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Aug. 6th, 2004 12:02 pmThe China Mieville signing last night turned into quite the party, as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethynyc, linaerys, seanmoon turned up, as well as M. and my friend Sarah.
I'd seen China do a reading before, but I'd never heard him do a Q&A. He came across as extremely intelligent, funny, thoughtful, etc. I won't try to summarize everything he said; there's an entry on the bas_lag community which does that very well, and linearys and seanmoon focused on various aspects of it in their posts. So, whattheysaid, plus:
One thing that impressed me was that he talked about prose style in fantastic fiction, and how mostly it's seen as getting in the way of the plot and etc. While China's prose style is one of the things a lot of people complain about (I love it, but I also read Proust for fun), I really admire him for using language to unsettle the reader or make him/her think. Similarly, I like the idea that *he* has maps of Bas Lag, but he doesn't want to publish them because he wants the reader to have to make his/her way around and feel that sense of disorientation. But then, as I've said, it's the depth of his world, the notion that there's a lot more going on than we'll ever be told about, that's one of the things which impresses me so much.
He was really friendly and patient during the signing -- patient when the flash on Sarah's camera didn't go off and M. had to take a second picture. He recognized M. as a fellow-Londoner, so they had a bonding moment.
And he's managed to finish his dissertation. I congratulated him on that, and he commiserated with me on mine. (This rest is all about me, so if you're reading it for China, feel free to bail!) It's a bit intimidating to think that someone else can manage to write massive best-selling novels and still complete; though his explanation in the q&A section of how he worked made a lot of sense -- that he'd focus on the diss. intensively for a couple of weeks and then switch back to the fiction. My various part-time jobs (teaching, indexing, paralegaling) are all time-disruptors and it's rare that I get two weeks to myself without a bunch of deadlines, lectures, etc.
So all I need to do is become a fabulously talented published novelist and I'll be set, eh?
bethynyc, linaerys, seanmoon turned up, as well as M. and my friend Sarah.I'd seen China do a reading before, but I'd never heard him do a Q&A. He came across as extremely intelligent, funny, thoughtful, etc. I won't try to summarize everything he said; there's an entry on the bas_lag community which does that very well, and linearys and seanmoon focused on various aspects of it in their posts. So, whattheysaid, plus:
One thing that impressed me was that he talked about prose style in fantastic fiction, and how mostly it's seen as getting in the way of the plot and etc. While China's prose style is one of the things a lot of people complain about (I love it, but I also read Proust for fun), I really admire him for using language to unsettle the reader or make him/her think. Similarly, I like the idea that *he* has maps of Bas Lag, but he doesn't want to publish them because he wants the reader to have to make his/her way around and feel that sense of disorientation. But then, as I've said, it's the depth of his world, the notion that there's a lot more going on than we'll ever be told about, that's one of the things which impresses me so much.
He was really friendly and patient during the signing -- patient when the flash on Sarah's camera didn't go off and M. had to take a second picture. He recognized M. as a fellow-Londoner, so they had a bonding moment.
And he's managed to finish his dissertation. I congratulated him on that, and he commiserated with me on mine. (This rest is all about me, so if you're reading it for China, feel free to bail!) It's a bit intimidating to think that someone else can manage to write massive best-selling novels and still complete; though his explanation in the q&A section of how he worked made a lot of sense -- that he'd focus on the diss. intensively for a couple of weeks and then switch back to the fiction. My various part-time jobs (teaching, indexing, paralegaling) are all time-disruptors and it's rare that I get two weeks to myself without a bunch of deadlines, lectures, etc.
So all I need to do is become a fabulously talented published novelist and I'll be set, eh?
