I decided not to go to the Tom Cho book launch at Planet Books tonight. This may be a decision I regret, but I've never been to a book launch before and I was too scared to go by myself. What if everyone there knew each other, and it was just like an industry catch-up? What kind of behaviour was expected of me if I attended? In short, I'm a big fat chicken who might never experience anything new, if I keep this kind of logic up.
Anyway, after way, way too long I finally finished reading A Confederacy of Dunces- The Pulitzer Prize winning, much loved book which had written the cover:
'Every reviewer has loved it. And for once, everyone is right.'
-Rolling Stone
And at the risk of sounding stupid I have to say: I didn't get it. In fact, I came very close to hating it. It made me angry, having to read about an obese, flatulent man's masturbatory habits, knowing they've built a goddamn statue of this guy in New Orleans. It annoys me that I didn't enjoy it, knowing so many other people did and I can't work out why I found it such a chore to turn the pages. It doesn't help when you really hate the main character. I guess you've got to feel some kind of sympathy for a character to enjoy reading about their adventures, but I think what perhaps was supposed to be amusing about him - his misguided attempts at inciting political movements for all the wrong reasons, his holier than thou attitude even though he couldn't hold down a job etc. etc. - I just found super irritating. Maybe if I hadn't had such high expectations this wouldn't have happened. I don't know. Someone please explain.
One of the main reasons I chose to read that book was because of the comparisons (which I can understand) between that and A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz which I love, love, loved. I hadn't laughed out loud so many times while reading for so long. But since the the Confederacy of Dunces Disaster I've decided to give up on laughing for a while. So now, after a Saturday night of perusing bookshelves (I think in a future entry I'm going to have to put up my top five bookstores in Perth) I'm reading The Boat by Nam Le. So far I've read about ten pages and have felt no burning hatred towards any of the characters.
Another thing I realised while book shopping was that I think I actually haven't read Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I thought I'd read most of his books that had been translated into English, but that one seems to have escaped my grasp so far. Not for long. It's going on my List of Books to Read. Also on this list, (apart from Look Who's Morphing which I think was kind of implied by the first paragraph of this entry) I'm thinking about tackling Rushdie's Midnight's Children, even though I could barely get fifty pages into The Satanic Versus. At least the first page of Midnight's Children makes sense. The first page also reminded me of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which conjured up images of Brad Pitt, which, I hate to say, instilled in me positive feelings towards the book :P
If anyone is actually reading this and has read any of the books on my list of wants to suggest something new, let me know.
Post Script (12/06/09)
Well, I think I've redeemed my non-attendance-of-booklaunches slightly by attending Cottonmouth last night. I was a bit anxious about how the night would turn out, since Daniel came along and I've made him suffer through a terrible French film before (although I may possibly have redeemed myself on that as well, since the next film we saw was Let The Right One In, which I feel might almost make my list of all time favourite films... if I ever had to write one) but it actually turned out to be a winner. It was
a) obviously where all the lovely freaks and geeks of Perth have been hiding, and it made me feel nostalgic to see so many arts students in one room
b) the kind of night where even the terrible performances were funny, and therefore of value and
c) possibly where Kate from Masterchef was last night. I swear it was her!
2 comments:
We obviously have polar opposite tastes in films and books because I HATED Let The Right One In (had my eyes closed through most of it), and as you know, loved Ignatius and A Confederacy of Dunces. Actually reading The Wind Up Bird Chronical at the moment but Marukami kind of annoys me. Too much direct exposition!! But damn it's easy to read.
Can't believe you didn't like Let The Right One In! It was sweet and funny and gory and everything you could want in a film, although Dan did point out as we were leaving that we were possibly the only two people who laughed during the film in the whole cinema.
I found Wind Up Bird Chronical kind of hard to read and actually gave up once. I think there's probably a lot that's lost in translation in Murakami books, but I still love the magical realism of it. Have you read any of this other books?
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