Slogging my way through Gargoyle... trying to get to the end. (Actually, I read the end on the bus today, so I could decide whether to go back and read the intervening 100 pages.) I can see why many people love it, just as I understood why so many loved Twilight, but it's just not my style. The love story is a bit too melodramatic for my taste. The beginning was great, the concept is interesting, but in the end I just didn't come to care very much for the characters. I don't really see/understand why they're in love. And the flashback stories are too dramatico-perfectimundo. (Super melodramatic things happening to the characters; and the characters are nigh on perfect. Except for the baddies, who are perfectly bad.)I'm balancing it off by reading PG Wodehouse. And I've got a Zadie Smith book lined up next. I'm dying to move on!
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I have never heard of this book, but I just checked out the summary on Amazon, and it looks god awful. I guess you have to keep up with this stuff for work, eh?
Also, it looks like people with disabilities as a circus freak show. At least in this description:
"A New York Times Bestseller The Gargoyle: the mesmerizing story of one man's descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation. On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuries confine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man's disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed."
Also, I still cannot understand why anyone loves Twilight. Can you explain this?
Umm... I don't know that it comes off as a freak show. A freak show implies that the enjoyment comes from ooh-ing and ah-ing over how "weird" the person is, and it's not like that. The belief of the schizophrenic that these two had a past life together is supposed to be beautiful or touching. And the story is from the POV of the burned guy, so you're witnessing someone going through burn therapy, and trying to adjust to his disability.
I think the people who love the book, love the connection between these two people, which possibly has existed for 100s of years. But it doesn't work for me because I find the two characters aren't very deeply drawn, so I just don't care all that much what happens to them.
As for Twilight...
There's a type of romance, where the two characters meet and immediately connect, and that connection is so strong it's as though they were Fated to Meet. In the case of Twilight, he desires her so much it's almost dangerous; but it's not a purely sexual desire, it's this soul-connection-I-can't-live-without-you desire.
And if you like that kind of romance, then Twilight is right up your ally. It's the book equivalent of the Leona Lewis song "Bleeding in Love." And the chaste version of the romance in the show "True Blood."
Re why I read it -- because I liked the premise and the reviews were really good.
Okay, so, about some things that irk me about this book just on reading the brief synopsis:
The idea that physical disability (or even loss of attractiveness) is somehow a mirror of Darkness of the Soul. And that becoming disabled requires/entails some kind of search for personal redemption (like the burn victim dude).
The icky spiritualization of schizophrenia. The idea that the schizophrenics are a window into another spiritual dimension or to past lives or whatever. This happens a lot with schizophrenia, in both bad fiction and in philosophy (i.e., Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari).
Freak show: I dunno... Two unlikely people, and no one is *ever* supposed to fall in love with them because they're *broken* and all... And that's why it's "beautiful and touching," right? Except that it's the typical "unlikely/flawed hero/heroine" love story amped up with disabilities, right? I still think it adds a freakshow element to this.
Fated Romance: Blech. I just don't get it. I haven't been able to get into True Blood enough to watch all of it, but I am definitely of the opinion that Sookie and Bill are the least interesting/most annoying characters in the show. And, having just read a couple of pages of Twilight, I have to be a bit of a literary snob here: It's just BAD, sixth grade level, derision-worthy writing. There's no Harry Potter-esque sense that "I'm just glad young people are reading!", oh no, because the writing is so awful, and it's influencing the writing of young people in disastrous ways. I have to say... Twilight is one of those phenomena that Adorno would've attributed to the bad effects of corporate-driven "mass culture," and on this one... He would've been right.
Re the book -- a lot of those elements are handled with some complexity. I don't think he completely failed in those areas.
Twilight: I have to disagree. Less and less people (not just kids) are reading all the time, and finding one book you love often becomes a gateway to reading in general, and then who knows where that'll take you. Maybe one day it takes you to Adorno. And the idea that everyone takes in mass culture uncritically--teenagers included--is one I don't agree with.
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