Yesterday I did something I very rarely do. I put aside a novel I was half-way through and decided I wouldn't read any more of it. Given that, perhaps it is unfair to criticize it harshly. All sorts of books don't work unless you read the whole thing. But I was unimpressed. Yes, parts of the book were funny, but nothing about the prose, plot, characters, or structure struck me as very interesting. Here and there it was spot-on, but those were sadly surrounded by vast, tedious swaths of words of little interest conveying nothing. I know he is (or was a few years ago) supposed to be one of the cool kids of modern literature. But this struck me as a very lazy exercise (perhaps, given his choppy writing style and the subject matter he thought he could pretty much just skate by on his supposed-rebel rep alone?), and I failed to really feel any of the characterizations ... even to feel the emptiness or obsessions they supposedly had. I repeat, yeah, he can be funny. But all in all, like far too many supposed princes of cool ... he's boring.
Posted by armand at October 3, 2004 12:08 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Booksif i remember it correctly, certain very important elements to the larger meaning of the book don't really emerge, and hence their thematics don't really enter the story, until past the mid-point. this might be a consequence of poor choices for what CP should be held to account, but i'm afraid i'm with the masses on this: i thought it was a very very funny book, and well worth reading to the end.
Posted by: joshua at October 4, 2004 09:35 AM | PERMALINK