"Remember You're a One-Ball!"

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

gveranon, would you still be inferring the author's intentions, if the work were published anonymously (i.e. male or female, date of writing etc. all unknown)?

Answering quickly before going to bed (it's 3:00 a.m. here!): Yes. At least with most types of writing, a surmised sense of author-intention seems to me an almost unavoidable part of construing the meaning(s) of the work or even of experiencing it aesthetically. This surmised sense of intention arises naturally in the course of reading almost any piece of writing. It arises naturally from the text itself (unless it's extremely avant-garde or in a language I can't read); although of course if I (think I) know something about the author, this may influence my sense of the author's intention. But even in that case, the text itself is what I'm reading; it is what I'm experiencing and construing. Knowing something about the author may cause me to (think I) see more in the text than I would otherwise, but still my inference of author-intention arises from the writing itself in the course of my reading it. And I should say that my sense of author-intention may be vague and not easy to put into words.

Most pieces of writing are written in a rhetoric of at least implied intentionality (human language, in most of its uses, even in literary texts, seems to naturally imply some sort of intention). I don't understand how one can read a piece of writing that is written rhetorically as if someone wrote it intentionally, without reading it as if someone wrote it intentionally.

It's 3:30! I'm sure I'll wish I worded this differently when I look at it tomorrow.

[Nemonymous]

That's all very fair, geveranon, and interesting food for thought.
I suggest that the inferences 'change' - and I think you bear this out - with one's degree of knowledge or (dare I say, even pre-judgement) regarding the author (known face to face or on facebook, or known by previous books, known by hearsay or biography or autobiography etc), i.e. 'change' one's whole system of interacting with that author's fiction (didactic or not). So the optimum is to know as little as possible about the author, hence my nemonymous approach. Not stipulating anything here, simply broaching possibilities...

[ToALonelyPeace]

How can I describe my feelings for this work? At first, I thought the book would be similar to Steve Rasnic Tem “Ugly Behavior” but it proved me wrong and reached entire new height of brutality. Perhaps because I experienced some of the fictional events, certain passages made me dizzy with nausea and pain so much that I vomited and was forced to lie down. When I was six I was transferred into a foster home because my mother left the country to fulfill her grand plan of another life. My father (whom I did not live with) took me there himself despite everything. In my opaque mind, I knew he would leave me there but still I trusted him when he told me to wait while he would go inside and apologize to them. He didn’t come back of course. Just like Norman, I cried and peed everywhere and was unable to talk or eat. I didn’t notice the other kids or the nurses though they threatened to force fed me my vomit. There was a numbing rock in my brain all the time but I didn’t understand why-why every moment was painful. Then one night, I woke up in a nurse’s arm to the moon shining on the cement’s floor and for some reason I understood. I understood that if I die no one would know. For all my screams no one would hear. This truth was too much to bear, and it culminated in me starving myself almost to death.

Of course I am in a better place now, reunited with my mother in the heaven she had promised. I didn’t fit in the beginning and resented her, but time healed all wounds. And yet…I still carry the pain around uselessly. My mother, various counselor and psychologist alike have told me I need to move on to better things, to forgive the past, let bygone be bygone. I believe so too most of the time, as I understand the pain to be an echo of my past self, who is dead to the world now, and therefore the pain has no authentic ‘I’ attached to it. I can also sense how it distressed my mother, how she would prefer I put the past in a box and in her words “You suffered? I also suffered. That makes both of us.” I move on as they wish and if I sometimes randomly confess my past to strangers it is simply an indulgent. The truth is I am stuck, have been stuck in a corner since then and even long before, because I now have nowhere to go and don’t know what to do with this useless pain. The pain doesn’t interfere with my work, I do love my mother, and I don’t seek to give out vengeance, justice, or forgiveness because it is not mine to give and no such things really exist. By all account I should have nothing to do with the past, should just pull a Ramsey and accept the world’s happiness (especially mine in this moment) is built on (my past self) a child’s mutilated corpse. Yet I wonder why I cannot? The book has no answer for such a question and no such thing exists anyhow. Nonetheless, I have to thank the author for this book as it has clarified my thoughts, and also for the moments which console me more than all the words from anyone.

[Justin Isis]

Still remember reading this when it was just a manuscript. Would have been 2007 or 2008 – so about ten years ago. Knew right away this book would wreck people, still proud to have been able to do the introduction for it.

[Mr. Veech]

Quote Originally Posted by Freyasfire

I received my copy of Remember You're a One-Ball! a few days ago, and I am really looking forward to diving into it. The only problem is, I am afraid it might depress me a little bit too much, and as I am currently working my way through Quentin's All God's Angels Beware!, I might need to take a little break from his world before I can attempt to take on Remember You're a One-Ball! Quentin's work has a way of getting under my skin, and causing me the most exquisite of pains. Masochist though I am, I often feel like I need to come up for air after reading one of his stories (I am mean this to be the highest form of praise I can give a writer). I can only imagine what reading a novel length tale of his might do to my fragile psyche! But oh, how I quiver in anticipation as I imagine the crack of that metaphysical whip...

It looks like I will have to get my hands on "All God's Angels Beware."