I've mentioned previously that I really should drop books sooner. It's actually fairly clear to me early on whether I am going to enjoy a book or not. I can think of very, very few examples where a book "turned around," and I enjoyed it more by the end. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any, but there are probably a few. It's definitely more common where the ending is fairly disappointing, bringing down an otherwise decent novel. (While it wasn't the only problem with this massive novel, the lack of a proper ending for The Man without Qualities definitely doesn't help.)
At any rate, I had a copy of Zorba the Greek (probably from another book exchange). I was debating reading it or just putting it out in the Little Free Library. I finally decided to give it a shot. I definitely agree with the critics of the novel that this is impossibly dated and frankly boring (once you strip out the parts of Zorba saying that women are basically just beasts of burden and are made for men's pleasure, there isn't a whole lot left). I bailed prior to the most appalling part of the book where a woman suffers mob violence (and is actually beheaded) because she has the audacity to reject one suitor's advances and choose another lover. Bleech. Not for me. It is true there are some connections to Rabelais throughout, but Rabelais (while certainly sexist) doesn't strike me as an out and out misogynist like Zorba (and frankly the author...), and there are plenty of other, you know, adventures in Gargantua and Pantagruel. Still, I made it about 100 pages in before I couldn't take any more.
In contrast, I knew within a few pages that George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo was an appallingly pretentious work that basically gives literary fiction a bad name. I think it is shocking that it won the Booker. There are basically two modes of writing here. You have lots of voices of ghosts hanging out in the bardo. It took me a while to understand that the small print underneath their reminiscing is there to identify who is talking. Ultimately, there are close to 160 different voices gabbling over each other, though I only made it as far as meeting four (including little Willie Lincoln). Pretty much all these spirits seem unaware that they are dead, which suggests either they are incredibly dense or just in denial. (This part reminded me a bit of Spoon River Anthology, though I thought Edgar Lee Masters did it better or at least not at such ridiculous length.) Then there are sections that basically read as reportage of Abe and Mary Lincoln and their doings in Washington on the eve of the Civil War. What's a bit confusing is that this appears to be stitched together out of actual contemporary diaries and academic papers/monographs, though I believe most are invented by Saunders (even this is annoying since he really shouldn't be mixing actual references with made-up ones). Since the citations are in the same tiny print as the spirit names, it is all quite confusing. It's possible that if this was a straight-forward account of Lincoln's grief at the death of his son, I would have been a bit more interested, but this double scaffolding seems so unnecessary and frankly alienating. So it will go out to join Zorba in the Little Free Library, and I will move onto books that are more to my taste. I'm about 1/3 through Ovid's Metamorphoses and the next novel will be Powers' Morte d'Urban.
Oh, it's definitely not at the same level of reaction, but I've been browsing Howard Barker's work and decided that there is no way I am paying Shaw Festival prices to see Victory. I might have gone to see it at a independent black box theatre (for $20 or so), but I really don't think his indulging in a bit of the old ultra-violence here and there appeals to me. I can safely pass on this play. (And unless Stratford cuts its prices on Henry VI, I won't be going to that either, so this will be the first summer in five or six years that I am not going to either festival.)
In other disappointing book news, Goodreads has changed the way that they archive their cover images, and I can't seem to directly link to them (at the bottom of the blog). I've found alternative covers for a few books I'm reading, but this is adding an awful lot of time to something that used to be simple, so I'll probably drop the Currently Reading and Book on Deck features if things continue on the same way. It's just a small thing, but still an annoying change I don't want to have to deal with.
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