Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
Yes, that's just what I liked about it SGR! We know something the characters don't: that their era will come crashing down with the Great Depression and Second World War, so it adds a poignancy to everything going on in the story.
Vapiid characters? Yeah, from what I remember, the characters drift around in the midst of plenty but remain unfulfilled. To me that's interesting because they are caught in that great conundrum of the modern age, which Dr. John sums up pretty well:
How can we live in the kingdom and never see the throne?
Have all the riches and treasures and still feel like we're alone?
|
So you liked Gatsby but you didn't like Moby Dick? What did you dislike about Mo Deezy?
Per the characterization of the people in the book being unfulfilled and being caught in the great conundrum of the modern age, I can think of three novels in this vein and I hated them all:
Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
Gatsby
Brett Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero
And while I hated Less than Zero the most, all three of them just have the most unlikeable characters ever. I think a good writer can make characters like this more appealing by either letting an interesting plot do the heavy lifting or by making the characters noticeably flawed (flawed besides being vapid and unlikeable that is) - example being Hubert Selby Jr.s "Requiem for a Dream".