"Violently"?? Haha. I just find him really boring. And I like his contemporaries, like Chabon and Franzen and Eugenides. It's hard to pinpoint why exactly.
No, I'd never heard of it, but thanks for bringing to my attention! It seems like a novel I'll have very strong feelings about, whether for good or for ill. The best kind of book.
Oh wow, "The Emperor's Children" ... I hated it too, also in a fun way! Murray Thwaite is basically Noam Chomsky without the linguistics (all he's got is the critique of foreign policy, which doesn't make him a genius, though people treat him as one). Bootie was a potentially interesting character but frustratingly underdeveloped. Messud missed a chance with Julius - what must it have been like growing up gay and Vietnamese in small-town Michigan? - but she doesn't tell us. The writing style was offputting and overblown: I remember a scene where characters take two pages to say goodbye and arrange to meet, which could have been handled in one sentence. And the NYC claustrophobia of the book is pervasive!
Yes, I got the sense that the extent of Murray's expertise was "Maybe we went too far in Kosovo."
Julius seemed like a precursor to Jude from A Little Life since Jude is also a mixed-race gay man who often gets involved with abusive and violent men. I wonder if Yanagihara read this book before or if this type of character is just a trope. I didn't even bother to mention that Julius is half-Vietnamese because it doesn't even matter in the story.
"Offputting" is a good way to characterize the writing. Did you catch all the many references to breasts? It seemed like the tendencies of a pervy male author. Bootie's cousin-lust for Marina is also just presented without any internal conflict on his part as if it were totally a socially acceptable thing to do.
I lost touch with an old friend who contacted me out of the blue at the beginning of the year to see if I'd read A Little Life with her. This was a wild request but I'm glad I did it. I only vaguely knew the book was controversial. Yanigahara does have amazing prose. The first part of the book really had me. As a whole, I was very disappointed in it. It was mesmerizing but that fell apart, for me, when I took a step back from it. I understand why people both love and hate it.
Once again confronted with the fact that Substack novelists are all middlebrow authoritarians, vigorously demanding we read the same way for the same things
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone hating Lethem so violently before! I’d be fascinated to know why
"Violently"?? Haha. I just find him really boring. And I like his contemporaries, like Chabon and Franzen and Eugenides. It's hard to pinpoint why exactly.
The problem with City on Fire is that it was boring.
Nice to finally see what's in this _City on Fire_ book that I heard so much about and never read
The services I provide
chris have you read A Fortunate Age
No, I'd never heard of it, but thanks for bringing to my attention! It seems like a novel I'll have very strong feelings about, whether for good or for ill. The best kind of book.
i agree, it's sort of like The Emperor's Children on steroids, except entirely concerned with white women who went to oberlin (i absolutely love it)
Oh wow, "The Emperor's Children" ... I hated it too, also in a fun way! Murray Thwaite is basically Noam Chomsky without the linguistics (all he's got is the critique of foreign policy, which doesn't make him a genius, though people treat him as one). Bootie was a potentially interesting character but frustratingly underdeveloped. Messud missed a chance with Julius - what must it have been like growing up gay and Vietnamese in small-town Michigan? - but she doesn't tell us. The writing style was offputting and overblown: I remember a scene where characters take two pages to say goodbye and arrange to meet, which could have been handled in one sentence. And the NYC claustrophobia of the book is pervasive!
Yes, I got the sense that the extent of Murray's expertise was "Maybe we went too far in Kosovo."
Julius seemed like a precursor to Jude from A Little Life since Jude is also a mixed-race gay man who often gets involved with abusive and violent men. I wonder if Yanagihara read this book before or if this type of character is just a trope. I didn't even bother to mention that Julius is half-Vietnamese because it doesn't even matter in the story.
"Offputting" is a good way to characterize the writing. Did you catch all the many references to breasts? It seemed like the tendencies of a pervy male author. Bootie's cousin-lust for Marina is also just presented without any internal conflict on his part as if it were totally a socially acceptable thing to do.
I don't remember the breasts, but novels of this type often indulge in unnecessary corporeality, as if to say "see, intellectuals have bodies too!"
Also, the 9/11 section was a real damp squib - about as apocalyptic as a heavy traffic jam.
Nooooooooooooooooo I wanted to hear your withering takedown of "A Little Life" ;___;
I lost touch with an old friend who contacted me out of the blue at the beginning of the year to see if I'd read A Little Life with her. This was a wild request but I'm glad I did it. I only vaguely knew the book was controversial. Yanigahara does have amazing prose. The first part of the book really had me. As a whole, I was very disappointed in it. It was mesmerizing but that fell apart, for me, when I took a step back from it. I understand why people both love and hate it.
Once again confronted with the fact that Substack novelists are all middlebrow authoritarians, vigorously demanding we read the same way for the same things