a fool and a libertine

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Me
S'up, my name's Rachel, I'm a twenty-two three four! FIVE (ugh how did I get so old) six HELLO LATE TWENTIES year old medical student DOCTOR, YO. You may offer me your congratulations on having reached this, the highest pinnacle of nerditude. My defining characteristics are a disgusting love of pink (it's stealth ninja, okay - I have a theory. A

Comments

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He has a fascination with the mechanics of things and tends to overwhelm the reader with its minutia.

He totally does. Only, I've seen it done better by Woolf. There's two problems for me with this style, the biggest and most obvious being that I hate being overwhelmed with minutia, and the second being that even done well it's tiresome. And I don't think he does it well. The reason I don't like it in the first place is because it's too easy to slip into this analysis of every second thought, going off into tangents. I've written like this. You end up doubling back, repeating yourself, contradicting yourself. It would take a million years of editing to ensure that it's consistent, and these books haven't had one minute, apparently. It's never coherent enough for me. Of course, coherency isn't a prerequisite - I just think it should be, because it's difficult.

And I think he's one of the few authors who really is NOT afraid to take chances with his characters

I really didn't see that. The 'non-happy' part is a common trait among this type of writer, I've noticed. You don't win Bookers by writing happy endings, obvs. I admit I'm battling with the notion that the 'good should end happily and the bad unhappily' - in the sense that I think if you're going to write nasty people, they should have the nastier traits. Making the hero of Love in the Time of Cholera suffer chronic constipation - what even WAS that? Still and all, there was nothing about anything in Atonement that roused even the slightest admiration in me, and certainly no envy. I'd rather write like the silliest troll on the pit rather than McEwan, I find it that bad.

I read the Line of Beauty. Didn't like that either. In the end I suppose it wasn't romantic enough for me; I hated how the college crush got fat. I really hated that. As for the rest. It's all very well to put all that on a page, but where did it come together? What was the point?

I've read one David Mitchell: Number Nine Dream. Although I think it's got the most stunning ending I've ever read, it wasn't really worth slogging through the beginning and middle. For some reason I couldn't fathom, it degenerated into random fantasy involving chickens or something at one point.

I sobbed with envy over his writing.

Let me be clear: I can't fault their prose. It's what they do with it that doesn't do anything for me. It's like a girl with a gorgeous face and body, but zero personality. Or a perfect cakemix that hasn't been baked. I feel they need to take the next step from writing lovely, fluid, accomplished bits and, like. Shove them in a writerly kiln. So they stick together some.

The most recent book I liked was Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahnuik. I also quite enjoy Douglas Coupland's later stuff. And yet, unless I was born writing like that, I wouldn't aim for it. It's again, very flimsy. I don't think there's any writer I couldn't find fault with. Even Terry Pratchett - yes, I would sell my soul for five minutes in his brain - of late has become less than he was. I think Maeve Binchy is an underrated genius - underrated, possibly, because she tells simple linear stories in a straight line with 3D characterisation and humour. Humour, clearly, is the antithesis of the modern literary classic!

(We also can’t rule out the possibility that I’m just too stupid to appreciate these books, lol.)

[pir8fancier]

(We also can’t rule out the possibility that I’m just too stupid to appreciate these books, lol.)

We are so not going there.

I will say in regards to Thin Line of Beauty that I was cooking during the 80s in San Francisco and I had a lot of gay men who were both colleagues and friends. My cooking career coincided with the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and I lost a lot of friends. I have one gay friend who survived those years, and his meds cost $4000/month. He's one of the lucky few. So what I think Hollinghurst is doing in that book (and I certainly took it that way) was that the ending was inevitable, given the times, and that the players couldn't see it. It's like reading the ending of a book. The fatalistic bent to that book (given my own experience) was profoundly moving, because I LIVED through those times, as the people I knew kept turning up HIV positive and then (because it was before the drugs) died.

simple linear stories in a straight line with 3D characterisation and humour. Humour, clearly, is the antithesis of the modern literary classic!

There is certainly NOTHING wrong with that sort of writing. I write like that myself! Although certainly not at the level of Maeve Binchy!

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But there is something in the idea that my lack of experience - in life and being shown how to read properly - has something to do with my general indifference to these acclaimed books. What you said there - I mean, how much more you must have taken from the Line of Beauty. You must have been able to say, well, this is accurate, this is genuine, this is true. Whereas me, whose touchstone for homosexuality is soft porn written by girls for other girls but about boys ... well. It just don't compare.

I guess it doesn't push the boat out much, though. (When mistful is published, we can reopen the 'cry with envy' debate. :D)

[pir8fancier]

It just means that your frame of reference (being 22 years old) is different. It doesn't mean MINE is better. Based on the pictures of Hollinghurst, he and I are probably the same age.

I was talking about this yesterday with another LJ person about my REAL writing. How my genre is dying because the readers are dying and the people of your generation just are NOT interested. Not even a commentary on what people like or don't like, who is smart, who isn't. It's just the reality that certain books will catch certain reader's imagination, and other's won't and the generational gap is never wider than it is today. Because now you have niche marketing like NEVER before, where audiences are targeted. And I think when you have a targeted audience, it can helped but shape your frame of reference.

Case in point. Daughter is something of a budding thespian, and was in a production of "Our Town," which is considered a dramatic masterpiece. I think it was written in the 1940s. Anyway, for some odd reason I've never seen this play, and despite ALL evidence to the contrary, I LOATHED IT. I thought it was REALLY sexist (most of the women in the play are dead by the end). Daughter was shocked at my attitude, saying, well, in those times women were in the kitchen... You know, I think that's bullshit. I couldn't help but notice that of the seven main characters, by the end of the play, three of the women were dead and three guys were alive. If that isn't sexist, I don't know what is. So, yes, despite the universal acclaim of this play, I hated it with a passion (and had to sit through it three times).

So, frame of reference is key. Your youth doesn't work against you or for you. It just, well, is. And while MacEwan floats my boat, the fact that he doesn't float yours is immaterial, IMO.

Whereas me, whose touchstone for homosexuality is soft porn written by girls for other girls but about boys

So? You and I both know that there are some killer writers here, and the fact that they "self-publish" doesn't mean squat, IMO. It just means they are using a different medium to publish their writing. Thank god!

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I can't speak for niche marketing, but that does remind me of an article I read in the Times about the google generation being, like, totally dumb! How we don't read books because we lack the concentration skills. That annoyed me. And not just for the obvious reason that hey, I get through ten books in a month. (Usually not so high calibre as of late, but still.) It was the idea that this was a sudden and new thing. Fifty years ago, or at any rate a hundred years ago, illiteracy was rife! At the time classic writers were writing, the kind of people who can't concentrate now couldn't read then. While I hate being pigeonholed - and hate the fact that this is true - reading is something of a speciality hobby. Honest to god, it just isn't for everyone.

I would agree that it's totally sexist, but it's something I see a lot in books written before ... well, the eighties, really. Because sexism was accepted for a long time in a way it just isn't now.

The only real difference between lj and Penguin - in terms of quality:trash ratio - is that on lj, we don't get paid.

[pir8fancier]

Well, being 51 and having a daughter who is 18, I will agree that there is a difference between her approach to culture and mine. Yes, she reads a lot, but I think that, in general, yes, your generation wants a bigger body count. And I don't mean actual bodies, I mean more kaboom. I think it's a circular thing. Media can provide more kaboom, therefore, since the ability is there, people expect more kaboom, and the kabooms keep getting faster and louder. But that does NOT mean the google generation is dumb. God, how ageist. It does mean that your expectations and desires in what you read and watch are different. So? I grew up on the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, my parents on Benny Goodman. Does that make my music choices inferior? Of course not. Just as it doesn't make THEIR music choices superior.

One thing I *have* noticed that is completely different and I think is marvelous (and I'm certainly reaping the benefits) is the globalization of communication on the most fundamental level. Here you and I are talking to each other. You're a 22-year-old med student in Ireland and I'm a 51-year-old suburban mom and we are talking. If I came to Ireland or you came to the U.S., we buy each other a drink. Yes? I THINK THIS ROCKS. So, yeah, some things are lost, others are gained. It's not an absolute. Culture moves forward, and it would be nice if pundits didn't take potshots at the participants, but really, they get paid to do that bullshit. I think it's practically in their contracts. Plus, I think that if they can't understand it, it makes them feel OLD, which pisses them off.

My favorite novelists don't have to be your favorite novelists. Although we both agree that mistful is a goddess, because she is. Some things ARE absolute!

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You're a 22-year-old med student in Ireland and I'm a 51-year-old suburban mom and we are talking. If I came to Ireland or you came to the U.S., we buy each other a drink. Yes? I THINK THIS ROCKS.

I wholeheartedly agree! I first discovered this when I took summer jobs, where the secretaries who were my mother's age took me under their wing while I talked about the suck in my life and they told me I'd be fine. (I think I nearly am fine now, so that was almost true.) I have a thing about judging everyone on their individual merit. Most people come up wanting, except on lj, where you do get to pick and choose.

I feel older than I used to, but it's mainly a good thing!

She's gonna be so big, it'll be insane. :D We'll be saying we knew her back when.