/lit/ - Literature

I would like to (briefly) make a serious post about the Prince of Nothing and Bakker, if the thread would be so kind to take it seriously as well I would appreciate it.

So I've had the Darkness that Comes Before placed prominently on my shelf for awhile, bought exclusively for the purposes of antagonizing a /lit/ friend of mine who had reason to see my book collection, but only now did I think to grab it and move it from m shelf to my desk. I am an author by trade myself and usually keep 2-3 books by my desk so that when my mind is under assault from crude prose or shoddy idealization I can grab proper literature and anchor myself to how English ought to be. Why I chose Bakker for this is suspect but I have it placed next to "Eye of the World" and "The Shadow of the Torturer." In any case, one such mental assault came after I foolishly spent hours wading through a poorly written pornographic video game (ah, the things we do for the greatest of our vices), and I sought reprieve in The Prince of Nothing... only to be completely caught off guard by the opening 100-some pages, which I tore through with surprising vigor.

I think there is a propensity to attack and mock those who present original ideas -- or even unoriginal ideas with equivalent sincerity to ideas of one's own -- simply because to present a thesis opens oneself up to the attack of an antithesis. It's a tale as old as time - someone purports that after great thinking they believe X to be true, and almost on reflex a casual reader who finds themselves instinctively disagreeing will put a small amount of thought into how best to contradict this claim that is now before them. They will sneer at the obvious wrongness (for it is so obvious to them) and sneer that one would have thought to express themselves at all. This goes for both philosophical ideas (rationalism, moralism, universal grammar, etc) but also for aesthetic choices such as presented beauty standards, character flaws or the lack thereof, how distance from Tolkien the worldbuilding style is to be, etc.

It should have been inversely obvious from the amount of mockery Bakker gets that his work is filled with such bold and open presentation of ideas. In his words, I mixed up "what came before" with what came after - his work is filled with ideas, ergo he gets mocked, not he gets mocked ergo the work is filled with memes. I found myself immediately gripped and intrigued by the undercurrent of powerful philosophy flowing throughout the text. Kellhus's grasp of rationalism and cause and effect are easy to mock, but the strength of the Dûnyain philosophy is real and powerful. The text is littered with intriguing paragraphs that do not merely hint at ideas, but state them flat-out for the reader to ponder. There is no trickery or illusion to hide any semblance of ideas to avoid expected attacks from angry readers, a practice which continually produces the blandest texts imaginable. Bakker is in fact a joy to read.