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magnificent7 posted:What I'm asking, I think, is it just great skill and effort to craft books like McCarthy's stuff? His stuff reads like fables or mythology to me. I honestly can't say what exactly it is... I get a similar sense from reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. His book is called "weird fiction" and I get that, but the way he tells the story is this odd very direct kind of style, that, when I read it, I love it, but couldn't tell you where it comes from beyond just "well, it's just a really good book." I think it's a little more than that. Those books aren't about a badass yet unfairly put-upon hero who defeats an antagonist and is implicitly rewarded with someone hot to gently caress. There definitely is great skill and effort, but it's being put to a specific end-- to connect to something real in the experience of being human. The conflict is not just a matter of plot mechanics; the protagonist is experiencing something that is conflicting. Maybe something that's shameful or painful, maybe that undermines the way a person tends to think of themselves, maybe that pits some emotional need against a practical need. Like No Country For Old Men-- you could spin a 100% normal genre story out of that premise, but he doesn't. Moss, for example, isn't that great of a guy, but it's because of that that he's understandable and interesting. He pursues pretty much exclusively selfish goals, but in a way that anyone can understand. Wouldn't you take somebody's $2 million and take off with the cute hitchhiker if it was easy and your life was kind of lovely anyway and you felt like you could probably handle the consequences? In a worse novel, he would be able to handle them, through violence or cunning. It just wouldn't be an issue the way it would be for a real person. Similar thing with The Girl on the Train. Rachel's life is hosed up, she has done dangerously irresponsible stuff and probably is going to again because she's totally emotionally reliant on drinking. Trying to do the right thing here exposes herself to scrutiny in a way that is genuinely scary. She's truly not sure whether her past or future behavior will expose her as despicable, even violent, or just kind of a sad mess. This wouldn't be a problem for a low-effort genre-cliche character-- they'd be mysteriously self-assured in a way that undermines the idea that there was ever any risk, or they just wouldn't have that kind of complexity in the first place because they'd have too much plot stuff to do. The plot would exist outside the character as a list tasks to fulfill.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:39
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:15 |
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