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[icepixie]

Several years ago, I read this, nodding my head along with much of it. However, I always thought that maybe The Shipping News was getting a bad rap in that article, and perhaps it has some good points. (Mostly because it's set in Newfoundland, and I apparently have a weakness for Canada [c.f. S&A, dS, etc.].)

Ohhhhhhh, no. No, every word in that article concerning this book is true. I tried to read it this week, and got about thirty pages in before I had to give up. It was either that or throw it across the room. During those thirty pages, my chief thought was, "I'd like to buy a verb, please." Proulx can't seem to go more than a paragraph without a sentence fragment: "A great damp loaf of a body." "Then, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot." "Growls from his shirt." Lord. Fragments are fine in small doses, but not all the time. Then they become less for effect than for self-conscious pretention.

On the other hand, Peter Ho Davies's The Welsh Girl, which I also read last week, is wonderful. It's set in Wales, during WWII. It involves a German POW, a Welsh girl (obviously), a German expat kinda-Jew (he has complicated feelings about his identity), and an English child evacuee, among other people. There is a not-exactly love story, an escape from a prison camp, and an unsuccessful interrogation of Rudolf Hess, among other things. It's hard to describe, but it's very good nonetheless.

Now I am on to Ivanhoe, for real this time, because it's part of the syllabus for the coming semester's 19th Century BritLit course. I haven't read a book while underlining passages and annotating them in over two years. Strange how quickly it comes back.

*

In completely different news, go listen to this, because it's purty.

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link; I also found myself nodding along with most of it. That is why I read very little contemporary fiction, and why I don't even usually feel bad about it. (Also why I could never make it in the publishing industry!)

Funnily enough, I just started trying to read All the Pretty Horses today on my lunch break, and... yeah. I thought it was just me, but so far it reads like a bad Faulkner parody. Myers actually picked out a lot of the very sentences that made me stop and go, "What the fuck? That's not even good writing!"

[icepixie]

Yes, Myers makes many a good point there. If I ever get into fiction publishing, it will have to be either poetry or SFF fiction, because I can't stomach much of the crap like Proulx or McCarthy. (I tried reading All the Pretty Horses some years back; didn't get far.)

My usual tactic is to stay away from anything nominated for the Pulitzer/Booker/PEN/etc. prizes, which cuts down on much of the crap. :D

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, there are certain awards that I trust more. Like, chances are if a book won the Booker, I'm going to like it--anyway, chances are better than with the National Book Award or the PEN/anything. The National Book Critics Circle Award also seems to be a decent predictor for me, while the Pulitzer's hit or miss, and the Tonys are pretty good for plays (but often terrible for musicals). I wish I knew more about what goes on behind the scenes of them all, and how they're different.

[icepixie]

I don't know enough about the more general awards to really be able to judge on them; I've just not had very good luck with modern (>20 years old) ones that I know have won or been nominated for awards. (Though come to think of it, The Welsh Girl was actually long-listed for the Booker Prize. Hmmm.)

I do have a preference for awards within the sci-fi community, though: I generally like Hugo award-winners far more than Nebula award-winners. I think the key there is that the Nebulas are chosen by published authors, and the Hugos by any fan who cares to pay the money to join WorldCon and have a vote. (At least, I think that's how it works. I know it's chosen by fans, anyway.) That said, I do have an issue with the way the Hugos always seem to be awarded to the same set of authors year after year, even if many of them are my favorites. (I guess that's what comes a voting committe made up of about 700 random fans...) But a lot of the Nebula-winners...bleh.