Friday, July 06, 2007

bulges

I can't recommend enough John C. Wright's latest trilogy, comprised of The Orphans of Chaos, Fugitives of Chaos, and Titans of Chaos. Only in part because I recently read for my first time Dante Alighieri's Inferno, I roared in delight over this passage found early in the second book:
"Come along, Mr. mac FirBolg. We have all had just about enough," I heard Boggin saying.

"
Stand back! I'm about to start speaking in tounges! Rafel mahee amek zambi almit! Papa Satan! Papa Satan allepe!"...

...Colin writhed and screamed and frothed, calling them all sinners and condemning them to damnation and hellfire.
"

Sometimes I wonder how you could possibly enjoy a novel without knowing what the author is alluding to with their cryptic references. I felt equally suprised when I read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and discovered a passage smuggling Buridan's Ass ("And so I'm trapped between two opposing forces, like an ass who does not know which of two stacks of hay to eat" Pg. 348.) Heinlein pulled the same one in his Time Enough for Love which I already noted elsewhere. (I've also once noted that Robert Anton Wilson, in his seminal Illuminatus! Trilogy aped Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged with a nested G.E.B.-worthy story-within-a-story titled Telemachus Sneezed.)



1 comment:

John Wright said...

Good to know someone got the reference. Writing is something like throwing a message in a bottle, not knowing if a passing ship will find it.