4chan archive /lit/ (index)
2012-09-23 06:33 3002062 Anonymous (The_Casual_Vacancy.jpg 423x650 118kB)
>Just a few strands of the plot have emerged. The story opens with the death of Barry, a parish councillor in Pagford, a fictional West Country village that neighbours the Fields, a deprived council estate. >Snobbish residents hope to fill the seat with a councillor who will vote to reassign responsibility for the Fields to a neighbouring council. But the campaign begins to unravel as candidates jostle for position and anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers' secrets. A central character, Terri Weedon, is a prostitute and drug addict struggling to keep her three-year-old son out of social care. Is she trying to pull a George Eliot? Doesn't sound very interesting. What does /lit/ think?

1 min later 3002065 Anonymous
I think she's conflating "adult" with "dull".

3 min later 3002068 Anonymous
It sounds a lot better than wizards and muggles.

4 min later 3002071 Anonymous
>>3002068 the thing is, no it doesn't

7 min later 3002078 Anonymous
>>3002062 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/01/121001fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all >The leathery skin of her upper cleavage radiated little cracks that no longer vanished when decompressed >A little later, a lustful boy sits on a school bus “with an ache in his heart and in his balls.” This sounds bad.

10 min later 3002086 Anonymous
I think I will buy the shit out of this book opening day no matter what you PH.D in Lit Arts virgins think.

13 min later 3002093 Anonymous
>woman >writing anything worth reading

14 min later 3002097 Anonymous
Hopefully it will go for the PG Wodehouse, amusing route.

16 min later 3002104 Anonymous
>>3002086 >getting all excited about "opening day" It's not fucking Grand Theft Auto

17 min later 3002106 Anonymous
>>3002093 Nice. Proceed to collect your 4chan credits.

18 min later 3002110 Anonymous
>>3002104 Exactly. I would never buy a video game on opening day.

32 min later 3002144 Anonymous
That sounds pretty.... normal.

36 min later 3002151 Anonymous
Oh boy I can't wait to not read this

37 min later 3002153 Anonymous
Why is fiction written by women so trivial and banal?

39 min later 3002158 Anonymous
>>3002153 because feelings brah

51 min later 3002180 Anonymous
>>3002078 >“The Casual Vacancy” will certainly sell, and it may also be liked. There are many nice touches, including Rowling’s portrait of the social worker’s gutless boyfriend, who relishes how, in an argument with a lover, you can “obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.” The book’s political philosophy is generous, even if its analysis of class antagonisms is perhaps no more elaborate than that of “Caddyshack.” And, as the novel turns darker, toward a kind of Thomas Hardy finale, it hurtles along impressively. But whereas Rowling’s shepherding of readers was, in the Harry Potter series, an essential asset, in “The Casual Vacancy” her firm hand can feel constraining. She leaves little space for the peripheral or the ambiguous; hidden secrets are labelled as hidden secrets, and events are easy to predict. We seem to watch people move around Pagford as if they were on Harry’s magical parchment map of Hogwarts. >And a powerful and protected writer risks getting things wrong. One teen-ager bullies another on Facebook, anonymously and repeatedly, which could happen only if the victim refused to make use of the network’s privacy settings. Some sentences cause you to picture a Little, Brown editor starting to dial Rowling’s number, then slowly putting down the handset"

1 hours later 3002284 Anonymous
>>3002153 Because being controlled by the right brain disables you from being able to make abstract, logical assertions about your environment.

1 hours later 3002291 CalleBorjesson (calle borjesson headshot.jpg 3456x2304 1271kB)
>>3002153 because Austen and the Bronte sisters did it.

1 hours later 3002295 Anonymous
>>3002291 What the actual fuck, Quentin?

21 hours later 3004715 Anonymous
>>3002153 What in your opinion is a subject worthy of literature if not class and poverty?

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