Saturday

[nightdog_barks]

First day of December and it is 75 degrees (23.9 degrees Celsius) and climbing here. BLASPHEMY.

Still really enjoying Swamplandia!, although I'll admit it's a good thing I'm down with magical realism, because otherwise I'd be going "WTF AUTHOR?" Heh.

Comments

[namaste]

I finished "Fundamentals of Care Giving." (Kind of. I started skimming after a while, which says a lot right there.)

While the story moves fast enough, I found myself really frustrated with the author for populating the entire story with eccentric "lovable" low income losers. I really hate that NY literature view of middle America -- that somehow it's just filled with people who can't get their stuff together and so fail from one moment in their lives to the next -- but quirkily so. There was almost no one happy and well adjusted in it. (When they had one tertiary character who ended up with a flat tire, failed to get the right kind of fast food for his kid, spilled said fast food all over himself, then ran over the bag of fast food also be someone who carries a remnant of his baby blanket in his pocket that he fingers in time of stress, I officially reached my tipping point.)

[nightdog_barks]

Oh, man. That is really ... twee. And yeah, I think a lot of the time these are the same kinds of writers who have short stories in The New Yorker and the characters are so quirky there's no connecting with them.

I started skimming after a while, which says a lot right there.

Ha, I remember that's what I ended up doing with Barney's Version. I love Mordecai Richler, but I thought that was one case where the movie was definitely better than the book.

[namaste]

And that's without getting into the pregnant woman who has to carry the luggage herself because the baby daddy hurt his back "fishing." (And he, of course, is a guy who just spent time in prison for breaking into houses whose get-rich-quick scheme is a burglar alarm, which is, in itself, quirky.)

The thing is, in the right context those quirky characters work. I just saw "Moonrise Kingdom" on the flight that never ended, and Lord knows both Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers fill movies with quirky characters, but maybe it's because the actors are able to make the characters more than just a collection of quirks.

[nightdog_barks]

Yep, this. I mean, I think the characters in Swamplandia! work, and they're pretty quirky. Even their names are quirky -- Ava, Osceola, and Kiwi. But it works, because Russell has made them more than their names (and quirks).

I think there's probably a huge temptation as a writer to make a character different and yeah, quirky, because that way you can hang a lot of stuff on him on her and (often) not have to think too hard about it. It's that danger, as you say, of the character disappearing into their quirks. Ha.

[taiga13]

that NY literature view of middle America -- that somehow it's just filled with people who can't get their stuff together and so fail from one moment in their lives to the next -- but quirkily so.
Sounds like well-meaning contempt.

[namaste]

I love the NYTimes Review Of books, but I've run across too many portrayals of characters in which they praise "realistic" portrayals of low income, Midwest characters that are little moe than collection of quirks. And people are only victims or villains.