Also, if the style is simple enough, I can handle it. I like Adrian McKinty's mysteries, and my favorite modern writer is Jay McInerney, especially his short stories. Even Bright Lights, Big City's second person formatting didn't bother me.
But I did a bit of shopping today and went by Talking Leaves Book Shop in the Elmwood Village part of Buffalo, and they had a copy of A Little Life, so I read a bit of it. And I knew I could never read it through. Mainly because of one paragraph. Something like this...
"It's been years since I was kissed," he said. "I don't know what it means, anymore," he said.
In one paragraph, both spoken by the same person, jammed together like that. And my thought is, That second he said is either a typo or poor grammar because it's brutally redundant.
It was the latter. I saw it happen, again, and the narrative went from third person omniscient to first person. I don't really have a problem with that, but to have it happen within one paragraph was disconcerting.
I should add, the only novel of Faulker's I like is The Sound and the Fury, because it's one story told from four different perspectives, including that of a boy who, if I remember right, had Down's Syndrome. And I love the clean, crisp, almost minimal prose of Hemingway while Isaac Asimov's writing style is basic but acceptable, in the Foundation series.
But as I mentioned in a much earlier post, Trust drove me insane with its omniscient third-person telling me everything that's happening instead of showing me.
So I sort of fell into a funk, wondering how best to deal with DW, which was added to when I heard my youngest brother in San Antonio had a severe health emergency and is back to being dependent on people to keep him going. Even though he doesn't want to admit it.
It just reminded me of how I'm getting older and squirrelier...and really resent that.
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