Purple Is Never A Good Shade For Prose

[pargoletta]

So I'm all of nineteen pages into a novel, and I'm not sure I can take any more without beating my head against a handy wall to lower my IQ. It really shouldn't have been this way. This book had so much going for it. The author is Erica Jong, who I've always categorized as one of those second-tier contemporary classic authors whose books really

Comments

[valmora]

....description is not a substitute for character development. That is all.

Japanese wife in full kimono,
Who would never travel that way because it's slow going and the shoes tend to hurt. Besides, there's many levels of "full kimono". RAWR FEEL MY ASIAN STUDIES WRATH.

[pargoletta]

Guess what! In chapter two, all the stereotypes get names. Arctic Siberian Icy Eyes is Grigory "Grisha" Krylov, Russkie slimeball extraordinaire. The Spanish guy with the long white hair is Carlos Armada, and the dishy girlfriend turns out to be Italian, but does not rate a name. The German Marxist is Walter Wildhonig, the shtetl-born Nobel laureate is Benjamin Gabriel Gimel, the vaguely Belgian guy is Pierre de Houbigant . . . and the Japanese wife in kimono isn't mentioned. I shall refer to her as Cio-Cio-San until she does get mentioned again. Perhaps Cio-Cio-San and the Exquisite Eurasian Daughters have high-tailed it out of this mess?

. . . nope, names added to descriptions still don't make for character development.

[valmora]

Russkie slimeball extraordinaire
Urgh. Why are all Russians always bad guys? Life needs more David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin.

(are the names even vaguely authentic? I caught that "Armada" in there and somehow I think that's less a real name than the author being lazy...)

I think the Exquisite Eurasian Daughters ought to be Hanako. (Yamada Hanako being, of course, the Jane Doe of Japan)

[pargoletta]

Well, vaguely authentic. I suppose it's not entirely out of the question to have a German man named Walter Wildhonig; it's just a very silly name. Grigory Krylov needs a patronymic, say, Ivanovich, and he would expect to be addressed as "Grigory Ivanovich" by some of his friends. Benjamin Gabriel Gimpel -- well, kind of silly, but he's supposed to be a Wandering Jew, so whatever. Carlos Armada -- "Carlos" I can buy, "Armada" doesn't sound to me like a last name that any Spaniard would be proud to carry, what with its being associated with the big defeat. I have no idea about ol' Pierre de Houbigant, husband of Cio-Cio-San and father of Hanako and Hanako Junior.

Urgh. Why are all Russians always bad guys?

Because it's an 80s novel. In fact, Our Heroine's ball gown is specifically described as having been inspired by Princess Di's wedding dress.

[valmora]

I looked up Houbigant and it is not a real word (though is a family name - just without the "de") - it's a brand of perfume.

just a very silly name
Why?

(my bet is that Cio-Cio-san didn't get a name because the author had no idea about Japanese names and was clever enough to not try.)

[pargoletta]

it's a brand of perfume.

But of course. Goes along with all the other brand-name-dropping that's been going on in the book.

I find the combination of alliterative first and last names, plus the first name "Walter," plus the last name that's a compound common noun to be just kind of silly-sounding in German. It's certainly a legitimate type of name; one of my good friends in Germany lo these many years ago had a similar name, only without the alliteration and with a much cooler first name.

My bet is that Cio-Cio-San doesn't have a name because, despite Erica Jong's cooing with indignation at male chauvinist pigs and citing "hundreds of years of feminism" (Really? In 1987? Really?), she just doesn't give a shit. In chapter three, we learn that more of the stereotypes have wives. They have designations like und Frau, "and wife," or e fidanzata. Cio-Cio-San does not appear to be in this scene, nor Hanako and Hanako Junior. Maybe they're off doing something fun.

[valmora]

compound common noun
What kind of compound common noun? Not all of us are blessed with German. =(

only without the alliteration and with a much cooler first name.
In other words, not a similar name at all. XD

Maybe they're off doing something fun.
They actually are subject to hundreds of years of Belgian feminism and are off in Japan financing the emerging BL market getting educations and in Cio-Cio-san's case working at a real job as a translator of postwar Japanese literature into French.

[pargoletta]

Wildhonig literally means "wild honey," except all one word. My friend's last name translated to "turnip seed."

Well, Cio-Cio-San and the Hanakos have just escaped a very silly riot caused at the film festival by a group of punk kids with orange mohawks shouting slogans at a film about Mozart, so they're probably better off wherever they are.

[valmora]

punk kids with orange mohawks shouting slogans at a film about Mozart
....why? Are they rebelling against chord changes and harmony?

[pargoletta]

Of course not. They're simply showing up to represent The Ugly Modern World, and they have not been heard from since.

[valmora]

Speaking of the ugly modern world, a link to a good Hetalia fic (if you're interested in other themes, tell me, otherwise I'm going to keep linking you ones like this):
http://hetalia-kink.livejournal.com/10960.html?thread=20406736#t20406736

[pargoletta]

I do like it! (One of the many reasons that Hetalia annoyed me was because it never went there.)