The Tesseract

didn't finish it.
boring and uninteresting.
a major disappointment.
The Beach was better.

[QUOTE=izen]didn't finish it.
boring and uninteresting.
a major disappointment.
The Beach was better.[/QUOTE]

so much better so far,

im bout 180 pages into it.

does it get better?
does anything connect back to sean and the mafia henchmen?

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]so much better so far,

im bout 180 pages into it.

does it get better?
does anything connect back to sean and the mafia henchmen?[/QUOTE]
i didn't finish it. i lost interest halfway through.

I liked it but you have to finish it to get it. It's kinda like "Lost in Translation" the point of that movie was that you didn't get it, and I didn't like it at all. but it made sense when you realized that's what they were driving at. The tesseract is supposed to be like telling a story in many dimension, showing how these sections of many people's lives intersect. I really enjoyed it once I got about 3/4 through it, it's not somehting hat makes sense at firs b/c t's not a linear story.

[QUOTE=izen]i didn't finish it. i lost interest halfway through.[/QUOTE]

oh yeah, sorry forgot allready.

i just get kind of pissed and frantic when invest the only time i have between full time college student and full time employment on a piece of shit

[QUOTE=ireLocus]I liked it but you have to finish it to get it. It's kinda like "Lost in Translation" the point of that movie was that you didn't get it, and I didn't like it at all. but it made sense when you realized that's what they were driving at. [/QUOTE]

i dont understand how you liked it then if its intention was not to be liked or understood. like i understand if you mean it was unsettling to the point were you didnt like it and in that sence it stuck with you, but thats really the only way how i can figure that out

i finished the book today, and honestly i liked it as a whole,i realized the entire story they were blatantly trying to make the characters as different and unconnected as possible, so the ending was that much more crazy and chaotic when they all interacted simultaneously

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]and the book bears an uncanny similarity to last exit to brooklyn by hubert selby junior. im just hoping that it wont be nearly as dissapointing as that crap fest was.[/QUOTE]

Good call here. That's what I was thinking as I was going through it. It ended much better though, tying everything together, but still just not very powerful.

I think it would have been much more effective if it was written more like "Rules of Attraction" or "Election," where each story gets about a page or so at a time. By the end, were were so far away from Don Pepe and Sean's story, that it didn't really fit just to sort of bring them in. The three different shorts wasn't very effective.

Still, it was written very well. Part 2, the part about the family was boring as hell, but I kept reading it anyways. In most books where that happens, I usually just put it down, never to return to again (like Delillo's "Underworld.")

I'm having a hard time figuring Garland out though, he's an awesome writer, but I have a problem with him. "The Coma" was pretty cool, but it was so small that I felt cheated. "The Tesseract" was nice, but too many parts were lame and unnecessary. Haven't gotten to "The Beach" yet, but the movie already has me a bit turned off.

I liked it because it almost seemed like an experiment for the author. I mean think about all the people you run into everyday. The guy you flip off in traffic, the guy who almost hits you in the parking lot, the guy that made your coffee this morning. In that brief second, we are not very important to each other. Things just happen. And yet everyone has a story behind why they do what they do and for one brief moment our lives intersect and then continue in another direction and we will never know how our actions may affect that other guys day of life.
So, yeah, I liked it.

[QUOTE=rico wonderboy]
I'm having a hard time figuring Garland out though, he's an awesome writer, but I have a problem with him. "The Coma" was pretty cool, but it was so small that I felt cheated. "The Tesseract" was nice, but too many parts were lame and unnecessary. Haven't gotten to "The Beach" yet, but the movie already has me a bit turned off.[/QUOTE]

alex garland seems to be trying to do different things and experiement with new concepts, also he has to do alot of drugs.

read the beach. the book is amazingly well structured and actually a damn good read (in short it shows the reality of communism..the uprise the candy coated fantasy,and how easy one tragedy can become an avalanche on a communist society).

also if you step back and look at the story you will realize that half way through the story everyone on the island was suffering from severe dimensia

the most obvious ones would be the main character hallucinating and thinking hes talking to a dead man

and the head of the island camp becoming insanely paranoid

[QUOTE=dzudzu]I liked it because it almost seemed like an experiment for the author. I mean think about all the people you run into everyday. The guy you flip off in traffic, the guy who almost hits you in the parking lot, the guy that made your coffee this morning. In that brief second, we are not very important to each other. Things just happen. And yet everyone has a story behind why they do what they do and for one brief moment our lives intersect and then continue in another direction and we will never know how our actions may affect that other guys day of life.
So, yeah, I liked it.[/QUOTE]

you nailed it dead on, the entire book was about how a series of random events can entangle total strangers into the most memorable moment of thier lives. i hated this book when i was stuck in the rosa chapters cause it was described to me as pulp fiction with drama instead of comedy

the book was an experiment in writing which now that im done reading it and i have the whole picture in my head i loved it...exept for the long ass chapters about rosas boring life.

Aside from the section of Rosa, I though this book was amazing. I remember alex garland saying he had friends, atheists/religious, and after reading it, they each said "this is why i believe as i do". The atheists thinking "things just happen", religious "things happen for a reason". Though the tesseract, what was formed from these three lives coming together, is something we cannot comprehend why or how, much as a two-dimensional being could not fathom three dimensions - we cannot envision four. My favorite part of the book was the end, when Cente runs off into the night, how it's left open was beautiful, I think Cente was able to envision the tesseract, either that things do or do not happen for a reason.

is it just me or did it really seem like the psychologist who recorded centes dreams was secretly his father?

slight problems with this theory might be they never really said what age cente was brought to manilla

but they do talk about how he doesnt remember why they came to manilla and how he really doesnt remember much about his parents.

(lost in translation)
[QUOTE=phlegmatics]
i dont understand how you liked it then if its intention was not to be liked or understood. like i understand if you mean it was unsettling to the point were you didnt like it and in that sence it stuck with you, but thats really the only way how i can figure that out[/QUOTE]

I hated the movie lost in translation. I guess some people liked it, but I jut thought I'd comnpare the idea of writing a story for a reason other than making literature per se. Both Tesseract and Lost in Translation seem more like exercises, I liked Tesseract and hate LiT.

[QUOTE=ireLocus](lost in translation)

I hated the movie lost in translation. I guess some people liked it, but I jut thought I'd comnpare the idea of writing a story for a reason other than making literature per se. Both Tesseract and Lost in Translation seem more like exercises, I liked Tesseract and hate LiT.[/QUOTE]
ok that makes sence, sorry if i seemed like i was jumping down your throat.

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]ok that makes sence, sorry if i seemed like i was jumping down your throat.[/QUOTE]

oh, no worries.

I finished this book today and I gotta say that I really liked it. I picked up on what was going on pretty quick. It was such a cool concept of nonlinear story-telling. The method reminded me of how Pulp Fiction was filmed.

The best part was for sure the ending when everybody came together.

did anyone else know there was already a movie out for this ??

[QUOTE=karbunkle]did anyone else know there was already a movie out for this ??[/QUOTE]
Yes, I saw it, the movie sucked. the book is excellent.

Oxide Pang made the film, loosing the whole point of the novel along the way. He and his brother made Bangkok Dangerous if anyone saw that film. It wasn't great, but it was much better than his pointless adaptation of Garland's novel on fate and interconnectivity reduced to shitty gangster fair.

i rented it with the hope of comparing it with the beach and seeing exactly which sucks more

[QUOTE=karbunkle]i rented it with the hope of comparing it with the beach and seeing exactly which sucks more[/QUOTE]
Well, The Beach has Virginie Ledoyen....

The Tesseract has a little Tahi boy.

I guess it depends on what you're into.

what a shitty adaptation
at least the beach had an actual beach in it
there was barely enough in this too even say its based on the book

there were some very cool visuals for the shootouts though

[QUOTE=karbunkle]what a shitty adaptation
at least the beach had an actual beach in it
there was barely enough in this too even say its based on the book

there were some very cool visuals for the shootouts though[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the Pang brothers do good action scenes.

I thought the book and the movie were totally different. It's stupid to even say that the movie was based on the book. It doesn't follow what the book was trying to do at all. I loved the book but thought the movie was meh.

This book should definitely be made into a new movie by people with actual storytelling skill.

Garland's an awesome writer. But I don't know if even he can write a good screenplay based on Halo. Bad call if you ask me.

[QUOTE=Federov]This book should definitely be made into a new movie by people with actual storytelling skill.

Garland's an awesome writer. But I don't know if even he can write a good screenplay based on Halo. Bad call if you ask me.[/QUOTE]
He's got about a good a shot as anyone. Besides, they laid out over a million US dollars for him to do it.