[UA] Abel and "A Void"-ance

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 10:28 AM 12/20/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>I got about halfway through before I stopped, and I never quit a
>book.  Not only was it a pain in the ass to read, but it seemed
>overwritten, as if the plot could have been fit in about a third of the
>space but the author was trying to fluff it up so it would seem more
>impressive.

It was a Christmas present from my mom, so I felt obligated to finish the
fucking thing.  And there WERE good bits.  Unfortunately, there were only
enough good bits to make up, say, three Mark Leyner articles, and Wallace
stretched it into 1000+ pages.  

It's the only book I've read where I wanted to grab the author at the end
and demand my time back.  It's the only book I've read where I cared LESS
about the characters at the end of the book than I did before I even heard
of them.  Is it that a unique accomplishment?  I guess so.  But teaching a
dog to write your name in the snow with piss would also be a unique
accomplishment.  That doesn't make it worth doing.  And for what it's
worth, I've read some of Wallace's short stories that have the same effect,
proving that he doesn't need 1000 pages to make you feel, not just
indifference and boredom, but something like the OPPOSITE of interest for
his characters.  

But I'm not bitter.

>ObUA:  There's probably some weird bibliomancer somewhere searching for an
>edition which accidentally contains an 'e' in it somewhere.  What could
>you do with that book?  Would it be mystically tied to Alex
>"almost-but-not-quite" Abel somehow?

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the symbolism that (to me) seems
really obvious with Alexander Abel.

-G.
Critics are like medical students: they always think a writer is suffering
from the very disease they happen to be studying at the time.
		-Milorad Pavic

http://www.waylay.com
http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html


_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua