Vastarien

Aeron

Aeron

Chymist
It had been many years since I'd last read this story, somewhere around 1996. Upon reading it again, the strange dream world contained within this tale, that horrific nightmare domain of Vastarien, was very familiar to me. I've had a similar place in my head since 2003 when I began the artwork found in The Imaginary Museum. Tom has always been a huge influence but this story reminded me of just how great an infuence he has been in directing my own imagination down ever darker and stranger corridors.

Now imagine the streets of Vastarien, what glorious horrific things are wandering there? One of the first concrete things that came to my mind was a twelve foot tall blob like fetus with 6 arms, each grasping onto a large wooden box. Small winged creatures flutter around its head, pecking at the exposed brains of this monstrous creature. It sits on a large wagon with rusty wheels, pulled forward by a cloaked figure wearing some grotesque mask, like a participant of an unusual festival who has lost their way.
 
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I'll do my best to create a vivid photorealistic scene in all of its grotesque and fascinating detail from the streets of Vastarien.
 
Aeron said:
Now imagine the streets of Vastarien, what glorious horrific things are wandering there? One of the first concrete things that came to my mind was a twelve foot tall blob like fetus with 6 arms, each grasping onto a large wooden box. Small winged creatures flutter around its head, pecking at the exposed brains of this monstrous creature. It sits on a large wagon with rusty wheels, pulled forward by a cloaked figure wearing some grotesque mask, like a participant of an unusual festival who has lost their way.
Click to expand...

If the mask no longer fits, then we will know exactly what festival from whence our friend came. Unfortunately, where might we direct him?
 
VASTARIEN

A substantive work where its venue's "warped structures" in Victor Keirion's dream echo those of the whole book heretofore, involving questions like: who is dreaming, what is their goal in dreaming or being dreamt -- what is the real place, what its echo -- what the real book, what its copy -- what the "sideshow of charlatanry", what the "fine and dark tracery of limitless patterns" -- and more?

You need to read this work many times, I guess, even to come close to scratching its surface, especially in the context of the foregoing stories. It may not even have a surface to scratch.

This is the most sophisticatedly inchoate set of obsessions and self-questionings you are ever likely to meet in all literature, ranging from the relatively simple interpretation of VASTARIEN as 'vast and nothing' to the agonisingly tantalising concepts of the bookshop and the Crow Man, and which book is ABOUT something, and which book IS that something.

A möbius section of books about books where even this book I am reading and reviewing is suspect or simply blank. Books seeking their special readers, in fact paying for readers to read them who can understand them or use them properly. Reading with borrowed eyes, as it were. And if you take this story to its ultimate conclusion towards CATHR thirty years later, blankness worked forward, blankness works backward, and nothing is worth the paper it's printed on. Even the print that tells you that nothing is worth the paper it's printed on is worthless. The ultimate tabula rasa. And maybe I am the reader with those borrowed eyes, having a number of years ago established the "provenance" of the world's first known blank story in 'Nemonymous'.

'The Noctuary of Tine' on page 243 - is this the second typo in the book or simply a reference to the spoke on, say, a fork for one of 'them apples'?

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
 
"Vastarien" is on my short list of favorite stories. One type of story that resonates with me is a story about a book's powerful hold on a person's mind.

Another story of this type is "Egnaro" by M. John Harrison. Notice the title of both these stories: a unique proper name of an imaginary place.

Are there books like this in reality? Well, this is what China Mieville says about the anthology _The Weird_ :

""These are strange aeons. These texts, dead and/or not burrow, and we cannot predict everything they will infect or eat their path through. But certainly your brain, and they will eat the books you read from today on, too. That is how the Weird recruits.
This is a worm farm. These stories are worms."

I read the Vandermeer's anthology _The Weird_, and my brain is rewired. I haven't read, or written, the same way since.
 
Nemonymous said:
VASTARIEN

A substantive work where its venue's "warped structures" in Victor Keirion's dream echo those of the whole book heretofore, involving questions like: who is dreaming, what is their goal in dreaming or being dreamt -- what is the real place, what its echo -- what the real book, what its copy -- what the "sideshow of charlatanry", what the "fine and dark tracery of limitless patterns" -- and more?

You need to read this work many times, I guess, even to come close to scratching its surface, especially in the context of the foregoing stories. It may not even have a surface to scratch.

This is the most sophisticatedly inchoate set of obsessions and self-questionings you are ever likely to meet in all literature, ranging from the relatively simple interpretation of VASTARIEN as 'vast and nothing' to the agonisingly tantalising concepts of the bookshop and the Crow Man, and which book is ABOUT something, and which book IS that something.

A möbius section of books about books where even this book I am reading and reviewing is suspect or simply blank. Books seeking their special readers, in fact paying for readers to read them who can understand them or use them properly. Reading with borrowed eyes, as it were. And if you take this story to its ultimate conclusion towards CATHR thirty years later, blankness worked forward, blankness works backward, and nothing is worth the paper it's printed on. Even the print that tells you that nothing is worth the paper it's printed on is worthless. The ultimate tabula rasa. And maybe I am the reader with those borrowed eyes, having a number of years ago established the "provenance" of the world's first known blank story in 'Nemonymous'.

'The Noctuary of Tine' on page 243 - is this the second typo in the book or simply a reference to the spoke on, say, a fork for one of 'them apples'?

(An extract from my on-going review of the Penguin Classics collection.)
Click to expand...

Rationale: Le NŒUD de Ligotti - THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK
 
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