Ready Player One’s only real crime is that it became wildly popular, and critics can’t allow people to just blindly enjoy a fun popcorn adventure. And then it has the sheer audacity to also become a popular movie helmed by a beloved director.
90% of RP1’s criticisms don’t mean anything if you are capable of accepting that it falls into the “a fun book but not a good book” category. The rest makes some decent points about the world being very boy-centric, but even that makes perfect sense in the context of the book itself: it’s a reasonable end-result of what happens when the internet is (apparently) wholly owned and shaped by an obsessed 80s fanboy. It never makes Halliday out to be a hero. Just an ultra-rich recluse who wanted to make sure his toys went to the ‘right’ person.
Here is an objective truth about Ready Player One, from one of the critical articles linked above:
That’s it. That’s the book’s intent. Cline got where he wanted.
I mean, hell, you could read RP1 as a dystopian tale about an entire generation of children brainwashed by a dead lunatic who is pulling their strings from the grave while their world rots around them. If Cline were a better writer, he could have made a seriously compelling book from that angle without lightening up on the nerd references at all. But he’s not a great writer, as Armada showed us.
I still liked RP1. I’ll still end up seeing the movie.
The problem with the book is that it is possibly one of the most terribly written books ever to come out of a legitimate publishing house. Ernest Cline should have all his pens broken.
Well said Johnny. I’ll add also that I didn’t find it a fun book, either. It was more like a stew of references from the 80s, and read more like a laundry list of pop references than a book.
If anything, I think that concept would have worked better as a movie than a book, but you’re not going to catch me spending money on this thing again.
I’ve heard Armada is worse. I don’t think it is one of the most terribly written books to come from a publisher. I found Twilight was much, much worse. I mean, it’s no contest.
I’ve never read 50 Shades and its sequels, but I’ve heard these are far worse as well.
I haven’t even read it all (just excerpts) and I know that’s not true. There have been some incredibly bad books to come out of big-5 publishing houses.
Yeah, that’s just fanboy nonsense. It’s not great literature, by any means, but it’s not so poorly written it deserves that sort of slam.
In the end, it’s a romp. A fairly blatant excuse to pander to the Gen-X demographic by referencing pop culture of the nerdy variety along with music and movies. It caught the public eye and it allows for cool visuals and endorphin producing affirmation moments such as the dramatic ‘Tom Sawyer’ soundbite in the trailer. It’s got curb appeal from the moment it was conceived.
Again, it ain’t high art, but it never intended to be. For those who think, “It could have been better if he’d writter X, Y and Z”? Don’t blame the author for not writing the book you wanted written. Go write it yourself.
I never asked for this book. I never wanted this book. My friends wouldn’t shut up about it so I borrowed a copy from the library, read half of it and returned it because again, it is absolutely garbage writing. If you disagree that’s your bag, but just telling me I’m wrong isn’t going to make me change my mind.
Willy Wonka wanted a child with a heart of gold. He didn’t care that Charlie couldn’t ever afford to buy the candy that he himself obsessed over.
James Halliday fashioned his quest so that the only possible winner could be somebody who matched his obsession in every way, including quantity of consumption.
It’s easy to disagree with hyperbole.
It’s not a great book, but calling it one of the most terribly written books in the last five hundred years or so? What are we talking? Bottom ten? Bottom fifty? Bottom hundred?
RP1 might be cliche and even trite at times, but it’s got a coherent plot structure and understandable prose. That puts it squarely in the middle of the pack by any objective standards you care to name, unless your standard is “number of 80s pop culture references.”
No, I haven’t read the book nor seen the movie. Part of why I haven’t picked up the book yet is because I read this review.
Excerpts in that review, and linked to from that review confirm that, yes, it’s shit writing. Here are some select examples.
And, frankly, it all feels like the worst part about being into “geek culture”. I’m tired enough of people in real life who use their encyclopedic knowledge of an arbitrary corner of culture to prove something about themselves and set themselves upon a pedestal, there’s no way I have the patience to read a book that elevates that kind of attitude to that of “hero”.
I’ve read piles of much worse books and quit on piles of stuff worse than that. RPO ain’t prose for the ages but it doesn’t even rate on a “Worst” list of stuff I’ve read.
Doesn’t make no nevermind to me if someone didn’t like it but that’s obviously not the “issue” or controversy addressed in the OP.
The “It ain’t high art,” thing is a pretty common strawman. Nobody’s complaining about RP1 because it failed to fully examine the internal struggle between the human intellectual ideal and our base impulses through a Marxist understanding of capitalist power structures as expressed through a high score screen in Donkey Kong. They’re complaining - rightly - that the book’s a dull, poorly written slog with paper thin characters and a weak plot, wrapped around a nauseating slug of empty nostalgia. It’s a book whose writing style could best be described as, “Hey, Dan Brown! Hold my beer!” Reading it is tedious if you understand the endless stream of context-free cultural referents. I can’t imagine how staggeringly dull it must be if you don’t share Ernest Cline’s very specific childhood interests. As someone whose interests appear to overlap almost perfectly with Cline’s, I found the empty recitation of things to be soul-numbing. It’s a catalog, without the slightest effort to contextualize anything in it or offer any insight into why these cultural artifacts are valuable, beyond, “I liked it when I was a kid.” It’s a ClickHole listicle in the form of a novel.
Which probably does as much to explain its popularity as anything else.
Well, the other half of that is “…but is was fun”. I certainly can’t convince you that it was fun but a whole lot of people DID enjoy it and had fun with it. Someone harumphing about how it’s absolutely terrible with thin characters and endless lists of stuff reminds me of this guy.
One of the complaints about the book (which isn’t in the movie), which I think is bogus, is that the hero turns into a stalker when the girl he loves breaks it off with him. The reason that complaint is bogus is because she doesn’t break it off because she isn’t into him, because she actually likes him a much as he likes her, but she breaks it off because, like him, she’s trying for the ultimate prize and thinks that the relationship is interfering with that. And she’s more interested in Doing Good with the ultimate prize than he is, because at that point, he just wants to use the millions of dollars coming with the prize to buy Cool Stuff for himself.
“It’s not high art, but it was fun,” is a statement that acknowledges that the subject being discussed has flaws, but is enjoyable regardless. It’s also not what Jonathan Chance said. He said, “It ain’t high art, and wasn’t supposed to be,” in response to someone explaining why they didn’t like the novel. Except thats a complaint nobody has made - nobody is under the impression that RP1 is, or even should be, “high art.” They’re complaining that the book fails even as “lowbrow” entertainment. The complaint is that the novel isn’t a “romp” - its duller than the back end of a butter knife.
As for that XKCD cartoon, all I can say there is it appears you don’t understand the joke.
He said “It’s a romp” which is generally understood to mean “fun”. I mean, I know he didn’t say it directly after “high art” but I’d think someone kvetching about terrible writing could understand context.
