Thank you for a really great, insightful review. There is so much going on in our world that we all may not want to face or know about. But, if we are people of empathy, compassion, loving-kindness, this book is one of the most important books I have ever read. Some parts of the book were so very real and upsetting that it was almost unbearable. However, it also made me think of all those around the world who are actually suffering. I sort of felt like I was another friend of Jude. Like his friends, they so hoped that he would change or let go. Yet, they were all so gentle and loving and understanding. I am glad that he had love in his life, but the abuse he endured as a child and as an adult truly destroyed him. I never got the sense that he ever had great happiness. The love he had with his friends was so very important to him, yet he was often very separate. He often could not bear their live. It is a great book. Probably the most important book I have ever read. The book is difficult, because as a reader, I so wanted Jude to get better. I wanted his life to improve. This is, per the writer, herself, a book about a man, Jude, whose life does not fundamentally improve. There are many lives in our world like his. How we all hope for happy endings. That is part of the true brilliance of this book.
Super late to this review but I appreciate your insight. Normally I would agree that Yanagihara wrote the men as women, except in all of her interviews she seems to be aware that they aren't typical. It was a choice I guess to explore modern maleness and how what it is to be male is changing. You'll also notice that like 98% of the characters are gay or bi or unsure and that it's set in a New York devoid of time. I think those choices, whether implemented well or not, were purposeful to make a point. But as far as the "misery memoir" goes, she has said that she wanted to make the damaged character's life unrealistically terrible, and then have him turn around and become unrealistically successful, because the point of the book is about a person's right to kill themselves. The book is meant to show that some people, even if they end up wildly successful, will never be able to escape their pain- and that if we let terminally ill patients choose to die, why not terminally mentally ill people as well? I'm not saying I agree or don't agree but that's what the author has said. My thoughts on the book are that I really like it a lot, although not necessarily on literary merit, and that it makes me very, very sad.
I had wanted to read this when it was first published; the praise seemed universal. But earlier this year, my friend Ben’s wife (the same Ben with whom we had dinner) read it and seemed to regard it as the worst book she’d ever read. And then I saw Mercy’s video on it. And then I read that Yanagihara has said that she intended to “force” her readers to feel, when it seems to me a writer should persuade their readers to feel. But when I heard Mercy’s laundry list of the suffering (and circumstances leading to it) in the novel, it struck me as brutally manipulative of readers - like Janet Fitch’s White Oleander on steroids. And there is maybe nothing I resent more, as a reader, than being manipulated, than being led through a litany of plot developments that strain credulity in the extreme and are designed to bully or railroad a reader. So even though I also have friends who love this novel, I don’t think I will ever read it, as it sounds objectively, offensively implausible to me.
Well then I don’t think you have much right to criticize something that you haven’t even read to honestly gain an opinion about it rather than how it seems to other people. I honestly love it and don’t think it’s forced there are people that have lives with constant abuse and tragedy and if that’s hard to accept than I don’t know what to say. Yes it’s fiction but all fiction is heightened and plotted in a way to manipulate you, slightly or straightforwardly, to feel or think differently than you might usually. If you really want an opinion then read it if the content sounds too much for you than just say that and move on.
@@gingrsnap1951 But I can and do have the right to criticize the author’s stated aim and to infer, from her comments, that she has written a novel engineered to force rather than to persuade. And that is objectionable.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse like I said you haven’t read the book. When the author is done writing or the director is done directing it is not theirs anymore it is the reader or the viewer and it’s not a text book forcing only one way of interpretation. This is fiction which is for the individual to read and to bring their own experiences and open their minds to other experiences and decide for themself. It’s a beautiful book that’s far more complicated than listening to a review and making a judgment on it.
@@gingrsnap1951 All true. Listen: it’s a polarizing book, I understand that - some of my dearest and smartest friends love it. Others of my dearest and smartest friends would like to see it burned. If I - who haven’t read it - can understand it’s worthy of vitriol, even as it may likewise be worthy of love, why can’t you? It is not a sacred cow; it can survive being roughed up a little. One doesn’t need to have read a book labeled as “torture porn” or “trauma porn” by as many sophisticated readers as who admire the book...to have some sense of what it’s likely doing. Just as I don’t need to see Pasolini’s last film Salo to know I’d want it scorched from my memory if I did see it. So, in short, I’m honestly glad you’re such a fan of it. But don’t go around snidely telling others they’re not permitted opinions on art because the criteria they’re using to determine whether they want to read the book in the first place fall short of your standards. It sounds like a steaming heap, and its author had dubious motives in writing it. I’m perfectly justified in passing a judgment on it being not at all worth my time. Period. Full stop.
@@gingrsnap1951 I have read it and think that Jason is pretty spot on. A 'one-note' book...and that note is unremitting misery without any colour or shade, set against a backdrop of implausibility and shockingly poor character development. Also, its utterly ludicrous to suggest that you can't hold a valid opinion on a book until you've read it. All of the books that I've ever decided I don't want to read are ones on which I've formed an opinion. If you blindly stagger into reading any old mush that coasts your way, without possessing the critical faculties to filter out what you will and will not find appealing then....I wish you the best of luck on your reading journey.
I agree. Compulsive but flawed. There is, indeed a very good book inside this tome. A lot of the abusive incidents could have been excised and Yanagihara would still have had plenty of meat left to examine a damaged life. By piling on the misery, she makes us feel, but she also fatally unbalances the structure. At half the length, the book could have been even more powerful. Your point about the men acting more as women do was insightful, and goes a long way to explain the strange dynamic in Willem and Jude's relationship. It also helps to explain that I kept on thinking it was a fable (the characters age, but their environment seems to be stuck forever in the first decade of 21st C) while knowing it couldn't be because of the gut wrenching detail.
my dad's friendships are all very supportive, but in practical terms (most of them have died now, so they've really had to support each other in times of crisis etc) eg helping when ill, homeless, divorcing etc. But not verbal! At all! (Age group 60-80 now, quite old.) It's my mother's friendships that are not supportive, as all of them are concerned with their family, husband, children, grandchildren, and a few close friends: apart from one lesbian with no children (older period so no adoption etc then), there are zero women who have been able to 'call in' friendships in their hour of need, and as a woman of 45 in a province where most women are grandparents then but i was infertile etc, i can't find a single woman my age available for friendship, whereas i see many single men around me with good friendship networks
could it perhaps be that women already have entire households to look after (mainly in older generation) and friendships just don't fit into that lifestyle? story of my mum's life...
Wow this review rubbed me in the wrong way in many ways but mainly because I think it’s very very dangerous to say that these friendships aren’t masculine enough. And I think that was the point of the author so I’m glad she was able to convey that through the writing. She wanted to explore feelings of men who have been historically told in our society to not express much but still experience those things which makes them incapable of dealing with it. I think that’s the reason men commit more suicide than women because they are not at all equipped to deal with any of their emotions.
You will probably get a lot of flack over this, but you are right. In AA, the men have compassion, but not sympathy. They say" Sympathy and Syphillis are next to each other in the dictionary for a reason." If you want what they have, you do what they did to get it. No one who does not suffer the problem will be able to help that person. I think the lack of roughness and sarcasm is a bit problem. I've been around a lot of men, and a tender listening ear is not their forte. In AA, they would call it whining and move on to someone who wants help. Same in AA. Same on support sites for mental illness. Love and understanding do not save anyone. All I've met in my groups are assholes in one way or another. I think even the women in my groups would have a hard time with the damaged character in this book.
Sorry, I meant it was the same in NA, Narcotics Anonymous. Climbing out of an addiction and/or mental illness is tough work that never goes away, and no one can do it for you. I ought to write about our Walking Man, a schizophrenic who stands in the parking lot on bad days and comes inside on good days, and has 15 years of sobriety. We are the only family he has. He probably walks 20 miles a day, and works hard to stay sober and sane as he can. He is worth being a modern classic.
Your thoughts are very interesting. I plan on reading the book this year and I am definitely gonna look out for the problems you mentioned. But the male/female thing is probably gonna go straight over my head because I am a woman myself, but we will see.
I was part of a women's book club a few years ago and someone chose the book, The Solitude of Prime Numbers. As I made my way through the first few chapters, the book felt false to me. It was hard to figure out why. Eventually I realized it was a male author telling the story of a young high school girl and the bullying she had taken by other girls. The description of those scenes seemed so off. My friends loved the book. I did not even finish. I had a hard time continuing on. Another book that many, many people love is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. In this case, a female writer is writing as a teenage/young adult male and I believe she goes a bit overboard trying to capture how young men behave. At least it felt that way to me. I did finish The Goldfinch but I did not enjoy it. The feeling of the voice being 'false' nagged at me through the whole reading. Self Indulgent also comes to mind (775 pages). Neil, have you read Stoner by John Williams or Tinkers by Paul Harding? I watched your 'slow read' video and both of these novels came to mind,though they are not lengthy. Tinkers won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2010. Stoner was written in 1965. I came across it through this article.www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-american-novel-youve-never-heard-of I think, if you love Gilead, you might enjoy these two books.
+Elizabeth Schubert Hi Elizabeth. I have read Stoner, one of my favourite novels EVER, and I've read Tinkers, which I really enjoyed at the time, but can't really remember, except some of the prose was exceptional. The more I think of A Little Life, the more it irritates me. I think I had the same experience as you with The Goldfinch
I find it frustrating for you to categorize all men the way you did... you really put them in a box... apparently you know all of them and can speak for them. Ironically that is one thing the author was speaking to. I know men who are softer in nature... who are sentimental... and the author herself stated this was an exaggerated version of life of these friends, and to write someone who went through so much that they were never able to "get better" because some never do... and how we as a society put pressure on those damaged to "get better." And she specifically speaks on emphasizing the societal restraints men are supposed to live within whereas woman aren't... especially when it comes to speaking or displaying emotion verbally and physically... what men can and can't say because they are men. Side note... her first book The People In The Trees was about extreme abuse of power from the perspective of the abuser, and this was about extreme abuse from a victim and what it means to live with that everyday and how it affects one mentally. Unfortunately I know people who have horrific pasts similar in nature and many not as extreme... the way she captured the understanding that trauma never leaves you, especially when repeated, was incredibly accurate... for males and females alike... and not just for the the one traumatized but for those around them, that love them, that don't understand how to help someone they love.
I am very hesitant to comment on this book. I have not read it. I will not read it. I have heard some reviews of it, however, and those reviewers whose opinions I respect have all had one thing to say. They refer to the writing itself as being only slightly above adequate and the amount of abuse is piled on to such an extent that it becomes unbelievable. One reviewer referred to it as misery porn. I looked up this term and found this: Misery lit (mis lit, misery memoirs or mis mems, misery porn) is a genre of supposedly biographical literature mostly concerned with the protagonist's triumph over personal trauma or abuse, often during childhood. It is also sometimes called "pathography." The genre is generally considered to be American in origin, but later became popular in Britain as well. The term misery lit was ostensibly coined by The Bookseller magazine. I feel that this sort of writing (I refuse to call it literature) is symptomatic of a society that feels it is not in control of its own destiny. From what I have heard booktube reviewers say about books of this nature, they are self-indulgent and lack a realistic perspective. I find it disturbing that this style of storytelling has been so embraced by professional literary critics. But, I have to be honest. I feel that book critics sold out to publishers years ago in order to increase their popularity and economic bottom line. In fact, popularity and economic bottom lines go together. Until such time that writers return to a storytelling that deals with an honest portrayal of the human condition without indulging in pathological behavior presented as the norm, literature will suffer. I see this style of writing being just as harmful to society as the pathological ills it exploits.
I thought this was a great review. I do want to point out that the indulgent novel and the sarcastic fault pointing modern novel seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum now. Its kinda like the whole popular vs literary novel debate. I've read some classics and I've read some that I absolute love (more than popular fiction) and a few that I absolutely hate because they seemed borderline psychopathic in terms of how they view their characters (they were unfeeling, disconnected, and torturous for the sake of not sounding too wishy washy or mainstream). I feel like there should be a mixture of both. It might not make for the most literary of novels, but I dont want to read another book about characters living terrible lives in a detached manner, because in that case I might as well read history because I can just assign my own feelings. What do you think?
You're right about a whole strand of modernism - essentially creating characters who seemed so disaffected by life they are dead inside. Sometimes it works, but most often it feels like reading about someone who's undergone a lobotomy.
it's sad but I stopped reading Hemingway for this exact reason. I love Bradbury, Fitzgerald, and a few others even though all these are difficult for me to read (I didn't always read out of my comfort zone lol). Hemingway on the other hand, doesn't really give a point to his character's suffering at least in the two novels I've read. I'll definitely try more if the other books are different, but I feel like maybe it was a bit much because he was himself suffering from many tragic happenings that eventually lead to a death that may or may not have something to do with the torturous electric treatments he went through. I find this extremely strange because I love noir films, even if they are depressing or detached because I always feel like they have something very profound to say (and i've found this in pretty much 90 percent of the ones I've seen). Its strange because alot of noir was, apparently, inspired by writers like hemingway and others. I'm hoping Im just not seeing this whole thing wrong, because I definitely want to write with a certain degree of literacy, even when I write in a quote and quote popular genre.
I don't think you're seeing things wrong - Hemingway is not known for the interiour life of his characters. Noir films tend to have a strong central character wrestling with their own vulnerabilities, which makes them very relatable.
Thats good. Thank god. I do enjoy sometimes the realism that Hemingway portrays so I will probably learn from that, but I instead will take more from noir, and then actually have a good ending after the inner turmoil. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes things can be tragic. I thought I was going crazy. Thanks for letting me know.
Also wanted to ask you what branches of modernism are your favorite or how do I avoid a situation like A Little Life (I dont want to end up writing something like this. Especially after what you said)
Thank you for a really great, insightful review. There is so much going on in our world that we all may not want to face or know about. But, if we are people of empathy, compassion, loving-kindness, this book is one of the most important books I have ever read. Some parts of the book were so very real and upsetting that it was almost unbearable. However, it also made me think of all those around the world who are actually suffering. I sort of felt like I was another friend of Jude. Like his friends, they so hoped that he would change or let go. Yet, they were all so gentle and loving and understanding. I am glad that he had love in his life, but the abuse he endured as a child and as an adult truly destroyed him. I never got the sense that he ever had great happiness. The love he had with his friends was so very important to him, yet he was often very separate. He often could not bear their live. It is a great book. Probably the most important book I have ever read. The book is difficult, because as a reader, I so wanted Jude to get better. I wanted his life to improve. This is, per the writer, herself, a book about a man, Jude, whose life does not fundamentally improve. There are many lives in our world like his. How we all hope for happy endings. That is part of the true brilliance of this book.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much - you're not alone: many people loved it.
Super late to this review but I appreciate your insight. Normally I would agree that Yanagihara wrote the men as women, except in all of her interviews she seems to be aware that they aren't typical. It was a choice I guess to explore modern maleness and how what it is to be male is changing. You'll also notice that like 98% of the characters are gay or bi or unsure and that it's set in a New York devoid of time. I think those choices, whether implemented well or not, were purposeful to make a point. But as far as the "misery memoir" goes, she has said that she wanted to make the damaged character's life unrealistically terrible, and then have him turn around and become unrealistically successful, because the point of the book is about a person's right to kill themselves. The book is meant to show that some people, even if they end up wildly successful, will never be able to escape their pain- and that if we let terminally ill patients choose to die, why not terminally mentally ill people as well? I'm not saying I agree or don't agree but that's what the author has said. My thoughts on the book are that I really like it a lot, although not necessarily on literary merit, and that it makes me very, very sad.
Thank you for your insight into author's motivations.
I had wanted to read this when it was first published; the praise seemed universal. But earlier this year, my friend Ben’s wife (the same Ben with whom we had dinner) read it and seemed to regard it as the worst book she’d ever read. And then I saw Mercy’s video on it. And then I read that Yanagihara has said that she intended to “force” her readers to feel, when it seems to me a writer should persuade their readers to feel. But when I heard Mercy’s laundry list of the suffering (and circumstances leading to it) in the novel, it struck me as brutally manipulative of readers - like Janet Fitch’s White Oleander on steroids. And there is maybe nothing I resent more, as a reader, than being manipulated, than being led through a litany of plot developments that strain credulity in the extreme and are designed to bully or railroad a reader. So even though I also have friends who love this novel, I don’t think I will ever read it, as it sounds objectively, offensively implausible to me.
Well then I don’t think you have much right to criticize something that you haven’t even read to honestly gain an opinion about it rather than how it seems to other people. I honestly love it and don’t think it’s forced there are people that have lives with constant abuse and tragedy and if that’s hard to accept than I don’t know what to say. Yes it’s fiction but all fiction is heightened and plotted in a way to manipulate you, slightly or straightforwardly, to feel or think differently than you might usually. If you really want an opinion then read it if the content sounds too much for you than just say that and move on.
@@gingrsnap1951 But I can and do have the right to criticize the author’s stated aim and to infer, from her comments, that she has written a novel engineered to force rather than to persuade. And that is objectionable.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse like I said you haven’t read the book. When the author is done writing or the director is done directing it is not theirs anymore it is the reader or the viewer and it’s not a text book forcing only one way of interpretation. This is fiction which is for the individual to read and to bring their own experiences and open their minds to other experiences and decide for themself. It’s a beautiful book that’s far more complicated than listening to a review and making a judgment on it.
@@gingrsnap1951 All true. Listen: it’s a polarizing book, I understand that - some of my dearest and smartest friends love it. Others of my dearest and smartest friends would like to see it burned. If I - who haven’t read it - can understand it’s worthy of vitriol, even as it may likewise be worthy of love, why can’t you? It is not a sacred cow; it can survive being roughed up a little. One doesn’t need to have read a book labeled as “torture porn” or “trauma porn” by as many sophisticated readers as who admire the book...to have some sense of what it’s likely doing. Just as I don’t need to see Pasolini’s last film Salo to know I’d want it scorched from my memory if I did see it. So, in short, I’m honestly glad you’re such a fan of it. But don’t go around snidely telling others they’re not permitted opinions on art because the criteria they’re using to determine whether they want to read the book in the first place fall short of your standards. It sounds like a steaming heap, and its author had dubious motives in writing it. I’m perfectly justified in passing a judgment on it being not at all worth my time. Period. Full stop.
@@gingrsnap1951 I have read it and think that Jason is pretty spot on. A 'one-note' book...and that note is unremitting misery without any colour or shade, set against a backdrop of implausibility and shockingly poor character development. Also, its utterly ludicrous to suggest that you can't hold a valid opinion on a book until you've read it. All of the books that I've ever decided I don't want to read are ones on which I've formed an opinion. If you blindly stagger into reading any old mush that coasts your way, without possessing the critical faculties to filter out what you will and will not find appealing then....I wish you the best of luck on your reading journey.
'There is much to admire about this...' line of the week!
Spot on. My reaction as well. The male characters are actually female characters.
I agree. Compulsive but flawed. There is, indeed a very good book inside this tome. A lot of the abusive incidents could have been excised and Yanagihara would still have had plenty of meat left to examine a damaged life. By piling on the misery, she makes us feel, but she also fatally unbalances the structure. At half the length, the book could have been even more powerful.
Your point about the men acting more as women do was insightful, and goes a long way to explain the strange dynamic in Willem and Jude's relationship. It also helps to explain that I kept on thinking it was a fable (the characters age, but their environment seems to be stuck forever in the first decade of 21st C) while knowing it couldn't be because of the gut wrenching detail.
Good points. I think the fable idea is right.
my dad's friendships are all very supportive, but in practical terms (most of them have died now, so they've really had to support each other in times of crisis etc) eg helping when ill, homeless, divorcing etc. But not verbal! At all! (Age group 60-80 now, quite old.) It's my mother's friendships that are not supportive, as all of them are concerned with their family, husband, children, grandchildren, and a few close friends: apart from one lesbian with no children (older period so no adoption etc then), there are zero women who have been able to 'call in' friendships in their hour of need, and as a woman of 45 in a province where most women are grandparents then but i was infertile etc, i can't find a single woman my age available for friendship, whereas i see many single men around me with good friendship networks
could it perhaps be that women already have entire households to look after (mainly in older generation) and friendships just don't fit into that lifestyle?
story of my mum's life...
Wow this review rubbed me in the wrong way in many ways but mainly because I think it’s very very dangerous to say that these friendships aren’t masculine enough. And I think that was the point of the author so I’m glad she was able to convey that through the writing. She wanted to explore feelings of men who have been historically told in our society to not express much but still experience those things which makes them incapable of dealing with it. I think that’s the reason men commit more suicide than women because they are not at all equipped to deal with any of their emotions.
You will probably get a lot of flack over this, but you are right. In AA, the men have compassion, but not sympathy. They say" Sympathy and Syphillis are next to each other in the dictionary for a reason." If you want what they have, you do what they did to get it. No one who does not suffer the problem will be able to help that person. I think the lack of roughness and sarcasm is a bit problem. I've been around a lot of men, and a tender listening ear is not their forte. In AA, they would call it whining and move on to someone who wants help. Same in AA. Same on support sites for mental illness. Love and understanding do not save anyone. All I've met in my groups are assholes in one way or another. I think even the women in my groups would have a hard time with the damaged character in this book.
Thank you for such a candid response.
Sorry, I meant it was the same in NA, Narcotics Anonymous. Climbing out of an addiction and/or mental illness is tough work that never goes away, and no one can do it for you. I ought to write about our Walking Man, a schizophrenic who stands in the parking lot on bad days and comes inside on good days, and has 15 years of sobriety. We are the only family he has. He probably walks 20 miles a day, and works hard to stay sober and sane as he can. He is worth being a modern classic.
Wow - that's a tough life. And a subject for a modernist novel, definitely.
Your thoughts are very interesting. I plan on reading the book this year and I am definitely gonna look out for the problems you mentioned. But the male/female thing is probably gonna go straight over my head because I am a woman myself, but we will see.
I was part of a women's book club a few years ago and someone chose the book, The Solitude of Prime Numbers. As I made my way through the first few chapters, the book felt false to me. It was hard to figure out why. Eventually I realized it was a male author telling the story of a young high school girl and the bullying she had taken by other girls. The description of those scenes seemed so off. My friends loved the book. I did not even finish. I had a hard time continuing on. Another book that many, many people love is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. In this case, a female writer is writing as a teenage/young adult male and I believe she goes a bit overboard trying to capture how young men behave. At least it felt that way to me. I did finish The Goldfinch but I did not enjoy it. The feeling of the voice being 'false' nagged at me through the whole reading. Self Indulgent also comes to mind (775 pages).
Neil, have you read Stoner by John Williams or Tinkers by Paul Harding? I watched your 'slow read' video and both of these novels came to mind,though they are not lengthy. Tinkers won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2010. Stoner was written in 1965. I came across it through this article.www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-american-novel-youve-never-heard-of
I think, if you love Gilead, you might enjoy these two books.
+Elizabeth Schubert Hi Elizabeth. I have read Stoner, one of my favourite novels EVER, and I've read Tinkers, which I really enjoyed at the time, but can't really remember, except some of the prose was exceptional. The more I think of A Little Life, the more it irritates me. I think I had the same experience as you with The Goldfinch
Well, JB is very jokey and sarcastic and kinda mean.
Best book
hello neil where have you been? just found your channel and have an air of a good booktuber, regards william
I find it frustrating for you to categorize all men the way you did... you really put them in a box... apparently you know all of them and can speak for them. Ironically that is one thing the author was speaking to. I know men who are softer in nature... who are sentimental... and the author herself stated this was an exaggerated version of life of these friends, and to write someone who went through so much that they were never able to "get better" because some never do... and how we as a society put pressure on those damaged to "get better." And she specifically speaks on emphasizing the societal restraints men are supposed to live within whereas woman aren't... especially when it comes to speaking or displaying emotion verbally and physically... what men can and can't say because they are men. Side note... her first book The People In The Trees was about extreme abuse of power from the perspective of the abuser, and this was about extreme abuse from a victim and what it means to live with that everyday and how it affects one mentally. Unfortunately I know people who have horrific pasts similar in nature and many not as extreme... the way she captured the understanding that trauma never leaves you, especially when repeated, was incredibly accurate... for males and females alike... and not just for the the one traumatized but for those around them, that love them, that don't understand how to help someone they love.
I am very hesitant to comment on this book. I have not read it. I will not read it. I have heard some reviews of it, however, and those reviewers whose opinions I respect have all had one thing to say. They refer to the writing itself as being only slightly above adequate and the amount of abuse is piled on to such an extent that it becomes unbelievable. One reviewer referred to it as misery porn. I looked up this term and found this:
Misery lit (mis lit, misery memoirs or mis mems, misery porn)
is a genre of supposedly biographical literature mostly concerned with
the protagonist's triumph over personal trauma or abuse, often during
childhood. It is also sometimes called "pathography." The genre is
generally considered to be American in origin, but later became popular
in Britain as well. The term misery lit was ostensibly coined by The Bookseller magazine.
I feel that this sort of writing (I refuse to call it literature) is symptomatic of a society that feels it is not in control of its own destiny. From what I have heard booktube reviewers say about books of this nature, they are self-indulgent and lack a realistic perspective. I find it disturbing that this style of storytelling has been so embraced by professional literary critics. But, I have to be honest. I feel that book critics sold out to publishers years ago in order to increase their popularity and economic bottom line. In fact, popularity and economic bottom lines go together.
Until such time that writers return to a storytelling that deals with an honest portrayal of the human condition without indulging in pathological behavior presented as the norm, literature will suffer. I see this style of writing being just as harmful to society as the pathological ills it exploits.
exactly right. although so many people love this book, maybe they're seeing something the more critical are not. Or they just like 'misery'.
I thought this was a great review. I do want to point out that the indulgent novel and the sarcastic fault pointing modern novel seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum now. Its kinda like the whole popular vs literary novel debate. I've read some classics and I've read some that I absolute love (more than popular fiction) and a few that I absolutely hate because they seemed borderline psychopathic in terms of how they view their characters (they were unfeeling, disconnected, and torturous for the sake of not sounding too wishy washy or mainstream). I feel like there should be a mixture of both. It might not make for the most literary of novels, but I dont want to read another book about characters living terrible lives in a detached manner, because in that case I might as well read history because I can just assign my own feelings. What do you think?
You're right about a whole strand of modernism - essentially creating characters who seemed so disaffected by life they are dead inside. Sometimes it works, but most often it feels like reading about someone who's undergone a lobotomy.
it's sad but I stopped reading Hemingway for this exact reason. I love Bradbury, Fitzgerald, and a few others even though all these are difficult for me to read (I didn't always read out of my comfort zone lol). Hemingway on the other hand, doesn't really give a point to his character's suffering at least in the two novels I've read. I'll definitely try more if the other books are different, but I feel like maybe it was a bit much because he was himself suffering from many tragic happenings that eventually lead to a death that may or may not have something to do with the torturous electric treatments he went through.
I find this extremely strange because I love noir films, even if they are depressing or detached because I always feel like they have something very profound to say (and i've found this in pretty much 90 percent of the ones I've seen). Its strange because alot of noir was, apparently, inspired by writers like hemingway and others.
I'm hoping Im just not seeing this whole thing wrong, because I definitely want to write with a certain degree of literacy, even when I write in a quote and quote popular genre.
I don't think you're seeing things wrong - Hemingway is not known for the interiour life of his characters. Noir films tend to have a strong central character wrestling with their own vulnerabilities, which makes them very relatable.
Thats good. Thank god. I do enjoy sometimes the realism that Hemingway portrays so I will probably learn from that, but I instead will take more from noir, and then actually have a good ending after the inner turmoil. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes things can be tragic. I thought I was going crazy. Thanks for letting me know.
Also wanted to ask you what branches of modernism are your favorite or how do I avoid a situation like A Little Life (I dont want to end up writing something like this. Especially after what you said)
PARDON ME. YOUR HETERONORMATIVE INTERPRETATION OF MALE RELATIONSHIPS IS REALLY GETTING MY GOAT.
I know nothing about your goat. But if it's escaped I will certainly get it if I see it.
as a gay guy, let me say that i agree with neil.
@@Ichisokeno you need better male friends.