New around here? Register your SA Forums Account here!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of literature absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of literature complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren: For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives]

2014:
January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness
February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita
March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
April: James Joyce -- Dubliners
May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude
June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States
July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine
August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August
September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice
October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October
November: John Gardner -- Grendel
December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel

2015:
January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities
February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1.
March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger
April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem)
May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row
June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood
(Hiatus)
August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me
September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone
October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant
November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl
December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road

2016:
January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome
February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon
March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima


Current:
The Vegetarian by Han Kang


quote:


Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners; she is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flatline of their marriage is interrupted when Yeong-hye, seeking a more 'plant-like' existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares. In South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Her passive rebellion manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, leading her bland husband to self-justified acts of sexual sadism. His cruelties drive her towards attempted suicide and hospitalisation. She unknowingly captivates her sister's husband, a video artist. She becomes the focus of his increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, while spiralling further and further into her fantasies of abandoning her fleshly prison and becoming - impossibly, ecstatically - a tree. Fraught, disturbing and beautiful, The Vegetarian is a novel about modern day South Korea, but also a novel about shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.


quote:


Last August, Anne Rice posted a call to arms — on Facebook, of course — warning that political correctness was going to bring on literary end times: banned books, destroyed authors, “a new era of censorship.” “We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored,” she proclaimed. “I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised.” I, a fan of transgressive literature, could not pinpoint why I found her post to be so much more vexing than the usual battle cries of P.C.-paranoiacs. I finally had my answer after reading Han Kang’s novel “The Vegetarian”: What if “the despised” can stand up on their own?

All the trigger warnings on earth cannot prepare a reader for the traumas of this Korean author’s translated debut in the Anglophone world. At first, you might eye the title and scan the first innocuous sentence — “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way” — and think that the biggest risk here might be converting to vegetarianism. (I myself converted, again; we’ll see if it lasts.) But there is no end to the horrors that rattle in and out of this ferocious, magnificently death-affirming novel.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/the-vegetarian-by-han-kang.html


About the Author

quote:

Han Kang (Hangul: 한강; born November 27, 1970) is a South Korean writer.[1] She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for The Vegetarian, a novel which deals with a woman’s decision to stop eating meat and its devastating consequences.[2] The novel is also the first of her books to be translated into English.

Pacing

Just read, then post.

References and Further Reading

I don't really know enough about this author to suggest, but I'm hoping other folks can chip in.

Final Note:

If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

the_homemaster
Dec 7, 2015
Eagerly waiting to see how many people turn vegetarian.

Btw the experience the wife goes through was very similar to my own, and I really connected with it on that level. Then it got weird.

Obviously I think the vegetarianism is merely a plot device, a symptom of a larger problem, but one through which we can enter the pain of the main character more easily.

Fun fact it was actually Under the Skin that turned me vegan.

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

27 holds on next returned in the local library system :negative:

Apparently a popular book to read right now.

the_homemaster
Dec 7, 2015
Ebook has been on special...

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

Just ordered it off Book Depository as that was the cheapest option I could find after looking at the ebook. Will get stuck in once it arrives since I never manage to read a BOTM during the actual month it's being discussed.

I know very little about South Korea. Is there any general background I should have going into it?

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.
I like how the books correlates the social expectations of femininity with the consumption of meat. Yeong-Hye's nightmares begin as the idea that she is taking another thing's life and essence into herself in order to survive. In the same way, Korean culture seems constructed in such a way that men survive off the essence of women in the same way that animals eat other animals to live. The three sections seem to be a meditation on how men "consume" women. In the first chapter, Yeong-Hye exists as a vessel her husband takes from in order to establish his own existence. Food, sex, clothing, social stability, these are all things her husband seems to consume and that Yeong-Hye is expected to provide. Notice when she begins to break down, even her own family is less concerned with her own well-being than with the fact she is unable to provide for her husband's expectations.

In the same way that the first chapter is explicit criticism of the predatory nature of male and female relations in Korea, the second chapter seems to be a broader critique of sexual relations and the trope of the "muse." Despite being well provided for by his wife, the brother-in-law still looks at Yeong-Hye as something to consume for own benefit. Instead of consuming her for social stability, he seems to be higher up on Mazlow's hierarchy, seeking to consume her for own his self-actualization. The brother-in-law sees her as a thing to be used for his own spiritual and artistic benefit, utterly unconcerned with how his behavior affects either of the women in his life. Both of them exist for his benefit, at some level or another, and he never seems concerned with reciprocating that support. I appreciate how thoroughly the concept of a "muse" is intertwined in this portion. The idea of the beautiful or at least sexually appealing women as a source of artistic inspiration is an old cliche, but here the author really breaks it down into its inherently predatory nature.

The third section complicates any possible resolution. Why does Yeong-Hye want to become a tree, and no longer be animal? Because, plants do not consume anything to live. Even as a vegetarian, she was still taking life from something else living. She was still acting in a predatory fashion, if not against a "conscious" being like an animal. Her desire to stop eating meat, tied back into her dream, is tied into her desire to escape from the predatory experience of womanhood. This is alluded to in the memory of the sisters lost in the woods. For Yeong-Hye, to end her own taking of life means an escape from the predation of a male society. However, we see that this is impossible. Not only because she is slowly dying, but also because of the burden this places on her sister. Ironically, Yeong-Hye's own desire to escape from the cycle with consumes her essence has caused her to become a burden to her sister. Yeong-Hye is now consuming essence from her sister in the same way the men of her life have consumed from her. There is no clear resolution.

Further Recommended Reading Please Look after Mom by Shin Kyung-Sook

the_homemaster
Dec 7, 2015
^ bang on.

chopbustabrown
Sep 14, 2011

I AM THE HEAT MISER
As a butcher, I would like to read this book this month. Need to buy it in Australia. Is it in common bookshops? I'm sick of asking for poo poo they don't have and is out of print etc.

Living Image
Apr 24, 2010

HORSE'S ASS

I don't know about Straya specifically but it's recently released and prize-winning. I've seen it in chain bookshops (Waterstone's etc.) in the UK.

WrenP-Complete
Jul 27, 2012

I found the thread! Fantastic!

In my defense, I am moving and many of my brain train station platforms (metaphor) have been occupied with other logistics.

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
Just finished it; that was a very hosed-up book, in a good way.

the_homemaster
Dec 7, 2015

chopbustabrown posted:

As a butcher, I would like to read this book this month. Need to buy it in Australia. Is it in common bookshops? I'm sick of asking for poo poo they don't have and is out of print etc.

Most good inner city independent book stores will have it (I saw it at Better Read Than Dead in Newtown and Kinokuniya in the city)

chopbustabrown
Sep 14, 2011

I AM THE HEAT MISER

the_homemaster posted:

Most good inner city independent book stores will have it (I saw it at Better Read Than Dead in Newtown and Kinokuniya in the city)

Ah thanks- I'm going to order it from the book depository because it is on special on there! I am quite excited to read this. Got some good reviews around the place.

Living Image
Apr 24, 2010

HORSE'S ASS

I loved this book. I don't have fantastic amounts to add because Mel said a lot of what I was thinking above.

External to the novel itself, the story of its translation is pretty cool. Debbie Smith learnt Korean after casting around for something to do afted uni and noticing Korean was rarely translated. With no previous experience and an entirely monolingual background she learnt Korean, moved to Korea for immersion, and now 7 years on she won half a Booker for this. Not bad going.

the_homemaster
Dec 7, 2015

chopbustabrown posted:

Ah thanks- I'm going to order it from the book depository because it is on special on there! I am quite excited to read this. Got some good reviews around the place.

As someone who works in the Australian publishing industry, this offends me. Deeply.

chopbustabrown
Sep 14, 2011

I AM THE HEAT MISER

the_homemaster posted:

As someone who works in the Australian publishing industry, this offends me. Deeply.

Ok ok I will go on a hunt for it today!!

chopbustabrown
Sep 14, 2011

I AM THE HEAT MISER
E: double post

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011
I skim read it and found the writing dreadful, characterization fake and inch-deep, and actual plot trite and mystified without a single idea that's worth something.

And the revelation at the end of the book? Are you kidding me? Take a random guess, whatever you say will be right 99% of the times. Call that originality.

I'm convinced this book won a prize because it's so short that they rewarded it because no one wants to work hard anymore. Paid reviewers LOVE this because you can read it in a couple of hours and feels like FREE MONEY. It's just a pretense of a book. An imitation of good writing and good plot. And then people love it because they love what some institution tells them to love. The book won a prize, so it must be GREAT.

I mean:
"Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way."

"the inferiority complex I used to have about the size of my penis"

"The only respect in which my wife was at all unusual was that she didn't like wearing a bra."

"Her voice as it sounded over the phone, always somehow more distinct than in person, never failed to send me into a state of sexual arousal"

"Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head … leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands … so I dug down into the earth. On and on … I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch so I spread my legs; I spread them wide … "

"Can only trust my breasts now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts, I’m okay."

"She was standing, motionless, in front of the fridge. The potential options all filled me with fear."


Is this good writing? Really? If you told me this was a parody I'd believe it.

You can look up the preview on Amazon, the book is so short you can basically read half of it for free. It VERY BARELY qualifies as a "novel" because its word count is just at the edge of a novella.

P.S.
You want that flavor of mysterious, evocative mystification, but AT LEAST done competently? Forget this book even exists and read "The Vorrh", by B. Catling.

Abalieno fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 14, 2016

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

I skim read it and found the writing dreadful, characterization fake and inch-deep, and actual plot trite and mystified without a single idea that's worth something.

And the revelation at the end of the book? Are you kidding me? Take a random guess, whatever you say will be right 99% of the times. Call that originality.

I'm convinced this book won a prize because it's so short that they rewarded it because no one wants to work hard anymore. Paid reviewers LOVE this because you can read it in a couple of hours and feels like FREE MONEY. It's just a pretense of a book. An imitation of good writing and good plot. And then people love it because they love what some institution tells them to love. The book won a prize, so it must be GREAT.

I mean:
"Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way."

"the inferiority complex I used to have about the size of my penis"

"The only respect in which my wife was at all unusual was that she didn't like wearing a bra."

"Her voice as it sounded over the phone, always somehow more distinct than in person, never failed to send me into a state of sexual arousal"

"Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head … leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands … so I dug down into the earth. On and on … I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch so I spread my legs; I spread them wide … "

"Can only trust my breasts now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts, I’m okay."

"She was standing, motionless, in front of the fridge. The potential options all filled me with fear."


Is this good writing? Really? If you told me this was a parody I'd believe it.

You can look up the preview on Amazon, the book is so short you can basically read half of it for free. It VERY BARELY qualifies as a "novel" because its word count is just at the edge of a novella.

source your quotes

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

source your quotes

Huh, what do you mean with that?

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

Huh, what do you mean with that?

Its a joke about how your review sounds like a terrible amazon review that you copied/pasted

Abalieno posted:

P.S.
You want that flavor of mysterious, evocative mystification, but AT LEAST done competently? Forget this book even exists and read "The Vorrh", by B. Catling.

If you think The Vegetarian is about mystery and mystification perhaps you should not skim read it and actually read it.

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

If you think The Vegetarian is about mystery and mystification perhaps you should not skim read it and actually read it.

It wants to imitate that dreamlike, introspective and symbolic atmosphere. I only think it's dreadful for what it achieves. Symbols are powerful because of what they hide. But being the actual deal here inch-deep, it's all fluff and mystification. Japanese horror B-movies have more creativity and depth.

The title is of course misleading. It's not about vegetarianism in ANY way, it's not even technically correct because she starts already as more like "vegan". But if they titled the book The Vegan then it would have been even more misleading.

So, it's just about a very subjective mental illness. The book does a poor job with it. The motivations are fluff. It doesn't play realistically, and the dreamlike effect is lost because the depth just isn't there, it's only imitation of what a million of other books do better.

There are reviewers that TRY to lift it up as a kind of metaphor of Korean culture and society. None of them explains how you could reconcile that theory with a story of very subjective mental illness that has absolutely no point of possible generalization to "everyone".

It's a sad story written with the purpose to shock, without ever earning it.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

It wants to imitate that dreamlike, introspective and symbolic atmosphere. I only think it's dreadful for what it achieves. Symbols are powerful because of what they hide. But being the actual deal here inch-deep, it's all fluff and mystification. Japanese horror B-movies have more creativity and depth.

I think you are putting your own tastes into the book more than allowing the book to speak to you. You seem to be hunting for a metaphysical symbolism to the text that isn't present.

quote:

The title is of course misleading. It's not about vegetarianism in ANY way

The Grapes of Wrath is not about very angry raisins either.

quote:

So, it's just about a very subjective mental illness. The book does a poor job with it. The motivations are fluff. It doesn't play realistically, and the dreamlike effect is lost because the depth just isn't there, it's only imitation of what a million of other books do better.

There are reviewers that TRY to lift it up as a kind of metaphor of Korean culture and society. None of them explains how you could reconcile that theory with a story of very subjective mental illness that has absolutely no point of possible generalization to "everyone".

It's a sad story written with the purpose to shock, without ever earning it.

Its not a subjective mental illness. Its a commentary on the nature of how human interaction is always in someway based on consumption and exploitation, and how Korean culture is particularly built around women being consumed for the benefit of men. There is an overwhelming feminist perspective in this book you seem to be completely glazing over.

I mean, do you honestly really believe there is a huge literary-industrial complex shilling out short awful books for a profit and that no prize-winner ever really deserves it rather than maybe you just didn't get the book?

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jun 14, 2016

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

Abalieno posted:

I skim read it and found the writing dreadful, characterization fake and inch-deep, and actual plot trite and mystified without a single idea that's worth something.

And the revelation at the end of the book? Are you kidding me? Take a random guess, whatever you say will be right 99% of the times. Call that originality.

I'm convinced this book won a prize because it's so short that they rewarded it because no one wants to work hard anymore. Paid reviewers LOVE this because you can read it in a couple of hours and feels like FREE MONEY. It's just a pretense of a book. An imitation of good writing and good plot. And then people love it because they love what some institution tells them to love. The book won a prize, so it must be GREAT.

I mean:
"Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way."

"the inferiority complex I used to have about the size of my penis"

"The only respect in which my wife was at all unusual was that she didn't like wearing a bra."

"Her voice as it sounded over the phone, always somehow more distinct than in person, never failed to send me into a state of sexual arousal"

"Well, I was in a dream, and I was standing on my head … leaves were growing from my body, and roots were sprouting from my hands … so I dug down into the earth. On and on … I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch so I spread my legs; I spread them wide … "

"Can only trust my breasts now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts, I’m okay."

"She was standing, motionless, in front of the fridge. The potential options all filled me with fear."


Is this good writing? Really? If you told me this was a parody I'd believe it.

You can look up the preview on Amazon, the book is so short you can basically read half of it for free. It VERY BARELY qualifies as a "novel" because its word count is just at the edge of a novella.

P.S.
You want that flavor of mysterious, evocative mystification, but AT LEAST done competently? Forget this book even exists and read "The Vorrh", by B. Catling.

I have not read this book nor read a plot description, but all those quotes make me want to read the book now

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Its a commentary on the nature of how human interaction is always in someway based on consumption and exploitation, and how Korean culture is particularly built around women being consumed for the benefit of men. There is an overwhelming feminist perspective in this book you seem to be completely glazing over.

It's a disservice to feminism. It's exploitative. It's hubris. It's just a representative act. A show with no actual meaning because, as I said, it's just imitation of an idea the writer thought would get the attention (as I suspect was the purpose of that title). I only find that manipulative in a bad, unsubtle way. It has an agenda and it's poorly written. Those you cite as important themes are only gross generalizations. The book is unable to earnestly engage with anything.

What surprises me is that very often you find these big prizes to books that are all form and no content. That happens. But this is a special case where the form itself, the writing line by line, is itself so plain and poor. It's explicitly bad, it's not like you need to have a sophisticated literary sense to notice.

And it's impossible EVEN to engage with the characters on a personal level. The woman not only is mentally ill, but she's completely unaware of everything around her. So whereas if you were mentally ill you'd notice how people react around you, you'd be self conscious, struggle to blend in and fail (and this could be an interesting and worthwhile story to tell). But this woman doesn't give a drat. She's ostensibly weird around people, she makes a deliberate exhibition of it. She's completely, utterly self-absorbed and without a trace of empathy. She's essentially not-human, because of how cold she is to everything that surrounds her. But then the book EXPLOITS this by making everyone else around her even more implausibly WORSE. So you'd expect the "sane" people to act differently, but nope. Her husband is a piece of poo poo who has even less empathy and not a single redeeming quality.

That's exploitative. It's a carefully picked selection of the worst human beings with the sole purpose to put the protagonist under an excess of negativity, just to justify what happens to her "internally".

But I don't want to offend anyone tastes. I explained the motivations why I think this is dreadful. It's not just a generalization on my part for a book "I didn't like". That's a subjective, legitimate reaction. But I do think this book is objectively terrible. Those are some of the reasons, so you can make your own mind.

I'm not going to try to persuade people that this book is bad. If you like it, all the better.

P.S.
"consumption and exploitation of women for the benefit of men" as a KOREAN culture thing? REALLY?! More like an universal human thing in the last thousands of years. So she played a game on the "metaphor", consumption = eating. "I don't like consumption of women, so I stop eating." Whoa! Booker Prize! This is exactly what I mean with "inch-deep".

Abalieno fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Jun 14, 2016

Living Image
Apr 24, 2010

HORSE'S ASS

Post history: 10,000 posts in the Malazan thread lmao

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

And it's impossible EVEN to engage with the characters on a personal level. The woman not only is mentally ill, but she's completely unaware of everything around her. So whereas if you were mentally ill you'd notice how people react around you, you'd be self conscious, struggle to blend in and fail (and this could be an interesting and worthwhile story to tell). But this woman doesn't give a drat. She's ostensibly weird around people, she makes a deliberate exhibition of it. She's completely, utterly self-absorbed and without a trace of empathy. She's essentially not-human, because of how cold she is to everything that surrounds her. But then the book EXPLOITS this by making everyone else around her even more implausibly WORSE. So you'd expect the "sane" people to act differently, but nope. Her husband is a piece of poo poo who has even less empathy and not a single redeeming quality.

That's exploitative. It's a carefully picked selection of the worst human beings with the sole purpose to put the protagonist under an excess of negativity, just to justify what happens to her "internally".

This is the problem though. These are not hand-picked awful human beings. These are flawed but realistic people meant to reflect the overall ideas of the text.

Yeong-Hye doesn't have agency not because of terrible exploitative writing, but because the idealized Korean woman is one who is subdued and complicit in her own abuse. The novel's very introduction sets out to show how she was "ideal" to her husband in her total passivity, and how a single act of generally meaningless rebellion becomes catastrophic. Her husband is not uniquely terrible, her husband is a normal man of society with the normal expectations of a man in that society. Seeing your wife as a vessel of prestige and household maintenance is not a unique evil, even just in Korea. Plenty of American men feel that way as well. As with the brother-in-law, plenty of men lust after women over than their wives. Plenty of men put their wives in a mother role and a different one in a purely sexual role. Plenty of men also justify the exploitation of their sexual partner as a person less worth considering than their domestic partner. There is an entire theory about it "madonna/whore". You seem to want these people to be uniquely evil because you are uncomfortable admitting they are actually quite normal and common people.

The total point of her passivity is to show the willingness of men to use women for themselves. If she was a more engaged character, not only would the only intellectual base of the plot dissolve, but she would not even be an effective reflection of societal expectations on women.

Abalieno posted:

P.S.
"consumption and exploitation of women for the benefit of men" as a KOREAN culture thing? REALLY?! More like an universal human thing in the last thousands of years. So she played a game on the "metaphor", consumption = eating. "I don't like consumption of women, so I stop eating." Whoa! Booker Prize! This is exactly what I mean with "inch-deep".

"Fishing is hard, life is hard" whoa Hemingway great inch-deep symbolism

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jun 14, 2016

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

because the idealized Korean woman is one who is subdued and complicit in her own abuse.

Yes, I agree with that.

quote:

how she was "ideal" to her husband in her total passivity

Yep, the husband being a blatantly piece of poo poo, and the protagonist made into a convenient symbol. That's what I call exploitative. The characters are just embodied concepts without any realism and respect.

quote:

how a single act of generally meaningless rebellion becomes catastrophic.

But it wasn't *meaningless* rebellion. It's self-inflicted pain. That's why the title is ridiculous. It's not like she decided to eat "healthily" and started to do something in a different way. The catastrophe is self-inflicted with minimal impact about what happens around herself. It's more like "doom" and destiny than cause-consequence. Is suicide "meaningless rebellion"?

She's essentially into self-harm. Being "vegetarian" is utterly misleading unless there's really someone out there who consider being vegetarian as an act of self-harm. Is self-harm an act of rebellion? And of course it's catastrophic, the concept starts that way regardless of what's around her. She's trying to kill herself, but of course people around her are so bad that certainly they don't help.

It's a legitimately sad story used in an illegitimate exploitative way.

quote:

The total point of her passivity is to show the willingness of men to use women for themselves. If she was a more engaged character, not only would the only intellectual base of the plot dissolve, but she would not even be an effective reflection of societal expectations on women.

I still consider this exploitative, convenient (for the book theme) and quite useless as an insightful and meaningful description of society.

And it's just a tragedy set in motion and described (and made into universal symbol), then you might as well read a newspaper and don't need the transformative art of fiction and a novel to do that.

Abalieno fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jun 14, 2016

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Corrode posted:

Post history: 10,000 posts in the Malazan thread lmao

To be fair it looks like the smallest Malazan book is 600 pages and several are over 1000! So definitely not for those lazy rear end reviewers who just want to read some short book and get paid cash money.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

But it wasn't *meaningless* rebellion. It's self-inflicted pain. That's why the title is ridiculous. It's not like she decided to eat "healthily" and started to do something in a different way. The catastrophe is self-inflicted with minimal impact about what happens around herself. It's more like "doom" and destiny than cause-consequence. Is suicide "meaningless rebellion"?

She's essentially into self-harm. Being "vegetarian" is utterly misleading unless there's really someone out there who consider being vegetarian as an act of self-harm. Is self-harm an act of rebellion? And of course it's catastrophic, the concept starts that way regardless of what's around her. She's trying to kill herself, but of course people around her are so bad that certainly they don't help.

It's a legitimately sad story used in an illegitimate exploitative way.

You seem to want the author to have written a book about a selfless family dealing with a mentally ill woman's habitual self-abuse rather than a focused meditation on the predatory nature of human relationships. Like, I can get if you do not think the book achieves its goals well, but you seem to think the author should have written an entirely different book.

Do you think The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is similarly exploitative?

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

a focused meditation on the predatory nature of human relationships.

On one side I considered those relationships utterly implausible, so neither the relationships nor the characters can work for me that way. It's a twisted, convenient representation, to my eyes.

Yep, I don't think human relationships work that way, given this context of the story. Even if you take that, it's superficial. I don't know how to better say it than repeating endlessly it's exploitative.

I do see what you mean, and you do see what I mean. The difference is the angle the writer forced on the story is utterly dishonest and artificial to me, so why it turns into that story into the one I described. She wants those themes, but because the characters are so fake it all falls apart. We interpret things differently because that angle is a false one for me.

You buy into that concept and its use, I don't.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

On one side I considered those relationships utterly implausible, so neither the relationships nor the characters can work for me that way. It's a twisted, convenient representation, to my eyes.

Yep, I don't think human relationships work that way. Even if you take that, it's superficial. I don't know how to better say it than repeating endlessly it's exploitative.

I do see what you mean, and you do see what I mean. The difference is the angle the writer forced on the story is utterly dishonest and artificial to me, so why it turns into that story into the one I described. She wants those themes, but because the characters are so fake it all falls apart. We interpret things differently because that angle is a false one for me.

You buy into that concept and its use, I don't.

I don't see how the characters are implausible to you. In a patriarchal society aren't men given the expectation that their worth can be measured by the woman they claim? In that same society aren't fathers measured by the suitability of their daughters? Aren't mothers measured by their dedication to their children? Aren't wives measured by their submission to their husbands?

Plenty of marriages have ended because they became socially inconvenient for one of the partners. Plenty of men have cheated on their wives while sexually and emotionally exploiting their mistresses. Does this make these people monstrous? Probably. Does it make them implausibly monstrous? Not at all.

What particularly about the husband or the brother-in-law comes off as inauthentic to you?

Abalieno
Apr 3, 2011

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I don't see how the characters are implausible to you. In a patriarchal society aren't men given the expectation that their worth can be measured by the woman they claim? In that same society aren't fathers measured by the suitability of their daughters? Aren't mothers measured by their dedication to their children? Aren't wives measured by their submission to their husbands?

Plenty of marriages have ended because they became socially inconvenient for one of the partners. Plenty of men have cheated on their wives while sexually and emotionally exploiting their mistresses. Does this make these people monstrous? Probably. Does it make them implausibly monstrous? Not at all.

Yeah, let's hammer themes into things. You certainly don't want to use a tiny brush.

So yes, I see those things. I don't see the hammer as the best tool to represent them.

quote:

What particularly about the husband or the brother-in-law comes off as inauthentic to you?

The brother-in-law I can't comment because I skipped that almost entirely. The rest, also because this book is so thin, events proceed like following this one directional convenient thread. So there's no depth also because there's no space. The husband isn't even in a "relationship", they are just there as strangers because the writer put them there. Very good writers in so little space would give at least the illusion of a relationship. She doesn't manage that.

But hey, this husband is so perceptive that he always thought his wife was alright before "turning vegetarian". The premise already falls apart.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Abalieno posted:

The brother-in-law I can't comment because I skipped that almost entirely. The rest, also because this book is so thin, events proceed like following this one directional convenient thread. So there's no depth also because there's no space. The husband isn't even in a "relationship", they are just there as strangers because the writer put them there. Very good writers in so little space would give at least the illusion of a relationship. She doesn't manage that.

You skipped a third of the book and are complaining about the underdevelopment of the plot and its characters.

Abalieno posted:

But hey, this husband is so perceptive that he always thought his wife was alright before "turning vegetarian". The premise already falls apart.

He thought his wife was alright because she never gave him any trouble. It's the whole point. He was never concerned with her well-being because how his wife felt didn't matter as long as she performed her role.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jun 14, 2016

Living Image
Apr 24, 2010

HORSE'S ASS

There's more than a touch of the 'tism about a guy complaining how a book titled The Vegetarian wasn't about a literal dictionary-definition vegetarian.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Corrode posted:

There's more than a touch of the 'tism about a guy complaining how a book titled The Vegetarian wasn't about a literal dictionary-definition vegetarian.

I am willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt but the whole angry spiel about reviewers and critics got me super annoyed.

Plus the whole skipping the middle of the book thing.

EDIT: Has made for a lively book club thread at least!

CestMoi
Sep 16, 2011

a touch of the 'tism

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

I do declare I have been overcome with a touch of the 'tism

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.
a speck of the spectrum if you will

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Nanomashoes
Aug 18, 2012

There's also a touch of the 'tism in calling your literature thread mates to make fun of the guy who doesn't like the book you like.

  • Locked thread