TWIB II-24: 3/17-3/23
Mar. 25th, 2008 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanTwo books this week: a much ballyhooed novel and a much better graphic novel.
1) The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Add Cormac McCarthy's The Road to the list of reasons why I have developed a strong allergic reaction to "literary fiction." One would have thought McCarthy had penned the answer to the meaning of life given all the popular and critical adulation The Road received, but the book is nothing more than science fiction cleverly marketed to an audience that turns its nose up at the genre...and is thus unable to spot how unoriginal and mediocre this novel really is. (Struggle for survival in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world? The origins of which are left largely unexplained? Yeah, that's never been done before.)
McCarthy relays his narrative in a series of choppy, disjointed vignettes, and although he is to be commended for showing in many places where he could have told, this abruptness, when combined with McCarthy's self-consciously affected style of writing ("Look at me! My negative contractions don't have apostrophes (although my possessives do)!) seriously annoys. I'm rather conflicted as whether the novel's length is a detriment or an asset--nothing much happens in its latter 200 pages that hasn't already happened in the first 40, but perhaps the grinding horror of The Road's setting would have been less convincing without the repetition. And although McCarthy's descriptions of this nightmare world can be downright engrossing, he frequently spoils the effect by ending these sections with overwrought "philosophically deep" observations in the "How can you go on living...if you're already among the living dead!?!" mold.
And then there's the problem of the ending. After 230-odd pages of having the message that humanity is a lost cause outside of the unnamed protagonist's love for his son drummed into one's head, an altruistic, empathetic couple just happens to be waiting in the wings just in time to provide a loving home for said son upon his father's death. Perhaps noting that this happy coincidence would strain the disbelief of even the most credulous reader--even without the novel's previously unflagging realism--McCarthy adds some throwaway dialogue to the effect that they've been trailing the boy and his pneumatic father for some time. Which begs a question--why on earth didn't they step in to help sooner--that is ultimately as unsatisfying as their appearance in the narrative would have been had it been left unexplained.
Final verdict: not at all deserving of the hype. And to anyone who's still reading this review and did enjoy the novel, please let me recommend that you check out some bona fide scifi/dystopian lit to see just how much better it can get.
2) Marvel 1602 - Neil Gaiman
In the interest of full disclosure, I have never really followed any of the "canon" Marvel comics. That said, this collection kind of makes me wish I had. Marvel 1602 takes a goodly number of Marvel superheroes and villains (thirty-two, if the authors' notes are to be believed) and transports them back in time to Elizabethan England. It makes for a rollicking good show, even for someone like me who can pick up on all the important hints (Ooh, that must be a reference to something important!), but has no idea as to what they're meant to reveal to me.
I'm going to venture a conclusion that this miniseries is to Marvel what American Gods was to world mythology. Gaiman weaves a typical Gaiman story with all the usual Gaiman elements: magic, high adventure, betrayals, imminent apocalypse, supernatural contracts and the clever ways in which one might weasel out of them. It kept me reading, highly entertained, into the wee hours of the morning; I can only imagine how fun it might seem to someone able to pick up on most of the references. Gaiman only fumbles once: by having Captain America argue passionately in favor of potentially destroying the world so that his 1602-era self can Help the colonistsbring genocide to the Native American populations create the America he loves and has vowed to protect bring genocide to the Native Americans and thus create the America he loves and has vowed to protect, but other than that, this is some pretty solid storytelling, with top notch art and some neat goodies in the collected edition.
That will be all.
1) The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Add Cormac McCarthy's The Road to the list of reasons why I have developed a strong allergic reaction to "literary fiction." One would have thought McCarthy had penned the answer to the meaning of life given all the popular and critical adulation The Road received, but the book is nothing more than science fiction cleverly marketed to an audience that turns its nose up at the genre...and is thus unable to spot how unoriginal and mediocre this novel really is. (Struggle for survival in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world? The origins of which are left largely unexplained? Yeah, that's never been done before.)
McCarthy relays his narrative in a series of choppy, disjointed vignettes, and although he is to be commended for showing in many places where he could have told, this abruptness, when combined with McCarthy's self-consciously affected style of writing ("Look at me! My negative contractions don't have apostrophes (although my possessives do)!) seriously annoys. I'm rather conflicted as whether the novel's length is a detriment or an asset--nothing much happens in its latter 200 pages that hasn't already happened in the first 40, but perhaps the grinding horror of The Road's setting would have been less convincing without the repetition. And although McCarthy's descriptions of this nightmare world can be downright engrossing, he frequently spoils the effect by ending these sections with overwrought "philosophically deep" observations in the "How can you go on living...if you're already among the living dead!?!" mold.
And then there's the problem of the ending. After 230-odd pages of having the message that humanity is a lost cause outside of the unnamed protagonist's love for his son drummed into one's head, an altruistic, empathetic couple just happens to be waiting in the wings just in time to provide a loving home for said son upon his father's death. Perhaps noting that this happy coincidence would strain the disbelief of even the most credulous reader--even without the novel's previously unflagging realism--McCarthy adds some throwaway dialogue to the effect that they've been trailing the boy and his pneumatic father for some time. Which begs a question--why on earth didn't they step in to help sooner--that is ultimately as unsatisfying as their appearance in the narrative would have been had it been left unexplained.
Final verdict: not at all deserving of the hype. And to anyone who's still reading this review and did enjoy the novel, please let me recommend that you check out some bona fide scifi/dystopian lit to see just how much better it can get.
2) Marvel 1602 - Neil Gaiman
In the interest of full disclosure, I have never really followed any of the "canon" Marvel comics. That said, this collection kind of makes me wish I had. Marvel 1602 takes a goodly number of Marvel superheroes and villains (thirty-two, if the authors' notes are to be believed) and transports them back in time to Elizabethan England. It makes for a rollicking good show, even for someone like me who can pick up on all the important hints (Ooh, that must be a reference to something important!), but has no idea as to what they're meant to reveal to me.
I'm going to venture a conclusion that this miniseries is to Marvel what American Gods was to world mythology. Gaiman weaves a typical Gaiman story with all the usual Gaiman elements: magic, high adventure, betrayals, imminent apocalypse, supernatural contracts and the clever ways in which one might weasel out of them. It kept me reading, highly entertained, into the wee hours of the morning; I can only imagine how fun it might seem to someone able to pick up on most of the references. Gaiman only fumbles once: by having Captain America argue passionately in favor of potentially destroying the world so that his 1602-era self can Help the colonists
That will be all.