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Nine Prince of Amber

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny


Heard this book is about magic! It has tarot cards, astral travel, and intrigues.
There's an idea about shadows as in Plato's idea of the cave and shadows. Earth is a shadow world of Amber, the real world. Corwin is from Amber. He lost his memories. This reminds me of Lord Valentine's Castle. I don't know which book came first but there is plenty of stories about lost memories.
I wanted to read it because it has magic!

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'We have always lived in a castle'

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some notes:
(spoiler alert)
Merricat practices magic. She has a familiar, cat Jonas. Is Jonas the whale reference to Noah's Arc? She practices magical protection. This is similar to the idea of protecting portals. This suggests that her home is a magical place. It is called a castle in her mind. This portal protection is like the spell the magicians used in Brakebill's academy. At one point she teasingly mentions baking a gingerbread cookie in the likeness of her cousin Charles so she can eat him. this suggests the sympathetic magic that is common in Vodoo dolls. Same with the idea that magic is created from psychological pain as displayed in The Magicians, Merricat is experiencing psychological trauma. She was put into foster care after her parents died. She feels protective of her older sister Constance. The invasion of cousin Charles into her home causes disruption. She nails thin notebooks of her fathers to the pine tree to protect the place. She buries things which represent burying the psychological traumas, loss of a parent, and having to be displaced in foster care. Home is very important to her and Constance. Isolation from the outside society. Shirley Jackson wrote a little story called 'The Lottery' that mentions mass mentality and conformance to social 'norms'. Merricat's uniqueness and her odd family is shrouded in mysteries. But they made the news when the parents died of poison. At first, Constance is to blame. Shirley Jackson also didn't like to leave her home. Constance has agoraphobia. This book is a good continuation of my previous readings about spatial places, a sense of home, and architectural elements as magical portals. And isolation as caused by the Covid19 pandemic. Little,Big house is a magical place that is ever unfolding. Piranesi is a mental construct of his world, Hurtfew Abby library of Mr. Norrel, Brakebills, the Wardrobe to Narnia. Architectural elements as portals into other realms. The staircase in Piranesi, where the narrator went through. Harry Potter lives underneath the staircase. There is the element of the portal and there is the perception of expansion. The perception of expansion is a mental construct. The idea that spaces unfold endlessly, and space is infinite was first declared by Bruno Giordano. He also practices the method of the memory palace. The portal is an idea that it connects to other worlds, Little, Big, leads to the world of Faeries. Brakebills, the labyrinth of Piranesi, Borge's labyrinth, and the mythic Minotaur from the Greeks. This labyrinth is also of the mind and it's connecting chambers. We are sometimes not sure if there is an actual physical place or our shift in perception and mental constructs. These ideas blur together between what is real and what is imagined. This spatial expansion is a magical trick, such as the one Norrel conjured at his library in Hurtfew Abby, or is it an actual place such as the one in Piranesi where it is substituted and revised in the mad narrator's mind. This sense of protection and portal is important. When it begins to break down, it signals a turning point in Merricat's peaceful existence in her insular world that she and her sisters try so hard to protect and Uncle Julian tries so hard to relive. This breaking through the portal further temps cousin Charles because of the wealth more than the mysteries. But as in Brakebill, the students who didn't pass the magical exam and were rejected and had their memories erased, except Julia who remembers and is haunted by the power and mysteries of Brakebill. And also the participants that Mr. Norrel allowed in to see his spatially expanding library. And with Little, Big we are hooked into the story because we want to read what it's like to live with magical creatures. What does Merricat have to protect and why is Constance fearful? Merricat has constructed a safe place, it is a codependence place. Constance protects Merricat by taking the blame for the murder. And Merricat is protecting her sister from their father, who abused her. Merricat doesn't want her to have any boyfriends. Constance's attraction to cousin Charles is taking her attention away from Merricat and so she feels threatened. It is even worse when Charles resembles their father and seems to bring back memories. Magic was practice out of necessity to protect the psyche. Much like magic was a mental construct for the narrator in Piranesi. Psychological trauma made the narrator created this safe world. Was he sent there through means of magic? In either case, the thin line of the portal and what is on either side remains very interesting in the fictions of these works. After the fire, as the only means of cleansing the place of cousin Charles, Merricat is able to restore the peace at the cause of physical damage. To Merricat, the notion of a safe psychological place is more important than a physical place. But there is a danger to this psychic palace. The Narrator was able to leave it to save his sanity. But is drawn to it.
It can imprison and it can paralyze as in the statues of the Piranesi palace. 'Castle' sort of explains in very particular circumstance the idea of agoraphobia, just as Piranesi can partially explain madness, and particularly madness as brought on by magical acts. Magical acts cause and can be caused by great psychological pain. Or it is the psychological pain that creates the desire for magical and imagination to survive. In Castle, Merricat goes to great lengths to protect herself and her sister. First poisoning the whole family and second, setting fire to rid of cousin Charles, which in a sense is a second attempt to get rid of their abusive father.

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Piranesi

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some notes: I bought the ebook $10 and Audible $7. I could not go shopping for the first edition because some of the book stores are closed?  Listened and read some last night.  the way Clarke uses the month by number instead of the name.  But there were Journal titles with November and June.  This alters reality.  The year is given by specific events such as the year the Albertross came.  On earth, we don't have names for years except for the Chinese Zodiacs. This seems to make the narrative an earthbound person but a slightly altered perception.

'The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. ... Therefore, the albatross can be both an omen of good or bad luck, as well as a metaphor for a burden to be carried as penance."  

So this signals a psychological change in the narrator. The Other calls him Piranesi but he says it's not his name. This suggests that the narrator has an alter ego. The Other sometimes acts as the narrator's psychologist.

This year could have easily been named the year the Covid19 virus came. One critic mentioned that Clarke's Piranesi is so very timely. We are sequestered yet we are yearning to explore. Clarke's Piranesi's allows us to do this a little bit. It's a guide to our own psyche. Clarke puts up symbolisms, ancient icons, and myths that echo within the vast hall.

We see the statues make an appearance in Clarke's novel 'Strange and Norrel' 16 years ago. Norrel performed the only trick in the book was to make the statues in the cathedral speak bring back ghostly accusations and pleadings.

'I dreamt of him once; he was standing in a snowy forest and speaking to a female child.' This is a reference to Narnia. The epigram from C.S. Lewis also is the frontispiece and the cover is a figure similar to Tumus. Of course, statues are a result of the wicked queen turning her enemies to stone, even the lion got turned. The statues are paralysis, could possibly be a psychological one as experienced by the narrator. In the end, the lion is turned back to flesh. The Medusa also turns flesh into stone.
The statue with the beehive. Bee has appeared in 'The Magician' novel by Lev Grossman. What was hinted at in Piranesi is a full-fledged tribute to Narnia in 'The Magician'. As a child, Tumus seems innocent enough. But in the Greek characterization, Pan is a sexual and seductive God that plays with nymphs. Of course, these are just mere guides after we enter through the doorway, wardrobe, and fall into another world that is largely in our heads. The medium here is the book. The journal as a record. The house itself is an expanding world. We are given measurements in meters. It takes the narrator 3 hours to reach a certain hall. It is mentioned that the Hall is created for giants. The statues are larger than human size. If we scale it back, the idea of the house as expansion and is magical is in the novel by John Crowley 'Little, Big'. The house itself is the key, the entry point. The house is magic and so is the Hall.
I can't remember how Piranesi showed up on my radar. But the first enticement is that it had to do with architecture. It reminded me of 'Little, Big'. But here was this reference to Piranesi. I also thought of Bolle and his large structures. Piranesi is classical and Boullée is more modern. Bolle created a monument to Newton. The first hint of this expansion is in Norrell's library. When I read this some years ago, I immediately drew some parallels to 'Little, Big'. Norrell left his visitors baffled at the vastness of the library that is bigger than the modest house could contain and also managed to remember very little of what the library contained. I remember reading it as one of my favorite parts of the book. Frankly, when it got to the warfare it was less interesting. Maybe it was my interest in architecture and books. The magic is an expansion of spacial relations. I'm a little disappointed when I read review yearning for the sequel or prequel to Norrel and Strange. People complained because it lacks certain malicious warfare. But to me, Piranesi is a continuation of this theme of spacial expansion and our own mind's capacity for spatial renderings, our yearning to reach far with telescopes and drive on interstates highways. Clarke takes just two elements (statue and spacial expansion0 from Norrel and Strange 16 years later to create Piranesi. When we were studying, Piranesi and Boullee, were presented as paper architects. They fantasized about the possibility of architecture. Their architecture was for the mind to inhabit. The profession also derides architects that didn't build physical buildings. But as you can see Piranesi inspired other creatives and novelists to that it further to link it back to magical practices. In some case, Calvino and now Clarke has something to teach the architects. Sure we were given books to read such as 'Invisible Cities' and Heidegger's 'Being and Time'. Yes, we were encouraged to imagine. The cross-breeding of discipline enriched the work. I guess my point is, Clarke mixed genera in Norrel and Strange by rendering it with Victorian romance languages that read like Wuthering Heights to the fantasy story which contained magic. Here we see a similar cross-breeding of architecture, art, and myths. It could easily be written by Piranesi himself if he attempted a novel.

The Other is about to perform ceremonial magic to bring the answer to the secret knowledge. Here we see magik as practical as a modern-day revival of it similar to the Golden Dawn tradition instead of the fantasy kind. Clarke doesn't dwell on this. It's a hint of modern-day era magical practices. The Pan god suggests Paganism.

The element of water is pervasive. There is this element of a Protean dream within the space that is destructive and shifting but the narrator tries to record.

This vast complex that the character traverses in reminds me of Calvino's Invisible Cities. Perhaps there are other similar structural organisms of this microcosm. There is a stratified layer. At the bottom is the element of water. Also, the pentagram has five directions for the earth, water, fire, air, and spirit. The Drowned Hall is in water and The cloud chamber in air.

Mentions of the commonplace method of record-keeping and journaling.

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