Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Not long after I joined this forum I unwisely said that I quite liked some of McEwan's novels and I think I'd have got a better reception if I'd admitted to enjoying child porn.
Writers you hate
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Not long after I joined this forum I unwisely said that I quite liked some of McEwan's novels and I think I'd have got a better reception if I'd admitted to enjoying child porn.
IdleRich
IdleRich
He's the one that does stick in my craw. I read a criticism once which I thought was quite insightful - beyond the usual 'smug wanker' stuff, which is perfectly valid - saying that McEwan is a good short story writer who has recognised that to get real money and acclaim you need to write novels. So he spins out what are essentially short stories to novel (actually more like novella) length, which is why his novels feel so thin and short and smug. Well it doesn't explain the last one actually come to think of it.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
"Saturday" is the one I always remember as being compulsively readable, impressively written, but ending (spoiler alert) with a psychotic criminal breaking into the brain surgeon's house, about to rape his daughter or something, then being stopped in their tracks by a poem (Matthew Arnold?), having a seizure and finally having his brain operated on by aforementioned surgeon.
What he IS good at is creepy tension. The incursion/eruption of violence into a sheltered life.
What he IS good at is creepy tension. The incursion/eruption of violence into a sheltered life.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, I remember Black Dogs being pretty creepy. I liked The Child in Time too. Maybe his reputation would be better around these parts if he'd suddenly died or something ca. 1995?
IdleRich
IdleRich
No I'm joking. I quite liked Tropic of Cancer and I feel it fits into a very recognisable category which includes... I dunno, some Bukowski, um, Ask The Dust (John Fante), er, maybe even Thief's Journal by Genet, perhaps Journey to the End of Night (Celine) and so on and so forth some Burroughs. Basically angry guy bumming around, getting drunk (or otherwise fucked up) and pontificating on how only he understands... anything really. Not sure it's my favourite genre but the good ones hit the spot every now and again.
I read Tropic of Capricorn and thought it was patchy. There were some great bits with him going off about writing or whatever, but then I'd have to slog through sections of him going on and on about how he imagined floating on a sea of cunt, looking up at a sky of cunt and the sun was a big cunt and everything smelled like cunt because the universe was just one giant cunt.
Probably why I left the Denis Johnson, I really like buk, love his writing style!