skygiants | (no subject)

If nothing else, I probably have Snowpiercer to thank for reminding me about reading Railsea, China Mieville's MOBY DICK ON A TRAIN.

...ok, Moby Dick on many trains. Moby Dick in a land where NO ONE HAS BOATS. There are only trains. And giant whale-moles that prowl the vast expanse of earth over which the trains roll , biting people's legs off. If you think 'but that doesn't make worldbuilding sense!' - yeah, OK, it kind of doesn't, but you roll with it.

I had a hard time getting into Railsea at first, in large part because of Mieville's decision to replace every 'and' with an & sign as part of his internal worldbuilding, which felt incredibly cutesy and jarring to me for about the first hundred pages.

But then we got to the part where the narrator explains that all the greatest moling captains on the great railsea spend their lives pursuing a giant animal, generally one that has bit of an extremity of some kind, and this animal is known as their PHILOSOPHY and they spend the time that they're not obsessively pursuing the animal sitting around in bars expounding on the DEEPER REPRESENTATIVE MEANING OF THEIR PHILOSOPHY, and OK, Mieville, you got me, I can't resist that level of straight-faced meta parody. YOU GOT ME. Captain Genn's Ferret of Unrequitedness! MOCKER-JACK, THE MOLE OF MANY MEANINGS.*

Also, Captain Naphi herself, with her charisma and her obsession and her facility with a spin story, is 100% fascinating and I love her entire terrifying narrative arc.

Captain Naphi is not the protagonist, and the Mocker-Jack strand, while important, is not actually the primary plot of the book; our protagonist is Sham ap Soorap, trainboard doctor's assistant, who gets swept up in a Great Adventure when he accidentally stumbles over evidence of the edge of the world (or at least the world as they know it.) I kind of expected Sham to bore or annoy me, but surprisingly he didn't! I became immensely endeared to him from the moment he rescued a pet daybat and named it Daybe. DAYBE.

And then: train pirates! kidnappings! ancient salvage! giant mole attacks! mutiny! angel trains! wildly playful worldbuilding and prose! a sudden hilarious left turn into 'BY THE WAY CAPITALISM IS THE WORST' because it's China Mieville and he can't resist! a total lack of crushing depression at the end!

This may be my new favorite of Mieville's books? No, actually, it is my favorite, no question. Though I still have Embassytown left.

* Sidenote: Actually I've never read Moby Dick. I know! I will! Someday! But Railsea was still deeply hilarious to me.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/386023.html

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jinian

I love Railsea SO MUCH. I think it and Embassytown are both my favorites in completely different ways.

Should we start a reading community for Moby-Dick? It is totally hilarious and great, and I know at least two other people around here who would discuss each chapter with the greatest pleasure. (Its chapters also stand alone unusually well!)

From:

esmenet

If you do it, I'll dig up a copy for myself and join you!

From:

darchildre

I would also love a discussion comm for Moby-Dick, as I have meant to read it for years but never found the proper motivation.

From:

skygiants

I've been saving Embassytown! .... I should probably stop saving it now and actually read it, everyone I know speaks of it very highly. Instead I read the one where everyone chases the giant doomsday kraken. Someday, Embassytown. SOMEDAY.

Oh man, that would be AWESOME, though I haven't had good luck keeping up with chapter-by-chapter reading comms in the past (I'm bad with bite-size.) But if someone wanted to run it I would totally be willing to give it a try! :D

From:

rushthatspeaks

Eeee! Would do! Moby-Dick is so slashy and hilarious and amazing.

From:

ceitfianna

I last read Moby Dick in college and love it and would love to reread it and dig into it.

From:

jinian

I was already counting you ♥

Okay, apparently I am running a Moby-Dick comm. Further updates soon.

From:

jinian

mobydick :)

From:

jinian

mobydick :)

From:

jinian

mobydick

Wanna mod it with me? :)

From:

jinian

mobydick :)

From:

rushthatspeaks

I would love to!

From:

nextian

I would love you to read Embassytown, because while I think it's the only one of his where the writing stands up under its own weight and the plot is a beautiful arc, it basically punched me in the face with "this book is a colonialist trope nightmare" both times, and I'm hoping I was wrong.

From:

damselfish

As someone who couldn't finish City and the City, would you recommend Railsea? It looks interesting but I found City to be interminable and pretty pointless (real stumbling block because I also wanna read Embassytown).

From:

tree_and_leaf

Ooh, do. I've been meaning to reread it for ages and this would be a great excuse.

From:

luzula

Oh, hmm, I was thinking this book sounded too ridiculous and wondered how on earth he would pull it off, but maybe I would actually enjoy it. I tend to not enjoy Miéville when there is a lot of wordy description about how gritty and dark and depressing everything is, but this kind of sounds like the opposite of that?

From:

skygiants

ohhh ugh I know that feeling. :/ Well, it is on the list! And I am now braced.

(...probably Harrington first though.)

From:

skygiants

Definitely -- on the scale of Mieville, Railsea is, like, completely at the opposite end from City and the City, which is trying very hard to be a completely different kind of book.

From:

skygiants

It really is! I just kept being struck as I read the book with how much fun it seemed like Mieville was having. It felt very playful to me -- almost in the way Terry Pratchett sometimes gets -- and I really enjoyed that.

From:

lacewood

HAHA YES RAILSEA. I am convinced Railsea is China Mieville's literary equivalent of TURNING CARTWHEELS WHILE CACKLING HAPPILY. Everything is insane and ridiculous and so SHAMELESSLY GLEEFUL.

After the work of art that is Captain Naphi I almost feel that I am doomed to be disappointed by the actual Moby Dick. But I should probably give it a try one day anyway... far away...

From:

skygiants

Yes that was exactly how I felt about it too! He was having SO MUCH FUN, I was like, OK, I can't resist these cartwheels. Sure! Take a chapter to invest the ampersand with symbolic meaning while snickering up your sleeve. YEAH, DO IT.

SHE'S SO WONDERFUL. I'm so delighted by her ending! Hell yeah, Captain Naphi, FIND SOMEONE'S PHILOSOPHY. Or maybe find ... a whale ...

From:

rachelmanija

Railsea is pure joy. It did strike me as silly/twee for a while, but at some point that stopped and I fell in love with it. It's not depressing at all. There are hunting scenes and butchering animals for meat, but no grimness, and the daybat lives.

From:

sovay

This may be my new favorite of Mieville's books? No, actually, it is my favorite, no question.

I bounced off every single novel of Miéville's and then I got to Railsea; I was so happy.

From:

skygiants

I've enjoyed various of Mieville's books to varying degrees (though I wonder what I would think of the Bas Lag books now, ten years down the line) but Railsea really felt like the first one where he was just like 'fuck it, I came here to preach nihilistic doom and have a good time and I'm all out of nihilistic doom.'

From:

sovay

(though I wonder what I would think of the Bas Lag books now, ten years down the line)

I had Perdido Street Station (2000) preached to me as an incredible innovation of language and worldbuilding and just a barnstorming new voice in all ways and I read it and I was not overwhelmed, because I had read Angela Carter and Tanith Lee and Mervyn Peake; he was not doing anything that dropped my jaw. I should have loved The Scar (2002) because it was nautical and I just . . . didn't. I heard that Iron Council (2004) had golems and couldn't work up the enthusiasm to try it. I didn't like King Rat (1998), but I know part of that was personal; I bounced very hard off some of the character decisions. Miéville's short and YA fiction also failed to pull me in. I read the first half of Railsea in a bookstore in Providence and bought it from a bookstore in Cambridge as soon as I got home. It was just great.

'fuck it, I came here to preach nihilistic doom and have a good time and I'm all out of nihilistic doom.'

Heee.

Edited (damn you, italics) Date: 2014-07-27 07:27 pm (UTC)

From:

sovay

and the daybat lives.

Yes!

From:

lacewood

Sure! Why not have the final obstacle be a primitive tribe of accountants who have been waiting centuries to collect on the bill no one remembers? WHY NOT. Have another cartwheel, Mieville, GO AHEAD.

... omg I bet Captain Naphi totally finds a whale. Think of ALL THAT SEA just waiting. FULL OF WHALES.