middlesex

[firsty]

i am 120 pp into this novel by j eugenides. i like it. there are parts where i see that he slips in the narrative, forces things or says too much. thats probably why the damn thing is so damn big. but i like it, i like the characters a lot, and i think the back story is very intriguing, while the front story lingers there with much promise, which i hope is delivered.

but while i like the story a lot, i dont find the writing as strong as i had hoped. it seems a little flat.

other than that, it'll probably be the longest book i've read since "it".

[singlemalt]

i've been having a problem with long books for the past several years. i have a hard time devoting months to a book. although i'm a big Hem fan, i haven't read for whom the bell tolls (which i know you're a big fan of) because i look at it and say "shit i'd rather read something that will take me one-third of the time."

this is weird because the sun also rises and a moveable feast are two of my all time favorites.

weird.

[firsty]

ok, i'm about 4/5 of the way thru this book now, and am enjoying the writing much more than in the beginning. i think i hate epic novels. epic novels are for assholes, i think. fuck them. if you like epic novels, i hate you and you should crawl into a rabbit hole and have them make fun of you for enjoying epic novels. middlesex is an epic novel, but i dont think it needed to be an epic novel. or at least it might have been better if it were done more creatively. it's too fucking linear. it goes from here to there. or at least it does so far. maybe the ending is creative. i dont know. i won't know until i get there. but i really think that the 2nd half of this book kicks ass and that i could have done without the first half in general, interesting as it was. the strength of the writing is in the 2nd half, the narrator's own story, not those of his parents and grandparents. he's a good writer. but epic does not fit him, not here anyway. i felt this way about chabon's "kavalier and clay", too, and i'm a big chabon fan. at least until he started getting all fucking dave eggers and then also with the lying at book readings and stuff. but chabon is still a good writer. eugenedes is a good writer, too. but i could have started at the middle chapter and not have been lost, and that makes those first 200 pages pretty nonessential as far as words go, and nonessential words are a waste of my time.

[singlemalt]

that's what i say. if you had more time you could do other stuff. like, watch the sopranos or something.

[stilltrucking]

I read a philip roth novel this month. proud of myself I sold a ccouple miiion paper clips this month and still managed to find time to read a book. I have no trouble with spending a month on a long book, it is those fucking short ones that I been plucking away at for thirty years, Last year I read the Da Vinci code. It was great it made me feel so smart that I could read a big long book like that in four hours. I hear he is not a nice guy, being sued for the plague. you know it is pretty sad when an old man like me uses cute emoticons for wrods he cant spelll like Plagiarism. The year of the cuban missle criss the year I lost my true love, i read War And Peace, such a sweet restpite for the noise, the ringing in my ears.

Yep you are right long novels are for young asshwoles, or so it was for me.

[firsty]

philip roth yay. havent read him in several years, but he's a damn good writer. that dan brown is a hack, tho.

i already plan time for the sopranos, singlemalt butters scotch, sir. what reading books that are too long does to my schedule is prevents me from starting my grand plan of making all the hippies drink motor oil.

[stilltrucking]

Well, it was a long book though. I personaly would like to see snobs drink motor oil. I had fun reading the Duh Vinci code. It felt so dam good to speed read for a change. Maybe my favorite long book was about three thousand pages in the Modern Library edition.

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section ... wsid=11419

I loved reading Gibbon. The downward spiral would be broken now and then by some political genius that would restore the fortunes of the empire for a generation and then it would continue down after his death.

I love that tagline single one. I have already ripped it off a couple of times.

[firsty]

i just have to say, because it's out there...this middlesex book is about a guy who was born a hermaphrodite and raised as a girl. he thought until he was about 14 that he was a girl (this is a novel, tho). so, the problem for me is reading the scenes where he has a childhood crush on one of his friends, who happens to be a girl. so we have 2 13yr old girls, touching and kissing and all that, eventually it gets pretty hot and heavy. which is a lesbian scene. of course, they're not both really girls. and, of course, theyre both 13.

was it correct for me to not get turned on by this or should i have been turned on by it? whats the deal?

[stilltrucking]

I drink a quart of motor oil every morning. A breakfast of champions.

I don't have a clue about middlesex. I thought itwas some 19th century British novel

was it correct for me to not get turned on by this or should i have been turned on by it? whats the deal?

Well I think that is a strange question. Do you mean you thought it was some kind of child pornography?

[firsty]

ok now i'm finished.

i have to say i'm disappointed. i read a lot of good reviews on this book, formal and informal. it won the pulitzer prize, too.

this is the theme, apparently: the only thing that matters in life is death.

basically, a bunch of crazy family secrets render themselves meaningless because people die anyway, eventually.

thats all well and good, but it makes the entire book, which is one person's effort to come to terms with his gender identity, entirely anticlimactic. and, given the length of the book, i can only add "ugh."

i think this could have been a short story. it wasnt a bad piece of writing, but it was sort of flat, the story, the tension, the progression of plot. i dont recommend it.

now i'm reading "the curious incident of the dog in the night time". it's ok so far, even if it is just an example of a o aint i so clever writer ripping off vonnegut. i'm not sick of it yet, plus, it's shortish. i'll keep you posted.

[firsty]

forgot to add: one thing that i was impressed with about this book was that the narrative went from female to male without my noticing it, but with a distinct shift in tone. you know from the first sentence that the person was "born twice, first as a female, then as a male." and the transition in the story is pretty clear. but the author is able to quickly shift to a male tone of voice from a female tone of voice, and, reading it, it felt different. i have to go back and see exactly how he did that. he might have just started using shorter, more direct sentences. but i have to see. that trick impressed me.

[singlemalt]

i think he used the jedi mind trick on you. kind of like the whole deal with luke and lea being siblings. but maybe they were just one person with both "parts" like the book you're reading over there.

i remember in college i was with this broad who was "born twice." at least that's what she told me. it was after we put away about half a bottle of cutty sark. yeah college. good times.