I don't understand:
Jon said in class on friday that "a book asks to be read." (or something like that)
My question is (which is elaborated a bit on the lecture as well): Why are books boring then?
Why do authors make books complex?...or in the case of Los Siete Locos, why are the ideas interesting but something about the writing is so confusing that our class has pretty much voted that it's boring? If authors choose to write, and choose to create that that "asks to be read," then shouldn't they try harder? I guess this is what the course it about. Authors who may be trying, (or trying to do something new or different), but don't succeed because they're just bad writers. But there's more to that. I know Allende isn't a bad writer. She can't be. Eva Luna is bad, but at least one of Allende's bestsellers must be good writing. Even people who may not like the ideas of her books might see that her use of language is good. (it's seperating two parts of writing: language and ideas, but I'll talk about that later) I just don't believe that she would be that famous if people thought that all of her books are either all good or all bad. SO, was she not trying as hard when writing the books that the majority of her readers think badly of? Was she just trying something different so that the books call out to be read by the rest of the readers? Was she trying to please them, and by doing that letting down her 'usual readers' if any???
I know I'm supposed to be talking about Los Siete Locos, but I'm just using Allende as an example.
I thought at first that the beginning of chapter three wasn't as "difficult" to read as the first two chapters, but it seems to be exactly the same. I find it difficult to connect with the book. As mentioned before, it's easy to seperate the ideas with the language. LIke it says on the back of the book, apparently people have read the book and thought that the ideas were interesting, but the writing was bad. I'm not sure how I feel. I think that the idea in the beginning of the book is interesting, how he stole money because he needed to improve his life, but he ended up spending it fast and not using it to advance in life, like buying himself some new clothes. I'm not sure if he ended up improving himself in the end, because I find it difficult to connect with the language of the book. I should watch the movie.
span490
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3 comments:
Elena, I think you ask a series of very good questions. Honestly, I don't know if I have the answers, but at least as the course proceeds I feel we're making headway on clarifying the questions.
Let me put one of your questions another way: we've said that Arlt (unlike Allende, say) makes his readers work. Admittedly, part of the reason why his book seems like work to us is because it is more distant to us, because it naturally seems stranger, in that it was written in the 1920s rather than the 1990s. Also because it feels much more like a quite specifically Argentine book, rather than a "Latin American" one. Even so, where Allende seems to go out of her way to make the process of reading her book relatively painless and easy, Arlt doesn't seem to want to do this. Why?
maybe Arlt is going after a small audience and perhaps purposely trying to alienate other readers? Who knows.
I like complex books, and I don't think it's the complexity that makes Los Siete Locos boring, as you kind of stated, though I am still not sure what is. I think I should watch the film as well, who knows, might give a different perspective.
is there a movie? who made it? how do you get it? i saw a version in the theatre in buenos aires it was good but less intense than the book.
ana
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