[lit-ideas] Re: book nausea
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:37:01 -0500
Maybe your expectations were too high. If you had picked up the book not
knowing the author, you might have thought it creative in a shabby chic
sort of way. I'm still kind of reeling over the Al Gore movie. I can't
imagine that anyone who has seen it can still doubt global warming is well
under way. But they do, and most don't bother to even watch a 96 minute
movie to know what it is they're doubting.
> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 11/27/2006 3:14:23 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] book nausea
>
> So I bought the new Thomas Pynchon book, _Against the Day_,
> and expected something bright and interesting. Read the
> first couple chapters -- sort of a late 19th century Hardy
> Boys in a magic dirigible at the Chicago Exposition, then on
> to the Tesla versus Edison stuff -- and felt disappointed.
> The Sunday NYT Book Review came out with extravagant praise
> for the novel, and I read the glowing review feeling that I
> must be missing something and persisted for a few more
> chapters.
>
> Last night I threw the book aside. Same old, same old. Half
> digested history about Tesla (better covered in Paul
> Auster's _Moon Palace_ or Paul O'Neill's nonfiction bio
> _Prodigal Genius_) and loads of overly cutes Pynchonian
> tropes. Bad rich people, good poor people. Plots to control
> the direction of history. Tone-setting archaic words like
> "absquatulate" when "run away" would do.
>
> Hak-patooey. Move over Irene. Curmudgeonland for me. It's
> enough to make one give up literature.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
