I'm starting to find it harder and harder to keep a really open mind and read fiction that glorifies terrible people, so for instance I've never once had any interest in reading American Psycho. I certainly didn't like Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars, and I probably would have been better off never knowing it even existed. I suppose it is true that my echo chamber is shrinking, and I have less and less tolerance for any artist/writer truly on the conservative side of the spectrum (and this even extends to non-ironic portrayals of conservative-types). At the same time I find straight parodies of the Orange One and his hapless minions to be just a waste of time (shooting fish in a barrel basically). I just don't want to read anything that gets into the heads of Trumpsters in any way, ironically or not. I suppose using this logic I would have dropped Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk where the family was pretty much made up of "deplorables." In that sense, I suppose I am no longer really a reader open to brand new experiences, because I have closed myself off to so much. Now I don't literally want every character to be a reflection of myself and my worldview, but I have certainly ruled out a lot.* I guess I might still be willing to spend some time with centre-right characters (and definitely the extinct Rockefeller Republicans) but not hard-right ones or Ayn Rand-type libertarians, but even this wouldn't be my first choice, as I prefer keeping to the company of centre-left types.
And beyond this, I don't like characters that are feckless and expect others to take care of them (most of the artistic husbands in Comyns's novels and it certainly seems that Gully Jimson from Cary's The Horse's Mouth fits this pattern as well). And I am practically allergic to children who hate school and/or just drop out. Does that mean I only want to read about people who would only make the same life choices I would? I hope not, though it is somewhat hard to tell. I see that a few years back I was writing about characters that I simply hated (and in a few cases I simply dropped the novel -- I can add William Trevor's Mrs. Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel to that list).
But then there is a longer list of characters that I either despise or just would refuse to spend any time with (in real life certainly) because they make so many bad life choices -- and in most cases then blame others or just "Fate" for their misfortune. I am truly struggling with whether to push on with Joyce Cary's first trilogy as I am so turned off by both Sara Monday, the narrator of Herself Surprised, and Gully Jimson, the self-pitying artist (or rather enfant terrible**) who gets plenty of screen time in Herself Surprised and then his own novel, The Horse's Mouth. But it is considered such a classic in the canon that I think I will push through. I have decided to never read his second trilogy, and I have put Mister Johnson (featuring a foolish civil servant in Africa) so far down on my list I probably will never get to it either.†
I'm finding it harder and harder to take pleasure in the foibles of literary figures. In a few cases, this could be because I agree it is somewhat ugly to "punch down," and mock a woman from the servant class for instance, which is one way of looking at Herself Surprised, though I should make it clear I don't agree on any blanket prohibition on punching down. More often, I just think that these characters have absolutely no common sense and very few normal people would end up in such situations and thus this spoils my enjoyment. Quite a few farces take things just that step too far, though the really clever ones stop just short of the line (and Boeing Boeing was a pleasant surprise along those lines). So again, I have added some red lines that also kind of restrict what I will really open myself to. I suppose in the end it really only hurts myself when I keep narrowing the scope of what I want to read, but at the same time I can tell that I will run out of time and I should probably not bother reading novels that really rub me the wrong way.
* One important caveat is that this largely only applies to novels and plays set in North America or Western Europe. I don't have a great sense of how people would react in different cultures and don't put as many pre-conceived restrictions on non-Western novels. And novels written before 1900 also get a bit of a pass in that the politics of the day were so different. That said, I can assure you that if I run across a novel with a pro-slavery slant, I am not going to bother finishing it.
** It probably goes without saying that I don't hold with the idea that just because artists or musicians or actors are talented, this makes up for it if they are deeply unpleasant people. I might have been a tiny bit more sympathetic to that view when I was younger, but absolutely not now, which makes me think that The Horses's Mouth will be pretty hard going. I think I'll still watch the movie version, especially as it is only a bit over 90 minutes, and I am curious what Alec Guinness (who wrote the screenplay!) did with the material and how many rough edges did he sand off.
† And indeed after the entire plot was spoiled by Goodreads, I can't imagine spending any time with this book. I doubt I will ever read more Cary after I get through the trilogy, but if I end up with endless time on my hands (post-retirement), maybe I'll give A Fearful Joy a go.
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