tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5749081159166385909.post1932634153898896532..comments2024-01-09T17:32:54.394-08:00Comments on blahdeblahblah: Life is pain, Princess . . . rambling, spoilery notes on "The Buried Giant"Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16988552680114857345noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5749081159166385909.post-55424070101096679712015-03-24T18:56:46.856-07:002015-03-24T18:56:46.856-07:00Mr Wood does seem to be familiar with "Never ...Mr Wood does seem to be familiar with "Never Let Me Go" -- otherwise I might think he hadn't read Ishiguro before. And he may have a fair point about some of the language; if you can't accept that aspect of the book then you're going to have trouble taking any of it seriously. But I feel like you *need* that language to get at what is being gotten at; you need 300 pages of unironic "Princess" to get to "It’s all distant now, like a bird flown by and become a speck in the sky" which is a line I find simply beautiful. It's certainly one of those books that you have to allow to be the way it is--which I was willing to do while Mr Wood was not. His loss, I'd say.Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16988552680114857345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5749081159166385909.post-7537574531624044972015-03-24T18:51:41.916-07:002015-03-24T18:51:41.916-07:00Thank you for the p.s., dear sister, because I'...Thank you for the p.s., dear sister, because I'm not sure if I'd have figured out that it was you. I don't think I knew you read mysteries. I'm not so sure about the other authors featured in the Huffington Post piece -- I find that no one *talks* about writing as well as Scott does! I could be biased, of course. Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16988552680114857345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5749081159166385909.post-87094743928571697802015-03-24T10:09:15.155-07:002015-03-24T10:09:15.155-07:00Love the new blog place! Came across this:
htt...Love the new blog place! Came across this: <br /><br />http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bomb-magazine/real-talk-from-five-writers_b_6850036.html<br /><br />starts with comments by the author of the book you just finished, so maybe some of the other authors here are good? You would know far more than I on that topic, though, as I almost never read fiction....other than science fiction and mysteries.......alas.......also tried to check out the Seattle Times article on good, new books, but they won't let me open it, as I am not a subscriber....oh well. p.s. this is your sister....<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5749081159166385909.post-86340448272789885052015-03-24T09:56:38.635-07:002015-03-24T09:56:38.635-07:00Maybe Wood's problem is his possibly incorrect...Maybe Wood's problem is his possibly incorrect insistence that Ishiguro's novel is allegory, is a watered-down version of <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, and the books "failure" is a failure to be something that Ishiguro never intended. Wood has his own ideas about what a well-formed narrative is, does, should do. His harping about the "flat/bland" prose shows, I think, that he's never read any Japanese literature, which operates without rhetorical flourish. I liked James Wood for about fourty-five minutes a few years ago when I read his book <i>How Fiction Works</i>, but then I realized that Wood was being arbitrarily reductive and generalizing from his personal taste like everyone else. Speaking of allegory, I might point Wood to Plato's cave. And stuff.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.com