Cultural Writing/Reading Differences?
So, I had an interesting thing happen to me and it made me wonder about cultural reading. Now, this is probably better appropriated to earlier English writing rather than current as a lot of authors now don't have this style. I'm a huge fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I find Douglas Adams' style of writing to be exceptionally unique... except that it's not.
I picked up Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland and was immediately sucked in to this certain way of speaking and how very much it sounded like Hitchhiker's Guide. (Or vice versa.)
The best way that I can describe this writing is scattered, but with structure. It's like when you talk and you throw in a bunch of sidenotes. You have a very clear thing going on with interesting or funny little tidbits thrown in.
I'm utterly and thoroughly delighted by this style, so when I began to write my newest story, I had this at the fore of my mind and it was showing in my writing.
Here's the problem though. At this point in time, I've shown the start of my story to 4 people and I didn't realize a pattern until the third one.
My first two people I showed are Americans. The last two are from the UK.
The first person said that Harry sounded really dumb and the second said he came across as ignorant while later following with the same word, 'dumb.' Admittedly, I was disheartened at this point because I thought it was pretty interesting. However, the third person really enjoyed the style and story and the fourth seemed to follow that she enjoyed it as well.
So, I had to ask myself was I writing poorly or was I writing something that was unfamiliar to a certain group of people? My intent was to try my hand at an older English style and the two English friends that likely grew up with things like this liked it, wheras my American friends did not.
I think it's safe to say that Alice comes off as a bit simple and perhaps Arthur Dent does as well, but they're really not simple characters. It's more that they're not letting themselves get bogged down by the specifics, the hows, the whys. Alice follows a white rabbit and doesn't stop to question what she's doing or why the rabbit is wearing a waistcoat. The author touches on this in his own way by mentioning that she doesn't give mind to these things. And Arthur comes across simple as well in his own way when he wakes up in the morning to a bulldozer outside his house and takes several paragraphs to acknowledge it. However, the author clearly has him acknowledge it in some way by having him register the word "yellow."
It's just this certain style that I can understand how it'd come away as dim, but it's actually very brilliant if you don't let yourself get bogged down by clear cut lines.
So, to cease my rambling, I really wanted to bring this element into my story and it seems like if you're unfamiliar with the inspiration it comes off as simple. Have any of you ever noticed something like this or experienced something like this?