Cry Me a River or 49 (Not Even a Half-Assed Review)
I just give up.
I tried one more time to make it through The Crying of Lot 49. How hard could that be? It's not a terribly long book. It should have been a two day affair, and then we could move on. Alas, I find it a tedious, contrived bore. It's not so much that I couldn't just knuckle down and finish it, but every time I look at it sitting there, I get the urge to do almost anything else but read it. I'm serious—I think I might actually prefer cleaning the bathrooms.
I'm sorry to have revealed myself as a literary square to any Pynchon fans out there. I'll try to find a good home for it somewhere; I'm sure somebody else has more sticktoitiveness than I do.
I'm sure there would be a fine blog meme in this one: name a popular or acclaimed book that you just can't make it through.
I tried one more time to make it through The Crying of Lot 49. How hard could that be? It's not a terribly long book. It should have been a two day affair, and then we could move on. Alas, I find it a tedious, contrived bore. It's not so much that I couldn't just knuckle down and finish it, but every time I look at it sitting there, I get the urge to do almost anything else but read it. I'm serious—I think I might actually prefer cleaning the bathrooms.
I'm sorry to have revealed myself as a literary square to any Pynchon fans out there. I'll try to find a good home for it somewhere; I'm sure somebody else has more sticktoitiveness than I do.
I'm sure there would be a fine blog meme in this one: name a popular or acclaimed book that you just can't make it through.
posted by EB at 11:11 PM
Site Feed
6 Comments:
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. And Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. Bleh. I would rather poke my eyeballs out with chopsticks than try to read either of those books again.
Oh my goodness. After reading your post, I realized that I had never made it through Brave New World either.
Maybe my librarian friends can warn me off before I even try next time.
Noting also that you've picked up this thread on your LJ.
What I find funny is that all the books everyone else can't get through - I CAN'T EITHER!
I think there's a conspiracy out there of people who strive to make other people feel inadequate about their reading preferences. I, for one, refuse to bow down to them! The emperor wears no clothes!
/rant off
I hate Pynchon. I couldn't even read him for my master's exams. Thankfully, we only made it to Hemmingway.
What's bugging you about CL49? Even if you aren't into the "but, what does it all mean??" stuff it's stil a fairly interesting story. Or, so I remember.
I wrote my BA English thesis at Bryn Mawr on Pynchon so I am probably biased...
Oh, TH, I just think it was just plain dumb and tedious. Other words that come to mind are plodding, contrived, unstimulating. Maybe the later sections of the book are better...I'm not going to get there to find out, though.
Post a Comment
<< Home