posted
So, I'm now in the middle of reading David Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius during moments of spare time in which I should be writing a paper on Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist which I just finished. Both are postmodern (ok, one was written 200 years before Andy Warhol started painting soupcans) deconstructions of the novel and attacks on the narrative tradition.
Part of me loves it. The random, wandering, jerky pace and the constant allusions to the "bookness" of the book, the authors' acknowledgements that we don't have to take them seriously while profiting from the fact that we do; all of this is deliciously appealing to my cynical self.
Part of me hates it. Part of me laments the loss of the novel-as-artwork with all the technical trappings and longs for a day when, even if we weren't always stupidly optimistic, we still regarded it as a perfectly viable state of being.
posted
I haven't read Diderot, but I have read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. For the most part, I enjoyed reading it. My only complaint is that I can't listen to that guy talk forever. It's not a book that you can sit down and read cover to cover, you've gotta take breaks.
Why did he write it that way? Why not a more traditional novel?
I don't know. Maybe he can't focus enough to write an entire novel. He's definitely got imagination and wit, but discipline? Maybe he just doesn't take himself seriously. Maybe he takes his unseriousness seriously. Maybe he's just a punk kid.
As for your bigger question, I have trouble addressing it because I don't at all know what's up in the literary world today. It's just one book, don't let it get you down. If there're others out there like it, well stay away from them. It just seems style and genre are all so relative anyway. What you remember in the end is the stories.
I don't know. Oh well.
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posted
i absolutely loved A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, although I'm much less fond of Eggers' subsequent novels. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought a copy for my younger brother. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
i liked his novel. i think You Shall Know Our Velocity was a very fun book. but i understand the struggle that comes with listening to him ramble.
**and i adore Heartbreaking Work...
[ March 22, 2004, 11:34 PM: Message edited by: Ben ]
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posted
*grins* I don't think I could have eaten that book faster than I read it. Not that I'd want to try...
Of course, I just thought it was a good and honest story with a lot of heart...I probably wouldn't enjoy a
quote:postmodern...deconstructions of the novel and attacks on the narrative tradition.
...guess I was tricked! As far as the way it was written...color me fooled once again; I believed this was not an easy story to tell and he simply told it in the way that it would come out the most honestly.
Now I sort of feel like a dumbass :\.
*wonders vaguely if pomo is in the head of the beholder...then realizes she's going to get trouble for that very very bad pun.*
Posts: 1676 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Hmm. Guess I just found yet another book I need to read.
I just started Oracle Night by Paul Auster. It's pretty fun so far. I enjoyed City of Glass so I thought I'd give this one a go.
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quote:Likewise, Priscilla Walton utilizes deconstructionist principles to demonstrate that the gaps in James's text "allow the readers to create meaning, to create, in effect, the text of The Wings of the Dove" (140). According to her, "the meaning of the text is literally absent" (140).
This epitomizes what I hate about deconstructionism. It's ridiculous and illogical to claim that a book has no meaning in and of itself.
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posted
I thoroughly agree, Jon Boy. Same thing with some of the ludicrous art I've seen - if there's nothing there beyond what "the viewer brings with him," why are we paying the author/artist at all?
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posted
Exactly. Basically, I could sit at home and imagine this book called The Wings of the Dove, and my perception of it would be just as valid as someone who actually read the book. In my opinion, the best art has levels of meaning: some of those levels are easily accessible, so anybody can experience it and say "this is what it means," and some of those levels require some digging to get to. To me, deconstructionism is the cheap way out—it's like blowing up a building and then commenting on the lack of a foundation.
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