Crowd Work: Which novel felt the most like you had a whole other life?
In this essay, I talk about A Fine Balance and Winter's Tale, but the novel I go back to the most in my daydreams is actually probably a children's book called Twenty-One Balloons that I read at the end of middle school and it really capture my imagination. It was about a guy who was supposed to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon and found a secrete island where these people had secretly been living with this huge diamond mine in this secret society. It was funny and whimsical and fantastical and ridiculous. Other than that, I feel like when I finished 100 Years of Solitude I had to sit in silence for like an hour just to let it wash over me. It felt like I had to say goodbye to a friend.
Shantaram is perhaps one of the most immersive recent novels I have read. This amazing description of your main character gives me a good sense of the complexity and magnetism of your recent read. "Such a weird, patriarchal, generous, cartoonishly evil man who nonetheless did right by people in his own weird way and lived by a rigorous internal code." And the stories about the kids in China stumbling into the grip of written narratives, and especially your win of getting permission to engage them in conversation about novels, is all incredible to hear. A complete testimony to the influence of both travel and story.
With how fast the world is moving, I'm always swayed towards reading non-fiction to make myself "smarter". But after all these years, the ones that stick and change me are always, always fiction. One short story that will always be close to my heart is The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, printed online here: https://gizmodo.com/read-ken-lius-amazing-story-that-swept-the-hugo-nebula-5958919
P.S. How do we get in on this really cool book club?
I can so relate to your latest post! I’ve experienced what you described so many times. That’s why I love fiction set in places unfamiliar to me. I can live in another world. Thank you Charlie!
Reading is essential grist to the mill of storytelling. I’ll find a novel – and love it so much I immediately go hunting for anything else the author has written. I look back on different authors and phases, only now it’s not simply libraries and bookshops, it’s online worldwide explorations to trace books by a newly-discovered ‘favourite writer,’ or a fresh obsessive topic – fiction or non-fiction, (generally obscure).
We absorb fictional characters; the test is to find yourself still thinking about them even when the works are finished. A “whole other life” is a good analogy, how what happens in our minds is so powerful, although it’s a problem when I find myself unconsciously writing in the same style as an author I’m reading.
I’m alarmed by Gen Z’s instant screen illustrations and videos. ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’ doesn’t encourage the exercise and development of the inherent faculty of imagination and visualisation that’s been indispensable for so many aspects of human life.
NB: While I admire writers who work to a time clock, (I can’t), don’t worry about posts, Charlie. Whether we like it or not, ‘muses’ are prone to taking extended vacations – without notice.
Not a single novel, but the Discworld novels left such an imprint on me that when I walk around new cities I expect to see the Dysk theatre around the corner or the Tower of Art looming over the skyline. And though technically they are visual novels, though likely the most immersive for it, the original Ace Attorney series still feels like I could walk back into the courtroom or the Wright and Co Offices and see what nonsense case turns up this week, or which of my friends' trauma needs unraveling
Crowd Work: Which novel felt the most like you had a whole other life?
In this essay, I talk about A Fine Balance and Winter's Tale, but the novel I go back to the most in my daydreams is actually probably a children's book called Twenty-One Balloons that I read at the end of middle school and it really capture my imagination. It was about a guy who was supposed to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon and found a secrete island where these people had secretly been living with this huge diamond mine in this secret society. It was funny and whimsical and fantastical and ridiculous. Other than that, I feel like when I finished 100 Years of Solitude I had to sit in silence for like an hour just to let it wash over me. It felt like I had to say goodbye to a friend.
Shantaram is perhaps one of the most immersive recent novels I have read. This amazing description of your main character gives me a good sense of the complexity and magnetism of your recent read. "Such a weird, patriarchal, generous, cartoonishly evil man who nonetheless did right by people in his own weird way and lived by a rigorous internal code." And the stories about the kids in China stumbling into the grip of written narratives, and especially your win of getting permission to engage them in conversation about novels, is all incredible to hear. A complete testimony to the influence of both travel and story.
With how fast the world is moving, I'm always swayed towards reading non-fiction to make myself "smarter". But after all these years, the ones that stick and change me are always, always fiction. One short story that will always be close to my heart is The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, printed online here: https://gizmodo.com/read-ken-lius-amazing-story-that-swept-the-hugo-nebula-5958919
P.S. How do we get in on this really cool book club?
I can so relate to your latest post! I’ve experienced what you described so many times. That’s why I love fiction set in places unfamiliar to me. I can live in another world. Thank you Charlie!
...the phantom tollbooth always felt like a documentary to me for at least the first few years i read it...
Reading is essential grist to the mill of storytelling. I’ll find a novel – and love it so much I immediately go hunting for anything else the author has written. I look back on different authors and phases, only now it’s not simply libraries and bookshops, it’s online worldwide explorations to trace books by a newly-discovered ‘favourite writer,’ or a fresh obsessive topic – fiction or non-fiction, (generally obscure).
We absorb fictional characters; the test is to find yourself still thinking about them even when the works are finished. A “whole other life” is a good analogy, how what happens in our minds is so powerful, although it’s a problem when I find myself unconsciously writing in the same style as an author I’m reading.
I’m alarmed by Gen Z’s instant screen illustrations and videos. ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’ doesn’t encourage the exercise and development of the inherent faculty of imagination and visualisation that’s been indispensable for so many aspects of human life.
NB: While I admire writers who work to a time clock, (I can’t), don’t worry about posts, Charlie. Whether we like it or not, ‘muses’ are prone to taking extended vacations – without notice.
Not a single novel, but the Discworld novels left such an imprint on me that when I walk around new cities I expect to see the Dysk theatre around the corner or the Tower of Art looming over the skyline. And though technically they are visual novels, though likely the most immersive for it, the original Ace Attorney series still feels like I could walk back into the courtroom or the Wright and Co Offices and see what nonsense case turns up this week, or which of my friends' trauma needs unraveling