This month I pair two sprawling visionaries, each with blockbuster stylings and ripping sea yarns.
I read The Scar by China Mieville way back when it was published in 2001, but, like all things Mieville, it has followed me; sprawling timelessly as I make my way through the years, then rising periodically to remind me of its panoramic inventiveness. Mieville said of this novel that he intended to write a ripping yarn that was sociologically serious and stylistically avant-garde, and so he did.
A beefy fantasy it hunches along, filled with swirling, arguably obvious, plot inventions and larger than life characters who, like blockbuster Oscar contenders, sweep you up to amaze you, infuriate you, grab you by the shirt neck and leave you unwilling to be let go.
The world of The Scar lies offshore on Armada, an immense pirate city made of thousands of ships lashed together and filled, like any other city, with slums, cultural centers, a highly developed social structure and barely sustainable economy. The main character is a lonely, exiled woman who discovers the citizens of Armada are plotting to harness the otherworldly power of a rift in the ocean floor (The Scar). It is a quest that could destroy the floating city and everyone in it.
Vividly real and tangible, this deep ocean fantasy about hard lives, broken exiles and desperate pirates dealing in monstrous (literally) trades and economies conjures for me the magnificence of William Turner’s larger than life sea images, in which boats hover offshore and misty skies hide murky economic opportunities within cities near and far. All of it glowing with the hope of light in the distance but beset by dark sea or clouds on the horizon.
So, this month I recommend to you pairing
The Scar by China Mieville
With
Watercolour paintings by
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851)
The first time I saw a Turner exhibit I was 15 and my parents took the family to an exhibition of his paintings. I was prepared to tag along, looking and passing the hours, until we were able to get back in the car and head home. What can I say—I was a teenager, prepared to be underwhelmed. But wow. I will never forget seeing my first Turners. They were huge—with sprawling skies that spoke of fortune and misfortune. Ships keeled over in storms, languishing in doldrums or afire at sea. Massive and overwhelming, their magnificent size – bigger than me, bigger than 20 of me—loomed and left me stunned.
I have carried that memory with me through the years. And then one spring day a few years ago, I was killing time between meetings in Manhattan and decided to head over to The Frick Collection.
Oh. My luck. William Turner was showing at The Frick. I drank in every one of the massive, imaginative, often violent, marine watercolours; looking closely, sitting to gaze, then getting up to inspect each closely again. I even snuck a picture. While I gazed, I was again that 15-year-old, overwhelmed by Turner for the first time.
And that brings me back to our pairings. In the same way Mieville’s The Scar is a ripping yarn full of courage, fantastic imagination and bold sweeping statement, Turner’s expressive, sweeping colours and style, are sprawling and visionary. Considered overly bold for his day and controversial because of their extravagance, Turner’s works are now considered to have laid the foundations for Impressionism.
