writers I don't love
Ayn Rand: just read that scene in the train tunnel and you'll see why.
Anita Brookner (I know a lot of people love her, but I just can't get past the 1st pages of any of her novels).
Barbara Pym (ditto).
Annie Proulx: too many dashes.
Tom Wolfe (I'm more OK with Thomas Wolfe).
Arthur Conan Doyle: I like him better when Basil Rathbone is playing Holmes.
Anthony Trollope (maybe I just can't stand how fast he wrote).
Jasper Fforde (I know, he's very clever).
William Trevor (just can't warm up to him--too many farmhouses, too many depressed women anxiously wiping their hands on a towel).
Hawthorne: house of the seven comas; and I hate that birthmark story.
Ayn Rand: one of her heroines is raped but loves the man who did it; plus it's worth saying twice.
Anita Brookner (I know a lot of people love her, but I just can't get past the 1st pages of any of her novels).
Barbara Pym (ditto).
Annie Proulx: too many dashes.
Tom Wolfe (I'm more OK with Thomas Wolfe).
Arthur Conan Doyle: I like him better when Basil Rathbone is playing Holmes.
Anthony Trollope (maybe I just can't stand how fast he wrote).
Jasper Fforde (I know, he's very clever).
William Trevor (just can't warm up to him--too many farmhouses, too many depressed women anxiously wiping their hands on a towel).
Hawthorne: house of the seven comas; and I hate that birthmark story.
Ayn Rand: one of her heroines is raped but loves the man who did it; plus it's worth saying twice.
posted by mary grimm at 10:10 PM
4 Comments:
With the exception of Trollope (who makes me laugh and whose narrative voice I find comforting and enticing), I'm in complete agreement with your choices -- and twice with Ayn Rand indeed.
I haven't read Ayn Rand since I was in my twenties, and back then I liked her. Otherwise, I'm kinda with you, though I like the idea of Jasper Fforde so much that I refuse to give up on him yet. Annie Proulx has always struck me as somebody that people read because it's fashionable and who they claim to like because the literary elite would approve. Is that harsh? She's eccentric for eccentricity's sake, and the dashes are only the beginning. ... But i did like "Brokeback Mountain" on the page and on the screen. In spite of myself.
I remember reading Barbara Pym when I was working on my master's. Four Quartets (I think it was called) was the only one I liked. Or wait. Is that the title of something by Eliot? Also, Hawthorne's birthmark story is horrible, horrible, I agree. I had to read that for a class, also. It was such a MAN'S story. And a remarkably stupid one.
I did try Trollope a couple of times BLily; but maybe once more?
Karen--I liked AR way back when, too--I can almost guarantee you wouldn't like her as an adult.
Erie--not only a man's story, but a woman-hating man's story.
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