Orlion reviewed Novelties & souvenirs by John Crowley
Review of 'Novelties & souvenirs' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
As the subtitle implies, Novelties & Souvenirs collects most of John Crowley's short stories/novellas up to around 2002. This collection is a third in the line of Crowley collections which had its beginning in Novelty: Four Stories by John Crowley. Does not seem like a lot, but those four stories take up a huge chunk of the collection and will no doubt also be the ones most people remember. Particularly a dozy of a novella called "Great Work of Time". But more on that later.
As can be expected, this collection presents the spectrum of John Crowley's writing talents in its mere 330-odd pages. This is how the man writes, in a beautiful, surreal style about ideas that will vaporize the gray matter within your skull more often not. This is where you leave behind your literary training diapers, kiddies.
So this book contains fifteen stories. These are arranged by …
As the subtitle implies, Novelties & Souvenirs collects most of John Crowley's short stories/novellas up to around 2002. This collection is a third in the line of Crowley collections which had its beginning in Novelty: Four Stories by John Crowley. Does not seem like a lot, but those four stories take up a huge chunk of the collection and will no doubt also be the ones most people remember. Particularly a dozy of a novella called "Great Work of Time". But more on that later.
As can be expected, this collection presents the spectrum of John Crowley's writing talents in its mere 330-odd pages. This is how the man writes, in a beautiful, surreal style about ideas that will vaporize the gray matter within your skull more often not. This is where you leave behind your literary training diapers, kiddies.
So this book contains fifteen stories. These are arranged by order of publication, by arbitrary authorial decree. The theme of the stories range from the supernatural, the theological, the metaphysical, the mythological, the poetical, the literary, and the sociological. Also, there is time travel and aliens from time to time.
The constraints of the short fiction mean that not a lot of time is spent explaining how 'things work'. This is very apparent in the time-travel story "Great Work of Time" and "In Blue". The first is by far the longest story in the book, clocking (ha) at about 100 pages. Its subject matter is such that I have come to different conclusions than others have over the ending. Something that is bound to happen when you use 'imaginary' in its standard and mathematical sense. Also be sure to review the term 'orthogonal', that is kinda a very important concept to the story. "In Blue" centers around something known in-story as an 'act-field'.
Good luck with that.
Not every story is going to require extra work on the part of the reader. "The Nightingale Sings at Night" strikes me as an example of a straightforward, touching story about why the nightingale sings at night and the expulsion of Man and Woman from Eden.
John Crowley's stories are like caramels. Oftentimes, you have to chew on it for a while before you can begin to digest it. Some require more mental processing than others. Still others you will find completely incomprehensible until you research the folk tale it is based on ("An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings", I'm looking at you!). It does not follow trends, nor does it care for your concept of 'plot and resolution.' What it does care about is 'effect', and all the work that Crowley puts into these stories goes towards exactly the effect that he wants. And oft times, I believe these 'effects' are much more important in literature than mere entertainment.