Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Forget Brooklyn
Oh, hooray, an excuse not to read all those books I feel guilty about not reading--you know, the ones by all those Jonathans and all them. (I know, must read Jonathan Lethem...someday.) (The reason I trust this guy is his take on The Lovely Bones which I could not even read, though I tried, and which I simply could not believe was such a bestseller. And though I did love A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his critique is spot-on.) (I suspect he kind of loved it too, despite said critique.)
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2 comments:
God, that was scary. I hope he never ever reads anything of mine!
Hmm, it reads a little like sour grapes to me. His take on YA fiction is pretty uninformed, and he's just as snarky and full of generalizations as the authors he disses. Not that I have any particular brief for any of them--I read Sue Monk Kidd's novel and guiltily liked it, didn't like The Bee Season, liked AHWOSG but can barely remember it, and haven't even tried the rest. And I think the point of Catcher in the Rye is that Holden's just as phony as the phonies he hates, so that didn't come as a blinding insight. As for the notion that you don't "get over" trauma, well, no, but does that mean it's wrong to depict hope artistically? (OK, so if it's not so artistic, it can be cloying and sentimental, but why not just say that?)
Ooops, sorry to highjack your comments! Wonder why that got to me?
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