they do to any other city, whereas it does bear a more specific resemblance to the only Eastern European city I know. If you mean "there's a lot of Eastern Europeans in New York," sure, but I don't see how that has any bearing.

Suddenly I'm having deja vu. I believe I had a similar conversation about some entirely other book several years ago. I wish I could remember which book and the details of the conversation.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I was also referring to the fact that "Eastern" Europe* isn't Eastern in the sense that, say, Thailand is... or even Iran.

Be it said, parts of Manhattan away from Central Park do have a lot in common with the Cities. I digress. I do that.




*The more so since Europe isn't even a continent, which is a body of land exceeding a certain size and not significantly connected with another body of land. South America, Australia, and even Antarctica are continents. Europe is a region at the western end of Asia.

Pluto, however, is a planet.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I could have been more precise. But I'm surprised that what I wrote was confusing anyway.

And I don't see what the continental status of any place has to do with what I wrote at all. I never made a claim for Europe being a continent, and the only time I left "Europe" off the "Eastern" label was where I was noting that the seemingly required condescension of Westerners towards Eastern Europe was present to a degree.

So I'm really at a loss as to what you're taking issue with, besides my assertion that The City and the City is solidly set in an Eastern European setting. Which is just odd, to be blunt.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

"...I don't see what the continental status of any place has to do with what I wrote at all...."

Nothing. I can't get one of my painkillers refilled for a week because my insurance carrier says nobody needs as much as I was prescribed, and when I get this miserable one of the symptoms is deadpan remarks mixed in with otherwise sensible conversation, insofar as I can still do the latter at all.

So:

The continent business was just an excuse for my Pluto remark.

The rest was my own grousing that Eastern Europe is well to the west of what I think of as East.

The gripping hand is, I found the book unsatisfying overall. When he wrote Un Lun Dun he was able to establish a surreal fantasy setting and develop characters and details without making the plot drag like a dead horse underneath a milk wagon on a steep downslope; what happened?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Yes, especially given that Bezsel has its own branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, referenced specifically in the book.

I loved the book; I think it was Mieville's masterpiece, and I was disappointed in your first post on the subject. I think my favorite bit is how the first chapters goes on and on about the division between the two cities, and then the two Bezs characters troop immediately over the Bezsel's Ul Qomatown for lunch.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Well, I think my first post is due to two things: one, I'm not a good match for crime fiction anyway, and two, that opening scene is not up to the rest of the book. There are good details in it -- the kids, Tyador's treatment of them vs the other fellow's: the woman at the end of the street who isn't in the city and gives the first clue to what's going on and is not explained for pages and pages of more clues (yeah, I like that, even though I was a bit annoyed at the moment that I couldn't quite parse the sentence). But the setup, that particular trope, where the woman is no more than a plot device, is just not undermined soon enough for me and made it really difficult for me to read the book correctly.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Ah, I can see that. TC&tC is definitely part of Mieville's "write a book in every genre" project, and he did hold a little closely to crime/police procedural this time out.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'm not on Mieville's wavelength most of the time, but I enjoyed this much more than Perdido Street Station. Felt slightly let down by the resolution, but liked the charcaterisation.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention that book. It's the one that turned me off Mieville. I so wanted to like him, and I think that reading this book has actually accomplished that for me.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Agreed. and ditto.