Sustained Criticism

Great news, Katrine, I've finished The Road, and agree with you. It is blah. Terribly post-modernistic, in that it is a warning; in that he is scared of what we are doing to ourselves, our relationships, our world; in that there is very little punctuation; in that there are no names. And the list goes on. It is intriguing, as a piece of post-modernism. As a piece of writing, the work of a craftsman, it is not. Call me conservative, but I like my post-modernism with puncutation, thank you very much. I also enjoy my literature with well-crafted sentences, which McCarthy completely lacks.

The story is intriguing, and it was easily enough read for me to not throw a tantrum and refuse to finish it. But that is also it. I can't relish the writing, the soul-searching dialogue or the beautiful scenes. While a post-apocalyptic setting should perhaps rule out beauty, at least in the case of The Road, certain scenes had the capacity of heart-breaking beauty. It just didn't quite get there. The straight-forward, monotonous [fantastic word to type] prose is incapable of touching me as powerfully as the story has potential to do.

Myers wrote A Reader's Manifesto, and criticised American literature (Wikipedia article), and I agree with him on both Auster and McCarthy. I will have to get my hands on a copy of his essay. I have not yet read DeLillo, but have been drooling on his Underworld for a few years. And I think I might have found a new, wholly personal God in Myers, from what I've read of him. – Yes, I will admit that I am a nerd if you ask me to. And I want to read more literary criticism, it is.

And some educated person (I persume it is a man, for what it's worth) thinks The Road, is Post-Southerngothic. Another very interesting idea. I just have to print it out, in order to be able to read it properly.

Addendum: A Reader's Manifesto is apparently out of print, so I have to get it shipped from the US *headdesk*. But, abebooks have some very, very cheap copies. And, of course, some unnecessarily expensive ones.



(Excuse the awful pun in the title, it was, I am afraid, intended.) And I miss both New York and London.
And I found a limited edition, signed version of The Secret History.

"Special Topics in Calamity Physics", wtf? Finished by sheer willpower, I do not think I will ever work up the stamina to re-read it. If I ever do publish something, someone please tell me if it's reading like an early, fake (taking a leaf out of "The Lambs of London" (alas, Blue has gotten to me, I'm referencing other works in my writing)) and bad Nabokov.

Why on earth the sloppy ending, why the 16 pages on the Nightwatchers? Why, why, why?

The characterization bored me: the Bluebloods seemed transparent and Schneider was too much of a mary-sue. And Blue seemed too much an extension of the author, too hung up in her own cleverness. The endless, at times very purple chapters relieved by sparkling dialogue, quotable ideas and general fun. It was too long, contained too many badly-written chapters, had a fun structure, bad ending, intriguing structure and "final exam", but all in all a disappointing book. I think I might have to remedy it by paging through TSH.

Written, by the by, by Marisha Peasl - she has obviously read both Tartt and Nabokov, and fails miserably at striking out on her own.

It also lacked the breathtaking passages Tartt flaunts so marvelously. ("And always, always, that same toast. Live forever.")s
If anyone else reads it and makes more sense of it than I have, enlighten me.

"Tartt taps her Marlboro Gold on the ashtray. She is kind of girl-boy-woman in her lineaments, with lunar-pale skin, spooky light-green eyes, a good-size triangular nose, a high, pixieish voice. With her Norma Desmond sunglasses propped on her dark bobbed hair, her striped boy's shirt and shorts from Gap Kids (the only store whose ready-to-wear fits her), and her ever-present cigarette, she is, somehow, a character of her own fictive creation: precocious sprite from a Cunard Line cruise ship, circa 1920-something. A Wise Child out of Salinger." Stolen from this decade-old interview.

There, the cat is out of the bag, and my dream revealed. I want someone to see me like that. A character of my own fictional creation - not that I'd mind Tartt's gorgeous bob, either - and have people drool over my writing. I want a book with my name on its spine in a bookshelf. I want to be the mysterious writer of obscure prose and root of tounge-twisting sentences.

And as for "Old Maidens" and my interpretation, I'm now positive it went to hell. How are we supposed to know "dressing saints" is a Catholic tradition of some sort? I might be a genius, but I'm not that into Catholic traditions. Pfft, I say.

Talked to Vigdis again yesterday: I'm seeing three Shakespeare-centred films during Christmas, comparing them, discussing "Lord of the Flies" with her, and doing an essay on American Politics (allegedly quite a challenge) and character analysis, respectively. American Politics for dummies, anyone?