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Literary Ambition Over Entertainment by doyin13(m): 2:06am On Feb 16, 2008 |
I read a book recently, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, quite ambius, had me thinking all the way through how clever and what an achievement it was to link five different stories across five different time periods from the first tale in the mid nineteenth century through the twentieth to a starwars future and a post apocalyptic reenactment of the beginning. . . It wasn't really philosophical in any way, at least the way i like my books, but it was an impressive feat of writing bordering on scholarship. That was frankly the thought that egged me on through the book. it sagged in the middle terribly and after the fact i realised the connections between the tales was not hermetic, in fact quite loose. Such ambition and enterprise is also evident in Yinn Martell's Life of Pi. The author sets up a good yarn, a boy gets caught up on a life boat with a tiger, an orangutang, a zebra in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. His tale of survival involves all of 300 paperback pages. Needless to say. . .it sags in the middle no be small When you get over how clever the author must be to think up such a scenario and write a book of such length with such limited material. . .you quickly find boredom it is a relief when you get to the last page. |
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