I did not finish All Fours, and I can’t decide if I should tell anyone (I do want to) or just let it slide. My reasons are not as sharp as the ones mentioned above for the Lost Lambs DNF, but elaborating on mine now seems redundant, even like posing. I just didn’t like it. There it is.
That description of The Vivisectors as if Mervyn Peake wrote The Human Stain! I was pretty bowled over by Williams’s project with The Doloriad but it is a deeply discomfiting novel. It pleased the lit student in me immensely though. I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time.
"That odd feeling I was getting when reading the first chapter was me picking up on a latent Lutheranism lurking beneath a thin Catholic veneer. I genuinely felt discombobulated by it. Maybe it sounds silly, but this just took me out of the book completely. It gave me the ick."
This is very aptly put, and I totally get this. Not naming names, but I felt this way about a recent campy horror novel. (I also felt this way about Season 2 of Riverdale, lol.)
I feel that way about "Heated Rivalry," homosexual desire appropriated for heterosexual commodification. More seriously, there is also that growing up Catholic is quite different from converting later on.
(also, I'm not putting this in my main comment because I am not gunning for shameless self-promotion in your comment section, but my forthcoming novel feels VERY Catholic to me and is pretty rooted in my own Catholic upbringing. if you ever happen to end up reading it, I'd be very curious if it feels properly Catholic to you as well.)
I did not finish All Fours, and I can’t decide if I should tell anyone (I do want to) or just let it slide. My reasons are not as sharp as the ones mentioned above for the Lost Lambs DNF, but elaborating on mine now seems redundant, even like posing. I just didn’t like it. There it is.
That description of The Vivisectors as if Mervyn Peake wrote The Human Stain! I was pretty bowled over by Williams’s project with The Doloriad but it is a deeply discomfiting novel. It pleased the lit student in me immensely though. I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time.
Catholicism is “in” right now. That’s my best explanation for it
"That odd feeling I was getting when reading the first chapter was me picking up on a latent Lutheranism lurking beneath a thin Catholic veneer. I genuinely felt discombobulated by it. Maybe it sounds silly, but this just took me out of the book completely. It gave me the ick."
This is very aptly put, and I totally get this. Not naming names, but I felt this way about a recent campy horror novel. (I also felt this way about Season 2 of Riverdale, lol.)
I feel that way about "Heated Rivalry," homosexual desire appropriated for heterosexual commodification. More seriously, there is also that growing up Catholic is quite different from converting later on.
Totally, it IS culturally different!!
(also, I'm not putting this in my main comment because I am not gunning for shameless self-promotion in your comment section, but my forthcoming novel feels VERY Catholic to me and is pretty rooted in my own Catholic upbringing. if you ever happen to end up reading it, I'd be very curious if it feels properly Catholic to you as well.)
The answer to your question is that this is what passes for "imagination" in that part of the literary world.