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Bakker - A Discussion of Rectal Miracles


Francis Buck

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I think Bakker's problem isn't that he isn't good, because parts of him are, but that he has a lot of what I'd call "turn off points". IE: There's a bunch of things in his books that would make people annoyed enough to stop reading (that is if they even started)

Other authors might not have Bakker's good points, but also don't have these "turn off points" which makes them... Smoother?

First of all his prose is, while occasionally stunning, definitely an acquired taste. There are long slogs of "Who the hell wrote this?" repetitive language, etc. Very different from eg. Abercrombie's much more "action-movie" style. (or GRRM for that matter)

Secondly is the high concepts, not everyone likes that kind of stuff.

Thirdly is the misogyny.

Fourthly is the general "ick" factors. People in general seems more comfortable with violence than sex. Bakker has both, not to mention stuff that's just gross (like sranc-eating) I know a lot of people who put down the book just with the child-rape at the start of TDTCB.

Fifth is the metaphysics/philsophy thing. I'm also not sure how much they overlap with each #4, audience-wise.

Sixth is Bakker's internet persona, which is well... Pretty dickish in a know-it-all kind of way. I honestly suspect he'd have been better off staying off the internet. (he's not the only author this applies to, mind)

The thing is, all these negatives are prevalent enough that a lot of people are going to find *something* they mind about Bakker's books enough that they won't recommend it/spread the word. Other authors might run afoul of a couple of these alienating factors, but Bakker combines them all in one neat package.

I can say for myself that I gave up on Bakker's work after the prologue of TDTCB mostly because of these reasons (except #4). The prose was nothing special, in fact it was downright bad at times. And the prologue was enough to make Kellhus so annoying that I wanted to see him dead ASAP, which I knew wasn't about to happen.

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that prologue scene has always fascinated me as a metric of ick, it seems so mild compared to what happens to Bran at the end of his second chapter.

btw, that was a great counterpoint someone had bringing up neuropuncture to refute my claim about thoughts being seated in the brain.

Just to add a litttle to the debate, when Kellhus is approached by Esmi controlled by Aurang(x) (inchie name fail moment) the text says something about everything Akka said,about the consult, going through his (Kellhus') "intellect" as opposed to soul. Something about them not being eplicit and singular but implicit and innumerable.

So while Kellhus removed Serwe's memory from the parchment of her soul, it seems Kellhus thoughts race through his "intellect" as opposed to his soul.

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Joe reached his peak/nadir of what I tend to call "dime store misanthropy" with Best Served Cold and then, perhaps sensing he'd said what he needed to say on that topic, began to shift away from it in The Heroes and even more in Red Country....BSC became tedious for me due to [what became] predictable character decisions).

Wow, that's pretty much how I see Joe A's work, save that I think TLAoK are the lesser novels.

Bakker, on the other hand, has descended into a cycle of repeating the same misanthropy, to the point that "Ever do Men..." became a parody on these threads not so long ago.

Yeah misanthropy seems to be Bakker's problem as well, as so many characters lose their positive qualities or we learn they never had them. Then there's Fayanal who is undone by lust to the point of stupidity.

This is particularly disappointing in that Bakker is highly intelligent and I sense he could be really pushing the bar in terms of intellectual content, but hasn't (yet) in TAE.

I'd have to disagree with this. I thought the ruminations on addiction were really well done, how one continually rationalizes and returns to the thing that was forsworn just moments before.

I think the politicking could be a lot better but I'm also not sure what you want in terms of intellectual content so some elaboration might help if you get the chance.

She has to act stupidly to get to that point, and relative weakness of the relationship-based cause of that stupidity (lil' Kel), coupled with the hoary sitcom miscommunication cliche, made it more of a "oh, OK" rather than a "oh, SHIT."

I actually didn't mind the Esmi vs. Maitha arc. It was a bit simplistic and had the faint of scent of sitcom miscommunication, but I thought it was well done overall.

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I can say for myself that I gave up on Bakker's work after the prologue of TDTCB mostly because of these reasons (except #4). The prose was nothing special, in fact it was downright bad at times. And the prologue was enough to make Kellhus so annoying that I wanted to see him dead ASAP, which I knew wasn't about to happen.

One of the very reasons that I think the second trilogy is greatly superior to the first. The author eliminates Kellhus as a point-of-view character and he is largely absent from the narrative.

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I'd have to disagree with this. I thought the ruminations on addiction were really well done, how one continually rationalizes and returns to the thing that was forsworn just moments before.

I think the politicking could be a lot better but I'm also not sure what you want in terms of intellectual content so some elaboration might help if you get the chance.

I actually didn't mind the Esmi vs. Maitha arc. It was a bit simplistic and had the faint of scent of sitcom miscommunication, but I thought it was well done overall.

Don't get me wrong, I like TAE just fine for what it is. The sense of adventure is stronger, the writing is more polished, and there are many brilliant moments scattered throughout -- the addiction sequence as they slog across the plains, for one. And tbh I'm not sure what sort of intellectual content I'd like*; except that PoN blew my mind back when I read it in 2006, and neither of the first two volumes of TAE have done that (now, this may be the case of reading three books back-to-back and reading them as they are released... but... ) My biggest issue, again, has been how predictable the sequence of events are; it's spelled out for us from the beginning and the main pleasure (for me) is in savoring the journey aka how it is written rather than any surprises on what happens or any major reversals such as occurred in TWP or TTT.

In a way, Bakker is similar to Rothfuss. Both play their cards very close to their chest, revealing clues about the underlying mysteries rather grudgingly (Rothfuss does this in a much more annoyingly hamfisted fashion). This is, of course, a way to keep readers hooked and loyal to the serial as it continues. Still, we're five books in and it feels like Bakker revealed about the same if not more in The False Sun than he did in TAE's 350,000 words so far.

(Also, the battle sequences are much more repetitive and boring in TAE than they were in PoN, at least until the Bashrag are unleashed near the end of WLW).

----

*intellectual content-wise, I suppose I'd like plots that take me where I don't expect but feel natural nonetheless (example: Breaking Bad / Mad Men / early ASoIaF), a greater expansion on the underlying conflict beyond cryptic commentary delivered every couple hundred pages, perhaps some serious metaphorical representation / deliberation on all the philosophy he's studied -- this comes through very briefly most of the time, like the watcher/watched segment, the WLW passages, the Yatwer priestess, etc. I'm more interested in that as a reader than frankly most of the Three Seas segment, or Sorweel's emo grieving or his crush on Serwa.

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So I'm [re-]reading TWP and, as I was the first time 'round, am confused about the Wathi doll kerfuffle. Is Kellhus actually one of the Few? [isn't that a ginormous, convenient and unbelievable coincidence?] Or does he make the doll move [and later learn the Gnosis, etc] simply because he's so completely badass and/or divine and/or tricksy that he doesn't need to be one of the Few in order to perform sorcery?

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Kellhus is absolutely one of the Few. To my knowledge, this is explained in the sense that magical-sensitivity is genetic, and so the Dunyain (perhaps inadvertently, though they may have simply "forgotten" that they were doing it in the first place, which I find to be more likely) were breeding for sorcerers, among other things.

That being said, it has nothing to do with the Wathi Doll. The doll, as far as it appears, is simply...well, a doll, with a human soul inside of it, that Achamian somehow commands. Soul capturing/controlling is, as of yet, relatively vague.

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Kellhus is absolutely one of the Few. To my knowledge, this is explained in the sense that magical-sensitivity is genetic, and so the Dunyain (perhaps inadvertently, though they may have simply "forgotten" that they were doing it in the first place, which I find to be more likely) were breeding for sorcerers, among other things.

Bakkers notes that the genes which allow one to be counted among the Few intertwine with genes related to other desirable traits...IQ may have been an example he gave. Or maybe it was memory?

Okay, so what about the haloed hands? Martemus seems to be the first to see them in Kellhus, though of course by AE everyone does... how does that come about? Kellhus doesn't seem to speak any words or cants, so it doesn't seem like sorcery...?

It's unclear. It seems to be mass hysteria, where people delude themselves. But perhaps only those who believe can see - IIRC Akka sees the haloes even when he hates Kellhus for "stealing" Esmi, but does he after Cnauir makes him believe Kellhus is a Dunyain fraud?

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Even though I'm dying for Unholy Consult, I like the first trilogy better up to this point. I think the plot is much more intricate with the new trilogy being more linear and I suppose predictable as kuenjato said.

Ah, but is it only predictable because it is an accelerated inversion of the Prince of Nothing? Did the first trilogy Prime the readers to find the second trilogy predictable? In the first trilogy a holy war horde heads south from Sumna. In the second Trilogy a holy war horde heads north from Sumna. Geographical inversion. Unfortunately, other than Mimara becoming Jesus unbeknownst to the readers (because of deliberately obfuscated metaphysics on the part of the author), we don't have a sort of Umiaki moment yet.

So I'm [re-]reading TWP and, as I was the first time 'round, am confused about the Wathi doll kerfuffle. Is Kellhus actually one of the Few? [isn't that a ginormous, convenient and unbelievable coincidence?] Or does he make the doll move [and later learn the Gnosis, etc] simply because he's so completely badass and/or divine and/or tricksy that he doesn't need to be one of the Few in order to perform sorcery?

The way this works is that a wathi doll is awoken not by sorcery, but by saying the sorcerous word, such as, "Abra Kadabra." For it to be sorcery you would have to say the magic word, "Abra Cadabra!" while thinking the inutteral, for example y=mx+b. Kellhus only says the magic word, which is all it takes. For whatever reason (plot hole?) this works as an effective test that he is one of the few without marking him, because even if you're not performing sorcery by thinking the inutteral while saying the magic words, the magic words only work if you're inherently magical, because the magic words know if you're magical or not because magic.

Hmmm.

Okay, so what about the haloed hands? Martemus seems to be the first to see them in Kellhus, though of course by AE everyone does... how does that come about? Kellhus doesn't seem to speak any words or cants, so it doesn't seem like sorcery...?

The Haloed Hands are one of the most confusing parts of all five novels. It is perhaps best to think that it at once a mass delusion (people seeing what they expect to see) and also a divine influence (the gods causing them to happen at certain times). If you think about it, this is possibly quite sneaky of the gods, because they get to influence events without Kellhus noticing, because Kellhus will interpret the God's intervention (other people seeing haloed hands) as other people deceiving themselves. In this way, Kellhus is deceived by the gods.
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I think we can rule out divine influence as a source for the haloed hands, based on the fact that Serwë sees haloes on the skin spy The Thing Called Kellhus.

I think they make complete sense. Once you see Kellhus as holy, you see the haloed hands. It’s in you minds, or, in Eäwan metaphysics, in your soul.

Unlike in our world, this does not make it fake or irrelevant.

The most interesting part of the haloes is that Kellhus himself sees them.

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Exactly. A short story about a young Swayali wish-fulfilment kick-ass heroine, secretly beautiful. Double wielding. Make her lesbian as well, and maybe half-Zeümi. She could blow stuff up, and reflect on the hardship of feeling contradictory societal pressures on her.

Also, a male vampire falls in love with her.

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I actually have a short fanfic in the works about a Swayali who denounces her Sisters in the interim between PON and AE.

But no, I was hoping for an stand-alone original outside of the Second Apocalypse narrative.

I like where your head is at though, HE.

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Exactly. A short story about a young Swayali wish-fulfilment kick-ass heroine, secretly beautiful. Double wielding. Make her lesbian as well, and maybe half-Zeümi. She could blow stuff up, and reflect on the hardship of feeling contradictory societal pressures on her.

Also, a male vampire fall in love with her.

I figure Bakker would just have a black prostitute beaten to death by Kellhus. And Bakker would just say those who don't see how it battles real misogyny have deceived themselves.

But you're [your] idea works too.

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I was originally going to throw out ideas like various prostitutes using their sexual prowess to survive in a bleak world of pendulus phalli...

But thought that I would stick with something at least a little serious, since you know... one labia comment in the NFL thread gets me a warning mod. :lol: Apparently, I'm allowed to say whatever I want here.

And therein lies the problem with suggesting Bakker for the Dangerous Women anthology; he has sort of become the poster boy for negative female stereotypes in fantasy literature. Could he write a good female oriented short story and be taken seriously?

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Is that true, Rhom? The poster boy?

Mark me incredulous...

Actually this might be the one thing that may have left it's [its] mark on Bakker['s reputation]:

I want to find things to be relentlessly positive about. But when we’re talking criticism — and we are — it’d be dishonest to only look to the good, and ignore the bad and the ugly. And, ladies and gentlemen, when a male author can declare himself a feminist and see no cognitive dissonance in writing

“Now what I’m always interested in all my books
is the reader
, their moral sensibilities and their biological drives (among other things). I always assume this reader is male,” [
*]

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Exactly. A short story about a young Swayali wish-fulfilment kick-ass heroine, secretly beautiful. Double wielding. Make her lesbian as well, and maybe half-Zeümi. She could blow stuff up, and reflect on the hardship of feeling contradictory societal pressures on her.

Also, a male vampire falls in love with her.

Brilliant.

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