i agree. i'd rather be reading The Last Thing He Wanted any day of the week.;)

It was like a Wes Anderson movie: I can only take so much "art" centered around the neuroses of wealthy assholes. -this would be a far more accurate in regard to Saks-shopping actress Maria and the other characters of a little book called Play It As It Lays. Don't expect Didion to be the sort to turn an eye on the homeless and the old ladies. Those sort of people wouldn't be 'interesting' nor the sort of characters that passive people in our decadent culture can relate to. I think I bond better with Ellis's characters because I don't see myself as 'special' or 'the center of tragedy/attention' in the way Maria is meant to be seen. So there really isn't any way I could have bonded with her. I just found her and the treatment of her to be loathesome, and at first thats what I thought Didion intended but on second-read I realize how much I overestimated her. There is, therefore, no way I'm able to see myself as Maria but I am perfectly able to see myself as a faceless character permanently trapped in a Less Than Zero world. It has to do with self-conception, and I strongly feel that connecting with Maria and her 'tragedy' is dangerous, unhealthy, and ultimately self-defeating.

I'm wondering how INLAND EMPIRE would have been 'improved' if Laura Dern was out shopping for vinyl dresses, smoking hash, thinking plants were sucking up her oxygen, Yorkshire terrier 'jokes', mocking people who seriously think change is possible, and being hopelessly attractive and dependent on virile yet brutal men--all this in a black and white pencil-only animation format.

also, interesting ways to get the point across failed. The Wasteland failed. Less Than Zero is saying, you know what monkeys, I'm not here to entertain or dazzle you with my explanation of what 'everybody knows' (everybody, Richard, doesn't). Less Than Zero says "all thats left is rubble" and rubble, dear Richard, isn't shiny and entertaining. Its dull.

You want entertainment, go read Glamorama and check the Sinead O'Connor bit. It'll teach you a think or two about bonding with Maria.

Ooh, that sounded unnecessarily harsh, and now in the unlikely event that you actually do read the book, I feel I'm going to hear "No, Jason, The Smashing Pumpkins are just bad but Sinead O'Connor is soulful and is a metaphor."

So wait, what's so bad about reading a book by a man known for being highly critical of the state he lives in? Is it not so interesting because its an alternative viewpoint that you, as an American, thinks makes his work inherently less important? Also, his state wasn't really very "socialist" in actuality.

One of the reasons I read authors like Kundera is to be able to appreciate different cultures and approaches to writing. He also does Godard-esque things with language, although he's more subtle than Godard, and unlike you I don't feel "show, don't tell" is grounds for dismissal. It certainly isn't for Godard, who didatically lectures his audience and investigates the very nature of language (which is something I feel you should be picking up on with Kundera). I dismiss your approach to 'poetic' writing as singular, restrict, and irrelevant. maybe you can think of a better way to say why you don't like Kundera.

i was also thinking that if i wanted to read 'tone poems', i sure as hell wouldn't read Play It As It Lays. talk about rolling around in the mud! who wants to read 'poetry' about characters who act disgusting and have nothing to say? I understand wholly what Vowell was getting at, and while I do like Didion's conciseness, Hemingway does the same thing, did it first, and certainlly did not revel in the muck like Didion did.

Perhaps we should discard Kundera and stick to overestimating the importance of "tragedies" we Americans know, such as the downfall of actresses who go crazy? Also, what's up with Britney Spears these days? It brings a tear to my eye. She once seemed so bright, sane, young, and promising. It IS just SO sad what happened to Judy Garland.:)

Give me Sunset Boulevard or All About Eve or Joan Crawford or whatever if it has to be all about the tragic actresses. Sophocles wrote tragedies because the chracters had legitmate reasons to fall. Some wanna-be-prom-queen-oh-wait-I-mean-actress-thing...oh sheesh...I'm so sick of that. I don't connect. I'm bored with the whole thing. Send me off to a socialist state. I'm a cold Grinch, okay?

Okay, The Unbearable Lightness should be opening up brain cells and new ways of thinking of things, thats why he's bursting out with that language that you feel isn't 'poetic' and you need an N quality, and I don't feel like revisiting the book just so you can enjoy it.

Play It As It Lays is a hermetic environment of walking human garbage that explained things I already knew. Unless the meaning of "nothing" was some sort of revelation for you, or that your mind was blown to see that people don't know how to communicate.

Kundera's book has an elegance to it, and being that he's considered one of the best authors from his country, I think its kind of harsh to act like his country has nothing to offer to literature. You should, at the very least, be gaining a new understanding of sensibility from it.

Nah, burn him, lets roll around in Hollywood with Didion and understand how tragedy relies on sitting around a pool with airheads and talking about nothing and being abused by mens. it'll be witty.

also, sorry for the exclamation points and the 'burn him' and whatnot cheap sarcasm, i'm wired on coffee today and i'm typing in a rush.

Maybe somebody could put on a modern version of Oedipus Rex where Jocasta is holding a joint and instead of exposition, she could just nod her head and say nothing. Then she could hop into bed with a man who calls her a vegetable cunt. It would be poetic and heighten the tragic element.

I'm done talking about Didion because we're looking at it in two different paradigms. You're criticizing this viewpoint you perceive that I have but it's off target because it isn't what I think. Moreover, just to correct a factual error, I would advise you to take a second look at Maria's childhood and its lack of material splendor.

I think the Kundera could have been well served by a subtler approach. The sculptress is okay but the only character I find truly interesting is Tereza. I'm just over half way through and I'm keeping my mind open that it will get better.

As for Less Than Zero, assuming his point were valid, it would still be poorly executed. Or, perhaps more precisely, his point is not valid enough to excuse the poor execution, which the author himself has acknowledged was somewhat unfortunate. It's not creative. It's hardly worthwhile for someone to say "It's not that I'm uncreative, it's that there's nothing left to talk about." And even if that were true, there'd certainly be a more artful way to say it than Ellis did.

And for both of them, if the point of reading these two books is that they are instructive then I feel like they should instruct me in something I don't already know.

The reason I said it was clear that The Unbearable Lightness of Being was written by a man is that the women are clearly a man's idea of what women are, which might explain why my female friends are less fond of this book than others might be... The reason I said he seems like he's from a socialist country is that his ideas are as rigid and boxy and graceless as an East German apartment building...

Her husband calls her a cunt because no matter how hard he tries he can't seem to reach her. He's frustrated by her lack of affect. She doesn't jump into bed with him afterward. It may have escaped your attention that this woman is suffering from a serious mental illness...

i can't believe you liked that review written by yet another hipster who is so completley clueless as to read Glamorama for the complete opposite of what it is.

i mean, i really don't think Bret Easton Ellis is all THAT subtle and clever, but apparently he's subtle and clever enough that 27 yr old Americans can honestly mistake an over-the-top parody of our culture's obsession with celebrities for actual namedropping and that people can like such reviews. and i suppose thats just the mentality of the sort of goodreads hipster who thinks Harry Potter, David Sedaris, and J.K. Rowling have written a number of 5 star reads.

but thats the current state of American "culture", I suppose.

"so, pleased to meet you. it turns out there are five Arquettes, did you know there are five Arquettes? here's the list..." ;)

Your argument about Ellis's wealth is bunk. It sounds like the sort of thing people say when they're arguing that they don't want to read Wharton, James, Eliot, and Austen novels
because all the characters are of the wealthy upperclass.

And unlike those greats, Ellis is condemning wealthy brats. How unfortunate that you somehow feel the need to argue that he's some decadent rich brat asking you to weep for the rich.

One thing I learned from life experience is that there are a million freaks running around trying to assert various claims to eminence and certain behaviors based on claims of working-class family backgrounds and poverty. What made me just tire of that whole grab bag is that I eventually discovered that most of the time these people have had more given to them than I have.

also, not that it really matters anymore but Maria is New Hollywood Actress Money who shops at Saks and hangs out at the poolside. See Valley of the Dolls or VH1 Behind the Screen: Britney Spears or whatever else. Didion sees Maria as victim. Ellis wouldbe the sort to rip Maria apart as spoiled brat, not to praise her for her endurance. You claim the book is tragic and heartbreaking and I suppose the main difference between us is that we find different sorts of things to be heartbreaking.

I understand who and why Maria slept with and I understand why she got called a cunt. What I'm saying is that better authors have conveyed the psych and same things so much better, and I just thinks its lowbrow and disgusting to have to have somebody called vegetablecunt. Its not the use of the language (which I understand), its more about the fact that such language is even present.

Also, I never said Less Than Zero was creative or interesting or some high form of art. I'm just saying I thought it was perfectly white and other things you haven't even tried to engage with. I'm just sayings I thought it was a noble effort for somebody so young, and it seemed more noble than the bullshit everybody else was doing at that age, and seems to be to be significant in the long stretch of history. To me, despite the prose (which I've always said was bad), it seems rather noble. I mean, he could have just been another busy little bee spinning off The Last Thing He Wanted.

It seems to me most people hipsters these days are obsessed with the greatness of the 80s and continually fail to recognize or talk about...oh...he just seems like a necessary author to me. All these people who are into bands and scenes because they're bad, and all this hipster insanity. No wonder it seems that hipsters either misread him as an affirmation of the things he condemns, or lack the historical context to understand his uniqueness, or think he's the wrong sort of disturbing simply because he isn't clever and hip and classy enough for them.

And I guess its easy to say "I already knew that" in regard to Less Than Zero but I suppose if people already knew that they'd be rioting and protesting instead of dancing to the 80s and attending midnight showings of 80s flicks. Ellis is a threat to such lifestyles, so of course its easy to discount his youthful sub-Didion prose and to go play with shinier baubles.

We're a 60's and 80's fashion culture and I'm a 90's kind cynic who wants to burn everybody's baubles? No. But I do think we're wacked and out of balance. There are a number of modern authors I personally prefer to Ellis, but nobody else has so accurately painted a portrait of contemporary America. Much like Shakespeare, his work is significant because of its problematic nature. Shakespeare's plays are thoroughly neurotic works, but they raise all these issues that most people simply don't have the mental ability to grapple with. Ellis isn't Shakespeare by any stretch--his prose is a million miles distant from that star. He's be better described as the literary equivalent of Garry Winogrand. I don't know who else would be deserving of that title.

Also, do you think my synaesthesia in regard to Less Than Zero's whiteness is totally nuts?

I'm always looking for a whiter book. So if you know of any...

The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch is the closest thing I've found to an actual rainbow in literature.

She's hardly a new hollywood actress. she married a guy who happened to become a famous director. she made two movies, one of which was her husband following her around with a movie camera like andy warhol or something and the other was a biker movie where she gets gangbanged by a bike gang. She's hardly a starlet. I think some of the dark humor comes from the way that people only see her as an extension of her husband and also the way that people have no decency toward each other, like the abortion guy who only cares about her car.

I have no experience with synaesthesia but if it makes you feel better it is generally considered a sign of mental illness.
:-)

Granted, I only read the book once, but he doesn't seem terribly interested in putting forth effort himself. When she offers, he rescinds, and vice versa.

I have to agree that most of the novel was a frustrating emotional ping pong match between two characters I could not care less about.

Also: please advise on where I can find the aforementioned Glamorama review.

what glamorama review?

"i can't believe you liked that review written by yet another hipster who is so completley clueless as to read Glamorama for the complete opposite of what it is."

my bad. he must have been referring to a Joan Didion inspired review.