I can think of some novels I would not have finished if I had not been paid to write about them. Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Paul Theroux's Blinding Light. Just to name two. When reading for pleasure, I let the pleasure principle be my guide.
Thanks for the link, Dave. Brilliant review, only spoiled by the fact that it reminded me again of how much I hated the 'frail slush' of the 'twisted matrix' of that book. And, shamefully, when 'they went on', I did not.
A lack of desire on my part to spend time in "the company of characters who are all equally contemptible, irredeemable and hideously flawed" is exactly why I find so little current fiction, praised or otherwise, to be worth bothering to read. I mean, who cares about such people? It's not that one requires good characters all the time, or the unbelievably unflawed, but the current parade of genuinely unlikable lead characters in so much fiction is beyond the pale. It leaves you with no good reason to keep on reading, since you really don't care what happens to them.
There are very few of us who don't let the pleasure principle guide us in reading, i.e. non-professional reading. The thing is, each person takes pleasure in something different.
I am so glad to discover someone else who doesn't worship The Road
ReplyDeleteFrank's review is reprinted here in Time Out, the magazine of the Gulf Times (August 12, 2009, page 5) as a .pdf file:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gulf-times.com/mritems/streams/2009/8/12/2_308638_1_255.pdf
or in Google Docs:
http://tinyurl.com/4oa5fbj
Thanks for the link, Dave. Brilliant review, only spoiled by the fact that it reminded me again of how much I hated the 'frail slush' of the 'twisted matrix' of that book. And, shamefully, when 'they went on', I did not.
ReplyDeleteA lack of desire on my part to spend time in "the company of characters who are all equally contemptible, irredeemable and hideously flawed" is exactly why I find so little current fiction, praised or otherwise, to be worth bothering to read. I mean, who cares about such people? It's not that one requires good characters all the time, or the unbelievably unflawed, but the current parade of genuinely unlikable lead characters in so much fiction is beyond the pale. It leaves you with no good reason to keep on reading, since you really don't care what happens to them.
ReplyDeleteThere are very few of us who don't let the pleasure principle guide us in reading, i.e. non-professional reading. The thing is, each person takes pleasure in something different.
ReplyDelete