True.Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
True.
I agree and disagree with you. Like Davis said, brevity is not something he aims for. To me, the crux of his novel is always very small; there is not much he wants to say, and he chooses to say it in the wordiest way.
Yet, I agree that how he says it contributes to the thing he wants to say. Kinda like human's existent itself. Life is the most beautiful, but you're still able to reduce the whole thing to its very brief essence.
"Over analysis is like the oil of the Match-Cut machine." KK2.0
Going to start Dimiter, William Peter Blatty's latest religious thriller, tonight. In reading some reviews of it, I came across an interesting consensus: Blatty's greatest strengths - his earnestness and sincerity - are also his most easily mockable traits. As an admirer of sincerity and earnestness, this is probably why I have gravitated so strongly to his work - his writing strikes a particular chord with me. I also admire greatly his personal religious quest.
Although apparently it's well known, I've never heard of Jerome Bixby's story It's a Good Life.
And now I'm going to have nightmares.
You can read it here.
...and the milk's in me.
NIGHTMARES. ALL FREAKING NIGHT.
...and the milk's in me.
Duncan- let's talk about Tinkers. What do you make of the clock metaphor?
For a book so short (yet so lovely) I thought these clock interruptions damaged the flow of the story of Howard and George. Howard being the far more interesting story of the two.
Maybe if I understood how it tied into the framing story my opinion would change.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Given the appreciation that I've had toward Atonement, I decided to finally start a second McEwan, by reading Saturday. Lovely prose and characterization, as always.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
Fucking page break. Duncan see bottom of last page.
Dreamdead - let me know what you think. I've had it on my shelf for awhile but heard it's pretty disappointing. On Chesil Beach is great, fyi.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
I actually saw him give a reading here in Vancouver and he spoke pretty extensively about the clock metaphor. According to him, the whole book is supposed to be built like a clock in exploded view, so we can see all the individual parts moving independently; or the narrative is at least supposed to feel like an inevitable countdown to both their deaths. Hence the lines like, "Such and such many hours before his death, George started to..." George's work as a clockmaker is supposed to be like an unconscious effort to give order to the universe, and a kind of comfort meant to assuage the pain of knowing that we can't. More specifically, clocks are something mechanical that, with enough care and effort, he can repair, but his relationship with his father is beyond such repair, and this irreparable, ineffable loss is something that he carries with him and struggles with his whole life.
edit: but when he said it, I feel like it was a lot more complicated and eloquent and moving.
I also got to meet him afterwards. Seemed like an incredibly nice guy.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
I got the sense that he carried it with him but not that he was emotionally devastated about it. I don't think George's character was developed enough for me to feel that impact. But I didn't get much inward or outward emotion from any of the characters, just this dream-like, restrained sense of longing for something beyond the hand (of the clock! No.) they were dealt. I thought the metaphor could have been worked in better than abrupt placement of excerpts from that old book. Perhaps with more scenes in George's basement with his grandchildren as he's fixing them.
I think the sequence with Howard and the guy who lived alone in the woods and claimed to know Hawthorne was my favorite.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Agree with the bold. They're kind of ethereal people with very little psychology to them. But the writing itself, I thought, was very evocative. I actually forget how the clock stuff is worked in, but I do remember the images of clocks, like a surreal passage about this tree-clock with golden leaves and stuff. I also loved that sequence with the hermit. That and some of the real abstract reveries were probably my favourite parts.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Saturday is more memorable than On Chesil Beach, for what it's worth. Both were very good, however. The climax of Saturday blew me away, but McEwan takes his time getting there. On Chesil Beach's climax (no pun intended) left me a bit cold, but I was completely absorbed in the journey there. Atonement is his finest, most complete work from start to finish. One of my favorite novels.
I thought Saturday was terribly boring, lacked the teeth for a truly gripping climax, and had an utterly contrived catharsis that lavished pity on a whole group of people who, I would think, might be vaguely insulted by the patronizing tone of the thing. It's politics are already dated, but were never very complex or interesting to begin with. It's also very much a writer's book, in that he obviously did a ton of research on neurosurgery, but instead of it coming off organically, it comes off as a guy who really has no experience in the field and is out of his depth. Bad book.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Meh, that's not what I took away from the book. The politics in the backdrop, outdated they may be, are the soft-focus behind the display of man's feeling of helplessness. It's been awhile since I read it, but I think it makes a better study of man's place in the modern world than a political statement.
I wasn't saying that the politics are central to the book. I'm just saying that it's politics are dated and lack complexity.
No doubt the Dr. fellow is the book's core. But he's a dull character. So he sits down when he pees. Great. Let's spend 20 pages on a goddamn squash match. The only genuinely moving passage I can remember is when he's watching his son play music.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Never Let Me Go, best novel of the decade? Hardly, Time Magazine. It's tediously paced with little reward and its interesting premise is watered down to focus on a doomed love-triangle. Ishiguro dealt with similar themes of memory and devotion more aptly with The Remains of the Day. Think I'll skip the movie, too.
They really picked that snooze-fest as novel of the decade? What a terrible choice.
That's what the cover of the novel quotes, I haven't actually seen a list from Time.
EDIT: A quick Google search yielded this list.
Books
Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004), by Susanna Clarke
The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), by Junot Diaz
The Known World (2003), by Edward P. Jones
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), by J.K. Rowling
Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
Lush Life (2008), by Richard Price
Then We Came to the End (2007), by Joshua Ferris
American Gods (2001), by Neil Gaiman
I adore this book, and I can never manage to get anyone to read it on my recommendation, because it's a measly ten thousand pages long.
I finally read it aloud to my mother when we were commuting together. It took a few months, but was totally worth it.
...and the milk's in me.
These are terrible choices, I'll say.
"Over analysis is like the oil of the Match-Cut machine." KK2.0
The Corrections, Atonement, and Then We Came to the End are worthy choices. Never Let Me Go, Harry Potter, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao... not so much. Haven't read Lush Life, but I've heard great things, and I liked the other Richard Price I read.
Started reading Cloud Atlas. Like it a lot so far (just finished first section).
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Picked up a couple of books last night:
Never even knew Spark wrote ghost stories. This will surely be amazing. Can't wait to read some more stuff by her. I recently re-read The Driver's Seat, and it only further solidified my opinion that it's one of the best pieces of American literature I've ever read. It blows my mind how few people I know of have ever read her.
And I got an old collection of short stories from John Shirley:
I agree that the climax fails, quite badly, but I actually found the first half quite gripping, even the squash match (after Netherland and O'Neill's cricket descriptions, maybe I'm more tolerant of sports passages even when I don't understand the game). That said, I feel the politics here offer something very of-the-moment, which I'm thankful of. I fear that you dismiss the book when it acts as testimony of that transitional moment, when a populace was ready to be swayed to either side of the war on Iraq debate, if only solid evidence could be granted. I like it for that engagement, as it's one of the few books to take this perspective (DeLillo and O'Neill, for example, don't, and so I feel that McEwan tackles a new angle here).
Most of the Baxter business, however, fails to amount to anything. A great opening with Perowne gazing out into the night, but as the plane fades from the narrative, so too does McEwan's ability to make anything of the characters.
Still kinda want to read Amsterdam at some point. One positive and one middling book means I want that to be the decider.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
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