Didn't feel so hot so spent the day piddling and reading. I was trying really hard to get into A Confederacy of Dunce by John Kennedy Toole, but I finally gave up. It's not often I can't become part of a book's world, but this one drove me insane. Ignatius Reilly is a character I despise because he's nothing but a characature of a man. Not real or human. I made it to page 89 before his comments about his valve being an issue and his laziness and selfishness and childishness and on and on and on drove me to the brink.
I can only think of two other books that pushed me away like this -- Continental Drift by Russell Banks and Light in August by William Faulkner. I'd never read anything else by Banks, and that book made me never want to, it was so relentlessly down-beat and programmed for what I knew would be a tragic ending. I gave up at page 100.
With Faulkner, I'd been okay with The Hamlet and actually liked The Sound and the Fury -- I was taking a college course in him, for English credit -- but when I started in on Light in August...it may sound weird, but I don't think the book wanted me to read it. It refused to let me in, and truth is, I wasn't all that interested in pushing it. Unfortunately, the class was being taught by a Faulkner aficionado and he did not take kindly to my comments about the book...so I dropped the class.
Oh...and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Jesus, God, this was anything but the life-affirming auto-biography I'd been told it was. Three children are dead by page 50, thanks to a childish, selfish man's alcoholism and laziness. I actually asked someone who had read it if things get better, and she said, "No." Since I wanted to slit my wrists by page 60, I chose the better option of not continuing the book.
I did make some similar mistakes in tone with Bobby Carapisi -- focusing on Eric's slide into depression and prostitution after he's raped by three men, counterpointed with Bobby's struggle to regain his balance after the same men attack him in the first 2/3 of the book. The last third focuses on Eric trying to get Alan, one of the rapists, to admit what he and his buddies did to Bobby by letting him tell his side, much of which is told like pornography and is revealed to be a lie...but which does lead him to finally take responsibility for his actions while Eric regains his sense of compassion and humanity enough to pen up to a future of possibilities.
Of course, these could be merely my justifications for a book that is as brutal and downbeat as the ones I didn't like. Maybe that's why I did The Lyons' Den next. Its chaotic farce mitigates the deep horror of Daniel's past with a present that is ludicrous in the extreme. And The Vanishing of Owen Taylor has Jake snarling and snapping his way through the book like a pissed off Jack Russell terrier, but has a fair amount of humor and love and even moments of tenderness and quiet. And now comes The Alice '65, more chaos, drama, farce and...I hope...hope.
Next comes the trick of Place of Safety...taking a horror of a time and not letting it obscure the humanity of people or their hope and insistence that life be lived on their own terms and no one else's. Brendan is my proto-Candide...journeying through the world with little more than hope and determination to keep him going. Even in the face of people's hate and stupidity. And make it...hopeful...maybe.
Who knows -- one of these days I may actually turn into a real writer.
I can only think of two other books that pushed me away like this -- Continental Drift by Russell Banks and Light in August by William Faulkner. I'd never read anything else by Banks, and that book made me never want to, it was so relentlessly down-beat and programmed for what I knew would be a tragic ending. I gave up at page 100.
With Faulkner, I'd been okay with The Hamlet and actually liked The Sound and the Fury -- I was taking a college course in him, for English credit -- but when I started in on Light in August...it may sound weird, but I don't think the book wanted me to read it. It refused to let me in, and truth is, I wasn't all that interested in pushing it. Unfortunately, the class was being taught by a Faulkner aficionado and he did not take kindly to my comments about the book...so I dropped the class.
Oh...and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Jesus, God, this was anything but the life-affirming auto-biography I'd been told it was. Three children are dead by page 50, thanks to a childish, selfish man's alcoholism and laziness. I actually asked someone who had read it if things get better, and she said, "No." Since I wanted to slit my wrists by page 60, I chose the better option of not continuing the book.
I did make some similar mistakes in tone with Bobby Carapisi -- focusing on Eric's slide into depression and prostitution after he's raped by three men, counterpointed with Bobby's struggle to regain his balance after the same men attack him in the first 2/3 of the book. The last third focuses on Eric trying to get Alan, one of the rapists, to admit what he and his buddies did to Bobby by letting him tell his side, much of which is told like pornography and is revealed to be a lie...but which does lead him to finally take responsibility for his actions while Eric regains his sense of compassion and humanity enough to pen up to a future of possibilities.
Of course, these could be merely my justifications for a book that is as brutal and downbeat as the ones I didn't like. Maybe that's why I did The Lyons' Den next. Its chaotic farce mitigates the deep horror of Daniel's past with a present that is ludicrous in the extreme. And The Vanishing of Owen Taylor has Jake snarling and snapping his way through the book like a pissed off Jack Russell terrier, but has a fair amount of humor and love and even moments of tenderness and quiet. And now comes The Alice '65, more chaos, drama, farce and...I hope...hope.
Next comes the trick of Place of Safety...taking a horror of a time and not letting it obscure the humanity of people or their hope and insistence that life be lived on their own terms and no one else's. Brendan is my proto-Candide...journeying through the world with little more than hope and determination to keep him going. Even in the face of people's hate and stupidity. And make it...hopeful...maybe.
Who knows -- one of these days I may actually turn into a real writer.
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