miss smilla's feeling for snow

What do you mean by the 'psychological nihilism' of SOTL, Mark?

Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander bks are also gd in a dour, snowy, scandiland kind of mystery/detective way...

No no no. I love this book, too. Living in a wintery sort of place, I totally understand the concept of different types of snow. Misanthropic Smilla is a wonderful character. His other book was ok but not overwhelmingly mesmerizing. The name escapes me now but it's about the nature of time & kids in a juvenile detention centre/school.

i much prefer "smilla's sense of snow" for the technically translated title but then i am always awed by a little aliteration

miss smilla's snow sense!

This is a great book. Being married to a Dane, of course I was drawn to read some Peter Hoeg. I enjoyed the one set in the school as well although my wife read The Woman and The Ape and it's apparently just too strange.

I love it too and not just because it's full of ice and sno.
The book has a towering and not very comfortable sense of place(s) (both Copenhagen and Greenland), and maybe it's that tension between knowing somewhere intimately, it being part of you,and yet being alienated from it and yourself, hating it even, that animates both the landscapes and the sense of character. RElationship between person and place turns out to be v fragile and shifting, also excessive to the point of scariness. The plotting is so-so and on a single reading I didn't follow the end section which feels curiously detached from the rest of the narrative (also I don't understand ship layout/terminology) The film is ok but Gabriel Byrne FAR TOO SMALL AND THIN to be the boyfriend.

I found it quite boring. It's me, not the book, I am sure.

I liked the first 200 pages and hated the second 200 IIRC.

The bit where she fucks him with her clitoris sticks out in my mind.

I liked the first 300 and disliked the last 100. It ran out of steam and I got a bit bored.
And yes, the clitfucking is the first thing that springs to mind when anyone mentions th book.

Yes me too!

yes it's true he can't work out how to end a thriller and basically just suddenly throws his hands in the air and says IT WZ ALIENS ALL ALONG AND WITH ONE BOUND SHE WZ FREE!!

when i finish it tonight i shall post my "analysis"

nihilist psychology = eg when smilla points out the fear and curiosity are connected, similarly respect and resentment, in fact opposites generally (thin line between love and hate blah blah) (i wub that stuff: everything is it's opposite you know)

I hate books that challenge what I know.

i like when she uses inuit words then translates them and one of them is aanoraaq and she translates it as anorak

(i guess i mean he)

I don't understand how the author or the publisher or someone didn't realise that the ending was completely pathetic and does not at all support the first half of the book. But I am glad that other people didn't like it too.

ok i finished it: i like it right up to when the mechanic reappears: he is a REAL PROBLEM PLOTWISE cz the entire energy of smilla is that she thinks luv is an obsessive-compulsive crock to be distrusted, and to bust through that the mechanic wd have to reach into her convincingly powerfully, but he just doesn't (even when not played by gabe byrne = more like philip seymour hoffmann in my head), howevah it is necessary — morally and practically — that she not be totally alone on the ship, otherwise she becomes just wonderwoman

i think the end is a deliberate "i am not impressed by the machinations of corporate pulp" gesture: in other words, hoek convinced himself — and bystanders — of the um "indie ethics" of having an anti-ending, rather than actually doing the work

the subtext is very pynchon: collision of difft kinds of knowledge and the deluded and destructive character of the presently triumphant mode => yet smilla actually keeps besting ppl because she's so undeluded abt the practicalities of violence (she4's never tricked into a losing position by respecting Chivalrous Rules of Combat which wd place her exactly there) (this is k-sexy btw) (she's also a cruiser)

pynchon is also no good at ending books generally (tho mason&dixon, which = closest to smilla in deep topic, does have a real ending)

"nature is not fooled": smilla understands ice = smilla understand what actually motivates the various ppl she encounters (because she cruises them) rather than responding to what they represent and therefore OUGHT to motivate them

(isaiah is actually killed bcz his killer feels judged by him, though this reason is then rationalised into a casual powerplay)

(the villain flees at the end rather than turning and fighting bcz he realises he is morally bested by smilla's attitude to the child: but this is inferred not told, and only available as storylogic after abt the fifth read, really) (pay attention every time thetre's a digression on ice-knowledge: smilla is "allowed" to get as far as she does bcz the villain needs and recognises her expertise — this much is overtly stated — yet when the expertise manifests, he is destroyed...) (this is an apologia for the structure of the ending, but the execution is k-rub i think, as all attest)

other narratives being quietly invoked: frankenstein (smilla = monster, villain = victor) and THE THING!!

I will read this book now. But let's note that Gravity's Rainbow and V. and especially Vineland all had real endings too, to one degree or another.

[insert much-told anecdote abt the final pages of my copy of GR, to bug josh]

seriously, i don't think pynchon has formally cracked the last-pages solution to the structures he sets up, in re closure vs non-closure

M&D's end is enormously moving in a way that GR's isn't, so that relieves the pressure: GR's is often explained away with abstract deep-subject justification which i think is more flannel than not ("oh it's entropy maaan")

i can't remember the endings of either vineland or v., so i think my point stands

Vineland -- mystery & crazy stuff solved, return to "normal", everything resolves.

GR has nothing to do with "entropy" (that would be Col49 which REALLY DOESN'T resolve) and wraps up I think incredibly strongly and powerfully, although granted in a non-traditional "breaking the frame" sorta way.

V. -- The ship sinks, the mystery persists, v. and her friend disappear into the mists. The normal grail-quest narrative isn't resolved but it still feels satisfying in that the quest itself is over even if it is frustrated.

ok i cracked the last bit of smilla on the bus:

two questions need answering which PH never directly answers: why does isaiah die and what is the question tork actually wants to ask smilla

clue 1: smilla is the ONLY living person tork actually respects
clue 2: he's already read all her scientific papers

sorry, clue 3: what kind of a name is isaiah anyway?

haha i already kinda answered both those questions further up!! but both my answers are NOT QUITE RIGHT!!

It's amazing what people get out of books. I was not even aware that there was clit-fucking IN the book. I just remember being filled wih the overwhelming desire to go to Scandinavia when I read the book. And then being disappointed by the ending, because the rest of the book was so amazing.

I agree, kate, though the clit-fucking was quite explicit.

It's the first thing that springs to mind when someone mentions that book for me, too...

ha sterl still holding that osbie feel theory?

mark my watchful eye has caught your shadow of a joke so rest easy

josh: Zhlub as Nixon is more to the point, rilly. Regardless of the feel theory (which seems so... duh of course!) the book resolves quite nicely, with a bang no less, heh heh.

Aside from M&D it is structurally his most elegant. I'm sure it's been pointed out that the central visual motif of each book is its structure as well.

Pynchon = the busby berkeley of novelists!

I just finished reading Smilla, and agree with all of this, though the clitfucking seemed pretty silly rather than terribly memorable. I always like stories with plenty of craft knowledge, like Smilla's snow and ice expertise here.

Naughtiness with mechanic alarmed me at the age of 15. Amuses now. Sub-X-files ending is annoying, given how cool the rest of the thing is.

I like 'Borderliners' (the school one) although I've yet to work out exactly what's going on, and 'The History of Danish Dreams' is very good too, kind of gothick.