Lois McMaster Bujold: Book analysis (sort of forwarded from LMB mailing list) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2552: > Well, taking a look at all the answers to this > thread, there seems to be a few people like me > for whom _Komarr_ didn't really work out, and > a sound majority who enjoyed it. I do have a few > comments for those who defended the book. It is not possible to *argue* a person into having had a different reading experience than the one they did have, and what follows should not be construed as an attempt to do so. (Though the arguments can be pretty entertaining.) That said... > About Tien; to my surprise, quite a few people > said that they knew folks like that. As I have posted on, I think, Baen's Bar -- Tien is as accurate a portrait as I could draw of a person suffering from undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder. While I don't wholly trust all modern psychiatric memes (actually, all psychiatric memes are modern, a new way of thinking about or mapping some pretty old realities), I think the pshrinks are onto something with this one. I have been acquianted with two persons who were (eventually) formally diagnosed with this disorder, one male, one female. (In retrospect, I think I may have met a couple of others, not diagnosed.) While the *details* of their disrupted and disrupting lives were very different, the underlying patterns, their mistaken life tactics if you will, once I had a sample of two and not just one to look at, rather leapt to the eye. Go look up some information on this diagnosis, and take another look at Tien sometime. No rush. > I dunno, maybe it's just the company I keep, If you've never been involved with a borderline, count yourself lucky. They have a mind-boggling talent for disrupting the lives of persons around them. > but to me > the whole Tien part was like listening to a friend > who has just been through a divorce and wants to > tell you about it - there is no end to how stupid, > evil and boring their former partner is, and to > the sufferings that they have endured at said > partners behalf. And while you nod your head > and mumble sympathetically while you listen to > that tale, it's never fair, nor correct. It really > takes two to tango. While this last platitude is sometimes correct, it isn't always correct. You never know all of the inside story. One way of telling is to watch the subsequent relations and lives of the aggrieved parties. If one goes off in a cloud of permanent chaos, and the other straightens things out for themselves, well, that's a clue. It usually doesn't take too many years of observation to distinguish them. (Erratic work history -- not for short periods, but perpetually -- can be another clue. Bosses have far less motivation than spouses for tolerating borderlines. Note, the borderline will *always* have a plausible and often dramatic reason, not their fault, for quitting/getting fired, whether it's job #5 or job #35. Erratic financial habits that never improve, including poor credit management and borrowing money and not returning it, is another symptom.) >In all cases that I've seen > I'm still on talking terms with both the people > involved and they are both decent enough human > beings. Things just didn't work out. This is probably more often the case than that one party has subtle, or not-so-subtle, mental problems. But people with mental problems are quite real nonetheless. Both the worst, and the likeliest, match for a borderline (of either gender) is a trusting straight-arrow. Anyone else with an ounce of self-preservation will drop the borderline along about Round Three of the iatrogenic chaos at the latest. Only the straight-arrows hang on, and on, and on, trying to bail the ocean. (The female borderline I knew also had a straight-arrow spouse. She had to do some quite extraordinary things to finally drive him off.) In other words, borderlines don't have long relationships with anyone *but* long-suffering persons. Short-suffering persons correctly identify the source of their troubles much sooner, and split. I cannot imagine what two borderlines mated to each other would be like. *Scary* thought. But here, > Ekatrin is the suffering saint, and Tien is a > godawful ruffian and bastard. This does not really > lead to involvment with her predicament. I can > never identify with the hero/ine when the evil > counterpart is about as interesting as a typical > marvel comics henchman. > > About Ekatrin; can anybody please tell me why > Miles is interested in her? Once she has trashed > all that machinery at the end of the book I can > see why Miles would be a little excited, but up > to that point she seems, well, dull, to me. Somebody > argued that she is really a Cordelia in Barrayaran > upbringing disguise, but that is simply not so. The > whole series of books, up to this point, has been > centered around showing how people overcome the > limitations the where born with or into. Miles > himself is the King of Letting Nothing Stand In > Your Way. So why should he care for someone > who has spent a decade doing nothing except feeling > sorry for herself? You have a... peculiar view of women's lives. "So, what does your Mom do all day?" "Oh, nothing..." But I'd say, that *until* Ekaterin was worn down enough to start feeling sorry for herself, the action of shedding Tien was not available to her. It is precisely *because* she gave herself no quarter, none, that she endured him for so long. Note that you are first meeting her at the very end of a long process of erosion. The end was not like the beginning. Hm, a person who believes that the existence of her own pain is no reason to alter her actions... who else do we know like that...? :) >This has nothing to do with > any maturing process - that Miles has learned that > there are prices too high to pay for some wishes > does not mean that he has suddenly grown into > appreciating ineptitude and docility. Indeed, not. It will be interesting to see if your eventual reading of _A Civil Campaign_ throws a different light for you in retrospect back over _Komarr_. They really are the two halves of the M&E emotional story arc. I'd be curious to see a post from you on that topic when the time comes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2678: > In chapter 10 Miles says: > "I gather from the pattern of her flinches that the late unlamented > Tien Vorsoisson was one of those subtle feral parasites who leave their > mates scratching their heads and asking 'Am I crazy? Am _I_ crazy?" She > wouldn't have those doubts if she married _him_, ha. > It seems to make better sense if the first question is 'Is he > crazy?'. I've been assuming that's a typo of some variety. Am I right? Nope. Tein was the borderline personality, remember. One of boderlines' several notable traits is their ability to make the troubles that surround them seem anyone's fault but their's. Ask someone who's known one for confirming data on this point. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 744: > Betsy wrote: > > >>That said, I also think it's not an either-or proposition. Saying "people > before principles" is a little like saying "human rights before property > rights" -- being able to own and protect your property is an aspect of human > rights. Similarly, an important part of your principles includes how you > deal with people. It's a principle that people should be treated with > dignity, that the individual is valuable, etc., etc. > << > > I understood the "people before principles" idea was essentially a statement > of loyalty to close family and friends. In other words, you must always > support family and friends no matter what. (snip) > > Carol Um, no, not exactly what was intended. Not just family and friends -- all people and each person. It's one of Cordelia's theist, ah, principles, which Miles, who imagines he's an atheist, has absorbed by osmosis -- Matthew 25:35-44 sets it out as clearly as anything I've ever encountered. The problem comes round in its toxic and negative form in those people who try to put, for example, the Good of the State above the good of those individuals who make up the state. It's her plea to him not to mistake as real things abstractions which will slip through his fingers, leaving him in the end with nothing but blood on his empty hands. It's important not to confuse real reality -- lands and roads and people and farms and cities and children and cats -- with "consensus realities" such as governments and corporations, which have no actual existence. Such abstract constructs are legal fictions which act merely as more-or-less useful maps by which real people organize themselves and their things and move around. (If you think governments are real, then you will have an interesting time explaining how the government of, say, the Soviet Union evaporated off the face of the Earth over one weekend...) We anthropomorphize the hell out of our consensus realities, but in fact they are intriniscally incapable of "acting", "deciding", "taking responsibility" being "good" or "evil" or having any other moral qualities -- those are only available to individuals with free will. When people start acting as though their consensus realities are human, you know you're getting onto dangerous ground. I note in passing that Barrayar is properly referred to not as "The Barrayaran Empire" but as "The Barrayaran Imperium", and it is construed by the Barrayarans as existing in the *people* who make it up, not in the territory it occupies -- which is, of course, quite right, since consensus realities exist only in the minds of people. A curious legal point with some subtle consequences.