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Nov. 11th, 2020 10:04 pmPiranesi is the first full book I've read in several weeks and I downed it yesterday in more or less a single shot -- partly due to circumstances and partly due to the particular spell of the book itself, which, having fallen into it, I found myself increasingly reluctant to disturb.
Piranesi is the journal of a man whose world is an endless mansion of infinite rooms, populated by a variety of complex marble statues, thirteen skeletons, flocks of potentially-prophetic birds, and some fish (delicious.) Also there is another man, whom our protagonist refers to as the Other, who meets with him on a strict weekly schedule to discuss the pursuit of the lost knowledge of the universe. The Other calls the protagonist Piranesi, although the protagonist is fairly sure that's not in fact his own name.
Obviously this premise invites some questions. Answers come in an uneasy trickle, growing to a flood.
A short list of things that have evoked similar feelings in me as Piranesi: the film Annihilation. Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist. Hand's Wylding Hall. Vague memories of playing the computer game Myst when I was very small. It's something about about the feeling of being a person in a world that's so much bigger than you are, and so capable of betrayal, and also just profoundly beautiful; a world that will inevitably change you in ways that were never consented to by the person you used to be, who maybe would only see the loss of transformation, and not the wonder of it.
...there are already too many adjectives in that last sentence about the Piranesi experience but let me just fling another few at the wall: lonely, eerie, discomfiting, numinous. Okay, sorry, just had to get those out there! We're done now!
Piranesi is the journal of a man whose world is an endless mansion of infinite rooms, populated by a variety of complex marble statues, thirteen skeletons, flocks of potentially-prophetic birds, and some fish (delicious.) Also there is another man, whom our protagonist refers to as the Other, who meets with him on a strict weekly schedule to discuss the pursuit of the lost knowledge of the universe. The Other calls the protagonist Piranesi, although the protagonist is fairly sure that's not in fact his own name.
Obviously this premise invites some questions. Answers come in an uneasy trickle, growing to a flood.
A short list of things that have evoked similar feelings in me as Piranesi: the film Annihilation. Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist. Hand's Wylding Hall. Vague memories of playing the computer game Myst when I was very small. It's something about about the feeling of being a person in a world that's so much bigger than you are, and so capable of betrayal, and also just profoundly beautiful; a world that will inevitably change you in ways that were never consented to by the person you used to be, who maybe would only see the loss of transformation, and not the wonder of it.
...there are already too many adjectives in that last sentence about the Piranesi experience but let me just fling another few at the wall: lonely, eerie, discomfiting, numinous. Okay, sorry, just had to get those out there! We're done now!
