DISQUS

josh · 1 year ago

Most conversations are actually very shallow. Actually, probably 99.9% of all conversations are extremely shallow, whether or not they are New York intellectuals.

bjk · 1 year ago

Why not auction off passports and then walk down the streets in Bangladesh handing out the proceeds. It would appear to have the same effect and would result in a more advantageous division of labor.

Ashish · 1 year ago

It's true that Messud's prose is often a little too "precious", although that adjective is thrown around so promiscuously these days I'm not completely sure what it means anymore. I'll also grant that the character of Murray Thwaite is drawn a little too broadly. And the book's heavyhanded foreshadowing is annoying. But ultimately Messud's treatment of the themes of friendship, meaning, and personal myths (remember the quotation from Dance to the Music of Time?) struck me as more than enough reason to pardon the novel's faults.

I think one of the reasons the novel was so well-received was because everyone could relate to at least some aspect of the main characters. Who hasn't felt as adrift as Marina at some point in their lives? Or as alone as Bootie? Or as frustrated as Danielle?

Do you have any more specific criticisms of the book? I'm surprised you didn't like it, and I'd be interested in hearing you elaborate.

DWAnderson · 1 year ago

"And most of the actual books I buy on Amazon are used anyway, and that’s got to be worse for the publisher."

Probably not, because an active resale market supports higher retail prices for books.

Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

Ashish, I did like it, a great deal even. But I think it has been overrated as high literary art. I think somewhat 2-D characters are often more emotionally engaging, since I think we often identify more strongly with them because our own self-narratives are usually embarassingly 2-D. (Many people really do find illumination in watching Sex and the City and deciding "I'm a Carrie!") I quite identified with Bootie's naively fierce idealism about intellectual standards while at the same time thinking he turned out to be a pretty implausibly silly character.

Benjamin Hourigan · 1 year ago

It's time we started to be okay with dropping page numbers for citations. If you can get a full-text, searchable edition of a book, it's easy to locate a quote in context. Anyway, page numbers aren't a great guide to location for readers who have different paper editions. If you read an e-book version for research, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask *your* readers to chase a searchable edition if they want to check your quotes. Embrace the future!