My reading has been extremely sporadic. I hope to get to some titles of things I really liked later, but my timer today is just about out
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I find that sermons and polemics, no matter whose voice they're given in, get tiring much faster than an actual story does. The idea that the story exists only to put forth these "truths" that the author feels need to be said? No. Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with the commentary, the truths that stick with me the most are the ones that sneak up on me through the story itself, that leave me in no doubt whatsoever of their reality through the characters and the events in their lives. Dickens vs. Swift, in other names.
Yes...to me, this narrative device swings over into the "allegory" category, and I am not one for allegory, just as I'm not one for "idea" stories. I like people stories that include ideas, not idea stories in which the characters are brief sketches only present in service to the idea.
I like people stories that include ideas, not idea stories in which the characters are brief sketches only present in service to the idea.Yes! I won't say I *never* like idea stories, but my favorites are always the ones where the ideas are in subservience to character (and I have to come to realize that character really is more important to me than plot, and so, too, is writing style
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I get impatient even with allegory that agrees with my own idea set. In the opposite ideas case I'm being hammered to shift my perception of something, and in the same-idea case I'm being told what I already know, which is boring and makes me impatient. But then I have a very limited attention span for philosophy in any form.
Heh, I was a philosophy minor and two classes short of a double major, but it still irritates me. If nothing else, reading books that overdo this has convinced me of what NOT to do in my own works -- only one of the projects I'm working on now is political, but in it, I'm damn sure going out of my way not to lecture, even tho I'm pretty sure the obviousness of my takes on some things are going to run around waving at people, simply because of the way the story progresses (then again, I see some online discussions and wonder what the hell is going on in some people's heads). If people don't already agree w/you, most lectures are just gonna make 'em dig in their heels and glare at you, then leave.
I confess to not being a particular student of the place/time (I probably remember more of it from literature than I do from my history classes, tho I did enjoy history), but nonetheless, agreed w/you wholeheartedly on Hugo.
I still remember, with loathing the female yetchy voice saying, "Ev'ryman...." speaking in narrative voice for the medieval morality play, in a recording played back when I was in public school.
As regards intrusive narrators, Brust's Paarfi for the most part I find amusing/entertaining. One of the main and most notable exceptions to that was the excursion of the protagonist expounding on the nature of love and the loved one or some such, for at least two pages. I was profoundly bored by it and found it completely tedious. Yes, the character had fallen in luuuvvvv, but I didn't want two pages of exposition on the topic
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I get impatient even with allegory that agrees with my own idea set. In the opposite ideas case I'm being hammered to shift my perception of something, and in the same-idea case I'm being told what I already know, which is boring and makes me impatient. But then I have a very limited attention span for philosophy in any form.
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Political I like, actually. Anyway I agree.
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I still remember, with loathing the female yetchy voice saying, "Ev'ryman...." speaking in
narrative voice for the medieval morality play, in a recording played back when I was in public school.
As regards intrusive narrators, Brust's Paarfi for the most part I find amusing/entertaining. One of the main and most notable exceptions to that was the excursion of the protagonist expounding on the nature of love and the loved one or some such, for at least two pages. I was profoundly bored by it and found it completely tedious. Yes, the character had fallen in luuuvvvv, but I didn't want two pages of exposition on the topic ( ... )
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Or what bit will be tiresome. But when a whole novel seems mostly comprised of 'bits'...
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