Chekhov's Mistress
How to Hate a Novel in One Glance
Call me shallow, but after a while you come to realize that to wade through the seaweed of books you have to be able to make necessarily quick judgements based on whatever criteria before you. That might be pink jacket covers (mentioned here already) or sometimes even the press clippings. Tonight’s email from the NY Times Book Review (with, I might add, some encouraging coverage of Chinese literature), included this bit (see image) and I instantly hated it. First, it’s a Marion Ettlinger photograph and I have such dislike of her morbidly stylized photography that that alone is enough to turn me off. The rest, well, you can see the one line description the Times put up, which is either just non-creative or meant to doom the book because if that’s all that’s there is then this is such well-trod territory that it doesn’t seem worth bothering.
comments
Plus if you already have an aversion to Martin Amis, you can hate the book for the author’s choice of husbands.
– Pete (05/03 at 12:59 PM)
Since you mentioned your dislike of Marion Ettlinger, I did an image search for her name and realized, looking at the results, that I’ve seen her author photos probably a hundred times and always disliked them, at least as author photos. Author photos probably shouldn’t make you uncomfortable. Richard Ford has unusually intense eyes anyway; if anything they should be toned down if he’s going to be on the back of a book staring at shoppers. And how about the one of David Foster Wallace, with the clouds in the background?
– gunter (05/04 at 05:27 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: May 03, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:2
- Links to this Post: Technorati
