City of Saints and Madmen

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Just the First Citizen: Ambergris was founded by a whaling fleet turned pirate. So first rulers of the city are called the Cappan (a regional pronounciation of "Captain") which started under the captaincy of Mazinkert I and continued under his descendants. It's not only with his jokes and allusions that VanderMeer leaves nothing to chance, he has characters tell us in footnotes when we are supposed to think they are funny, he mentions when a certain part is deliberately over-written, or that we shouldn't trust some character, or that this point-of-view shift indicates a change in the character's personal identity. Undaunted, Dradin sprang to his feet, his two books secure, one under each arm, and smiled to himself. Ambergris began in 1992 with "Learning to Leave the Flesh", a short story conceived for the Clarion writers' workshop at Michigan State University. Although it does not reference the city directly, it mentions locations that would reappear in later work, such as Albumuth Boulevard and the River Moth. Considered a "proto-Ambergris story" by the author, "Learning to Leave the Flesh" wouldn't be included in the book until its 2004 edition.

It's not that I don't see it--the book certainly has the right markers: the self-awareness, the meta-fictions, the ironies and self-contradictions, the allusions and in-jokes, the big, rearing ugliness of modern literature. And yet to say that it has those markers doesn't mean much--it's like saying that a math book has equations, it doesn't mean that they add up to anything. the world has to be metaphorically and metaphysically interesting, which means you can’t be too consistent. Everything can’t be tidy and pat, and it should be in flux—it should be, in a way, alive. Above all else, to be interesting, a fantastical city should be a reflection of the writer’s obsessions and subconscious impulses."Friday’s tally set the highest daily Covid-19 record in the US for the fifth time in 10 days, surpassing the previous day’s highest daily spike of 91,248 new cases. Technology Marches On: Janice notes that in this time period, besides having more motorized vehicles, Ambergris gets some new technology. Through relations with the new Kalif, Ambergris got guns and telegraphs. The Cassandra: Duncan destroys his career and later his relationship by insisting that the city is secretly controlled by mysterious midgets that dwell underground and like mushrooms. Though it's implied that many of his opponents know perfectly well that he is right, but try to convince themselves otherwise to protect their peace of mind.

In a sense, what is important here is not so much a hero and their journey, but the comprehension of a world, and perhaps the manner in which and extent to which it consists of saints and madmen. too early. Around the same time, I also read Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, and constructed the fight scene between Dradin and Dvorak as a kindGo Mad from the Revelation: Yeah becoming a spore receptacle didn't help him mentally, but Duncan gets increasingly less sane as he spends more time and learns more of the Gray Caps and their world. This book is a collection of linked stories, possible to read as standalones, but all taking place in and around VanderMeer's invented city, Ambergris. The most obvious marker, at first glance, is the self-awareness of the text, what the kids these days call 'meta'--where not only are you writing, you're also commenting on the fact that you're writing, making jokes and references, reminding the reader of the artificiality of what they are reading.