City of Saints and Madmen: (Ambergris)

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Imagine a city, the city of Ambergris. An old city, with a strange and bloody history. Imagine the people who populate that city - an idolized composer, a dilettante politician, a mad writer, a steadfast merchant and so forth. Imagine a city built on genocide and violence. And squid. But before I leave behind what seems an intentional use of hyperreality on VanderMeer’s part I must mention the succession of Manzikerts, the early Festivals of the Fresh Water Squid, and the Saint of Saints. All very hyperreal and all very cool.

The stories of City of Saints and Madmen are set in Ambergris, an urban sprawl named for " the most secret and valued part of the whale" and populated by humans after its original inhabitants—a race of mushroom-like humanoids known as "gray caps"—were violently driven underground. These creatures, though removed from the eccentricities of daily life in Ambergris, continue to cast a shadow over the city with their unexplained nocturnal activities. VanderMeer explores the implications for writing (and, by extension, reading) in the most metafictional story, "The Strange Case of X". Such a city would have a thousand, no, ten thousand stories to tell. It's as rich a fantasy city as Iest, or Tar Valon or Ankh-Morpork, and any writer could spend his life writing stories in it. King Squid: Every step is making me feel mad, as if the entirety of City of Saints and Madmen is a manifestation of madness, which is, of course, no stretch at all. Utter paranoia. VanderMeer extends the concept to interpretation in "The Transformation of Martin Lake", a story that consists of art criticism, on the one hand, where the critic draws inferences about the motivation of the artist, while, on the other hand, a separate narrative strand reveals what their true motivation was.He also seems to have committed a crime for which he has been charged and exonerated by a jury, which believed his “story”. Now he is being interviewed to establish his sanity. Whether the entire story is an expression of Dradin’s psychosis or Dradin is merely psychotic within a crazy story, madness, as the title of VanderMeer’s book suggests, is an integral part of Ambergris. I can’t wait to move on to the History. It's a lesson all artists need to learn: if you're going to be brave and create something, then be brave all the way through. Don't stop halfway to explain yourself. When you hand off your work for others to enjoy, don't include qualifiers and excuses--even though the urge to do so will be strong. You have to let the work stand on its own, and if you aren't willing to do that, then don't take on a monumental task, because the meddling will ruin it. Cuentos que parecen ensayos y ensayos que parecen cuentos, todos ambientados en la ficticia ciudad de Ambergris. Y me han gustado bastante, algunos diría que son excepcionales, como el segundo relato, narrado a modo de guía turística por el historiador Duncan Shriek. Hay datos “históricos” mezclados con cierto humor, añadiendo elementos new weird, misterio y algo de terror. Cuenta la fundación de Ambergris y haciendo hincapié en el Silencio, donde tuvieron lugar hechos realmente macabros. Otro buen relato es el relacionado con el Rey Calamar, que de nuevo parece un ensayo sobre un elemento importante de Ambergris. Hay más buenas historias, como la primera, ‘Dradin enamorado’, donde se nos narra las aventuras y desventuras de este misionero que acaba de llegar de nuevo a Ambergris después de un tiempo en la selva, y que de repente ve a una joven en la ventana de un tercer piso de Hoegbotton & Sons, y aquí empieza su obsesión por conocerla. For several years now, I’ve almost exclusively read books as research for my second novel. With few exceptions (when the books were short), I’ve been committed to that focus religiously. (As religiously as an atheist-buddhist-jew can be.) Not all the books I’ve read were chosen for concrete research, per se—such as, “I’ve invented a character who survived a botched lobotomy so I’m going to read books by Ann Coulter”—but sometimes I choose books to get a taste of stylistic influences that might be complementary. In this case, City of Saints and Madmen gave me the impression of a sensuous style and fantastical weirdness. Tastes great, more filling.

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. And let's not forget the squids. Or the squid cults. Or how we have a large portion of the most respected library in Ambergris devoted to books on the squids that range from naturalists to fairy tales to squid cults to conspiracy theories hinting that some of the most troublesome parts of a few popular squid plays were, in fact, written by a certain cephalopod IN HIS OWN INK. They all start off pretty bland and unexciting, and then suddenly, the atmosphere totally changes - especially the Dradin and the Lake stories so far. Suddenly they become surreal and in the case of the abovementioned story, it's a breathless, totally out there mixture of horror and weirdness. One of VanderMeer’s characters describes the Other as “the Darkness”, which then takes on the form of a manta ray.Recommended to: squid lovers, mushroom enthusiasts, fans of strange, non-linear, experimental stuff and unique settings The clerk, a rake of a lad with dirty brown hair and a face as subtle as mutton pie, winked wryly, smiled, and said, “I understand, sir, and I have precisely the book for you. It arrived a fortnight ago from the Ministry of Whimsy imprint—an Occidental publisher, sir. Please follow me.” 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."

I suppose all fantasy worlds are collages of some sort. Your standard derivative Tolkien stuff, your D&D and high fantasy, is all a vaguely medieval Western Europe, with some drastically altered Eastern Europe folk tale stuff added (I'm thinking trolls and elves and whatnot), with an altered form of Greek deities added. But that format has become so widely used that it seems homogeneous and normal. One of the things I like most about fiction is the concept of world building. To create an alternate reality so captivating & fully realized that it not only feels like a real place, but a place almost preferable to reality. It's why I've been drawn to fantasy & sci-fi writing, it's why I'm such a huge D&D nerd & it's certainly a part of why I love video games. Worlds like Ed Greenwood's Faerûn, Terry Pratchet's Discworld, William Gibson's Sprawl & video games like the Suikoden series are places where my mind has often wandered & wondered what it would be like to actually live within them. I'm sure I'm not alone here & this collection of short stories of VanderMeer's Ambergris only proves that.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. Anywho, this brings me to my first minor bias against this book. Several of the stories herein end too patly. Like the one I just described. It’s the twist ending, the clever payoff, the surprise you didn’t see coming (or did, because it wasn’t quite that well disguised.) Yes, there is a great deal of ambiguity, mystery and unknown in COSAM, but there are also a few too many stories that tie up neatly like a riddle rather than like reality. Nothing is ever so tidy. So that bothered me.

However, often, the subconscious works against us by resurrecting our guilt in our dreams and nightmares. COSAM” is an assemblage or collage of disparate elements that VanderMeer works into something luminous.The Cage" is short, yet very visceral and effective. Probably the most overt horror story of the collection, though they're all varying levels of depraved. And what a city it is. Through the book, we learn about its history, its customs, and its inhabitants. We learn of the mysterious gray cap people, the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, a few famous artists and composers. There are references to mushrooms and squid scattered throughout. There’s a nice sense of atmosphere, too. I appreciate it when writers refer to in-universe books, plays, works of art, historical events – it makes a setting feel much more lived in and less like a set piece for the story. We now have a situation where a person, an artist must effectively struggle with a lethal marine life form. We learn about the horrible fungus and the silent retribution of the Gray Caps whose nation was violated to build the city. We learn about the King Squid, the top of the food chain in the River Moth, who may be trying to kill us all. We learn a lot of things, but very rarely through the standard style of narrative.