Re: New to Banks - recommendations please
- From: His Noodly Appendage <godfather@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:14:35 +1000
While I agree that it should probably not be your first Banks, I found
that after a few pages, I adapted to the phonetic spelling and it ceased
to annoy. One trick is to start by actually "saying" the words (not
necessarily out load)...something that works well for Shakespeare as
well.
I found that the phonetic spelling did two wonderful things for the book.
* The Leeds accent heavily reinforced the defining elements of Bascule's character. At least, it does if you're even vaguely tuned in to English/Scottish semiotic cues. He's a proto-Lad, albeit an ADD one.
* The extra effort required slows the reader down enough that they can't see the jokes coming. You can't skim ahead and pick the significant words off the page in preparation (as I tend to do); you're forced into a purely serial reading of the text - and your comprehension lags the narrative. Thus when you come across 'dephlaitd bolgounz' at the end of a paragraph, the imagery doesn't hit until after you've swallowed it whole. The whole tunnel-vision effect is sufficiently weird that you start identifying with Bascule's own mis-tuned mind.
Sheer brilliance.
(not unlike the distorted graphics in Invader Zim, where we see Earth through Zim's eyes - we really ARE dirty monsters that smell like feet!)
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