Not giving it a rating, as I only made it about 50 pages in before I admitted that it wasn't for me. I really wanted to - since everyone else seems toNot giving it a rating, as I only made it about 50 pages in before I admitted that it wasn't for me. I really wanted to - since everyone else seems to think so highly of it. But I found so little of worth in those 50 pages I could not fathom continuing on.
Think I'm gonna come right out and admit that post-modern literature just isn't for me. In the sense that post-modern always has some underlying didactic point, it seems to straddle this uncomfortable divide between fiction & non-fiction. But rather than contain the best of both (entertaining & educational), I'd say it has the worst of both (it's made up & it's not a very compelling read).
When (at least within the part I read) every other chapter is just a list of single sentence context-less paragraphs that are - more or less - gobblydegook, it's not a good sign. Clever, I'm sure. But the world is full of cleverness & beauty, chock-full of it. I was given no particular reason to care about THIS one....more
Back in 2011, I saw this movie titled Martha Marcy May Marlene, about a young woman who recently escaped from a cult. It had a very high rotten tomatoBack in 2011, I saw this movie titled Martha Marcy May Marlene, about a young woman who recently escaped from a cult. It had a very high rotten tomato score (it’s at 90% right now), so I figured that it had to have at least some redeeming qualities. Instead, it became the only film that managed my lowest rating, a single star.
At the time I wrote, “See, art does not need to be happy. In fact, it rarely is. Alas, this has caused some people to mistake anything with despair, depression, and destitution as art. This is not so. Dragging viewers through mud, through the slime of humanity, accomplishes nothing. Art – good art – no matter how awful its depiction of humanity has a way of… inspiring viewers. Of pulling them above above that muck, giving them wings.”
This perfectly describes how I feel about Money: A Suicide Note. I gave it fifty pages to ever rise about the muck, but it only dug itself deeper. The protagonist is a sleazebag porno director but that’s not his problem. His problem is that he’s a loser. He spends the vast majority of these fifty pages (and, from what I’ve read in other reviews, the remainder as well) doing little but worrying that his girl is cheating on him, sitting in his hotel room drinking, and occasionally mustering up the energy to go to the strip joint to drink there. All of this written in a stylistically sharp prose that ultimately turns purple as it suffocates on a lack of substance.
I have a rule about books, movies, and television shows. If my consumption of it only detracts from my life, then I should stay well away from it. I consider this not only a wise plan of action, but also the foundation for good criticism. The way I see it, it doesn’t take much skill to peddle human misery as narrative and art. Rather, the true artist can take us down to the greatest depths, the worst darkness of humanity and STILL find some light there. That’s tough. That takes genius.
Money: A Suicide Note had no light, no joy, no genius, at least that I ever encountered. If you’re a huge fan of black comedy & postmodernism or otherwise have found your life suffused with dangerously high levels of optimism, I might well recommend this book. Otherwise, I’d keep your distance....more
Because I am unable to resist the seductions of irony, here is a quote from Robert Downey Jr.:
This is probably going to get quoted in every publicatio
Because I am unable to resist the seductions of irony, here is a quote from Robert Downey Jr.:
This is probably going to get quoted in every publication just because I said it. And I’m not even saying anything. I’m not talking about my films, I’m not talking about my life, and I’m not talking about the world. And yet, the media will print it simply because I said it. And at this moment in time, I bet there is an artist around the corner of this hotel, on the street, with a mind far beyond ours, but we will never listen to him simply because he has not appeared in a movie.
He goes on to say, “And that is what is fucked up about our culture,” but that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
Instead, I’d like to appreciate for a moment the popularity of celebrities and the compelling nature of fiction in general. We all have known the experience of watching a film and finding ourselves on the edge of our seats, empathizing with the characters. This, even though we know that they are just actors, in NO DANGER whatsoever, and that, even if “based on a true story,” what’s actually happening on the screen is an artificial construct, no more real than a golem’s dream. Yet there we are, caring. Somehow these characters in their imaginary worlds approximate truth in a way that actual reality, confusing and indeterminate as it is, cannot.
Many people, particularly a certain stripe of intellectual, would call us fools and escapists, mere addicts of the phantasmagorical. I know a fellow who foreswore all fiction and instead dedicated himself exclusively to documentary film and non-fiction books (and also joined a nudist colony). David Foster Wallace in his essay E Unibus Pluram suggested our television obsession causes a chain reaction of disassociation in which American fiction writers get their dosage of reality from fiction – which is itself written by personages who have based their reality on consumed fiction – thereby creating a recursive spiral down the rabbit hole, until what we think is reality is not real but an infinitely regressed, telephone-game garbled version of it.
Even if I were to agree in principle, I would not agree in sentiment. I think humanity’s capacity for empathy is nothing short of amazing.
I'd say that when we engage in narrative, we are exercising our empathy muscles. All forms of narrative do this, but the intimate nature of written literature does it best. A good book – with complex, diverse characters and morally gray situations – is the empathy version of a Crossfit workout. As such, I’d claim that readers are, if not the best people in the world, at least the most empathetic. I believe our pathetic little meatsack hearts, brimming with narrative and character, carry on the great work of humanity in a way that the mighty wielders of the sword and the hammer and the abacus do not. I say that the greatest and most beautiful machine or theory, wielded without empathy, is not only inhuman, but antihuman.
Alas, Radiance demands little exercise of our empathy muscles (or perhaps too much). It’s not that it doesn’t contain complex characters, morally gray situations, or a great imagination, but that they are not presented in an engaging manner. Instead the author utilizes language, structure, genre, and form as ends unto themselves, rather than as means to an end (that end typically being the exploration of humanity). Put simply, the author Catherynne Valente wanted to eat her cake and have it too. To quote from an interview she had with John Scalzi:
I’m not going to lie. This book is crazypants. I threw everything I had into it. Heart and soul and probably some cartilage and eyeball fluid, too. I wanted to write a melodrama about a wild, living and breathing and squabbling Solar System. I wanted to write a horror-romance about huge, elemental aliens. I wanted to write a non-linear postmodern SF novel that was also a page-turning thriller because I secretly always wanted to write a hardboiled noir murder mystery. I wanted to write a badass adventure about film patents. I wanted to write a book about movies. About seeing and being seen. About what the camera does to us when it never leaves our side. About who has the right to speak, and who has to buy it. About the meaning of science fiction in a science fictional universe. And through it all I wanted to write about a lost girl who didn’t come home. It all hangs together, I promise!
Alas, Catherynne Valente, you’ve made a promise you couldn’t keep. Not for this reader at least. It doesn’t hang together. It’s too much in too little space. Worse, you’ve committed the one sin no author – whether her book is a non-linear postmodern narrative or not – can commit: you didn’t give us a reason to care.
Now those who do like this book might argue that I’m committing the affective fallacy. That I’m critiqueing a piece of literature based on how it makes us FEEL (as opposed to what it makes us think). They would trumpet the book’s non-linear narrative and metafictional elements as an explicit choice that may make the book more difficult to read but that is NECESSARY to the story’s ultimate purpose: To explore the subjective nature of reality, and of film’s intersections with it, and the methods and consequences of how and where we choose to focus the spotlights of our eyeballs, ears, and minds.
I would counter that not all non-linear narratives are created equal. Even if the mere EXISTENCE of a non-linear narrative OUGHT to tell us the author is trying to make some metafictional comment about genre or narrative, that doesn’t mean she actually accomplished her aims. I’d go further still: even the ACCOMPLISHMENT of these aims wouldn’t necessarily make the book worth reading. Instead, each reader must ultimately ask him or herself, is the metafictional exploration of genre worth reading if the author has failed to provide a compelling underpinning of humanity?
My complete lack of engagement with this novel would answer a resounding NO.
But do not mistake this as MERELY an opposition to postmodern fiction. True enough I consider postmodern lit a form of intellectual masturbation, but a 1-star rating from me is an even greater condemnation. I think Radiance is a particularly bad example of post-modern lit.
By way of contrast, I’d bring up Italo Calvino’s post-modern book If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler. That book is in many ways as difficult and experimental as Radiance. But I love it. I love it because underpinning its non-linear structure is a humor and keen sense of the absurd that give readers a reason to care.
More technically, Calvino’s novel plays with structure by way of concatenation. By this, I mean it tells micro-stories compelling in their own right but then ends them at the height of climax, a level of tease to make any Arabian concubine proud. A Winter’s Night’s meta-story is then about the reader (often pronounized as ‘you’) in his search to find the rest of the story and therefore closure. Story structure thus mirrors story theme: how readers engage with narrative as a whole and how our expectations for a standard narrative structure (rising action -> climax -> falling action -> denouement) have become inculcated in us and in fact now inform our fundamental conceptualizations of things like romantic relationships, life and death, and even our debates on intelligent design versus the theory of evolution. Deep deep stuff.
Catherynne Valente, as the above quote reveals, thinks she’s also writing about deep deep stuff. But the difference is that Radiance's form and content have a fractious, dissonant (and unengaging) relationship. In a different interview with Clarkesworld Magazine, she writes:
I had to give myself permission to do certain things, use certain tricks—like including scripts, audio, shifting POV, and the other ephemera and metafictional elements you mention. It’s pretty much a postmodern free-for-all. At first I kept thinking: I can’t just describe what’s onscreen in a movie inside the book. That just makes it look like I’d rather be making a movie. I had to get to a point where I could say: I actually can do that because it’s my book and that’s the right way to do it.
That phrase – “a postmodern free-for-all” – says it all. The book is a mish-mash of ideas and forms, its structure a shotgun spread rather than a sniper’s intimate voyeurism. The quote as a whole is an admission of self-indulgence. She includes scripts, audio, shifting POV, and other ephemera and metafictional elements not because doing so highlights explorations on “seeing and being seen; on what the camera does to us when it never leaves our side; on who has the right to speak, and who has to buy it; and on the meaning of science fiction in a science fictional universe” – but because she bloody well wanted to, propagating the mistaken post-modern confusion that MERE EXPLORATION of structure is, BY ITSELF, evidence of great and skillful artifice, if not authorial courage, and therefore worthy of being read.
Well I disagree. I would quote Picasso when he wrote, “In my opinion to search means nothing… To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the purse that fortune should put in his path. The one who finds something no matter what it might be, even if his intention were not to search for it, at least arouses our curiosity, if not our admiration.”
As I read through Radiance’s self-indulgent epilogue (which amounts, quite clearly, to the author justifying her decision to use a shotgun structure because “humans do not proceed in an orderly fashion from one scene to the next” – which, by the by, is a standard postmodern claim that is completely false. Au contraire, it is the tragedy of humanity that we have no choice but to creep in a chronologically linear fashion from scene to scene and tomorrow to tomorrow until the last syllable of our borrowed time); its boring essays from fictional film critics; its lists of ship’s manifest (and here I thought I left that self-important scheiss behind back on Walden Pond); and its long rants mistaking high-octane, purple prose like, “the Earth fucked the sky and made a hundred children” for genuine exploration of humanity – as I went through all this, I was never once engaged mano y mano. This was no story but a magic show by a patchwork golem, a dazzling array of images and words that held all the cohesive meaning of a fireworks display. I was never shown why any of these characters might have a superior grasp than I do on, e.g., who has a right to speak, or what it means to be seen, or what the camera does to us when it never leaves our side. Worse, I was never shown why I should CARE what any of these characters think.
In short, I would argue Radiance failed to ever find, or demonstrate, humanity in necessary quantities to overcome the artificiality of its narrative and structure. Its demands on my empathy muscles came far too late, far after it had lost me.
Earlier, I brought up Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler as a successful example of postmodern literature. It is therefore with great irony (and thus also circularity) that I believe the concluding paragraph from NY Times’ 1981 review of the book nails exactly how I feel about Radiance:
And then the book, for all its formidable wit and skill, is a confession of failure, and I think we shall get it wrong if we insist on converting all its apparent misses into clever hits. The stalled writer, the one who is in love with beginnings, says, "I would like to be able to write a book that is only an incipit, that maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning, the expectation still not focused on an object." This is a desire, not a program. An expectation permanently unfocused will die, and an expectation that can't be focused is simply a disappointment. … As a book about broken narrative promises this work is impeccable. But its very success in this vein leads us to the sadness of its central subject, the absence of the artist, Dickens, Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, who could brilliantly keep the promises he made.
When I picked up How To Kill a Rock Star, I had NO idea that it was a subversive book told from the perspective of three dastardly villains!
I mean, hWhen I picked up How To Kill a Rock Star, I had NO idea that it was a subversive book told from the perspective of three dastardly villains!
I mean, honestly, based on other people's reviews, I was kind of expecting this sappy romance. Y'know, one in which the primary conflict is that an unremarkable woman has to choose between the love of two amazingly gorgeous and talented men.
But NO WAY. THIS ISN’T LIKE THAT AT ALL. It’s subversive rock n roll, baby! How To Kill a Rock Star details the EPIC struggle between our hero – SIR JUST DESSERTS – and the three villains, Paul Hudson, Eliza Caelum, and Loring Blackman. WHABLAMO! 0010 STARS!
Villain Number One: PAUL HUDSON [image] Paul Hudson is one of those villains that’s just so easy to hate. He’s a womanizing, mentally unhinged musician with the voice of an angel (props to the author for the Lucifer allusion). He woos the villainess Eliza using a false name and, throughout the book, continues to have sex with women he despises. Oh man, it’s great. I was kinda hoping for an epic musical showdown between him and a Feminist armed with a Fiddle...
[image]
...but sadly it never happened.
Anyway, Paul Hudson’s villainy goes well beyond his womanizing. He manipulates this struggling record label exec into offering him a huge sum of money. Naturally, Paul then does everything he can to avoid fulfilling the accompanying contractual obligations, even going so far as to commit major fraud! You’d almost feel sorry for the exec, if the book bothered to characterize him at all beyond the bland stereotype of the innocent victim.
But WHATEVAZ. Villain, villain, villainy!
In addition to his dishonesty, Paul is ALSO a card-carrying member of the music Nazis. His PURE brand of music (indie rock, apparently) is the ONLY music worth playing or listening to. Everything else: garbage. Pfah! Heil Bananafish!
[image]
But easy to hate or not, I don’t want you to think Paul's depiction is one-dimensional. It isn’t. The author does an excellent job of humanizing him. Consider the following quote:
These last few months on tour, I’ve been keenly aware that my situation is the opportunity of a lifetime, and there have been short-lived moments here and there when I’ve been on top of the world. Holy Hell, who wouldn’t want a small entourage catering to their needs, women throwing themselves at their feet, and the chance to play for thousands of people on a nightly basis? It’s a goddamn dream come true. I’ve made it to a place so many of my peers long for and will never even get close to. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t get myself to truly appreciate my position…
GODDAMN HOLY HELL.
What a keen depiction of how villainy starves the soul of joy. Reading that, you can almost feel sorry for the guy. He’s got some goodness in there, but he just can’t get himself to appreciate what he has. When he does finally get his comeuppance at the hands of SIR JUST DESSERTS, you might even forget some of your earlier hatred. I know I did. I mean, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for the poor bastard.
Villain Number Two: ELIZA CAELUM [image] Eliza is Paul’s villainous sidekick. She’s amazingly crappy – which I mean in a good way. She’s homophobic (her favorite insult is to call something ‘gay’). She’s cowardly (she lets her boss call her a slut repeatedly). She gets injured easily (while running) & needs help from men to overcome her fears (about planes). Despite being a journalist, she’s terrible at communicating her feelings. If I had to pick any three characters to combine to make up Eliza, I’d choose Bella Swan, Peter Pettigrew, and that dumb chick in the horror/zombie movies who always walks down into dark alleys. Y’know, in order to contrive drama.
[image] (Bella Blonde Pettichick)
BUT IN THIS BOOK, IT WORKS SO WELL.
You see, the author’s a flippin' genius. She’s actually using the villainess Eliza to mock the trope of men falling in love with self-absorbed weak-willed women. In fact our hero SIR JUST DESSERTS strikes her down with a case of well-deserved self-loathing.
BUT THE BRILLIANCE EVEN GOES DOWN ANOTHER LEVEL.
It’s like in that movie Inception and we keep going down the next layer into another dream and it’s like WHOA WHOA WHOA THIS IS INSANE. [image]
See, actually, the villainy of the book isn’t as blatant as I’m making it out to be. You have to pay REALLY close attention. What both alerted me to the villainy AND to Eliza’s DEEPER, TRUER villainy is the following exchange of dialogue:
Eliza: “How fast could you run a mile?” Loring: “I don’t know.” Eliza: “Yes you do. Tell me.” Loring: “I think my best time was four minutes eleven.” Eliza: “Four eleven? Are you kidding? I run six days a week and can’t break nine minutes…”
DO YOU SEE IT? NO?
Okay well my pace-time – on a slow day, after I’ve eaten a fried grease sandwich from Chili’s – for a THREE mile run is eight minutes per mile.
There’s simply NO way that Eliza was running six days a week for like a YEAR and couldn’t break nine minutes. There’s only one explanation. She wasn’t actually running. What was she doing instead? My best guess: murdering pop singers. She’s like Dexter, except with music.
SO THINK ABOUT HOW BRILLIANT THAT IS.
The author depicted Eliza in this subversive villainous role to mock the standard romantic trope of rich, talented men being interested in poor, talentless women. BUT Eliza is ACTUALLY incredibly talented at murdering people. Like I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. The depths are TOO massive. But I know it’s amazing. Stunning authorial skills. Color me jello.
[image]
Villain Number Three: LORING BLACKMAN. [image] Loring Blackman is the son of Eliza and Paul’s favorite musician Doug Blackman and serves as the less obviously villainous counterpart to Paul. He is super rich and super famous. He is also obviously a cyborg programmed (the identity of his programmer remains mystery throughout the book. Is it Tiffanie Debartolo, Eliza, or SIR JUST DESSERTS???) to kindness and designed to be as attractive as possible. This is mentioned often. You need to know – it’s important here – that he’s very attractive.
Strangely enough, he’s also very attractive.
But because he’s very attractive, he’s very attractive.
How attractive is he, you ask? Very attractive.
But moving on, he’s very attractive.
Ok. Now that you’ve got that point, let me just add the one caveat that he’s very attractive.
You might think I’m being facetious with this repetition. I’m not. I stand in stunned awe of Tiffanie DeBartolo’s talent. Do you know how subversive this book is? It’s ultra subversive. [image][image][image]
So check this out.
THIS IS GOING TO BLOW YOUR MIND.
So the point of this book, basically, is that TRUE music comes from the soul and is more than just pretty noises and TRUE love also comes from the soul and is more than just physical attraction. Loring Blackman, being super attractive, is obviously meant to be lacking a soul. That’s how we know he’s a cyborg.
BUT HERE’S WHERE THE MIND IS BLOWN. I SUGGEST SURROUNDING YOUR HEAD IN PILLOWS RIGHT NOW. READY? OKAY. LET’S GO:
Loring Blackman is the MOST HUMANIZED CHARACTER IN THE STORY. PONDER THAT FOR A MINUTE. THE CYBORG IS THE MOST HUMANIZED CHARACTER.
[image]
Honestly, I think this book is so subversive that Tiffanie DeBartolo was actually writing herself as a villain as well. If you only read this at a superficial level, you might think that Loring was described as super attractive and super kind and super rich in order to setup a standard love triangle in which the main character nevertheless chooses the bad boy over the objectively superior choice.
BUT WE KNOW THAT CAN’T BE. RIGHT?
The book is very anti-pop but using such a clichéd love triangle as the primary plot device would be the literary equivalent of soulless pop music. Obviously, Tiffanie DeBartolo was subversively casting herself as a villainous author in order to make a point about these types of plots!!!!
META SUBVERSION!!!!
Seriously, this book of villainy is insanely awesome. I recommend reading it at least 65535+1 times to understand its full complexity.
Fifty pages in, I hated this book. Not just those fifty pages, mind you. The entire book. Just as the homeostatic behavior of an electron is a microcoFifty pages in, I hated this book. Not just those fifty pages, mind you. The entire book. Just as the homeostatic behavior of an electron is a microcosmic reflection of the homeostatic behavior of a covalent bond, of an animal cell, of a human body, of a community, of a state, of a... well you get the idea… so too is every chapter, page, paragraph, sentence, and word a reflection of the greater whole.
Really, I only needed the first two paragraphs to understand what DFW was going to do with this book. Really, I've already read the whole shebang. All it takes is a mind like a magnifying glass and one salient detail. To wit:
The second chapter/section is filled with paragraphs several pages long. Interesting. Now I think we can safely say that DFW was aware of typical writerly conventions in which paragraphs do not span 6 pages. Ergo, we know he made a conscious stylistic choice. But why?
Now obviously and ostensibly, he made this stylistic choice to approximate the manic, exhausting nature of an addict's neuroses, particularly the deal-making and second (and third and fourth and fifth) guessing churning through his inner narrative, a not inaccurate depiction of an intelligent individual who has come to distrust his own thoughts. A classic symptom of, in fact, depression. So, surprise DFW was intelligent and depressed. Naturally, his depiction is alright. Unfortunately, barring the obnoxious stylistic choice, the paragraphs in question are desolate and barren, completely empty of anything remotely interesting to someone who already understands the nature of what I refer to as 'The Hierarchy of Intellectual Watchmen.' You know, a second mind to watch the superficial thoughts, a third mind to watch the second, and on and on, down to a level depending on your intellect or your capacity to function with an nth-number of neuroses.
But I digress. I was investigating the reason for this choice, these annoyingly long paragraphs. So we know it's a conscious choice and we know the ostensible reason for it. But as a writer myself, I can tell you that's not enough. He *had* to know, just as I know, that page long paragraphs piss people off. It's like if you punch someone in the face, it pisses em off. So usually you don't do it, right? Even if you've got good cause. Still DFW did it. Why? To thumb his nose at typical writerly conventions. To jab the reader in the eye. DFW wanted the reader to WORK for his enjoyment.
Now we're getting somewhere more interesting. Standard postmodernism, essentially, but still, let's pretend like it's a new idea. Interesting, I write, because that's not how (most) entertainment works in modern society. Spectator entertainment is what we got. Passive-like.
OK. So now I know what the book's raison d'etre is. To use a completely unnecessary pretentious French term. I mean, really, I could have just used the word ‘theme’ right? Hell, I coulda just written 'OK. So now I know what the book's about.' But I'm sure you'll understand that, given the nature of the book I am critiqueing, I must armor myself against the idiotic conflation of a preference for precision and economy in language & style with simple-mindedness.
But again I digress. Allow me to recapitulate what I know about Infinite Jest, this so-called Magnum Opus, and its author David Foster Wallace:
DFW was very clever, yet incapable of managing his intellect. Not surprisingly he was also depressed. His stylistic choices are gratuitous, self-indulgent, and unrestrained, ergo it is likely his characterization will be the same, meaning he probably won't even try (or succeed, at any rate) at making his characters other than mere reflections of himself, meaning they'll all be intelligent, depressed, and too self-aware for their own good. The book, likewise, is self-referential, which is another way of saying self-indulgent, which is another way of saying - stylistically speaking - childish. In short: post-modernistic, or as my writing teacher called it, intellectual masturbation. Content-wise, the book will offer a one-sided, one-dimensional, yawn-worthy critical exploration of passive entertainment, particularly its addictive properties. True and nefarious, certainly, but a banal truth, excessively obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells knocking about in that cavern we call a skull.
Now I suppose I could continue to delve deeper into many layers as to why DFW chose to use page-long paragraphs and what this choice and the content within tell me about the rest of the book, but to do so would be to suggest that a knowledge of bio-chemistry is necessary to fall in love.
Nah. You should know by now I hate this book. I have said so. I hate what it implies about the beauty of elegant, restrained prose, about the difficulty of writing a story populated by real, human people rather than the cold, lifeless caricature found herein. I hate it so much, in fact, that I am going to finish the book - all 1100 pages of it, despite knowing exactly what is going to happen, in what style, and for what meaning - for the sole purpose of justifying everything I have just now written.
...alas, no. I could not finish it. My secret hope of an epiphany to uncover the blinds over my eyes failed to materialize. The process of doubt and dislike had become catastrophic and exponential. The more read, the more I hated it. Several hundred pages in, I killed our relationship. And the rebound with other books was oh so sweet. To once again be within the capable hands of a story-teller!
I’ll make no claims about DFW’s abilities as a writer, but I will say he is no story-teller. Infinite Jest is a grotesquely overweight, poorly dressed 10 page essay....more
Twenty pages into this book, I hated it. It was post-modern schlock. I found the author indulgent, telling me, in flat prose, unremarkable insights inTwenty pages into this book, I hated it. It was post-modern schlock. I found the author indulgent, telling me, in flat prose, unremarkable insights into the nature of how I acquired the book from a book-seller. Yes, this book is often addressed to You, the reader.
I fully intended to put this book down and never read it again. But I have a bizarre habit. Sometimes I rebel against myself. Sometimes I purposefully engage in activities I dislike or eat foods I loathe or watch movies I dislike. I do this because it's important, because first impressions are garbage, because I am constantly changing (to quote Whitman - "I am large, I contain multitudes"), and because I'm a human, damnit, not a machine.
I just so happened to be in one of these mercurial moods when I almost gave up on If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Not only was I going to finish it, I was going to like it by God!
Well, I finished it. And I loved it. 5 stars, top-shelf!
I don't even know where to start with this. It's a must-read for any author, aspiring or otherwise. It is beautiful, witty, insightful, and funny in the most delightfully absurdist tradition.
It follows two hypothetical readers which are you (I mean ME and YOU, yes YOU, I'm talkin' to YOU, not to my screen. But also not YOU and ME, but specific third person characters) as we read incomplete manuscripts and try to find the remainder of them. As such, the book alternates between opening chapters of seven or eight separate novels which end abruptly at the climax point and then chapters following Us Readers or sometimes the Author as we/they/us? try to piece together just why the book is in a fractured state.
The answer? Hell if I know. It's not important.
What's important is that this an awesome book that celebrates the connection between Reader and Author, a connection all the more wonderful because it is so nebulous, ethereal, and multitudinous, just like each individual reader and each individual author....more
One of the few postmodern books that I think is enjoyable to read outside of group discussion. Very very cleverly written with all the intellectualismOne of the few postmodern books that I think is enjoyable to read outside of group discussion. Very very cleverly written with all the intellectualism of a post-modern book but with characters and narratives and writing that is still pleasurable to read.
Some of the stories are exceedingly grotesque, so be warned if you pick this up....more
Same comment with all post-modern literature. Read only with a group. Pointless without group discussion. A hard read that requires a special humor orSame comment with all post-modern literature. Read only with a group. Pointless without group discussion. A hard read that requires a special humor or intellectualism to appreciate....more
Post-modern literature. Like almost all post-modern literature, read only in a group. Requires group discussion to get any worth out of it. Otherwise,Post-modern literature. Like almost all post-modern literature, read only in a group. Requires group discussion to get any worth out of it. Otherwise, it'll pass into your eyes and right out the back of your skull....more
A bizarre book, almost post-modern in style, about the life of insects, but they're actually people. Confusing as most post-modern is but with certainA bizarre book, almost post-modern in style, about the life of insects, but they're actually people. Confusing as most post-modern is but with certain redeeming sections.
A worthwhile read if you would like a foothold into the post-modern or simply to take a break from the narrative style that is 95% of modern literature....more
Loading...
