mark monday’s Reviews > Breaking and Entering > Status Update

Three guesses what the gerbils are for?

I can do it in one: I presume they are destined to be adventurers of the buttscape.

cause apparently that's what homosexuals do when they are broken-hearted. fuck off, Joy Williams. that Richard Gere joke is so tired.

WT proverbial F? That's just awful.

the sad thing is that phrase is a part of a lovely little paragraph all about longing and sadness and different lives going different ways. and then that phrase happens.

Wow.

I love Joy Williams and I am disappointed by this. I've never read Breaking and Entering and I don't think I will.

...I was going to guess "use the gerbils to recreate iconic scenes from Hollywood Classics," but now I feel naive for thinking so.

:/

Wonder how many people who've reviewed the work on this site passed over this as "excusable".

the only reason I can think of Joy Williams including that phrase is that that Richard Gere joke was still semi-fresh when the book came out in 1988.

but it is particularly inexcusable (and just laugh-out-loud BAD WRITING) because the phrase is not coming from a character. I put the phrase in quotes but it is not a line of dialogue or even a thought from one of the characters. it is 3rd person omniscient Joy Williams musing there. which is ugh.

Least no one can pull the ol' "Well you musn't confuse the character with the author cause objectivity and art and blah de blah de" whatnot with that. Although I'm sure someone will try.

Richard wrote: "I love Joy Williams and I am disappointed by this. I've never read Breaking and Entering and I don't think I will."

my friend Mariel (awesome reviewer with awesome taste) loves Joy Williams as well. although that phrase was head-smackingly stupid and not a little offensive, the novel itself is not so bad, at least so far. but nothing amazing either. worst things about it, other than that phrase: an annoying lack of affect and a couple bouts of terrible monologuing by a couple support characters. best things about it: frequent bits of lovely, melancholy poetic flights of prose; very enjoyable and sympathetic kid and dog characters.

I should restate that I love her short fiction. I've read one novel "The Quick and the Dead," which was interesting, but not my favorite type of book. She does write great dog characters. :) If you ever want to giver her another chance, her collection "Honored Guest" is wonderful.

thanks for the tip!

this made me really, really angry for a goodly half-minute or so. and then i remembered that it's the kind of bullshit i still see sprinkled around all over the place.

even if it's some elaborate headfake you'll be rewarded by later, it's cheap.

dislike.

cheap is the exact word for it.

Makes the novel title have a whole new meaning. And yes, glad that joke has died down some - finally - no urge to see it come back.

So did the gerbils suffer their fate as pawns in an outdated representation of homosexuality as degenerate behavior, or did Joy pull a fast one on the reader and the rodents were in fact used for recreating iconic scenes from Hollywood Classics?

they probably suffer from the same crippling anomie and lack of direction that the rest of her characters suffer from, and so I doubt if they even made it past the starting gate. so to speak.

i'm going to find someone to use 'crippling anomie' on right now.