Chess and Snow Crash
Chess should be renamed “The Game of Slow and Painful Death” since they already mean the same thing… *cringe* yeah, my dad kicked my ass twice… (interrupted my reading time to do it too… ) and later, Bonnie and I killed off too many of each other’s pieces (that’s a ‘draw’ right? or a ’stalemate’?) so nobody won.
I’ve noticed that my strategy in Chess has kind of evolved into something like this: “position a few pieces and really try to execute some kind of plan… when that doesn’t work, (and it never does) give up and just start killing pieces and hope you get lucky.”
I think I see why I keep losing.
I also think my brain isn’t really built to absorb …whatever it is… that’s needed to do well in Chess. A person can understand the rules, tricks and even be pretty skillful at this game and still suck. A certain amount of inherent talent is needed to really succeed. (This is exactly why no one fails Art classes, btw.) Not to say that beating my dad is out of my reach. Just because he can beat me doesn’t mean he’s good. hee hee.
Hmm… funny how I was able to recognize my “give up and just start killing” chess strategy only after I finished reading a few particularly bloody and violent sections in Snow Crash.
On Snow Crash: Now that I’m almost finished, and I’m still having some trouble following exactly what’s going on… I’ve concluded that I really am not getting dumber. The book is just written that way. Narrative voice is superb and spiffy… and some of the characterization is wooo! (I’m in love with Hiro.) But the story itself seems to be such a patchwork of so many ambitious ideas… this very complex interconnecting web of plot and subplot so large that the author devotes about a fifth of the book to conversations between the protagonist and this librarian character simply to explain stuff. (we’d get poor marks in creative writing class for resorting to stunts like this, btw). Not all the pieces connect in the reader’s mind… although I’m sure they made sense to the author.
The book reminds me of the way most Japanese Anime series are grandose and awesome, but the plot running through the whole series shifts and disconnects, refocuses and such… (you don’t really know what’s going on, but you think you do… and with the help of the internet later, you can believe you understand… and can pretend like you knew all along why Gendou made Shinji try to kill Toji with Unit 01, for example.) I used to think this was because most episodes were made one-after-the-other, with different teams, and so consistency was probably difficult. But I’m beginning to see that it’s more likely a Japanese style of story telling… (hmm… mental note to self: all the focus on Nipponese culture etc + grandose anime-style of confusion in the book… intentional? explore later.)
Anyway, the confusing nature of both this book and a lot of anime doesn’t detract from the amount of yum they bring me. It’s like, imagery and language playing on the pages… or rather, swordfighting in magestic and bloody shows of martial arts skill… and it’s neat.
