Ok, you can count me out of the Yu Hua Fan Club. I got through two chapters and put it down. I find his writing to be irritating, not entertaining. I had the same reaction to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" hated the writing style (but enjoyed the movie version). Maybe I just don't have an appreciation for translated text. I am surprised to be out of synch with several of you on Yu Hua, but there it is.
Come to think of it, I seem to be out of synch with the masses in several respects: I dislike being in an audience of any kind (inconsiderate people in groups are intolerable), I especially do not like watching people play music, whether symphony, bluegrass or jazz. Just give me CD's, ma'am. Also, I have never watched an episode of "American Idol" or "The Bachelorette."
I just enjoyed reading "Prague Fatale," my third in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series. A nice detective mystery in the now familiar Gunther style and wartime setting. After Chucking "Brothers" as noted above, I have started Larson's "Dead Wake" and have liked it so far (it passed the two-chapter-trial-test.)
My next scheduled book will be "The English Spy" by Danial Silva, the most recent release in the Gabriel Allon series. I happened to attend a book discussion with the author last week in Brookline. Among the topics discussed was increased evidence of anti-Semitism in Europe and especially France. After reading Kerr, I feel an unsettling sense of deja vu as I read statements like, "It isn't safe to be a Jew in France today."
Silva discussed the frustrations of dealing with Hollywood producers. The hero of Silva's spy novels is Gabriel Allon - a secret agent for "The Office" (Mossad) who operates under the cover of a restorer of masterpiece works of art. (Allon is the agent who tracked down each of the Palestinian assassins at the Munich 1972 Summer Olympics and killed them.)
Hollywood execs are worried that a pro-Israel movie might not be popular on the world market today, so they wonder, "Does Allon have to be a Jew? Or can he have a Muslim sidekick?" This is why you won't see Silva's work on the big screen anytime soon.
OK, what are the rest of you guys reading?
Dennis Noonan
Dennis, I can handle you not liking Yu Hua but "The Bachelorette"! Them's fighting words! "Dead Wake" is on my list: my wife loved it, the Lusitania is such a tragic, pivotal event, and Larson is always compelling. By the way, I finished Station 11 and thought it was superb. As for Daniel Silva, I read one but now find him unreadable. I don't mind a political POV, even if it disagrees with mine, but his is so heavy-handed and propagandistic that it makes his already clunky plots even clunkier, or whatever lies beyond clunky on the spectrum.
ReplyDeleteHere's a link to an article written by a close friend who used to be a news producer for the Today Show and now, in retirement, writes fascinating article about Jews in today's Europe. http://forward.com/news/world/310921/walking-without-fear-in-europe/.. Can't get a hyper-link on this comment box so just enter it in URL bar. The upshot is that Czech Republic is safe for Jews because the country is the most secular in the world - but there's a lot more to the issue in the article. Fascinating. Much of the violence against Jews in Europe is perpetrated by Muslims, but I do think the case is generalized by right-wing Jews to include the traditional population of Europe because it has propaganda value in recalling the lead-up to Nazism. Although non-Muslim anti-Semitism is a legit problem, any discussion of European anti-Semitism needs to clearly identify where it stems from. In the Brookline discussion, did Silva seem to be raising red flags about Europe in general? Just curious.
I do believe his Hollywood anecdotes though. The money folks of Hollywood have backbones made of dollar bills. Let's see, Allon could be a Pope Francis-admiring Roman Catholic with a sympathetic, comedic Jewish sidekick who has a Muslim wife but they attend a Unitarian Church because it's much more welcoming to their trans-gender fraternal twins who switched sex when they realized each was born in the other's body. The 5 Kardashian sisters, led by Caitlynn Jenner, can be the villains who plan to kidnap Tom Brady before he can deflate the footballs for Super Bowl L. Thats what they call 'high concept' in the movie business. That way they'll have everyone covered.
Ok, Bart, you don't like Dan Silva and I don't like Hua. I guess we are even. I didn't use the word "clunky" to describe Hua's writing style, but now that you bring it up, it fits perfectly. Re: European antiSemitism, I'll see your friend's article and raise you this one by Barabara Slavin in VOAnews a few months ago: http://www.voanews.com/content/rising-anti-semitism-in-europe-prompts-exodus/2673521.html
Delete(It's annoying that Blogger doesn't let you embed hyperlinks in comments).
I think you pretty much covered the ideal script elements for a blockbuster movie. The only things I might add would be some vampire spies or maybe Pixar zombies...
Hope you guys enjoy your Hua pajama party.
Dennis Noonan
A few years ago, in an effort to bolster my classics reading, I picked up Gulliver's Travels. After the first 50 pages, I felt like I was re-reading the same simple theme over and over again. The message and style were designed for a collective consciousness that was much slower paced than ours and, unlike Austen or Dickens, doesn't connect with a modern reader. Surprisingly, I had much of the same experience with Brothers. I found it slow moving, repetitive, and (I agree with Dennis) an irritating writing style. While I was interested in the context around the Cultural Revolution I didn't think it was worth the effort. I gave up after reading about a quarter of the book (chapter 20?) and read up on Wikipedia instead.
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading (and absolutely love) "The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill. I will admit, it is right in my wheelhouse - a comic novel with a very clever writing style about a displaced man trying to find his way in the modern world. Oh and by the way, it's set in Dubai and makes a really interesting comparison read to "Hologram for the King." Also, just brought home a copy of "Book of Numbers" by Joshua Cohen described as a cross between David Mitchell and DFW and one of the best books of the decade. (I know how much you all love the book jacket blurbs.) It's about a modern day high-tech megalomaniac who hires a failed novelist (named Josh Cohen) to ghost write his memoirs.
I agree the inability to imbed any formatting or hyperlinks in the comments is annoying.
I guess we have to cancel the Yu Hua symposium. I'm almost done with "Brothers" and still think it's tremendous. My fascination with the first chapters derived from imagining a society so repressed that the description of a woman's rear end glimpsed in a public rest room could believably become a sort of currency, exchangeable for food. Yu Hua's description of the collective processing of this highly prized information I found fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI'll check out "The Dog". Dennis, I'd read the article you posted - it's certainly disturbing. Something's happening there but "Europe" covers a lot of ground and I've found some of the reporting and discussions I've attended overly focused on tapping into the pre-WW II resonances than providing a clear view of what's actually occurring. On the other hand, Paris has a very popular Jewish quarter with great falafel restaurants and it's always very crowded. That fact alone, given the current attacks in France, is very disturbing.
Speaking of anti-Semitism, I got the Dover edition of John Buchan's "The 39 Steps", source of the classic 1935 Hitchcock movie starring Robert Donat. Buchan, a late-Victorian/Edwardian of the robust imperial type, uses "Dago" to describe the (fictional) Greek Prime Minister and clearly considers the "Jew/Anarchist" a threat to European peace. The book itself is very well written and provides a colorful picture of Scotland and England at the time (I'm less than half through it) as well as a glimpse of contemporary political thinking in 1914-1915. It's also a very influential entry in the espionage thriller genre. The web has a lively and often offensive discussion of whether Buchan was warning England against the influence of Jewish bankers/war profiteers, but the discussions (sometimes rants) contain spoilers regarding the novel's characters so I'm not going to read any more till I've finished the book. Hitchcock, by the way, took great liberties with the book.