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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Steven Hall: "The Raw Shark Texts"

23:21 / 03.07.07

I was surprised not to find a thread on this book. The premise--protagonist is pursued by a conceptual monster from the "waters" of human culture & shared ideas--struck me as especially Barbelith-y.

I began the book rather hopefully; it seemed like it might be the book Philip K. Dick would've written had he been around for meme theory. It turns into a pretty straightforward thriller, though, in which the characters might as well have been running from the bogie man, or some Steven King creation.

Not that I have a problem with a thrilling conclusion, but the latter 2/3 of the book's action seems to follow the plot of a generic thriller. I preferred reading about the narrator's dread at initially encountering such a thought-beast; I would've liked to have seen more about him wrestling with the existence of such things, particularly if the prose managed to match the high weirdness of the concept.

A promising book, though. I'd probably read something else by the author, unless it were a sequel, which he may have set himself up for.

23:27 / 03.07.07

Cute book, which spawned some wonderful absurdisms in reviews. As I recall, more than one reviewer decided that with all the textual gaming, page-layout-necessity, and flipbook stuff... the author really just wanted to make a movie and forcing it onto us in paper form. I reread it after about the third time coming across that accusation and it still doesn't make any sense. That and the frequent complaint (by paid, professional reviewers of fine magazines you'd expect to be better about these things) that the cliffhangers made it, again, seem like it wanted to be a movie. Books shouldn't have cliffhangers, you know, or genuine moments or (even humorous) tension.

As above: cute book. Not great, but I think, if I'd found it through an amateur avenue, rather than a proper press and bookstore, I might have loved it more. At least, it would have been more endearing.

21:19 / 08.07.07

I am currently reading it and while I find the central concept quite clever and the author seems to know what he is doing, I have this nagging suspicion that the book is navel-gazing to a worrying degree. Maybe I am getting a bit too old for this sort of postpostmodern malarkey.

21:19 / 09.07.07

...whereas I found myself wishing for *more* navel-gazing & malarkey. I guess the book tries to cleave some sort of middle ground, by being a gimmicky postmodern book where *stuff happens*. This would seem to be a commendable goal, but runs the risk of leaving readers disappointed on both fronts.

As an aside, Dusto's Icelander successfully delivers both plot and a full, fun bag of literary tricks.

04:14 / 29.03.08

I saw this last week and could not resist the uberblurbs - Borges! Kafka! Murakami! Matrix! PKD! Challenging!

Even comparisons to HOUSE OF LEAVES are a wee bit overstated: the text as visual angle is OKish, although the flip book pages near the end (which I have not read to yet) are a cool gimmick.

So far, there is some cool material which echoes Alan Moore's spin on Ideaspace/Immateria, which I had been researching for school project as it happens.

I am enjoying the book, but stylistically it is average. based on all those blurbs (and the US paperback edition has SCORES, mostly from pubs or blurbees of good quality/reputation) I was expecting Calvino meets Wachowskis (yes, blasphemy, I know). Still fun thus far and I too am mildly surprised this hasn't impressed/interested Lithers so much.