![]() In the second part, there's a shift, and ruth begins to take over the role of narrator. i resent having to wade through this kind of chewy-ass prose for such a basic piece of information. to quote dfw again, some people get the idea that maximum numbers of words, maximum amount of complication, equals intelligence and erudition. Though Lucy adhered to the polite fiction whereby one does not officially possess information gleaned from overhearing one side of someone else's telephone conversation, she gathered that Ruth was agreeing to meet Mark in twenty minutes for a burger at the Heights. ![]() to borrow a quote from david foster wallace's Quack This Way, people, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.Īnd it never ends, this turgid word salad that believes words are good, MORE words better, MOST words best: Ruth hadn't yet finished her first drink, so Anna ordered a second vodka for herself and another pint of pale ale for Lucy, who was trying to keep an eye on her alcohol intake and had regretfully deemed beer's caloric overload preferable to the moral hazard of excessive whiskey consumption. Not the most natural dialogue, but i'm willing to entertain the possibility that douchey postdocs talk like this on their downtime, but why does this also extend to the incorporeal narrator?Īnna was flagging down the waitress. Introducing actors risks things getting much sillier, and of course harder to coordinate." I can determine each player's experience within certain clearly defined boundaries, and players can enjoy the game on their own time and at any hour of day or night. "The devices are entirely within my domain. "I guess it's hard for me to give up the degree of control that would be entailed in allowing other people to play live parts in the game," said Ruth. "You two are never going to be able to make a decisive determination of the respective merits of fact and fantasy," Lucy said. "I'm sick of the way you always try to stave off confrontation." Here's ruth talking to lucy at this casual girls night out at the bar: maybe that's how the english language sounds when it is filtered through a danish academic. Whatever happens within the magic circle is fundamentally discontinuous with the external world. It's just a way of talking about an amoeba-shaped space of play, one that's distinctly demarcated from the ordinary world outside. The circle might be a boxing ring or a sports arena. ![]() "It could be a sacred grove or just the space in which a game is played.Even an ordinary childhood game like sardines turns a house into a magic circle. in defining the phenomenon from which the novel takes its name: She does, indeed, speak in a very formal way. The first part unfolds by way of an omniscient narrator, focusing on three female postdoc columbia students: anna, ruth, and lucy, who like to drink alcohol and chat about game theory.Īnna is from denmark, and described like so:Īnna was dark-haired, ringleted, slim, her spoken English precise and so little accented that only its hyper-correctness spoke to her foreign origin. it could have been really good, but it was written by someone who has never met a human being, and it was impossible to get past the bloviated way the characters spoke. This book had so many opportunities to earn a third star, but it staunchly refused to even try. Fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
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