[Cross-posted over yonder]
[Edit: Superfluous Swaddling Removed]
A broken Mr. Dorrit, recently of Marshalsea prison, moved over the
French countryside. Ensconced in his “snug corner,”
he
fell to castle-building as he rode along. It was evident
that he had a very large castle in hand. All day long he was running
towers up, taking towers down, adding a wing here, putting on a
battlement there, looking to the walls, strengthening the defences,
giving ornamental touches to the interior, making in all respects a
superb castle of it...
On the heels of last week’s discussion on alternative histories, I’m inspired by China Mieville’s The Scar
to ask a similar question about a similar speculative endeavour:
building castles in the air. New Crobuzon’s one of the best
realized castle-in-the-air I’ve ever encountered. Its
effectiveness, I’d wager, stems from the manner in which it seems
not to have been created but evolved. I once spent three months in Urbino and as soon as that city--with its unreal angles and centuries old inhumanly steep streets of inlaid brick ladders--seeps
into your brain, the obsession with cities as agglutinate as German
concept-nouns inevitably follows. So it has. (So much so
I’m even fascinated by Jon Jerde’s excessively colorful simulations.)
For the sake of clarity, I’ll call these “evolved
cities,” as “representations of fictional cities earthed in
a faux-historical developmental process such that it’s as
compellingly complex and un-invented-seeming as Drieser’s Chicago
or Chandler’s Los Angeles” sounds deeply stupid. So,
yes, literary representations of similarly “evolved
cities.” I’ve located a number myself, including Marco
Polo’s in Calvino’s Invisible Cities--although
I’m looking for fully realized cities, so Calvino can’t
really count--William Gibson’s suburb-on-a-bridge in Virtual Light; Gormenghast Castle in Peake’s Titus Groans and Gormenghast; the Orange/Los Angeles/San Diego County mall-complex in Robinson’s The Gold Coast;
etc. The unflattering way to phrase this request would be that
I’m looking for works which’ll foster the felt-immersion of
a fourteen-year-old’s first encounter with Tolkien or an
undergraduate’s first flipping of Ulysses.
So come on already! This is a p-a-r-t-y! Your
quarter/semester/Monday’s done and what would you rather do than
discuss your favorite fictional environs? Don’t tell me
you’re all off watching The Scholar.
A Highly Personal (and Possibly Inappropriate) P.S.: If
anyone’s ever figured out all the film references on John
Vanderslice’s Cellar Door
and wouldn’t mind sharing them, I’d be forever in your
debt. I’ve connected the obvious--"Promising Actress”
and Mulholland Drive and “When It Hits My Blood” and Requiem for a Dream--but outside of the obvious I’m as dense as ever.
Recent Comments