Tuesday, May 4, 2010
I can't think of a good phonetic scramble for this one. I'm all worn out.
This is just a personal observation, and it relates to my personality as a reader and probably nobody else's, but I find the organization of the book to be a major pain. Once I understood that Joe was in bandages from head to foot, or lack thereof, I wanted to find out more about Joe's condition! Would he be all right? What permanent damage will he suffer? (I now know the answer to that question is a bunch) But instead, I read a bunch of flashbacks to Joe's past. His friends, his family, his enemies, and even people he barely knew intertwine in his thoughts throughout the novel, and it really bothers me because I find this part irrelevant to the knowledge I want to obtain. I don't care what message is trying to be made through these memories, but the only message I wanted to receive from the book is what happened to Joe. I know Dalton Trumbo is a greater writer than I could ever hope to be yadda yadda yadda but that aspect of the book, at least for me, was a major nuisance.
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4 comments:
Brian,
I completely agree with you! I always feel like there is another piece to the story, yet I don't find out until later in the chapter what it is. The flash backs and memories are supposed to be sporadic, like his thought process, but it did make things more complicated and somewhat confusing.
Brian, I totally disagree with you. I think the organization of the book effectively mirrors Joe's thought process; this is necessary to show you that no matter how frustrated you are that you don't know his actual physical condition, it can and will never reach parity with the amount of frustration Joe feels for not knowing the same thing about his own body. This book is intended to piss you off.
Kwame, I totally don't care.
Brian, I once had a dream that you weren't a douchewater-drinking cynic. Once.
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