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A Labyrinth for Our Time

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30 pointslermontov9 comments

Piranesi is a very good book that has the misfortune to come after an even better book.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of the great books of the last half-century. It's a stunning achievement, the kind that seems like it would take an author's entire lifetime. It begs rereading to connect all of the dots, and craving more.

Piranesi isn't that book. It's an entirely different book, so much so that it's hard to evaluate on its own. On its own, it's a very good longish novella, meditative in a way that was perfect for the early pandemic times when it came out. Reading it during lockdown was a lot to handle.

So while I know it was very good, I mostly remember disappointment that it wasn't better. Unlike the OP, I felt that it was structured as a mystery, one whose result wasn't entirely satisfying. Strange was set in awesomely consistent magical world (including consistent inconsistencies). Piranesi rather hand-waves at a magic that doesn't bear any scrutiny but bears too much weight of the plot to wave away.

It begins so, so well, and the first half sets up an excellent enigma and rich world. Maybe others will feel that the second half carries it off better than I did; maybe early pandemic wasn't the time to read it.

I thought Jonathan Strange was ... OK, and Piranesi was maybe a bit better, or at least cuter, and mostly redeemed because it was short and didn't try to turn itself into an epic. I've found both books to be finely crafted, but unable to really deliver, like a dessert that looks amazing but just tastes like cake.

Strange is definitely a case where the journey is more important than the destination. The pace is languid to the point of lethargic, and then rushes through an ending that's almost literally a flurry of flapping birds.

I really like your analogy. I wouldn't have put it that way, but it beautifully evokes what the novel felt like to you. It's a helpful case where I can say, "Ya know, if it's not grabbing you 20 pages in, maybe don't bother." (I resent all those times people tell me, "Oh, you just have to slog through the first novel/first season and then it gets good.)

Piranesi was very enjoyable and refreshingly novel. The setting, the "house" which is the real star, has stayed with me even though I read it months ago. While it may technically be a mystery, it felt more like a fantastic and exquisite space that you get to inhabit for a time an examine from every angle. It's short and light enough that it's not much of an investment — well worth the small risk to pick it up.

I happen to be re-reading Jonathan Strange and am enjoying it even more than the first time.

This looks interesting. If you're into surrealist fiction, Labyrinths by Jorge Louis Borge is a great classic and Exhalation by Ted Chiang is sort of like sci-fi surrealism.

There's a ted chiang story that stuck with me. It was about a tower of babel so tall that bringing building supplies up takes days. Or maybe its a Borges story about an infinite tower so repetitive to climb that slight variations start suggesting a mind in the stone.

Honestly, all those meditations on the infinite start blurring together after a while.

Piranesi is a really excellent book. It's the first book I've read in a long time where I fell asleep reading it, then woke up the next day and finished reading.

'House of leaves' evokes this sense of vast incomprehensible emptyness and lonelyness.

Has Piranesi comparable vibes?

Appropriate username.

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