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I came to this book from Sandifer's "Neoreaction a Basilisk", and even though that book is partly a commentary on this one, the commentary is in this case more interesting than its subject.

It may be that different people just have very different susceptibilities to horror, and that mine and Land's have little or no overlap. This brief story shows us two parents worried about their daughter, the three of them going into a somewhat interesting sensory-immersion video game together, and then coming out again (OR DO THEY??? [portentous orchestra hit]).

Even including that obvious final trope, nothing about it struck me as disturbing, scary, horrible, or anything else related to horror, although there were lots of multisyllabic words telling me how terror-inducing it all was. Okay, I guess? For some people?

Various promising elements introduced early on (a creepy stuffed animal, a classmate attempting suicide after the daughter said something mysterious to them) are dropped and never taken up again; perhaps the reader is supposed to fill those bits in, but I didn't see anything in the video game world that would have had much of an effect on a modern youth, except possibly to get them to try a free trial subscription.

Given that I didn't find any horror in the horror story, it's perhaps not surprising that I didn't find the analysis of horror in general, and the horror of Fermi Paradox in particular, especially convincing either. It seems to me that horror, to be effective, must be grounded in the concrete and visceral, even if has a significant component in the abstract and unknown. A fly-covered liver can be horrible by itself; the purely abstract idea that something we currently haven't thought of might remove humanity from the universe sometime, not so much.

I feel as though I ought to have enjoyed these little police mysteries more, given how famous and well-regarded the author and the character are.

I read the first story and half of the second a while back, but bogged down and put it aside. Today I picked it up again, more determined, and read from the beginning of the second story all the way through. It wasn't bad?

These are simple crime mysteries with a homey feel; one is clearly supposed to like Inspector Montalbano and his setting: the general feel of small-city Sicily, the housekeeper who cooks so well, the young girlfriend from Genoa whom the housekeeper dislikes, the various foods and drinks that are so often and lovingly mentioned, the colleague that knows the history of every attractive woman in town, the eccentric unreliable secretary or something at the station who talks in a barely comprehensible accent that draws one to think about how a translator translates something like a thick regional accent.

(In this translation, Catarella has lines like "Chief, 'ere'd be a soitain Signor Valletta onna premisses wantin' a talk t'yiz poissonally in poisson," and one is extremely curious what that was in Italian and what it signified.)

The crimes, even when the Mafia is involved, are relatively mundane, even when horrifying. The solutions are sometimes completely unremarkable, sometimes aided by the equivalent of a fortunate shower thought by the Inspector, sometimes involving a little casual law breaking or letting the guilty go free in the interests of a wider justice. Which is all fine. Montalbano sometimes feels like a slightly-too-perfect possible self-insert, but not painfully. I guess it's somewhat comforting and heartwarming overall?

But I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and jaded, but I didn't come away feeling like it had all been a particularly good use of time in the reading. Maybe if I read more of them I'll come to know better and be fonder of this world, and more eager to just hang out and be comfortable in it?

Maybe we'll see. :)

Remember that no teacher has ever spoken or written a single word of teaching!

About halfway through this book, Foyan writes:

"I will settle something for you right now: the ultimate rule is to see your own mind clearly. This is what Buddhism is, as far as I am concerned."

That's it, that's the whole thing. Every other section of this book, every other sentence, is not saying anything different.

So, why? Because, I would speculate, even though it is all the same, and all free of any content or teaching, each different series of words, like a different set of bird cries or patterings of raindrops, might be the thing that someone needs to hear to be freed, or to attain a little insight. Or to smile.

And Foyan may have been a wily expert at arranging especially effective ways of saying exactly the same empty thing.

Therefore, read the whole thing! Why not?

Why not?

Why not?

This is one of those very rare books that reminds me of what books are at some level all about. That makes me want to go about and knock about two stars off of 99% of my prior book ratings, to make room to properly differentiate this one.

It's hard to say too much that's concrete, without giving it away. I was closer to tears at the end of this than I can remember with any book for a long time. Not easy maudlin tears, but deep oh-my-god tears about what a universe this is.

The people are very fully people; the viewpoint character is not a person, but ... well, that would be a spoiler also. But the viewpoint it gives her allows Ishiguro to say some amazing and touching and true and thought-provoking things without coming out and saying them (because nothing he could come out and say would say them so well).

Language cannot express truth, I often say; but what I mean is that it can't explicitly express literal truth. Language, when it's used with this much expertise, can and does express deep and breathtaking truth.

I need to go spend a few weeks processing this now, I think..

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend that you should,