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"Too much traffic"
About Me
- Jenny Davidson
- I have published four novels and four books of literary criticism; I'm currently at work on a book called FOR THE LOVE OF BROKEN THINGS: MY FATHER, EDWARD GIBBON AND THE RUINS OF ROME. I teach in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
A few pieces
Books
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Blog Archive
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2011
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July
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- Acrobatic historians
- The writing life
- Oh happy day!
- Lagos faits divers
- Improvement of the breed
- Retail therapy
- This side whimsy
- "Slightly, no, no, NO"
- Five-year planning
- Robopocalypse redux
- Natal update
- "Books do furnish a room"
- 'Muggletonians and animals'
- Bits and bobs
- "Well done the biscuit"
- Creating the doldrums
- "The tender new catch"
- Pern, Darkover
- Reacher-like
- Closing tabs (strangulation edition)
- "He was wedded to his sans serifs"
- Chairs, houses
- On format
- Taste of chlorine
- Summer thoughts
- "Fosberg's love grass, Franciscan manzanita, giant...
- "Somehow old-fashioned, gladatorial"
- 51%
- Carr/Talese
- Thursday linkage
- Post-vortex update
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July
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I find Child's take on literary fiction amusing, esp. when juxtaposed with "He shot a guy at a thousand yards and the interviewer asked, ‘What did you feel?’ He said, ‘I felt a little recoil against my shoulder.’" I cannot imagine a literary novelist just quoting that and moving on. On the other hand, it might be exactly the level at which one should naturally perceive things in order to write a certain kind of plot.
ReplyDeleteI have never read a Lee Child novel, mass-market thrillers are a little outside my circle of interests, but the persona of the interviewee has a great deal of "human interest." And what a strange take on Sir Lancelot!
PS I suppose one sees some of the same flatness in Icelandic sagas...
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