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ohthatdan posted:Like a few previous posters, I felt that the story within a story in House of Leaves was severely distracting. I finally got through it however when I completely ignored all of Johnny Truant's sections in the book, so I was basically just reading the Navidson record. I know I told myself that I would go back and re-read just those Truant parts at a separate time, but I really have no desire to do so. I did think the Navidson record portion of the book was pretty good after I cut all that crap out. While I think it is important to feel free to skip around in books as much as you want--it shouldn't feel like a chore--I don't understand all the House of Leaves hate. I postponed looking at it for quite a while because nearly every single mention of it (outside actual House of Leaves threads) on SA was disparaging, and three or four people would always chime in to say "Yeah, gently caress that book." Saying the format is distracting is fine and not even really criticism. After all, you said you thought the rest was pretty good, and that just means you didn't feel like making an effort to get into it, which is perfectly legitimate--I've never been able to finish Ulysses for the same reason, though I keep a copy in my room and start over again occasionally (one day, when I have time and less distractions, I'll get it done). But the majority of the criticism is always, always, always the same--in this thread it appears as quote:pointless, boring and not scary at all. quote:and I'm sure he thought he was being incredibly clever. It's to bad because I was looking forward to reading it. Why are people so eager to call out beautiful things that take a little time to appreciate? House of Leaves is no masterpiece, but there's definitely beauty in its story, its layout, its structure, and its imagery (both in the images he describes and in the "artsy layout bullshit".) if you just take a little time to look. But people on Something Awful love to let as many people as possible know that they're brilliant literary detectives--in their majority, they dislike House of Leaves because they can tell that the author is "smug," and "self-satisfied," and he must have thought he was "being incredibly clever" (of course, these readers can immediately tell that although he thinks he's being clever, he's really not). The crime of thinking you're smarter than you really are, evidently, means that everything you do is garbage. The first page of the thread contains a similar comment about The Poisonwood Bible, which I haven't read, and honestly from the plot descriptions I've heard it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'm into. But comments about how smug and falsely clever the author is just make me think that maybe the author really is clever--Danielewski, regardless of whether or not you think his work has literary merit (or to put it differently, whether or not you think he's worth reading), is certainly one of the cleverest writers I've found in a long time. Do you think Nabokov was born writing Lolita? I'm sure he must have written his fair share of artsy bullshit before he took up English, of which I imagine few things are translated or well-known. Anyway, this post is probably misplaced, but it's something I've been thinking about more and more when I cruise TBB, CD or NMD. Elitism is fun and all, but I think it's horrible and sad to mock people for trying to do something different and making money at it. And I would bet money that if Mark Z. Danielewski had been a goon and posted the preliminary drafts of House of Leaves on Something Awful the vast majority of his critics on SA would absolutely love him.
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May 11, 2008 23:36
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:59 |
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The Brothers Karamazov. I keep it on my shelf because it looks classy. The first time I opened it I read fifty pages or so, and I know it's a great novel, but in my head it went kind of like "Yeah, I'm reading great literature, no big deal, just exercising my intellect, you know it's like a muscle, just get into the rhythm, this is great phrasing, I know it's a translation but I can see the beauty in the, actually I'm getting kind of bored, just not in the zone, I think I'll get back to this later..." so I put it down for an indefinite period of time and forgot everything I had read. I've never been able to get more than a few pages in since then, I get a feeling of shameful deja vu and then despite my best efforts I get bored out of my mind. One day However, I maintain to my credit that I read all the way through Proust's Swann's Way. Now I walk through the streets like a wolf, knowing that I read Proust motherfucker, I'm better than you, fearing only the presence of people who have actually studied his work, or my nemeses, the ones that have read the rest of the books and can expose me as a faker.
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Jan 28, 2009 09:22
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