Friday, May 16, 2008

The struggle of Text against World. The World wins.

- from Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen

Yeah, it's like, when you have to go to bed, and you can't stay up all night reading a very long novel in a single go, even though the first twenty pages make you want to, very badly. Oh, please, please let this book stay as good as these first pages. I could deal with something so unputdownable.

(...Which, incidentally, and I hope this does not seem disrespectful to Ed's interesting post, but: "unputdownable" means--at least, in my head, in the world in my head, the one where things sort of make more sense, and everybody is a little bit happier--simply that a book creates tension the reader desires to have resolved. Like, right now. Whether resolution comes through actions and plot or meaning and ideas (or, both!) does not--ought not--matter. Which makes it easy to see there's no difference between so-called literary unputdownable novels and mainstream unputdownable novels--there are only differences between readers, differences between critics, readers and critics who exist in a society rooted in class and gender conflicts and binary oppositions, the kind in which one side or the other is always preferable, depending on which way you look at them. Which I think still gets me and Ed to the same point: you're pretty much douchey if you think the other guy or gal is douchey for genuinely liking what they like. But correct me if I'm wrong.)