I never could understand people's love of The English
Patient, and I think most of them didn't read it, but think
it sounds intellligent to say so, as you imply. Maybe they
saw the movie. So I don't think those people are good judges.
I don't recall it ever being mentioned by anybody involved in
creative writing. However, I can't say too much about it's
literary value, or lack of, since I couldn't get past a few
chapters myself. I've heard the same criticism about Ulysses
and Finnegan's Wake, of course, and I wouldn't start ripping
those classics. I do think there's a place for
non-traditional style, even if it is hard to deal with.
Writers have to experiment because they are creative people
and get tired of the same old traditional style and
technique, no matter that it works the best. John Barth comes
to mind as someone who wrote great novels until he went too
far in order to keep being creative--in my opinion. However,
Ondaatje (Thanks for the spelling.) can be a wonderful
writer. He has a much better book called Running in the
Family, a fiction/autobiography that never gets mentioned.
Chance and Hollywood both have major roles in what makes
money. Vicki
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 16 Nov 2005 EST