(no subject)

[adiva_calandia]

Okay. After today's lecture on Carnival?

I'm doing Puca Project next year, dammit. I AM.

'Kay, so. I'm reading The Eyre Affair. And I'll be perfectly honest -- I mainly picked it up because batyatoon and phoenixchilde mentioned that there's a RHPS-style production of Richard III in it, and the idea of actually staging that for Playground has eaten my brain (along with the idea of finishing and producing Pandora, of course. And the idea of producing The Tempest as Greek tragicomedy. And the idea of stealing ideas from improveverywhere.com and creating some organized chaos on the Cut).

ANYWAY. So first thing I did was flip to that section, read it, and then went back to beginning to read the rest.

I know these Thursday Next novels come recommended by a number of people on my f-list, so I'm willing to stick with it for a little while longer, but -- you knew there was a but . . .

I really, really cannot get past Thursday's dialogue. Especially in the scene I just read, where she's reporting on the first skirmish with Acheron Hades to SO-5.

Okay, so a lot of the novel has pacing issues; it reads like a first novel. It is a first novel. That does not excuse, in my mind, having a policewoman deliver a report as if she's writing a first novel. What soldier would have phrases like "I slowly looked around the room" in their report? Or, my favorite, "I noticed a sharp stinging in my arm with a sort of detached interest." Something like that. What? No. A soldier just says "He shot me in the arm."

And it's not like there's not a perfectly good literary device right there if Fforde wants to use it. It's called a FLASHBACK. That's what that section is: it's a flashback, with quotation marks around it. But nobody talks like a flashback.

Argh. The only possible justification I can come up with for it is something involving Thursday's LiteraTec training. And I don't like that this one scene has thrown me out of the novel, because I can see a lot of creativity in the novel as a whole. It's just . . . not getting onto the page very well.

I'm very much hoping that this is Fforde's The Gunslinger, and that he'll hit his stride later in the book or later in the series, because until then, my inner editor is pissed off.

Speaking of Richard III, I am off shortly to see the Ian McKellan version. YAY, RICHARD III. All the lines that will never not make me shiver. "Thou art unfit for any place but hell!" "One place else, if you will hear me name it." "Some dungeon." "Your bedchamber."

AAAAH.

Right, okay, done now.

Comments

[sdelmonte]

It's funny that you picked it up on Batya's pimpage since she will probably agree with your assessment of the book. The Richard III scene is, from what I recall, the only thing either of us really liked.

If you do read others in the series, please post about it.

And also please tell us what you think of the McKellan version. I love it - I got to see it at one of NYC now-extinct one-screen shoebox theaters when it came out.

[batyatoon]

Alex speaks truth. I didn't care for the book much as a whole.

But nothing will ever beat "When is the winter of our discontent?"

[misslucyjane]

I saw Sir Ian's Richard III in conjunction with Al Pacino's Looking for Richard a few years back (the artsy cinema program at my uni always did things by theme--one week they had two different Hamlets and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, it was glorious) and it helped SO MUCH in understanding the play and all the cuts they made for time and so on.

Plus Sir Ian is always yay.

[adiva_calandia]

Sir Ian: Let me look DEEP INTO YOUR SOUL through the camera lens.

Me: OHGOD. DON'T GET BORED AND KILL ME TOO, OKAY?

I had to leave for class just when he was like "Hey, Elizabeth, I'm gonna marry your daughter, mkay?" :(

[ihateyourtie.livejournal.com]

O gentlemen, see, see dead Henry's wounds
Open their congeal'd mouths and bleed afresh!--
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,
For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells.

*Sigh*

Richard III is amazing.

[ceph.livejournal.com]

Mom and I both had the same reaction. You make a good point about first novels, though; maybe I should try skipping ahead a few books.

[skygiants]

*rueful* That is rather my feeling on Fforde. He has some fabulous ideas; he clearly loves books a lot; however, his dialogue and characterization are . . . not so much with the realistic. Or existent.

I read him for the literary in-jokes, but I can't get swept up in him.

(I just saw a bit of Ian McKellen's BBC Macbeth in class today, and OH MY GOD. The production is not fabulous itself, but Sir Ian . . .)

[moondog.livejournal.com]

I'm with everybody on Fforde -- he's got fun, cute ideas, but the books themselves are ho-hum. I've read all of 'em, because I'm that kind of person, but, well, if you have other things you are more excited about them, read them first.

(Honestly, my favorite moment, and one of the most interesting, I think, was in the most recent book when the story switched into full illustrated mode.)