MORE FICTION B.S.

A new review, of a book I just tried to read:

THE NERUDA CASE – by Roberto Ampuero 
(2012, Riverhead Books, Penguin Group)

9/29/2012

I saw this recommended somewhere and tried to read it. But I found it very confusing. At the same time, I started rereading “Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand and her writing is a thousand times better, more engaging and clearer.

I can’t read this Ampuero stuff. I can’t tell where we are or what is going on. I found the sentences convoluted and confusing from the get-go.

The beginning: 
 

“What could be bothering the partners of Almagro, Ruggierio & Associates, who had asked him to appear at their headquarters in such a hurry?”

What? Why not just say they called him and they were on the rag? Even the names are boring. The sentence is long and wordy.

I managed to wade through the first chapter, but then I got lost again. Slow, boring and complicated. Not my kind of stuff.

Where did this guy learn to write, in a law firm?

His purpose seems to be to obfuscate. To bore. To cloud the mind.

He's a typical acadmeic. Required to publish, whether his work is any good or not. You might know he teaches at a university and is Chile’s ambassador to Mexico. This writing is sad.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

 

 

GOOD THRILLERS? REALLY?

I love a good thriller. I can't think of one, off hand, but I do love the idea of one.

When I was young, I read one whole Robert Ludlum book, a mechanistic thriller with lots of twists and turns and gut wrenching action. When I got to the end--I stayed up all night to finish it--I was exhausted, wrung out, sweaty and tired in a moral and emotional sense.

Then I found out that I could get the same effect, from another one of Ludlum's novels, by reading the first chapter, then skipping ahead to read one anywhere in the middle, and then reading the last chapter. And guess what. That took a helluva lot less time.

I find most "thrillers" unbearably boring. Lee Child, Dean Koontz, James Patterson, etcetera, etcetera. Most are a big fat snore, to me. 

Here are my notes about Lee Child's novel "Persuader," published in 2003.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

The first chapter isn’t bad, a fairly exciting action scene, although it doesn’t make complete sense. The last line of Chapter One is startling and turns the story on its head. It’s great, in a way. The second chapter explains why Jack Reacher was there, and then it gets way too complicated and repetitious for me. A paragraph or two of back-story would suffice. The narrative breaks two of the rules I tell my students: Don’t repeat, and don’t explain. The worst thing you can do is go through the planning of an action with the reader and then go through the action itself. The only time that works is when the action goes horribly wrong.

Here, the novel goes through the action and then through an endless explanation in flashback. It is so very, very boring.

I don’t care about any of this, not the characters, not the story, not the set-up, not the crime family, not the long-lost dead guy. Jack Reacher is a big fat cliché: ex-Army, highly trained with guns, other weapons, blah-blah-blah. Who cares? I ran out of gas on Page 38. I don’t know why anyone would read any farther.

 I tried to go back and finish Ch. 2. I sped-read it and when I finally staggered to the end of the chapter I was exhausted. Done. No more for me. I just didn’t care.

The writer’s main job is to make the reader care about what is going on, about the characters and the story.

The only person I could come close to caring about in this novel was the kid who was “kidnapped” and he was barely there. Just a few sentences, as I recall.

##  

 

I have this friend Jack, who is a Renaissance man: engineer, avid reader, a graduate of CalTech. A man of many moving parts. I often use him as a literary scout and often read whatever he recommends.

 

So I called him on the phone to talk about Lee Child and the tough-guy hero Jack Reacher. My question: Why would anyone enjoy this crap?

JACK: It's all psychological. Some people need to feel powerful and even omnipotent, and these narratives feed that need. Like James Bond.

        RA: The second chapter does show that the idiot Jack Reacher is in control. But that does not interest me. I’m more interested in what happens when you let go, when you lose control.

 

Back to my own notes:

        Another insight: Mediocre writers attract mediocre readers.

        Escapist readers just want to get away from their humdrum lives. That explains why mediocre writers, like Lee Child, attract a lot of readers, who must have boring jobs and boring families and live boring lives. They are probably grinding along in their routines and feel just barely alive. Jack Reacher and his "adventures" must bring them to life. Sort of.

        Child writes in a familiar genre: macho-psycho-stupid fantasy fiction. I don’t care about all that shoot-em-up stuff. Boom-boom, bang-bang, you’re all dead. Who the hell cares?

       But a lot of people do care. I don't begrudge them their escape. But I do wish they liked more depth, more character development, and better writing. Then they might like my stuff. At least that's what I tell myself.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

 

A SKINNIER ME

I've been trying to lose weight, and winning the battle of the bulge. As you know if you've been following this blog.

I started out at 174 lbs on March 28. Today I cracked 160. Am at 159 1/2. So far, so good. Started with a 44-inch waist and am at 40" today, around the middle, the largest part.

The secret is simple: calories. It doesn't matter what you eat, it's how many calories. Twice in the last week, I've had ice cream, probably the most caloric food you can eat. I drink an occasional beer. I had two cookies the other day.

But I don't eat huge plates of food that I don't need. I don't eat ten cookies in one day or eat a quart of ice cream in one sitting.

I try to stay under my baseline, which is 2,000 calories a day. (See my earlier posts.) And I stay active, working out every other day, most of the time -- 30 minutes cardio plus lifting weights. Moderately.

I don't kill myself at working out, and I don't starve myself.

But it's really simple. I didn't read any books, and I didn't join any support groups. I counted calories for a few days and learned how to eat, and how not to eat.

I try to eat foods that are low in fat and low in calories. I cut way down on the olive oil. I almost never eat butter. I eat Go Lean cereal with non-fat milk. I boil my eggs rather than fry them. I eat lean meat, soups, dry toast.

I find all this very satisfying. I often skip the ice cream or other desert. It's more important to me to lose weight. I eat as much as I need, not as much as I want.

Maybe this wouldn't work for everyone, but it sure is working for me.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

THE GOOD REPUBLICANS

When I was a child, I was surrounded by Republicans. That seems scary now, but back then it seemed like a good thing.

My father was a lawyer, and I grew up around judges, lawyers, and politicians. Most of them were proud members of the GOP. We even went to tea at the governor's mansion once, when I was about eight years old. (That was in Topeka, Kansas. I grew up in Wichita and was born in 1938.)

Back then, Republicans seemed to be the soul of good values: honesty, integrity, self-reliance, hard work, respect for others and for yourself. Respect for flag and country. Early to bed, early to rise. Always tell the truth. Always keep your word. Build trust and be worthy of that trust.

Those are damn good values.

Sad to say, today's Republican leaders are not like that. They pretend to be. They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk.

They lie and cheat every chance they get. I wouldn't trust Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan with one dime of the family money or with one minute of my grandkids' future.

Where did the GOP go wrong? I trace it back to President Richard M. Nixon. Tricky Dick. After the L.A. Times editorial board interviewed him during a presidential campaign, one editor turned to another and said something like, "After you shake his hand, you have to look at your wrist to make sure you still have your watch."

Nixon famously tried to use the Internal Revenue Service to harass and intimidate his political enemies. He did some good things--his trip to China, for one. But he was the soul of dishonesty and deceit.

The last good Republican president was Dwight David Eisenhower, I do believe. And even he had a terrible policy toward Latin America, supporting brutal dictators for the sake of profit.

So it is up to the Democrats to protect and defend and embody the values I admire. Unfortunately, they have not always done a good job of that either. But at least they do a better job. They get my vote, most of the time.

Twice in my life, I have voted for Republicans: California state Senator Marian Bergeson and Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York. I don't see leaders like them in today's GOP. Sad to say.

What happened to the good Republicans? Where did they go? How did they get so corrupt?

The GOP's integrity has melted away, like the glaciers and Arctic sea ice that are rapidly disappearing, caused by the global warming that the Republicans deny.

May God save us, if there is a God. The Republicans sure as hell won't.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle