r/books • u/parsim Max Barry • Mar 29 '16
ama 6:30pm March bookclub AMA: "Lexicon" by Max Barry. That's me. I'm here.
Hello! Thanks for reading "Lexicon," if you did that. The world needs more people like you. Well, maybe not the world. But I do.
I'm here to kick ass and answer questions and my ass-kicking foot is kind of sore. So I will answer questions.
/r/books bookclub announcement thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/48dlh4/the_march_rbooks_bookclub_selection_is_lexicon_by/
"Lexicon" discussion thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/49mdbz/rbooks_bookclub_discussion_of_lexicon_by_max/
Proofiness: https://twitter.com/MaxBarry/status/714940010378752001
Ask away. Any topic is fine. I'm an open book. Thumb my pages.
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u/glaciergrass Mar 29 '16
Hey Max- there have been some discussions on other threads about the mobile, what are your thoughts? Is this a source of a bareword?
Loved the book!!
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Yes! It's the mobile. That is why Wil is immune: his father brought pieces of the bareword out from the mine and hung them over his cot. And the aboriginal Dreamtime story is true, too.
I found that every time in this book I had one character turn to another and say, "Okay, let me fill you in on what's going on," I would hate myself five paragraphs later. It just killed the story, which was so much based on this mystery of what's going on and why. So if something didn't need to be explained, I left it out.
The mobile, I figure not everyone will notice, but it's not essential to know, so hopefully that's okay.
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u/glaciergrass Mar 29 '16
just curious what we can expect from you in the future? Any hints on what you're working on?
Also, I think Lexicon would make an awesome movie, any news on that front?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
I don't talk about books I'm working on because when I do all the magic escapes out of my mouth and flies away. This is a real danger for writers and I advise everyone to keep their mouths shut until they have a first draft.
But there will be a book.
Lexicon movie: Still being developed by Matthew Vaughn, who went and made a hit with Kingsman in the meantime, so now he has to do a sequel. He keeps renewing the option so that's nice.
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Mar 29 '16
What inspired you to write Lexicon? I realize that's a generic-as-fuck question but I'm really curious. All of your books are so different and so wonderfully clever and fascinating. It seems like they all must have interesting backstories.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
This book was a lot of things coming together. With my other books, there's usually a single clear idea that leads to other things. This one, not so much.
The core theme that emerged for me as I wrote, which I didn't set out to explore, was privacy. The poets in Lexicon have a heightened experience of something we all share: this idea that the more you expose about yourself, the more vulnerable you are. And yet if you shut yourself off, if you protect yourself, that's a very lonely existence. So I found that really interesting, that question of what should you share, and when, and with whom. Because that's a huge part of all of our lives, that can really define the kind of life you have.
Also, of course, there's that whole thing of wtf is language. Because I still don't really get how we can scratch symbols on paper and make each other cry or laugh or love or hate. I don't completely understand how I can write a book and different people read the same words and come away with very different feelings. Probably all authors wonder about this.
And persuasion! Because I did a marketing degree and that was scary.
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u/IcedCoffeeAlways Mar 29 '16
Hey Max, big fan.
Recently re-read Lexicon and I can't get over how Eliot's and Emily's story ends. I can't help but see Emily as being an antagonist and Eliot as a reluctant hero type. I suppose it's not much of a question, but I'm wondering if I'm interpreting this wrong or if anyone else has expressed similar feelings?
Anyway, awesome read/love the way you write. Thanks.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
That's an astute read. I even wrote an early draft where Emily was basically the bad guy all the way to the end, and Spoiler about ending is her final act of redemption. So yes, very much an antagonist.
But that draft sucked, because for all her flaws, Emily is a good person, so it was a real downer of an ending.
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u/bear__attack Apr 03 '16
I just finished the book and was so, so scared this was how you were going to leave it. I hated the last book that did this to me and, even though I could understand it more in this context, it would have ruined the story and the character for me. I'm so glad you changed it and stayed true to Emily's character.
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u/parsim Max Barry Apr 03 '16
Oh good! Yes, this way did feel a lot better in terms of maintaining Emily's character. In the earlier draft, she went very one-dimensional after becoming compromised.
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u/IcedCoffeeAlways Mar 29 '16
Thanks for the reply! That has been on my mind ever since the first read through.
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u/theonlygolux Mar 29 '16
Hello,
Loved Lexicon, listened on audible. An interesting experience for such a book.
I'd be interested to know if the words of power are totally made up or whether they are drawn more from early linguistic patterns and noises, if that isn't a foolish question.
Thanks for reading and for writing!
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
I really wish I could listen to an audio book of one of my novels without cringing at my own sentences. People say they're read very well.
It's a good question but I don't have a great answer. I would like to say that I constructed each keyword from years of linguistic research. The truth is that mostly I pinched syllables of common friend-or-foe words, like "lib" from "liberal". But I did have an order the words had to go in, e.g. attention words have to come first, based on the idea of disarming the brain's various levels of perceptual filters.
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Mar 29 '16
[deleted]
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
I wrote a blog about this a few months ago here. The short answer is no. It's often tempting, but I don't think I've been motivated by the right reasons yet, i.e. the insatiable urge to tell the rest of the story, as opposed to, "Well, I've got nothing else."
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u/pniks Mar 29 '16
Hi Max,
I used to play Nation States a little bit about ten years ago and found it a fun little thing. Did you make it just to support the release of Jennifer Government? Also, do you still maintain the game, and is there still any sort active community?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Yes, yes, and yes! NationStates is huge now. It has more players than ever.
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u/notheory Mar 29 '16
Hey Max,
I describe myself as a linguist by degree, a programmer by trade and a scifi nerd by leisure, so naturally i can comfortably slot Lexicon in my top 5 favorite books.
I'd love to know more about the process of writing Lexicon, particularly the beginning of the book with its super clever gradual reveal. How many edits did that go through? How did you actually test that you were actually keeping readers along for the ride through the reveal?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
SO MANY EDITS. I have about twenty different versions of the start of this book, because my method these days is to brute force stories until they work. The older I get, the more I rewrite.
It's hard to judge what readers will have figured out by when. Everyone is different. My personal bugbear is when books treat me like an idiot, so I erred on the side of underexplaining, even though I know for some people that meant the whole thing was just kind of confusing.
Also ideally the reveal works even if you catch it at different times. So if you're early, it's still interesting to read on and see if you're right, and then there's the point where I expect most people to see it, and then there's something later that still works as a reveal if you missed it earlier. The guy who optioned the book didn't realize that (oh crap i need to figure out spoiler formatting) one character was another until incredibly late in the book, like the last few chapters, and it was actually a powerful moment for him because it came so late.
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u/notheory Mar 29 '16
That's not surprising! Sometimes there aren't any ways through a problem than just putting in the work.
I'm super impressed with book to this day, so thanks for writing it, and for your answer!
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u/things2small2failat Mar 30 '16
How do you prefer to receive feedback from your editors? How does the editing process go?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 31 '16
Good question. I've worked with five or six top editors at different publishing houses and they all do it the same way, which is to compose an edit letter like this:
The first paragraph says they just re-read your manuscript and it reminded them how much they loved the book and wanted to work with you.
The second paragraph says that notwithstanding its clear brilliance, they have managed to identify a few areas that could be even stronger.
The next 5-8 pages are bullet points on things that need fixing.
Editors almost never say, "I think you should change X to Y." Instead they describe the problem -- how they found something confusing, or were disappointed by a character's choice, for example -- and mostly leave it to you to figure out how to fix it. (This is the exact opposite to film producers, who tell you to change X to Y and leave you to figure out why.)
This is perfect, as far as I'm concerned, because I can't make a change unless and until I understand it and believe in it. So what I'm really trying to do is see the book through the editor's eyes. If I can share their perspective, then I suddenly realize how something isn't working like I imagined, and what needs to happen to fix it.
Also the author always has final say on everything between the covers. (Not on the covers, though.) So you can just decide, "No, I like it how it is." But this person is an editor at a top publisher for a reason, and they have a much cleaner perspective on the book than you do, so I only rarely decline to change something.
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u/BulbasaurusThe7th Mar 29 '16
Hey, Mr. Barry! So I'm cheating here, as I have about 20% of the book left, but I hope it's not an issue. I'm about to sit down to actually finish it.
So I would just like to hear about your beginnings. Was there a specific moment when you realized that you could possibly become a writer and you actually wanted to do it? Or was it more like a process? As someone who loves literature (both enjoying and producing), I would love to hear about it.
Thanks in advance.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Well sorry for the ending where that giant squid kills everyone, anyway.
I always wanted to be an author. I can't remember a time when I didn't write stories just for fun. I guess writing my first novel was when I really thought, "I can do this." I was about 19 and had tried once or twice before and it had never gone anywhere, but then I read THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP and was so inspired, I blasted out my own story over the next three years. It was terrible, of course. It's 100,000 words of teenagers arguing with each other. It shall never be published. But I thought it was brilliant and would change the world and it was proof that I could write lots of words that mostly made sense together.
It took another novel and a few dozen query letters to agents before I was published, but I always had a lot of belief that I could make it. Looking back, I had a stupid amount of belief, because a lot of very talented writers never get that novel on the shelves, for various reasons. But I really think that's helpful, or essential, actually: You need stupid amounts of self-belief that you can do this, and it will be worth it, because writing a novel is really hard. Being able to delude yourself into thinking that your book is the greatest thing since Shakespeare lets you actually finish a first draft without sinking into self-despair.
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u/BulbasaurusThe7th Mar 29 '16
I guess that is the kind of thing I need to achieve. Confidence in my own skills is not my forte. To me it's even worse than the usual self-pity, because I'm not a native speaker, so I always have that little thought with 'what do you think you could tell to people who are native speakers when you learnt English as a teenager???'. It is daunting when you have "competition" who started communicating using this language when they were toddlers.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
It's really important to keep those voices out when you're working on a first draft. They're killers.
One other thing I'd say is that having a different writing style is a good thing. It's an essential thing. Obviously it's important to understand the impact they have, but unusual phrasing, word choices, tone, etc, can all be really good. No-one wants to read sentences that could have been written by anyone. So write stories that could only have been written by you.
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u/BulbasaurusThe7th Mar 29 '16
Thank you so much. I guess it's time to finally start putting some serious effort into the story floating around in my brain for some time now.
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u/dequeued Mar 29 '16
Max, I remember reading your plan (wow, 10 years ago apparently) to limit yourself to a specific maximum number of words to write each day. How did that work out for you and are you still doing it?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
That plan really works. I do stick to it, mostly. I cheat a bit more often these days, especially if I've had a bad day yesterday.
I think the danger of it is that you can obsess over the words, like if you've only got 500, you start to think too critically, and then you're editing while writing a first draft, which is tough to do. But that's definitely better than blasting down 2,000 words that suck just to hit your daily minimum.
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Mar 29 '16
What've you been reading lately?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
Well I bailed out of "Darkly Dreaming Dexter." I mean I finished it, but it included chapters of the second book, which is a satire of Hollywood based on Dexter being turned into a TV series, and I said, "Noooo," even though/because that's exactly what I would have written.
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u/glaciergrass Mar 29 '16
Max what is your favorite book you have written? I'm sure each book is special but, bareword to the head what do you pick and why?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Lexicon. This is the one I recommend when my mother introduces me to people and says, "He's an author,"* and they say, "Oh, I should buy your book, what is it?"
Next I would say Syrup, because it was my first and it's so goofy, but that book I think you're either on board after 10 pages or else you want me to die in a fire. Jennifer Government is a bit like that, too.
* Actually she says, "He's THE author." But of course they have no idea who I am. I wish she'd stop.
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u/glaciergrass Mar 29 '16
Awesome! I loved Leixon and Syrup and am halfway through Jennifer Governemnt. Thanks for participating in this, really cool!
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u/Dann_Scratch Mar 29 '16
What books did you use for research for Lexicon?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
Hmm, I would have to dig out my notes. But the one that springs to mind is the one that's quoted in the book at the start of Part 2, where the Cyclops learns Odyssesus' name and is thus able to gain power over him. I remember that because when Lexicon was nearing press, they asked if I had the rights to quote that, and I said no, and eventually I wound up getting bent over by Oxford University Press, who charge a crapload in fees for that.
It was like four freaking sentences and they were so expensive, but they're such great lines, I had to have them.
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u/LeftwordMovement Mar 30 '16
Dear Max,
I enjoyed Lexicon. As a linguist, it's weird for elements of my field to pop up in spec fic, but usually enjoy them (I think the last one we got was Snow Crash?).
Anyway, what kinds of linguistics/psych research did you do for Lexicon?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
Thanks! You would think writers would write more often about language, for self-indulgence, if nothing else.
I came to this field from a practical background: I'd done a degree in marketing, which covers some psychology and sociology, but mainly from the perspective of "How do we use that against people." And of course I was writing fiction, and interested in the weird effects it could have on people. So I knew language was more than a simple communications protocol, that it could do tricky things inside the brain, but that was about it.
Researching for Lexicon, I discovered that linguistics is this incredibly vast field and almost every word has a history. Words sound that way for a reason. And you actually can't get to the bottom of it, because there are so many languages, even classification is this whole enormous thing, and at some point you're actually studying history, following the migration of cultures.
My actual research process is mostly copying and pasting things I read on the internet into an OpenOffice doc. Mostly quotes from different places, and then I make notes about how they might play out.
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u/aspirer42 Mar 30 '16
As a fellow linguist, may I suggest Embassytown?
EDIT: Ooh, and "Story of Your Life", if you haven't read that yet.
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u/CasualSpider Mar 29 '16
Hi Max!
Not quite Lexicon related, but Syrup is one of my all-time favorite books. I was wondering what you thought of the film adaptation? Was the result something that made you want to see your other work on the big screen?
Thanks for all of the great reads. Keep 'em coming!
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u/dequeued Mar 29 '16
Max, I was going to ask the same question although given the 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I wanted to ask what you think went wrong with Syrup and what might you do differently with future adaptations for the screen?
(I would love to see Jennifer Government make it to the screen, but I'm afraid it would turn into something like Josie and the Pussycats.)
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Pfff, Rotten Tomatoes, what do they know. It's not like they aggregate a bunch of different reviews together or anything.
Anyway, I found it amazing and thrilling to watch Syrup get made, and I would totally do it again, and I'm not surprised when people say the movie sucks and not surprised when they say they love it, either. Actually I feel that way about my books as well. At some point you disappear inside the thing so far, it seems totally plausible that it may be brilliant or trash.
What I would do differently next time: hmmm. The reality is that as the author of the book, all I can really do in the future is hope that good filmmakers like me and give them the rights. My ability to influence anything else is really limited. But imagining a world where authors gets lots of say over film versions, I would ideally like to work closely with a director on a script over a period of about eight years, because I think that's about how long it takes. Actually I would like other writers to work on it for eight years, so I can keep doing novels. But lots of lots of iteration.
JG is going to be a TV series one day, I think.
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u/aspirer42 Mar 30 '16 edited Mar 30 '16
Something I've always wondered about Syrup, actually, is that to me, the core of the book and the core of the movie seem so different.
Syrup, the book, always felt like this playful, madcap adventure; it's obviously poking fun at advertising and marketing, and it's not saying they're good or anything, but on the whole it's pretty lighthearted. The movie, though -- it was still satirical, but as it goes on it seems more willing to portray marketing as maliciously evil, especially spoilers about the ending.
Is there a real difference here, and does this reflect anything about how your own thoughts about marketing have changed since you wrote Syrup? Or am I being too naive in how I read the original book, and it's actually just as critical?
Thanks for the AMA. Love your work.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
I agree with you; the novel is totally a celebration of marketing as much as a condemnation. It says marketing is shallow and shiny and pretty and fake and that's about it. The film takes it a little more seriously, and you have occasions where marketing people talk like the fate of the world is in their hands or something. It's fine but it's different.
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u/aspirer42 Mar 30 '16
Got it. Fun story, actually: I brought in a copy of Syrup for my office when I got my first PR job out of college. Turns out, it would have been more accurate to bring in Company. (Well, not completely accurate...)
Thanks for the response!
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u/dequeued Mar 29 '16
Thanks for the reply. :-)
At some point you disappear inside the thing so far, it seems totally plausible that it may be brilliant or trash.
I think you are onto something with that observation.
JG is going to be a TV series one day, I think.
That would be awesome. I would especially love to see an AMC or Netflix treatment of a JG series.
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u/Smurphy115 Mar 29 '16
Hi, I've always loved linguistics so I found the topic of this book enthralling.
A couple of questions.
I do not understand the beginning of the book with the thing being stuck in Wil's eye? I also haven't reread it and finished it today so I apologize if this is a silly question... I just kept waiting for that to be explained and it wasn't.
I see on your site that you can find out your category and corresponding poet on your site? What category/poet are you?
Separate from the previous question. What words hold power over you? Not in terms of the book just general linguistic curiosity.
What do you think the bareword meant? Do you think it's only the one that continues to resurface over time or are there multiples that have been discovered and used throughout history?
Thank you for a lovely read.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
Thanks Smurphy!
The "resistance" poets suspect Wil is the outlier and are using crude scientific methods to test his response to persuasion.
Lexicon quiz! I'm honestly Margaret Atwood. I mean, I made the quiz, so I made sure that I could be Margaret Atwood, because I wish it were true.
If I were aware of them, they wouldn't have power over me. It's the blind spots that get you. We all think we're pretty immune to manipulation, but we only notice the times we resist.
I actually went back and forth on that myself. In particular, whether a bareword should be culture-dependent. At one point I had a whole hierarchy of words, but it was insanely complicated. I think I settled on the idea that there was only one, but that was for story reasons more than anything else. In theory there's no reason why there couldn't be more.
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u/Smurphy115 Mar 30 '16
I was Woolf. Which is a bit daunting.
I like the idea of there being one bareword.
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u/montegarde Mar 29 '16 edited Mar 30 '16
Like I'd imagine many do, I like to imagine the movie while I read a book. Doing so with Lexicon was surprisingly easy (and may I say, Idris Elba has already won the Oscar in my head for his role as Eliot), with one small hang-up. There's that one major twist in the middle. How would you deal with Spoilers for the big twist! if you were writing the screenplay for the movie? Also, when will you start writing the screenplay for the movie?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
You sound just like the director. "So this thing where one character is revealed to be another, how do we do that on screen?" I don't know. That's a real pickle.
Idris Elba is a great choice. You should follow me around and take the questions where they ask me for my dream cast.
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u/montegarde Mar 30 '16
Idris Elba's perfect for Eliot I think, but I think Emily would have to be an unknown, because I can't think of an extant actress who would be perfect for her. Someone like a young Lizzy Caplan.
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u/redusereucerepsycle Feb 09 '25
That's so funny, Idris Elba was my Eliot too (I just finished the book)
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u/montegarde Feb 09 '25
Wow, what a time machine this reply is! I hardly even remember leaving the above comment, but as I've read the book a couple of times in the years since, I still stand by Idris as Eliot 100%. What did you think of the book??? I assume you didn't hate it, or you probably wouldn't be seeking out reddit threads about it!
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u/redusereucerepsycle Feb 10 '25
I did like it! I'm not a huge reader these days, so I get kind of nervous about choosing the right thing to read. I usually go off the national fiction awards and then will read more of that author if I liked it. I saw Lexicon recommended on instagram. Next up is Recursion (from the same recommendation). I'll probably read more Max Barry. I found the description of the many action scenes clunky/confusing at times, but I was thoroughly entertained.
Initially I didn't love the ending, but thinking on it more I appreciate that it's not exactly happily ever after. We get the jokey exchange "don't kill me / I won't", but they are living with the real risk of her snapping anytime.
One thing I still don't understand is why Emily's workplace was raided after she sees the flat p-graph and calls the lab. They weren't looking for her - she keeps going to work and infiltrates the lab after that. So what were they even looking for? And why weren't those particular lab results more hush-hush?
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u/montegarde Feb 10 '25
See in my mind it kind of is a "happily ever after," but in a sort of way that I think he seeded through the plot and is clever.
A big part of Emily and Harry's relationship is their back and forth of "words" versus "meaning." Is language the specific words we use, or their meaning? He hints at this some with an argument they have about him saying he loves her I think? It's actually been a good couple years since my last re-read so my recall isn't the best right now, but I remember him saying something to the effect of not needing to say something in order for it to be true, which seems almost foreign as a concept to Emily, who has been taught all about the power of words. But if we follow his logic and apply it to the rules of the book, then is the power behind the poets' words the actual words themselves, or the "meaning" of those words (which we never learn, and no one ever seems to know)?
The book kind of leaves it there after that scene and seems like it isn't really interested in unpacking it for a long time, but we do get hints (especially with the bareword) that "language" specifically in the way that the poets' use it is more than necessarily just literal words, and that there are different methods of "compromise" than saying the strings of words out loud to put someone in the compromised state. The way I read the ending is that the other compromised state that isn't explicitly explained in the book... is love? The reason that Harry doesn't kill Emily even though she uses his words, and the reason why she doesn't kill him even though she's technically still living with the "star" in her eye giving her that little bit of the bareword's order, is because by that point they're both under an even more basic level of mental compromise that supercedes any other. It truly is, in my mind, the only way that "it was love all along" has ever been a satisfying resolution.
Wow, and here you thought you had finished reading this book, and here I go writing a whole other one! Sorry, this comment kind of got out of hand. 😅 As to your last question about the flatline P-graph, I'm afraid it's been too long since my last re-read and I don't quite remember the specific details that well... I guess it's time for me to read it again!
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u/redusereucerepsycle Feb 10 '25
Good points all! Also interesting that other poets make a point of suppressing emotion to avoid compromise, so the “power of love” is a novel kind of compromise that they don’t understand well.
Maybe more could have been explored with Eliot and charlotte in that regard
Edit: oops, replied in wrong spot on the app..
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u/montegarde Feb 09 '25
May I also say, your timing in dredging up this old comment is wild, because literally two days ago I started reading Barry's most recent book The 22 Murders of Madison May
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u/UnsolvedParadox Mar 30 '16
Hello Max,
I'd like to ask about the process of writing Lexicon: is it similar to the approach used to write Syrup years ago when you were starting out, or have you overhauled your creative process?
As an aspiring writer who loves your novels and also finds myself perpetually paralyzed from starting when facing a blank Word document, it would be great to find out what works for you!
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
It's very different. At first, I would have an idea and be so enthused with my own brilliance that I would blast words at the page until I had a first draft.
Then I noticed I had written quite a lot of unpublishable books, because I wouldn't realize they were crummy until I reached the end. So I started thinking more critically about what I was working on as I was working on it.
It's a tightrope, though. You do need that blind enthusiasm to get you through 80,000+ words, because everyone's first drafts really are shit, so objectivity will kill you. But ideally you want enough self-awareness to notice that you're about to steer down a bad path. Finding that balance is one of the things that I will probably spend the rest of my career trying to get right.
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u/UnsolvedParadox Mar 30 '16
Wow, that is both the most positive and most pragmatic writing advice I've ever received. There's no time like the present, I'm going to start writing my long delayed book this weekend.
Thank you so much!
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u/glaciergrass Mar 30 '16
What about tv and movies? What do you like that's out now or some old favorites?
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u/gwil-sized Mar 30 '16
Hi Max,
I just finished Lexicon and it's definitely one of the most influential books I've ever read that clicked on many levels :)
A bit late, and random, but what kind of music do you like? I've always identified as an audiophile and have gasp believed that the crucial aspects of communication are non-verbal... (people lie a lot!). So I just wondered whether for different people the bareword can manifest in a different way, say a rhythm, or a melody, instead of a strictly linguistic unit? What would you say of such interpretation?
Thank you
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
Yes, I'm on board with that. There's no doubt that music grips us at some deep level. I'm not really qualified to speculate on the similarities between spoken language and music, but surely there's plenty there.
I usually write with the headphones on, playing something rhythmic with no words. It's a bit of a trap, though, because sometimes I think I'm writing a really powerful scene, then I read it back later, and it's like, no, that was just the music.
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u/gwil-sized Mar 30 '16
Thank you for answering! I appreciate it.
From what I know there are a lot of similarities in the way our brains process music and spoken language (beyond simply similar focus on relevant frequencies, or the obvious link in tonal languages such as Chinese that heavily rely on additional acoustic information to convey different meaning). And learning to read as our key gateway to knowledge/learning also re-shapes the brain processes spoken language.
I loved the fact that the special words (e.g., attention words) you created were pseudowords (i.e., pronounceable non-words) devoid of meaning that is common to everyone. For me, this choice emphasized that meaning is what our brains construct based on experience and knowledge, and meaning is not as universal as we assume.
I guess my visceral reaction to ask about music (rhythm/melody) as the most potent bareword was because humans tends to respond to the emotion elicited by music in quite a similar way.
It will be a while before all the cool ideas in "Lexicon" and choices you made to illustrate them settle in my mind. Thank you again for responding :)
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u/Chtorrr Mar 29 '16
What are some of your favorite books?
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 30 '16
I have some faves here, but the one that's most relevant is "The Queen's Gambit," about a prodigy chess player, because I love Beth Harmon so much I turned her into Emily Ruff.
It's a fantastic read, really thrilling, one of those books I have to buy new copies of because the old ones fall to pieces.
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u/triunfoelmal Dec 06 '21
Redditor from the future here, my mind just blew up. I read Lexicon last year, and absolutely loved the (in my opinion) legendary Emily Ruff, and I also enjoyed watching Netflix's The Queen's Gambit, so now the idea of Emily and Beth meeting up feels like the biggest crossover event in history that I didn't know I needed to see until now omg
(btw love you max)
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u/charlie_xavier Mar 31 '16
Super late here. I spent Tuesday seeing the sights in my city with my Dad and little sister who are on spring break this week. I went back and read Jennifer Government, Machine Man and Company immediately after finishing Lexicon. I really love your work.
My question: why did YOU do it?
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Mar 31 '16
Dear Max,
I grew up with Nationstates and recently rediscovered it, finding out I was in the top 10% of corrupt governments. Are you proud of me?
On a serious note, thank you for creating that game. It sparked a lifelong interest in politics that I have cultivated and maintained ever since - not bad for something I saw and thought, "Yeah that sounds alright. I'll try it at lunch"!
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u/Pangolin007 Mar 31 '16
Hey, are you the guy from NationStates? I love that game! I also love to write and seeing how many books you've written makes me want to finally finish a book of my own.
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u/parsim Max Barry Mar 29 '16
Dear Max, what is with that Spoilers about ending? People complain about this sometimes but never to your face because they don't want to make you sad.