I just finished GENERATION LOSS by the goddess of my idolatry, Elizabeth Hand.
And now I'm not so keen on turtles.
To my mind, no other writer so well captures how an Artist must burn in order to shine--the Vision and the Void--the Burning Arrows of Desire--the human Heart its hungry gorge--the leap in the Dark--the Kick Inside.
When I finish reading one of Liz's books I always want to set myself on fire. I find my tongue tied up into a thousand knots. She describes things that I thought were indescribable. Her books are like dreams made real. If I sound inarticulate here, and rather wild, that's because Liz's books are all about being wild--wild in the truest since of the word. Uncaged, dangerous, untamed. Her characters dare reach for the fire--try to touch the Muse Genius--and when the Muse, that bitch, embraces them--they are burned to a crisp. GENERATION LOSS is all about the madness of desire and how artists must be--are--become--monsters. Yet it is through this monstrousness that they find the Divine.
I realize that my mad ramblings are not telling you anything concrete about the book itself. I'll leave plot synopsis to Amazon and dust-jackets. Suffice it to say that GENERATION LOSS is a brilliant book (even the title is brilliant!) and you should go buy it and read it now. Then read it again.
Afterwards, you won't be too keen on turtles either.
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3 comments:
Oh, goodie! I can't wait; it's at the top of my stack of Books for Adults that finally get read starting next Saturday! (Or a month's worth of them, anyway.)
I promise you are gonna love it! Let me know what you think when you are done...
Will order as soon as finances allow. I've enjoyed everything you've recommended so far, although not QUITE as much as I enjoy reading you. Your stories have the same effect on me that E. Hand's have on you. Once I tried to describe MMA to my mom as "the sweet shudder of orgasm after all those chore-sex New Yorker stories." Like me, she used to make herself read the NYer fiction even though it's invariably depressing, full of alienated characters impossible to care about. Well-written as they almost always are, I've only read a few I actually enjoyed (e.g. Lethem's chapter from Fortress of Solitude).
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