I think the books are written in the mistaken belief that there is something lofty in recognizing the futility of human endeavors. One of the reasons I hate that these books are prized is that the fatalistic view isn't particularly sophisticated at all. It is the shallowest level of existence to simply observe that "It is a hard life, a hard life, a very hard life. It's a hard life wherever you go." I would rather writers at least moved along to the second idea in that song and tried to do more than observe and report on the obvious. I will agree that the reporting on the obvious was stellar in Olive Kitteridge, but I began to be impatient with being told over and over again that Olive was petty and mean-spirited and oh, by the way so was everyone else so let's all just except that these people are very, very human.
My problem is that's where the author's insight stopped dead. Okay, I agree, people can be petty and mean-spirited and that's very human. But so what? If I knew that already, why even bother reading such a book? To confirm that other people can also form shallow observations? No real person would ever been so unremittingly shallow. I've known narcissist and playboys and one or two sociopaths and none of them exhibited the anhedonia in Olive Kitteridge. And that's because Olive Kitteridge has lousy characterization. The book is full of one dimensional people who will never change and never deviate from their little groove.
As for you and Joss, I probably meant that you had his way with the characters. Overall, JW and RTD were both excellent in the original creation of their characters, but they did both refuse to let the characters grow in their natural direction. Buffy was returned to helpless childhood and Rose was forced into a marriage by the one person who would never have done that to her, except that RTD wrote it that way. The one saving grace for RTD is that he admitted he's made a mistake and he knew for sure that Rose would never love the man he forced upon her. JW sadly never realized what he'd done wrong. But that doesn't mean he created a cardboard Buffy...he didn't...he just tried to stuff her back into her original packaging when he took away her self-determination.
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Date: 2011-03-21 03:53 pm (UTC)My problem is that's where the author's insight stopped dead. Okay, I agree, people can be petty and mean-spirited and that's very human. But so what? If I knew that already, why even bother reading such a book? To confirm that other people can also form shallow observations? No real person would ever been so unremittingly shallow. I've known narcissist and playboys and one or two sociopaths and none of them exhibited the anhedonia in Olive Kitteridge. And that's because Olive Kitteridge has lousy characterization. The book is full of one dimensional people who will never change and never deviate from their little groove.
As for you and Joss, I probably meant that you had his way with the characters. Overall, JW and RTD were both excellent in the original creation of their characters, but they did both refuse to let the characters grow in their natural direction. Buffy was returned to helpless childhood and Rose was forced into a marriage by the one person who would never have done that to her, except that RTD wrote it that way. The one saving grace for RTD is that he admitted he's made a mistake and he knew for sure that Rose would never love the man he forced upon her. JW sadly never realized what he'd done wrong. But that doesn't mean he created a cardboard Buffy...he didn't...he just tried to stuff her back into her original packaging when he took away her self-determination.