A Novel Half Read
And even at half-read, that's more than enough to form an opinion. I've resolved to set aside a novel by Paul Theroux, titled "Blinding Light", despite the generosity of reviews such this most misleading of descriptives: "A shrewd and cunning novel full of malleable personalities, psychedelia and considerable sex. What more could a reader ask for?...Los Angeles Times." Well, shame on them. Despite the predictable bait of "psychedelia and considerable sex", the book's an unqualified bore.
Quite aside from the irritating fact that the print in this Penguin-issued novel is minuscule, all 438 pages of it. It's a consummately irritating book, not worth the effort I've wasted slugging through the 200-some-odd pages I managed, squinting at the typescript by the light of my bedside lamp. It hasn't been all that long ago I was confronted by another softback, one by Adelle Wiseman, published decades ago, with similarly miniature print.
Her book, however, was well worth the effort. It was an excelling novel, a period piece well realized and outstandingly well written. A novel must have principles and it must have actualized principals. There should be something about the main characters and the plot that grip your interest, your imagination, to ensure you continue to forge through what, in the instance of this book I'm rejecting half-read, has been a struggle.
I detest not reading a book through to completion. I feel it is insulting to the author whose creative work you're rejecting without making the effort to go through it to the very last page. And then evaluate the book. If you've taken the trouble to evince an interest in it to begin with, it must be because you're somewhat familiar with a particular writer's work and like it.
Or, you've thumbed through and found what you've picked up through thumbnail views interesting. Or the book has been reviewed and you've read the review with approval, or the book may have been recommended to you. In the case of Paul Theroux, known primarily for the excellence of his travel books, I've read enough of them to recognize him as a very good writer.
His books like "The Great Railway Bazaar", "The Old Patagonian Express", "Sunrise with Seamonsters", "Riding the Iron Rooster" have entertained both me and my husband. I've read his novel "The Mosquito Coast", as well as "The Consul's Wife" and "Half Moon Street". And liked them; not so much "Millroy the Magician". So wouldn't it seem reasonable that I'd enjoy his "Blinding Light"?
Alas, it was not to be. Apart from the absurdly tiny type chosen, which had more to do with his publisher than him (unless perchance they were so unsettled themselves of the prospect of this unworthy book issuing with their imprimatur that they sought to minimize its impact...), the novel proved to be an utter waste of my time. Of which I haven't all that much left, given the normal human life-span.
There are so many books I aspire to read, from so many outstandingly good writers, and too little time to waste on throwaway novels teased out of a creative talent that appears to have irremediably shrivelled, dessicated, worn out, disappeared. Is it so hard to call it a day when one has had a succession of very good books, both fiction and non-fiction? Perhaps his book about V.S. Naipaul might have been a whole lot better had I read it.
They're at hammer and tongs. One might think that Mr. Naipaul's book that I last read, "India", didn't cost that author too many sleepless nights and days of creative energy, since its creation was the result of a multitude of reminiscences, studied historical background and interviews. But it was enormously instructive, and well worth the read. There is, alas, nothing of value in this of Mr. Theroux's book that I've rejected.
So, I'm with Mr. Naipal in his falling-out with Mr. Theroux, fair or unfair. This novel, "The Blinding Light" is a truly monumental misery; dense, uninteresting, reliant on name-dropping, on gratingly gratuitously descriptive sex encounters, and of course, a mind-altering chemical derived from a lovely flower, the Datura - aka Brugmansia, Angel's Trumpet, discovered on an exotic trip to Ecuador.
Perhaps the ingredients for a good story might be in there somewhere; a has-been writer of one acclaimed travel book who has earned a fortune through clever marketing of travel appurtenances to the moneyed set aspiring to find their own out-of-the-way exotic Paradises replete with readily-attainable recreational drugs. But the book is bogged down from the very beginning with the detritus of ego.
It is a colossal bore. Poorly written, and burdened with an overabundance of details only its creator might enjoy for the weakly amusing allusions, the purportedly sinister repartee, the degraded sex passing as true love, the irritatingly senescent masochism, the overwrought irony, its misanthropic vision. This is the kind of book one plods through methodically, ever hopeful that it will miraculously begin to reveal its purpose.
Alas, it never does. An utterly witless novel, ravaging of precious time.
Quite aside from the irritating fact that the print in this Penguin-issued novel is minuscule, all 438 pages of it. It's a consummately irritating book, not worth the effort I've wasted slugging through the 200-some-odd pages I managed, squinting at the typescript by the light of my bedside lamp. It hasn't been all that long ago I was confronted by another softback, one by Adelle Wiseman, published decades ago, with similarly miniature print.
Her book, however, was well worth the effort. It was an excelling novel, a period piece well realized and outstandingly well written. A novel must have principles and it must have actualized principals. There should be something about the main characters and the plot that grip your interest, your imagination, to ensure you continue to forge through what, in the instance of this book I'm rejecting half-read, has been a struggle.
I detest not reading a book through to completion. I feel it is insulting to the author whose creative work you're rejecting without making the effort to go through it to the very last page. And then evaluate the book. If you've taken the trouble to evince an interest in it to begin with, it must be because you're somewhat familiar with a particular writer's work and like it.
Or, you've thumbed through and found what you've picked up through thumbnail views interesting. Or the book has been reviewed and you've read the review with approval, or the book may have been recommended to you. In the case of Paul Theroux, known primarily for the excellence of his travel books, I've read enough of them to recognize him as a very good writer.
His books like "The Great Railway Bazaar", "The Old Patagonian Express", "Sunrise with Seamonsters", "Riding the Iron Rooster" have entertained both me and my husband. I've read his novel "The Mosquito Coast", as well as "The Consul's Wife" and "Half Moon Street". And liked them; not so much "Millroy the Magician". So wouldn't it seem reasonable that I'd enjoy his "Blinding Light"?
Alas, it was not to be. Apart from the absurdly tiny type chosen, which had more to do with his publisher than him (unless perchance they were so unsettled themselves of the prospect of this unworthy book issuing with their imprimatur that they sought to minimize its impact...), the novel proved to be an utter waste of my time. Of which I haven't all that much left, given the normal human life-span.
There are so many books I aspire to read, from so many outstandingly good writers, and too little time to waste on throwaway novels teased out of a creative talent that appears to have irremediably shrivelled, dessicated, worn out, disappeared. Is it so hard to call it a day when one has had a succession of very good books, both fiction and non-fiction? Perhaps his book about V.S. Naipaul might have been a whole lot better had I read it.
They're at hammer and tongs. One might think that Mr. Naipaul's book that I last read, "India", didn't cost that author too many sleepless nights and days of creative energy, since its creation was the result of a multitude of reminiscences, studied historical background and interviews. But it was enormously instructive, and well worth the read. There is, alas, nothing of value in this of Mr. Theroux's book that I've rejected.
So, I'm with Mr. Naipal in his falling-out with Mr. Theroux, fair or unfair. This novel, "The Blinding Light" is a truly monumental misery; dense, uninteresting, reliant on name-dropping, on gratingly gratuitously descriptive sex encounters, and of course, a mind-altering chemical derived from a lovely flower, the Datura - aka Brugmansia, Angel's Trumpet, discovered on an exotic trip to Ecuador.
Perhaps the ingredients for a good story might be in there somewhere; a has-been writer of one acclaimed travel book who has earned a fortune through clever marketing of travel appurtenances to the moneyed set aspiring to find their own out-of-the-way exotic Paradises replete with readily-attainable recreational drugs. But the book is bogged down from the very beginning with the detritus of ego.
It is a colossal bore. Poorly written, and burdened with an overabundance of details only its creator might enjoy for the weakly amusing allusions, the purportedly sinister repartee, the degraded sex passing as true love, the irritatingly senescent masochism, the overwrought irony, its misanthropic vision. This is the kind of book one plods through methodically, ever hopeful that it will miraculously begin to reveal its purpose.
Alas, it never does. An utterly witless novel, ravaging of precious time.
posted by Pieface @ 5:25 PM
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