[QUOTE=SkipMagic]
… this type of post belongs in the Pit …
[/QUOTE]
Maybe it’s just me, but RealityChuck’s post seemed only a trifle snarky, not seriously ad hominem or pitworthy.
If it’s inappropriate to comment here on Mod actions, let me know and I will profusely apologize.
Yeah, the Pit is where we discuss (or criticize, or yell about, or…) Mod actions. But, no worries; I’ll answer it here. (Further comment, should anyone feel strongly about it, though, should go in the Pit.)
Cafe Society is meant for the discussion of the arts, not the other posters. Implying that another poster isn’t an adult because he/she doesn’t like a particular type of characterization is not only rude and insulting, but simply not needed in the discussion.
As explained here in the [post=6769918]forum rules[/post]:
I often hate it when the main character in a book is also an author - it feels too much like a book written for writers, rather than readers. Paul Auster is the worst culprit in my mind, with his main characters’ fascination with notebooks and writing. I know in his case it’s probably a postmodern self-referential motif that I’m just not clever enough to appreciate, but I still find it dreary and self-absorbed. Philip Roth does a better job with his novels with the recurring author-character whose name eludes me, probably because at least they concern the character’s incidental life more than the the writing itself.
Nothing seems more lazy and self-indulgent to me than writing about the ‘horrors’ of writers’ block, etc.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Try reading Robert Ludlum or Clive Cussler. They don’t worry about piddling things like insightful characterization or thematic complexity. Don’t, by any means, read anything by Graham Greene, Patricia Highsmith, or John le Carre.
Hornblower, by the way, isn’t the swashbuckling Errol Flynn-type character you seem to envision him; he’s a reserved, thoughtful, reluctant hero who fears battle but is devoted to notions of duty and maintaining a stoic, disinterested persona for his crew. This is a key part of his personality, and a standing theme in the series of books. The character is based in large measure on the lives, natures, and exploits of British Naval legends Horatio Nelson and Thomas Cochrane, and much of the tension in the novels comes from charting the rise and fall of Hornblower’s fortunes, about which he himself realizes are largely luck combined with a native intellect and his difficulty mustered bravado. Removing that from the character would leave a pale, flat characture of a man with endless descriptions of otherwise indistinguishable naval battles.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]
I have actually read a couple of books by Cussler but found them a little bit too comic book/tongue in cheek for my personal taste.
And I’ve read most of Le Carres work (the earlier stuff at least )and thoroughly enjoyed it .
I’m not railing against characterisation,far from it ,I dont like two dimensional characters myself but one of the things that I am complaining about is literary “Shadenfreude”(hope I’ve spelled that correctly).
That is, if an author wrote about say a mediocre detective or a very averagely performing naval captain nobody would bother reading about them as it would be boring .
ie.“Sorry Guv I’ve tried everything I know and I’m still no further forward finding the murderer,another one for the Unsolved Serious Crime Files I’m afraid” or
“Any luck Hornblower?”
“Not quite sir ,I nearly captured a homebound East Indiaman but it got away from me and I didnt come across any other enemy ships for the entire cruise.”
So the author not surprisingly makes the main character exceptional at their job ,wether it is as a detective ,action hero,womaniser ,whatever.
But then they think, hang on a minute this guys too lucky,hes solved all these murders ,captured all these ships etc.etc.people are going to think that hes got life too easy and they’re going to take against him as a result ,so then we get the lonliness,alcoholism and bad track record with relationships to compensate(I’ve read and enjoyed all the Morse books by the way)
I maybe shallow but I like to feel Good after reading a book as in wow that kept me riveted right up to the unveiling of the murderer rather then yes it was very clever how he found out who was guilty but really speaking whats the point ?
It made no difference in the end ,he lived a long lonely,depressing life and then his alcoholism killed him.
As to Hornblower ,his naval actions were indeed based on those of Thomas Cochrane but his character was most certainly not based upon that of Nelson,who was a vainglorious ,posturing ,selfpublicist as well as being an incredibly brave man and tactical genius.
O’Briens Aubery has a fair amount of unhappiness throughout his career but O’brien doesn’t lay it on with a trowel as did Forester who I think came to realise it himself later on ,hence his marrying a beautiful,aristocratic wife who he loves rather then pities,becoming wealthy and Admiral.
Hornblower WAS an action hero and that is why people read about his exploits and put up with his neurosis rather then the other way round.
If instead he’d been an insecure ,tone deaf,self pitying, emotional masochist with no head for alcohol but who was a gardener by profession maybe there would still be people who’d read about his life but I doubt very many .
If on the other hand H was still a naval officer with exactly the same experiences in war as the original character but was happily married ,enjoyed a drink ,was self confident and enjoyed music (Now what seafaring ,fictional hero does that remind me of ?)I dont think people would have deserted Foresters books in droves because somehow his characterisation would as a result be inferior.
far from it .
Characterisation doesn’t have to be depressing to be free of the taint of two dimensionality.
And an intelligent hero doesn’t have to be in constant misery to be realistic.
To answer another poster (thats if I wasn’t being wooshed that is) ,if we are reading fiction then we are reading for escapism,some genres being more escapist then others “Sword and sorcery” as opposed to" Police procedural "for example .
If we were’nt we’d read only factual literature and we wouldn’t become the character .
Lust4Life, I think I understand where you’re coming from - is it that these depressing things seem tacked on just for the sake of making the characters more miserable? If so, I can see why you’d dislike that sort of character development.
I was thinking about the main character of my work-in-progress: he has a dead wife and stillborn younger brother, and an uncle who when senile tragically early. These things aren’t just out there to make his life hard, though - his wife haunts him, the dead brother’s image is used against him by a god who is trying to bend his will, and his uncle’s faulty mind locks up a secret that’ll be key to the story’s resolution (no, he never becomes lucid and reveals it himself). Is this sort of thing easier to swallow - when the problems actually tie into the plot of the novel?
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
I’ll perfectly admit to having disliked Slaughterhouse Five because I spent most of the book wanting to slap the main character upside the head and just didn’t care much what happened to him. And I would probably feel the same about Neo-Genesis Evangelion if it didn’t have episodes which entirely had nothing to do with the main character.
[/QUOTE]
My mother’s book club book, last time I was home, was about a little kid who still takes what grown-ups say literally and whose parents are going through a divorce. Not quite the kind of stuff I pick when I want to switch off the grey matter.
After I finished it, I gave Mom my critique: “I know the marriage was flawed from the start, both seem to have had an irreal image of the person they were marrying; I know it was him who cheated… but God help me, I want so bad to slam her into a wall!”
We’re still wondering whether the kid’s mom was supposed to be a completely unsympathetic moron or just happened to come out that way.
elfkin477: I was starting to write a long paragraph, but let me try to sum things up a bit.
1.- You can’t please everybody. Don’t try, or you’ll hang yourself from your own navel.
2.- Is Sherlock Holmes’ drug addiction a bothersome quirk? To censors, evidently. To most of his readers, even those who’ve read uncensored versions, it’s a non-issue.
Is a several-hundred page book about what a bunch of people are doing in the 15 minutes that someone else is having some sort of huge fight a good book? Depends on whether you ask people who still read Wheel of Time or those who don’t.
Is Miles Vorkosigan’s obsession with taller women important? Well, when you’re Miles’ size, being obsessed with women shorter than you would be a serious problem 
His obsession with the obsession can sometimes get to the point of wanting to smack him, but then, there’s many times when he’s smackable - just (to those of us who enjoy that particular series) never too much. Plus he usually does get smacked, when he’s being smackable 
[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
O’Briens Aubery has a fair amount of unhappiness throughout his career but O’brien doesn’t lay it on with a trowel as did Forester who I think came to realise it himself later on ,hence his marrying a beautiful,aristocratic wife who he loves rather then pities,becoming wealthy and Admiral.
[/QUOTE]
You might want to re-think your theory on Forester’s writing choices. Unless by “later on” you mean “immediately in the series.”
Horatio meets Lady Barbara in the first Hornblower book Forester wrote. By the third book, Forester kills off Maria so that Horatio is free to marry Barbara.
He didn’t write the books in chronological order; his later books went back and filled in what happened before and after. That whole plot was in there to show the reader how honorable Horatio was (he wouldn’t cheat on Maria with Lady Barbara, no matter how unsuitable a wife Maria was, nor how right for each other he and Barbara were).
If anything, Forester went back later on and made Horatio’s life more unhappy, not the other way around.
[QUOTE=Lightray]
You might want to re-think your theory on Forester’s writing choices. Unless by “later on” you mean “immediately in the series.”
Horatio meets Lady Barbara in the first Hornblower book Forester wrote. By the third book, Forester kills off Maria so that Horatio is free to marry Barbara.
He didn’t write the books in chronological order; his later books went back and filled in what happened before and after. That whole plot was in there to show the reader how honorable Horatio was (he wouldn’t cheat on Maria with Lady Barbara, no matter how unsuitable a wife Maria was, nor how right for each other he and Barbara were).
If anything, Forester went back later on and made Horatio’s life more unhappy, not the other way around.
[/QUOTE]
I read them in chronological order, so it seemed to me that Hornblower spent a half-dozen books in utter misery, then inside of three chapters of *Commodore *he gets everything he ever wanted (he’s aquitted from a court martial, granted a knighthood, the wife he dislikes conveniently dies, and he finds the wealthy, widowed Lady Barabara waiting with open arms).
I did get annoyed with Hornblower’s insecurity, and with how cold he was with William Bush even after they’d served together for years. But I read several of the books back-to-back, so maybe I was just over-saturated with it.
In the Aubrey/Maturin books, Stephen Maturin is pretty miserable most of the time too, and has an unhealthy obsession with Diana, but I never got tired of him.
[QUOTE=ivylass]
Repetition…I’m looking at you, Jane Auel. How may times can you have Ayla formally introduce herself? Apparently six times to six different people at the same exact meeting!
[/QUOTE]
And the wolf … the whole thing with introducing the wolf. I thoroughly enjoyed the first four books, but the fifth really felt like she was trying desperately to pad her word count.
Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, I like your novels very much (mostly), but you really don’t need to give me directions anymore. After reading your books I could probably navigate London without a street map.
[QUOTE=Phase42]
And the wolf … the whole thing with introducing the wolf. I thoroughly enjoyed the first four books, but the fifth really felt like she was trying desperately to pad her word count.
[/QUOTE]
I present you the “Hymn to the Mother-Goddess” in Shelters of Stone which is repeated in entirety three times in the book. Twice come with Ayla’s Emotional Commentary. Now that’s padding!
[QUOTE=Eleanor of Aquitaine]
I read them in chronological order, so it seemed to me that Hornblower spent a half-dozen books in utter misery, then inside of three chapters of *Commodore *he gets everything he ever wanted (he’s aquitted from a court martial, granted a knighthood, the wife he dislikes conveniently dies, and he finds the wealthy, widowed Lady Barabara waiting with open arms).
I did get annoyed with Hornblower’s insecurity, and with how cold he was with William Bush even after they’d served together for years. But I read several of the books back-to-back, so maybe I was just over-saturated with it.
[/QUOTE]
Reference Hornblower you’ve taken the words right out of my mouth.
To answer some of the other posters ELFKIN yes, if its a basic building block of the plot then some problems are bearable but when as you say they’re just tacked on to compensate for the heroes success then its just depressing.
Its like talking to someone incredibly interesting at a party,an astronaut say or someone whos explored the Amazon jungle but every so often they insist on telling you about their unhappy marriage or their financial problems or how they hate their boss .
I wouldn’t want that in conversation and I most definitely dont want it when I’m reading .
I read fiction for pleasure and for no other reason,not to "improve myself " or to be able to hold my end of a conversation at cocktail parties and I suspect that that is true for most people .
I heard a quote once that its not permissible to defend bad writing because it is sending a significant message ,for the simple reason that not many people will read the book(s)so the the message wont be received anyway.
Regarding Auels series I read I think ,four of them for their novelty value but I always felt that they were a little bit like the "Flintstones"with their present day hygiene routine (Daily bathing and tooth brushing)having the stoneage equivalent of the contraceptive pill and so on .
(I was always privately wondering when Ayla would come across a tribe that had a water powered device that cleaned clay pots using local herbs or someone would come up with something based on a mammoths trunk for sucking up dust in the cave)
I gave up on them in the end because primitive humankind were just so “nice” and nonaggressive (except for those nasty Neanderthals of course) that very little ever seemed to happen .
I’m afraid that uncouth lout that I am ,Aylas emotional turmoils mostly ,no entirely left me cold.
In one of Julian May’s novels the hero (on another planet) eats a Snickerdoodle.
A Snickerdoodle? It really irked me.
[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
I heard a quote once that its not permissible to defend bad writing because it is sending a significant message ,for the simple reason that not many people will read the book(s)so the the message wont be received anyway.
[/QUOTE]
That is a lie and the person who said it is a liar. I have no tolerance for bad writing, especially if it’s trying to convey A Message. Life’s too short to read bad books. It is not, however, too short to throw said bad books down the hall when you run across them.
Now that would be some good reading! Especially if she found the Record Player Bird.