Lukewarm review for KITB

[--Ed.]

Find it here, at JMWW quarterly:

jmww.150m.com/Kittens.html

Hey, as long as people are reading the thing...

They also have a review for Patrick Silmonelli's publiching project, Bukowski Never Did This by Jack Saunders. The JMWW crew is hard to impress, but I thank them for even taking the time.

[sheriffwydell]

This one actually sells the book better than some of the glowing ones. It gives you a much clearer idea of what the book is about. As far as what the characters are like and what the tone is. The critique is very much based on taste.

What she said about the plot and the sameness could easily and more fittingly be said about American Psycho or Less Than Zero. Not every character has to have epiphanies, more often than not that sort of thing is phony. That is really what kills Bright Lights, Big City for instance. The big gay epiphany scene where he gives up coke and goes back to the simple life.

JMWW is pretty nitpicky anyway.

But again, the fact that this review goes into such depth in the first place, to me, shows a lot more respect for it than the other reviews did. More genuine.

[--Ed.]

I agree actually. I was happy to see some mention of the other characters, because I think they're just as important to the book as the narrator. Wee Andy is a really great character that hasn't been given any play in any of the reviews we've seen so far, and Christopher is really good too. They did make a bit of a mistake in the review in that the raterded flemish cook and the dodgy neighbor aren't actually the same person.

[dnucci]

I don't know if it's so much a critique as an honest assessment of what the book is and isn't. Yes, the reviewer beats you over the head with "This is not a Hemingway novel" ad nauseum instead of making the point and then highlighting some of the attributes that make it appealing to so many.




-D-

[magpie]

I disagree that there is no epiphany. I suppose there is no pivotal moment but I think there is certainly two or three key chapters that push the whole narrative into another space. I think the reviewer made a thoughtful effort and had some good points, but I would suggest they read it again.

[kavcarter]

Who needs a plot? A plot of land to grow cabbages maybe but a plot. Who needs characters? A play maybe well not even a play read Beckett…that landscape is voices only…Molly Bloom didn’t even need punctuation…the dirty filly but she made good eggs in the morning do eggs cause hiccups?…and finnegans wake lost the apostrophe bloody confusing losing that damn apostrophe… Lawrence beget Miller beget burroughs and he beget “ shit boy anything is possible!” what am I trying to achieve? Well when it comes to the old critic bissness one must realize that we are now I think though fatuous but anyway with dreadful computation around somewhere postpostpostpostpostmodernism and surely ( don’t call be surely ) that means anything is possible…was lecompte the first to use run on sentences…no! she the first to call herself George sands…I don’t think…like it or not Lecompte has got style…it might be back of the bicycle shed with a fag in its gob and music deafening but it’s still style…and epiphanies…why do protagonist need damn religious epiphanies…did Tristam Shandy have an epiphany? Didn’t Genet call his characters pencil marks and nothing else…the days of hardy are long gone! I love Hardy I do! I love Henry James as well…anyway enough of me…

[sheriffwydell]

The problem with people who harp on grammar is that they don't understand that grammatical rules are meant to be guidelines. Blindly adhering to strict grammar in your fiction can be just as amateurish as showing a complete ignorance of it.

So much grammar is regional. It's a common distinction between English and American writers. English writers, for the most part, understand that grammar is a tool in your palette. British editors often complain that American writers use far too many commas. In America a formal education almost completely destroys your creative writing skills.

The most important thing is being clear. Too much punctuation can destroy clarity.

It's especially idiotic to bring up grammatical use in a first person narrative since the voice that flows out of a character's mouth can't be controlled by the same grammatical rules that might be needed when you are doing a third person narrative.

Especially when you want to do a detached sort of third person narrative and just present scenes without imposing your personality on them, grammar can help a lot by giving your writing a uniform standard look.

Also sentence fragments are one of the basic foundations of suspense writing. Punchline sentences and strange sentence structure.

You can't present any streams of counciousness without run on sentences.

[dnucci]

All good points, Kane.

For proof that even academia can't deny, check out Joyce's Ulysses, Stein's Three Lives and most of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.




-D-

[--Ed.]

You boys is all all right.