Guh. Ugh. Ahhhhhhhh. You know that feeling when you pour yourself off a bus at the end of a really long bus ride, possibly taken overnight, in a bus with no suspension and a tv blaring at you in a foreign tongue? That's kind of how I feel after (finally) finishing this book. Also, during the bus ride the guy across the aisle was snoring and I woke up dribbling on myself.
I first became aware of this book at about 15, when I seem to recall having read the title in the liner notes to a CD / in an interview with someone insufferably cool. Whatever stopped me from reading it then deserted me at some point because recently when I came across it on my mate's bookshelf, I (mistakenly) thought it was time.
It was not time.
I'm not saying it's not interesting: the dude is discussing the whole basis of Western thought, the subject/object divide, the notion of Quality and the God head, and also teenage boys and insanity. It's just that, well, it's not good. The narrative structure and devices are clunky, the prose inelegant and the characters flat. He picked a tough subject. And he failed.
What is really interesting though, is a) how many people rave about this book, and b) the fact that in the edition I read, a 25th anniversary edition, they included excerpts from the correspondence between the author and his editor. It's rare to get these insights into how these relationships work unless you actively seek them out, but I can imagine that in a book of this scope, the working relationship here was crucial. It's nice to see that acknowledged in print, even if in this case, I don't think it produced very readable results. Seems I'm in the minority here though.
I haven't had a great year of it in the reading stakes, on reflection. No pressure, next book, but try not to piss me off.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment