Garden of Forking Paths
During the first few pages of the story, I was pretty uninterested in the story. I thought I was going to hate the rest of it and have to really force myself to keep reading. However, I ended up being really pleasantly surprised by it, and I actually kind of forgot that I was doing a homework reading since I got so into it. I don't think it was the actual story that I liked or that intrigued me in the slightest; I felt no connection to any of the characters and really didn't care about the plot at all either, so the plot twist of an ending didn't really phase me at all even though I thought the connection between Albert's name and the city was a cool addition and explanation. The part of the story that continued to grab my attention was just the complexity of the Ts'ui Pen's book. I was extremely interested in the concept of an infinite book and how this could possibly exist. Some quotes that jumped out to me include the following:
"The book is a shapeless mass of contradictory rough drafts"(96).
"Everyone assumed these were separate activities. No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same"(96).
"In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times"(98).
All three of these quotes explain how the concept of an infinite book could possibly exist which I found very difficult to grasp but in a really cool and interesting way. Albert then goes on to explain how the most crucial aspect of the entire book is time even though, or because, it is not mentioned once; this reminded me a lot of the specific definition of mystery that involves searching for a truth or some type of answer to make sense of things since the lack of the word "time" in the book led Albert to conclude the "time" was in fact the answer or solution. The entire conversation about how confusing the book is because it has so many different possible outcomes and is a "shapeless mass" also honestly really reminded me of Crying of Lot 49 in both a bad way and a good way. In a bad way, it just made me think of how confusing the book was and how much effort it took to stay on top of all of the different things happening at once while also thinking about what was real and what wasn't.. In a good way, it made me appreciate Pynchon's writing style a little more given that he probably meant to make the book really confusing and hard to follow for a specific purpose or to point to some type of answer (even though I have no clue what), just like Ts'ui Pen did in Garden of Forking Paths. Overall, I liked this story way more than I initially thought, mostly because of the cool inception-y ideas about splitting up time and its complex networks.
"The book is a shapeless mass of contradictory rough drafts"(96).
"Everyone assumed these were separate activities. No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same"(96).
"In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times"(98).
All three of these quotes explain how the concept of an infinite book could possibly exist which I found very difficult to grasp but in a really cool and interesting way. Albert then goes on to explain how the most crucial aspect of the entire book is time even though, or because, it is not mentioned once; this reminded me a lot of the specific definition of mystery that involves searching for a truth or some type of answer to make sense of things since the lack of the word "time" in the book led Albert to conclude the "time" was in fact the answer or solution. The entire conversation about how confusing the book is because it has so many different possible outcomes and is a "shapeless mass" also honestly really reminded me of Crying of Lot 49 in both a bad way and a good way. In a bad way, it just made me think of how confusing the book was and how much effort it took to stay on top of all of the different things happening at once while also thinking about what was real and what wasn't.. In a good way, it made me appreciate Pynchon's writing style a little more given that he probably meant to make the book really confusing and hard to follow for a specific purpose or to point to some type of answer (even though I have no clue what), just like Ts'ui Pen did in Garden of Forking Paths. Overall, I liked this story way more than I initially thought, mostly because of the cool inception-y ideas about splitting up time and its complex networks.
I was also fascinated by the idea of an infinite book. I know that I always love it when I'm reading a book and the last sentence is the same as the first. However, I never actually thought of an infinite book having an infinite amount of interpretations. I found it interesting how they talked about different futures and dimensions and how there must exist some realities where we are enemies with our friends. Overall, the plot twist at the end was pretty good, but I'd say the most captivating part was the conversation about time.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way. I couldn't really figure out how an infinite book would work, as there are so many possibilities out there it would be impossible to map them all out and write about them. The plot twist at the end was also pretty good, because I kind of forgot what the main character was even there for in the beginning. I also did not really care for the characters, although I felt a little bad for Albert because he was just being a nice guy and telling this stranger about his ancestor, then ended up dead.
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