Sam's Backup Page (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cblj_backup) wrote2011-08-09 12:56 pm
cblj_backup) wrote2011-08-09 12:56 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
Okay, so I really tried hard to get into In The Land Of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, but I give up.
It should be really interesting. Synthetic languages! Crazy historical figures! Klingon and Esperanto! And yet.
It seems to me that I keep encountering books which -- whether or not they actually are -- feel like expanded doctoral dissertations. There seem to be some common characteristics, like only vaguely explaining important concepts, or taking random digressions that are clearly mostly there to satisfy the writer's sense of humour (I am guilty of this myself, so I understand the urge). Also, these books are about historical events or trying to trace historical developments but never, ever actually present things in historical order. The attitude seems to be something on the lines of "Which makes the best anecdote? Let's put THAT first! We'll give the background a few chapters later."
It makes me a little nuts. And it makes the book very hard to follow, especially when chapter one already left me in the dust due to being mostly about math rather than about language.
So yeah, that was In The Land Of Invented Languages.
Coworker Crush loaned me Bret Easton Ellis's "Less Than Zero" yesterday, which I have to say at least had "it's not boring!" going for it. I was supposed to go to a concert last night but it got rained out, so instead I went home, curled up in a chair, and read for most of the evening.
It's a bit surreal reading Less Than Zero after Rules Of Attraction, because again, they're interrelated -- Rules Of Attraction is about events at a fictional liberal-arts school, and Less Than Zero is about one student's winter vacation from that school, set slightly earlier in the timeline. There's much the same milieu, though: parties, drugs, endless searching for something to make one feel alive. It's also Ellis's first book -- written when he was nineteen, published when he was twenty-one, and while I can pick out some flaws I am still insanely jealous of his talent. There's not a lot I wouldn't do to have been as talented at 19 as he was.
The book is, I think, along the same lines as Rules Of Attraction in terms of social commentary, so there's not a whole lot to say about it that I haven't already said. I'd have to do some research, but I do think it spawned the "disaffected suburban teen" genre that seemed so popular when I was a suburban teen, and which I loathed. I have a much, much harder time relating to the kids in this book than in the other books I've read, mostly because I think they're spoiled brats. I get where he's going with the book, in terms of cultural criticism, and it's not that I find the characters objectionable -- I just don't see why I should care about people who seem to me to be willfully blinding themselves. I can't sympathise with them the way I could with the heroes of the other books.
I do find Julian, the young male prostitute, more interesting than the others. He's not really any different in personality, since he grew up with them, but he's reached a situational difference: he is living without the numbing cushion of money that prevents them from maturing. Clay takes a little side-trip into Julian's life, but even then he knows he can leave at any time. Julian is stuck, alone, trying to survive in a world where he has no control over what he is made to feel. I don't think there's any solid conclusion Julian's arc offers, but it's certainly to me the most engrossing arc in the book.
One critic referred to Blair, Clay's erstwhile girlfriend, as the "moral center" of Ellis's work, which strikes me as odd. Blair is barely two-dimensional, though her archetype is common enough in the novels so far: she's built up an idealised relationship with someone who is near-totally oblivious to it. Lauren and Paul both have these to greater or lesser degrees in Rules of Attraction, and Luis seems to have done the same to Patrick in American Psycho (depending on how accurate you think Patrick's retelling is).
Final Verdict: Less Than Zero is a really fast read, which is just as well because nobody in it is terribly likeable as a character. It's a good book, but it has its flaws, and I wouldn't start out reading it as one's first introduction to Ellis. On the other hand, more and more I'm coming to see that reading any of these books in isolation -- which can be done easily -- means losing out on a larger subtext to the set.
It's a strange experience, because the whole grouping is like a little self-contained...codex, almost. Ellis has written six novels and one book of short stories in about 25 years, all interlinked in some fashion, and there's not much available about them or him online, comparatively speaking. It's a bit like playing a puzzle game like Myst or Legend of Zelda -- nothing quite makes sense until you see everything together.
It should be really interesting. Synthetic languages! Crazy historical figures! Klingon and Esperanto! And yet.
It seems to me that I keep encountering books which -- whether or not they actually are -- feel like expanded doctoral dissertations. There seem to be some common characteristics, like only vaguely explaining important concepts, or taking random digressions that are clearly mostly there to satisfy the writer's sense of humour (I am guilty of this myself, so I understand the urge). Also, these books are about historical events or trying to trace historical developments but never, ever actually present things in historical order. The attitude seems to be something on the lines of "Which makes the best anecdote? Let's put THAT first! We'll give the background a few chapters later."
It makes me a little nuts. And it makes the book very hard to follow, especially when chapter one already left me in the dust due to being mostly about math rather than about language.
So yeah, that was In The Land Of Invented Languages.
Coworker Crush loaned me Bret Easton Ellis's "Less Than Zero" yesterday, which I have to say at least had "it's not boring!" going for it. I was supposed to go to a concert last night but it got rained out, so instead I went home, curled up in a chair, and read for most of the evening.
It's a bit surreal reading Less Than Zero after Rules Of Attraction, because again, they're interrelated -- Rules Of Attraction is about events at a fictional liberal-arts school, and Less Than Zero is about one student's winter vacation from that school, set slightly earlier in the timeline. There's much the same milieu, though: parties, drugs, endless searching for something to make one feel alive. It's also Ellis's first book -- written when he was nineteen, published when he was twenty-one, and while I can pick out some flaws I am still insanely jealous of his talent. There's not a lot I wouldn't do to have been as talented at 19 as he was.
The book is, I think, along the same lines as Rules Of Attraction in terms of social commentary, so there's not a whole lot to say about it that I haven't already said. I'd have to do some research, but I do think it spawned the "disaffected suburban teen" genre that seemed so popular when I was a suburban teen, and which I loathed. I have a much, much harder time relating to the kids in this book than in the other books I've read, mostly because I think they're spoiled brats. I get where he's going with the book, in terms of cultural criticism, and it's not that I find the characters objectionable -- I just don't see why I should care about people who seem to me to be willfully blinding themselves. I can't sympathise with them the way I could with the heroes of the other books.
I do find Julian, the young male prostitute, more interesting than the others. He's not really any different in personality, since he grew up with them, but he's reached a situational difference: he is living without the numbing cushion of money that prevents them from maturing. Clay takes a little side-trip into Julian's life, but even then he knows he can leave at any time. Julian is stuck, alone, trying to survive in a world where he has no control over what he is made to feel. I don't think there's any solid conclusion Julian's arc offers, but it's certainly to me the most engrossing arc in the book.
One critic referred to Blair, Clay's erstwhile girlfriend, as the "moral center" of Ellis's work, which strikes me as odd. Blair is barely two-dimensional, though her archetype is common enough in the novels so far: she's built up an idealised relationship with someone who is near-totally oblivious to it. Lauren and Paul both have these to greater or lesser degrees in Rules of Attraction, and Luis seems to have done the same to Patrick in American Psycho (depending on how accurate you think Patrick's retelling is).
Final Verdict: Less Than Zero is a really fast read, which is just as well because nobody in it is terribly likeable as a character. It's a good book, but it has its flaws, and I wouldn't start out reading it as one's first introduction to Ellis. On the other hand, more and more I'm coming to see that reading any of these books in isolation -- which can be done easily -- means losing out on a larger subtext to the set.
It's a strange experience, because the whole grouping is like a little self-contained...codex, almost. Ellis has written six novels and one book of short stories in about 25 years, all interlinked in some fashion, and there's not much available about them or him online, comparatively speaking. It's a bit like playing a puzzle game like Myst or Legend of Zelda -- nothing quite makes sense until you see everything together.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject