nouns and verbs

[kirkcudbright]

I just finished slogging through Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and all I can say is — what a load of pretentious crap. I don't care if it's in the by-god College Board's list of 101 Great Books, it sufficiently failed to engage me that I fell asleep at regular intervals during the 5 months it took to finish it. Start with an unsympathetic protagonist, add a bunch of unsatisfying half-interactions with under-developed secondary characters, and lard the whole thing over with a silly conspiracy plot and stultifying prose, and you have something that's probably bloody brilliant when you're stoned.

In contrast, I also just read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is narrated by a boy with Asperger Syndrome. As the back-cover copy says, he "know all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow." Maybe not great litrachure, but enough to keep me interested (including an appendix with a geometric proof) for 63% more pages than that first one.

I enjoy a book/movie/news story that manages to change my perspective, to give me a new lens to look at the world. TCIotDitN-T did that. TCoL49 just made me feel like the stoners were looking at me, garrulously inarticulate (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing).

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

can i borrow the good one? :)