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Crack'd Pot Trail (2000)

by Steven Erikson(Favorite Author)

3.6 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1848630581 (ISBN13: 9781848630581)

languge

English

genre

Horror

series

The Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach

review 1: Huh, it's been about a year and I still have not reviewed this book. Well, time to take some few moments of my day to do so. In Crack'd Pot Trail, the story follows those who have sworn to hunt Bauchelain and Korbal Broach down for their crimes and they end up in this stretch of desert....Okay, the plot is not important. Like all Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas, this is all about Steven Erikson getting something off his chest. In this case, he is letting off some steam for various reasons related to being an author in the Fantasy Genre. You know the problems:1)Waaah! The critics won't take my work seriously!2)Waaah! The fans take my work too seriously!3)Waaah! Those critics miss the point! Don't you recognize my genius?4)Waaah! Those who are successful don't actually... more understand their craft and steal from more talented writers!5)Waaah! Waaah! WAAAAAAAAH!You've also heard variants of these from the reader's sides including critiques that include buzzwords as "world building", "character development", and "plot" and so forth. Erikson, in about 180 pages, essentially tells all those who hold these views to go f*ck themselves. And that is what I have found enjoyable about this novella. It is a fairly accurate, if satirical, view of the culture that has been built around the fantasy genre. A culture that so often is trying to be more then it is that it often becomes its worse critic as it seeks to devour itself. Oh, did I mention there's cannibalism in this book? Because there totally is. And thus, in an effort to be this all encompassing critique on the current affair of genre literature, the novella forgets it is a Bauchelain and Korbal Broach tale and they really do not feature much at all.Oh, Erikson, one day your cleverness will piss your readership off so much that they'll stop buying your books.
review 2: Nutshell: The Canterbury Tales meets the Donner Party. A party traveling across a desert has lost their supplies, and in the nights, the poets in their number have to sing not to be supper: the one that tells the worst story is eaten. Viciously funny and unsparingly critical of society.Crack'd Pot Trail is delightfully straightforward in stating its intent: to conduct a dialogue vis-a-vis the Artist and its relationship to its peers, the Patron, the Critic, and the Audience. It's cheekily on-the-nose most of the time, wearing its colors on its sleeve as it pontificates pretentiously. That's not to say that it lacks depth or intricacy: indeed, many of the florid asides tie into the theme with intricate precision, or are touched upon again at a later point with a self-vindicating example from the actors of the piece that strikes like a dagger to the heart (an easily constructed yet highly effective method, for all that it flirtatiously invites the author to take refuge in strawmen). There are profound and well-crafted arguments here, buried among the cynicism and wit.It is not flawless, and certainly many of the points that I consider its strengths others would find themselves balking at, but it wears its flaws proudly and excels so wonderfully at all the ambitious goals it sets for itself (splashing over to fulfill a whole other set of secondary goals besides, and all within so slender a 200 pages that I can scarcely believe Erkson managed to ft it all in) that I can forgive them easily and love the book all the same. The fact that the characters the book is nominally about don't show up until the last 2 pages, for instance--that is converted into a boon, as it allows the story to float freely, set within but not reliant upon an understanding of the Malazan world. The massive character-dump that constitutes the prologue is disruptive and contrary to the typical reader's expectations--but that serves to alert the reader to the fact that this will be no ordinary book, that they must be alert, and additionally establishes the Canterbury Tales-homage aspect of the tale all the more firmly.The book's female characters are strong and well-realized, but despite that, they fit very neatly into the little boxes that are their roles (the Muse, the Entourage, etc)--though the same can be said of the male characters, I suppose, as everybody in this sordid little sketch has to play their part to a tee. That said, certain of the authorial (or at least narratorial; I wouldn't want to confuse the author's beliefs for those of his characters) asides are decidedly sexist. For instance:"Guilt. Such an unpleasant word, no doubt invented by some pious meddler with snout pricked in the air. Probably a virgin, too, and not by choice. A man (I assert that it must have been a man, since no woman was ever so mad as to invent such a concept, and to this day for most women the whole notion of guilt is as alien to them as flicking droplets after a piss, then shivering), a man, then, likely looking on in outrage and horror (at a woman, I warrant, and given his virginal status she was either his sister or his mother), and bursting into his thoughts like flames from a brimstone, all indignation was transformed into that maelstrom of flagellation, spite, envy, malice and harsh judgement that we have come to call guilt."Somewhat ironic, that statement, given Erikson's inclusion of the three sisters Spite, Envy and Malice as major players in the early eons of his series' world. Still, this whole "women don't feel the full gamut of emotion because they're so different from men" idea I, at least, find ridiculous. And so on with other blanket assertions about sex and gender as the story goes on, in a story very candid about sexual desire and mores. I suppose they're just other self-contented observations/perceptions to slot into the narrator's summation of the human condition in general, but that doesn't make them accurate, necessarily, so this one aspect sticks in at least my craw.Erikson has constructed a story that wallows gleefully in its self-aware shamelessness (the scene between the critic and the narrator where they are discussing just how shallow, subtlety-lacking, and self-aware this conversation is springs to mind). It is a criticism of society and human nature bound up in an uproarious post-modern fantasy farce, highlighting extremes of venality in an intentionally ludicrous situation (oh yes, the horses and mules have been granted dispensation from being eaten, as have every character--no matter how useless to the group they are--besides the artists).One thing that I was gratified to see in evidence was the book's (lack of) ties to Erikson's other work: while thematically strong, such ties are otherwise nearly non-existent. One needs simply to know that the two characters on the front cover are evil men who delight in their remorselessly evil deeds--a fact given ample reference on the back cover and in the opening pages of the book itself, to the careful reader.Perhaps this story is written specifically for a small audience. It is certainly written for the artist (be she or he poet, author, painter: whatever), or at least any who suffer to create and suffer to see their art savaged in the wild; and for those who can let go of their own preconceptions and biases and simply permit Erikson to run roughshod over their beliefs long enough for him to conclude his own arguments; and for those who appreciate elevated diction and refuse to eschew needless obfuscation; and for those who can appreciate it as an homage to the Canterbury Tales fused with the Donner Party; and for those who simply want to see Erikson cut loose on a wild, chaotic ride. Needless to say, that one necessarily must to fit neatly into most if not all of these categories to derive such pleasure from the book as I do naturally limits the audience. Nonetheless, I am left agape and humbled by its ambition and execution. We all need to sing not to be supper in any case; Erikson simply presents this notion in the most naked and literal terms possible. less

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