Bonus points to any commenter who correctly (or incorrectly but puts thought into their answer) identifies what this story is an allegory for.
-Styg
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?
The Bamboo and the Firefly / Discussion
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Fantastic as always, Styg, and it's a joy to catch the references to your continually evolving body of work in your dreamlike prose. That being said, I'm gonna take a stab at interpreting what this is about.
I think this story is an allegory for work, the kind of work we do in the capitalist society we live in that alienates us from ourselves, each other, and the world as a whole. I know, the Marxist in me is showing. But it fits. It fits with the brambles living under suffering and believing there is no alternative. It fits with the allegory of water, and how they will try their hardest to only ever bring in the bare minimum to live. It fits with how parts of themselves are lost and forgotten beneath the drudgery and toil, like what is retrieved by the captain at the end. The contrast with the jungle and other ways of living not focused on arbitrary achievement and asceticism bring this into sharp focus for me. I think I'm right. How'd I do?
Sun-bleached wooden +1.
While I appreciate the largely abstract, symbolic, prose-forward effect the story is aiming for, overall I don't find it particularly compelling. Large parts of it feel repetitive and drawn-out, circling around a point that feels clunky and heavy-handed ("Perhaps a taste of joy is loathsome to those so diminished." etc, there are many times where I feel as if I'm being straight up *told* what message I'm supposed to get from all this, most egregiously with the firefly parable). It could be read allegorically in many ways (overcoming trauma, the pitfalls of clinging to ideology, the class divide etc), which is often a strength, but I don't think it adds much to any of these readings, or gains anything by being read through them, as busy as it is with interpreting itself for you. Beyond that it feels loose in its narrative structure, and the first parts especially overstay their welcome (I think it's often a bad sign when a story has to apologize for boring you and dragging on too much). There's some compelling writing here, and the landscape developed has potential, but it's not the right story for it, and not told in the right way. It's ambitious, which I like, but that ambition feels like it gets ahead of it. No vote.
i'm willing to upvote on the strength of prose and allegory present throughout, though i understand rum's criticisms and am disappointed that my advice regarding the lampshading was not taken. it feels especially unnecessary because this piece isn't even that long, and the prose flows well enough to make much of the repetition go down easy.
While on one hand I found the subject matter and central concept really interesting the point was a bit belaboured for me. A lot of your work has a kind of narrative remove from itself, a deliberate lack of verisimilitude, a real pushing of the boundaries of how narratives are constructed and conveyed. Perhaps this is just my lens on it but I much prefer your work that, while highly allegorical, also has a more defined and typical narrative which describes events which exist on more familiar logic, rather than being entirely narrative, entirely concept. On one hand this style is part of why your writing is so distinctive, but on the other hand I feel it can be variable in how well it works. Personally? I would have preferred the framing device for these concepts to be different, a part of a story rather than the entirety of it.
I'll give it a +1 for the prose, which is, as always, excellent and thought-provoking, but overall this isn't quite it
Quick note - not too fond of opening with the line that there is an <intangible object> that looks like a <tangible object>. 'LEDs' and 'architecture', too, appear out of place in what I think is a world of primal, bare forms?
The string of 'perhaps' does not serve to pull the reader forward - each clause is a diversion.
Generally I am confused as to why the reader is being addressed, or what the stakes are.
This is an interesting piece. I really liked the vivid, saddening life of the black brambles, and then this ship, this ship that feels like a metaphorical salvation, which then turns physical, concrete, mortal yet undying, and with details like the man and the jacket, it has this nice tinge to it, that there is hope amidst the drought. Can't say I'm too sure about the allegory: Was thinking it had something to do with mental health (Me when I take my SSRIs and I emerge from the bramble), but can't confidently say I'm too sure of it.
One detail that I wasn't sure of was the actual bit with the bamboo and the firefly. I get where you were coming from, but it felt intrusive in a not good way. It just passed by and didn't really leave much to savor, if I'm being honest. Didn't exactly add much to the A plot as well.
Still, a solid piece of writing that I enjoyed. +1~
the fact is that basically no matter what you write, your style appeals to me fundamentally and i always find your use of language interesting and beautiful. there's never been a thing you've written that i have read that i have not thoroughly enjoyed on the merits of its prose alone; i have expressed this sentiment to you before and it is in no less effect here. you're a phrase-artisan and that is a descriptor i stand by.
i agree with a lot of the critique in this thread for this piece in particular, however. structurally, it's somewhat circular. this piece also feels more in your head, more intellectual — i want viscerality, i want something in your feelings and i want those feelings to crawl into my emotional space and infect it, and when you do that, you do it so well that when you don't, it sometimes comes up a bit short.
regardless simply because of the joy of reading things you write and because i can feel your personal investment here i am leaving a +1 and am grateful as always to have the opportunity to consume your work, styg. thank you.
Phew! I thought you were leaving us for a second there. For me it feels like the captain is you (references to your other works means you must be involved, especially since the captain arrives on the ship with gold rigging), but I can't decide if the bramble island is supposed to be the real world or when you write. On the hand of the real world, the negativity makes sense and going and retrieving a part of yourself makes sense - you need those parts in order to put them into your pieces. On the hand of when you write, nothing really jumps out as evidence, but for the first half of the story that's what I was imagining. Either way, I think the fable of the bamboo and the firefly represents learning to write again. For me, it feels like I have to do that every time I start a new story.
I really like this piece. It does belabor some ideas (the two paragraphs on what the story is not about come to mind) but everything felt very meaningful, very purposeful. I'm not sure I agree with the title choice, ultimately that fable does not feel as central to the main thesis in my reading than it might in your head. Maybe that's because I'm way off, but it does feel like a strange choice. This story has made me think so much, consider many avenues of thought you might have been traveling. That is valuable, and the prose slaps as well. +1
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