chuephödli
Member
By way of introduction (this is my first post): I was wondering why nobody seems to have posted on Steven Hall...
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Steven Hall: The Raw Shark Texts
- Thread starter chuephödli
- Start date
chuephödli
Member
nothing quite like it
I like the obvious answer: because nobody has read it... or thought worth commenting on it... had that one coming, I suppose...
Actually, I have never read anything quite like it: the story of somebody having his memory devoured by a conceptual shark. Very far out, but the writing very crisp, almost dry.
I read mostly before I go to sleep. One of my key criteria for judging a book is: does it manage to keep me from falling asleep too quickly? This one did, with a vengeance. And another important thing: I rarely knew what to expect next. I find there aren't very many books that do this AND keep me glued to the page.
Would be a shame to tell much more - this really is a book that I would recommend to read with as little previous knowledge as possible. But to answer your question entirely subjectively: a must read.
I like the obvious answer: because nobody has read it... or thought worth commenting on it... had that one coming, I suppose...
Actually, I have never read anything quite like it: the story of somebody having his memory devoured by a conceptual shark. Very far out, but the writing very crisp, almost dry.
I read mostly before I go to sleep. One of my key criteria for judging a book is: does it manage to keep me from falling asleep too quickly? This one did, with a vengeance. And another important thing: I rarely knew what to expect next. I find there aren't very many books that do this AND keep me glued to the page.
Would be a shame to tell much more - this really is a book that I would recommend to read with as little previous knowledge as possible. But to answer your question entirely subjectively: a must read.
I've read this book and I thought it was absolutely amazing. I have never read a book like this before, where you read and question everything as to whether it is real or not.
In fact I read about 8 of the Booker long listed books and I still rate this the best book I read last year. I second chuephodli's recommendation to read this!
In fact I read about 8 of the Booker long listed books and I still rate this the best book I read last year. I second chuephodli's recommendation to read this!
beer good
Well-Known Member
The Raw Shark Texts.
One morning as Eric Sanderson awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into himself. Except he doesn't remember the uneasy dreams. He doesn't remember himself. He's got more or less complete amnesia (think Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - he's forgotten everything about himself, but every piece of historical and pop-cultural trivia, every turn of phrase, every cultural meme is still there). He's a blank slate. Except for the letters his old self keeps sending him, warning him of a conceptual shark - the idea of a predator, lurking in the stream of information surrounding all human interaction, and feeding on memories. The ultimate representation of self-destructive thoughts.
You'd think the best thing that could have happened to Eric - the new Eric, Eric II - would have been if Eric I had never told him about this, because once he knows, the shark is after him too. And so he has to set out on a quest to find himself - literally and figuratively, in both the subterranean and subtextual world under the consensus of what life in 21st century Britain is like. (Possibly, he's mad and it's all in his head. Possibly, the shark is very real. Possibly, both; after all, if you have an idea in your head, then that idea is real - the only reality there is, perhaps?)
It's difficult to explain, but it's really a quite clever idea, weaving in themes about language, subjective construction of reality, memetic mutation and evolution, dealing with grief, and a bunch of stuff that might have fit well in a Paul Auster or Haruki Murakami story (unsurprisingly, Hall namedrops both, along with Borges and other metafictional superstars). He's not quite the writer it takes to say anything truly profound about it, and rather than a new Kafka On The Shore it ends up more as a mixture of Snow Crash and Neverwhere with some unfortunate overtones of the Big Purple Dan Brown Book Which Shall Not Be Named. But hey, I really like two of those, and as metaphysical thrillers go it's entertaining. I'll put up with some clunky prose if it serves an original idea, and for a long while it does.
So I'm coasting along merrily on the streams of consciousness - not stream-of-consciousness - in Eric's wake until I hit the last 120 pages. Which, without giving away any details, are anything but original. In fact, I've both read and seen them. As in literally scene by scene, word for word. I get the point of it, but there's using pop culture references to make a point and there's outright plagiarism, and the fact that the characters acknowledge the original in the text while playing it out only makes it all the more stupid. The book sinks like a stone from a jolly
to a very weak 
. It was a good concept, but Hall bites over more than he can chew.
One morning as Eric Sanderson awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into himself. Except he doesn't remember the uneasy dreams. He doesn't remember himself. He's got more or less complete amnesia (think Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - he's forgotten everything about himself, but every piece of historical and pop-cultural trivia, every turn of phrase, every cultural meme is still there). He's a blank slate. Except for the letters his old self keeps sending him, warning him of a conceptual shark - the idea of a predator, lurking in the stream of information surrounding all human interaction, and feeding on memories. The ultimate representation of self-destructive thoughts.
You'd think the best thing that could have happened to Eric - the new Eric, Eric II - would have been if Eric I had never told him about this, because once he knows, the shark is after him too. And so he has to set out on a quest to find himself - literally and figuratively, in both the subterranean and subtextual world under the consensus of what life in 21st century Britain is like. (Possibly, he's mad and it's all in his head. Possibly, the shark is very real. Possibly, both; after all, if you have an idea in your head, then that idea is real - the only reality there is, perhaps?)
It's difficult to explain, but it's really a quite clever idea, weaving in themes about language, subjective construction of reality, memetic mutation and evolution, dealing with grief, and a bunch of stuff that might have fit well in a Paul Auster or Haruki Murakami story (unsurprisingly, Hall namedrops both, along with Borges and other metafictional superstars). He's not quite the writer it takes to say anything truly profound about it, and rather than a new Kafka On The Shore it ends up more as a mixture of Snow Crash and Neverwhere with some unfortunate overtones of the Big Purple Dan Brown Book Which Shall Not Be Named. But hey, I really like two of those, and as metaphysical thrillers go it's entertaining. I'll put up with some clunky prose if it serves an original idea, and for a long while it does.
So I'm coasting along merrily on the streams of consciousness - not stream-of-consciousness - in Eric's wake until I hit the last 120 pages. Which, without giving away any details, are anything but original. In fact, I've both read and seen them. As in literally scene by scene, word for word. I get the point of it, but there's using pop culture references to make a point and there's outright plagiarism, and the fact that the characters acknowledge the original in the text while playing it out only makes it all the more stupid. The book sinks like a stone from a jolly
to a very weak . It was a good concept, but Hall bites over more than he can chew.hostchecker
New Member
I'm gonna have to check out this guy.. it looks good