Quote: The Einstein Intersection

I've been reading Samuel R. Delany's The Einstein Intersection, and I'm really enjoying it. He does things with words that I didn't think were possible. It reminds me a little of Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle. But different. Also Gene Wolfe stories,. particularly the Book of the New Sun novels.

Here's something interesting, starting on page 20 of the 1992 printing:

"Let's talk about mythology, Lobey. Or let's you listen. We've had quite a time assuming the rationale of this world. The irrational presents just as much of a problem. You remember the legend of the Beatles? You remember the Beatle Ringo left his Maureen love even through she treated him tender. He was the one Beatle who did not sing, so the earliest forms of the legend go. After a hard day's night he and the rest of the Beatles were torn apart by screaming girls, and he and the other Beatles returned, finally at one, with the great rock and the great roll." I put my head in La Dire's lap. She went on. "Well, that myth is a version of a much older story that is not so well known. There are no 45's or 33's from the time of this older story. there are only a few written versions, and reading is rapidly losing its interest for the young. In the older story Ringo was called Orpheus. He too was torn apart by screaming girls. But the details are different. He lost his love--in this version Eurydice--and she went straight to the great rock and the great roll, where Orpheus had to go to get her back. He went singing, for in this version Orpheus was the greatest singer, instead of the silent one. In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next."