THE DEEP ONES: "The End of the Garden" by Michal Ajvaz
CharlasThe Weird Tradition
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"The End of the Garden" by Michal Ajvaz
Discussion begins March 9, 2021.
First published in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (1991).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1440124
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
ONLINE VERSIONS
http://blisty.cz/video/Slavonic/Ajvaz3.htm
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Ajvaz
https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/the-miraculous-side-of-the-universe-an-in...
http://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/review22.htm
https://tinyurl.com/2hfed2zd
Discussion begins March 9, 2021.
First published in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (1991).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1440124
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
ONLINE VERSIONS
http://blisty.cz/video/Slavonic/Ajvaz3.htm
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No online audio versions found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michal_Ajvaz
https://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/the-miraculous-side-of-the-universe-an-in...
http://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/review22.htm
https://tinyurl.com/2hfed2zd
2AndreasJ
Well, that was certainly weird, though not obviously Weird.
The non sequiturs give a dreamlike impression. If there's any points being made they went over my head.
The non sequiturs give a dreamlike impression. If there's any points being made they went over my head.
3housefulofpaper
This story was my selection, but I delayed reading it until today (from The Weird).
It was very dreamlike in its transitions, and in the character changes of its cast - dominant to subservient, and back again. I think my appreciation was increased by having a slight knowledge of Paul Feval and Karl May*, and having just dipped my toes into Kant's philosophy 20 years ago. The komodo dragon substituting in the adventure story illustrations struck a Monty Python-ish tone, I thought.
I read the linked articles in the miscellany for a helping hand in seeing further into the story - was it more than setting a dream down on paper, or a fairly light (and light-hearted) playing with the contents of the mind (that's all the reality we have, after all)? I confesss to not being able to see any deeper philosophy or political allegory in it.
I've noted before in relation to previous Deep Ones selections that I struggle to get my head around literary surrealism (but not visual surrealism, oddly). Especially where the subverting of rational cause-and-effect isn't in the service of terrifying the reader. I thnk this might well be at the root of my struggles with E.T.A. Hoffmann's fairy tales, and very likely points to a problem with me and not with the stories.
* limited in this case, to a Blu-ray commentary noting that Lex Barker had starred in some West German film adaptations of May's Westerns.
Edited - corrected a typo.
It was very dreamlike in its transitions, and in the character changes of its cast - dominant to subservient, and back again. I think my appreciation was increased by having a slight knowledge of Paul Feval and Karl May*, and having just dipped my toes into Kant's philosophy 20 years ago. The komodo dragon substituting in the adventure story illustrations struck a Monty Python-ish tone, I thought.
I read the linked articles in the miscellany for a helping hand in seeing further into the story - was it more than setting a dream down on paper, or a fairly light (and light-hearted) playing with the contents of the mind (that's all the reality we have, after all)? I confesss to not being able to see any deeper philosophy or political allegory in it.
I've noted before in relation to previous Deep Ones selections that I struggle to get my head around literary surrealism (but not visual surrealism, oddly). Especially where the subverting of rational cause-and-effect isn't in the service of terrifying the reader. I thnk this might well be at the root of my struggles with E.T.A. Hoffmann's fairy tales, and very likely points to a problem with me and not with the stories.
* limited in this case, to a Blu-ray commentary noting that Lex Barker had starred in some West German film adaptations of May's Westerns.
Edited - corrected a typo.
4RandyStafford
I thought there was one truly weird element here -- demons writing your books for you, but it wasn't developed at all. The rest of the story seemed humorous surrealism. All in all, I was underwhelmed.
