heady stuff, this reversal.
Feb. 12th, 2012 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmdI'm partway through the book "Time's Arrow", by Martin Amis. Our narrator is living in the head of a guy but is not the guy - he's just along for the ride, some kind of secondary consciousness. Our narrator is living backwards, and parsing everything as happening in reverse. He starts off in the body of an old man and gradually gets younger and healthier. Cabs are always there when you need them even in the rain and they always know where to take you - no wonder why we spend so long saluting and waving at them to thank them for their service. Pimps are angelic creatures who give money to women and heal their bruises. All those hippies and freaks who go to Vietnam for the war end up coming back all clean-cut and sane.
It's a heady book - I (somewhat obviously) have to read some conversations in reverse to make sense of them. I keep being surprised in the ways things are happening. (Why do patients in doctor's offices sit around in the waiting room after the appointment? Our narrator isn't quite sure about that, but that's the way things are.)
I know roughly where the book is taking me[1], but it's still a hell of a ride.
ETA: finished it. yeah. that's ... uh... that's a book, right there.
[1]Ur tbrf gb Nhfpujvgm naq perngrf n enpr sebz gur fbhyf sybngvat va gur avtug nve arne gur puvzarlf. Gehyl n uvture pnyyvat. (link to decrypt rot-13)
It's a heady book - I (somewhat obviously) have to read some conversations in reverse to make sense of them. I keep being surprised in the ways things are happening. (Why do patients in doctor's offices sit around in the waiting room after the appointment? Our narrator isn't quite sure about that, but that's the way things are.)
I know roughly where the book is taking me[1], but it's still a hell of a ride.
ETA: finished it. yeah. that's ... uh... that's a book, right there.
[1]Ur tbrf gb Nhfpujvgm naq perngrf n enpr sebz gur fbhyf sybngvat va gur avtug nve arne gur puvzarlf. Gehyl n uvture pnyyvat. (link to decrypt rot-13)
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Date: 2012-02-12 11:52 pm (UTC)(...cut to Cat discovering what taking a crap in the bushes means in a time-reversed world...)
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Date: 2012-02-13 12:00 am (UTC)Actually, Amis goes into the whole biological process thing a fair bit. Freaky, but, it all works.
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Date: 2012-02-13 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-13 04:53 pm (UTC)