15 hours ago
7
I read IOAWNAT nine months ago for the first time and I thought it was ass. And not genre-fiction funny kind of ass, but rather the boring, bland, vapid, I-am-wasting-my-time, not-worth-the-paper-it-is-printed-on kind of ass. After spending some time on this sub and others, I saw that my impression was not the general opinion of the work. As recently it was Christmas, which is the time of introspection, I was willing to put my opinion to the test and read IOAWNAT again. Here is the result:
As from my general verdict, it changes from ass to very ass. The story is boring, the intellectual musings pretentious and repetitive beyond belief, the sub-plots dull, lifeless; if all literature is connected, has perhaps an abler writer than you had the same thoughts you have now, but penned them briefer and better? What do you think, Calvino? Hey, where are you going? Hey!
I leave you with this bad translation of Borges' "The Plot" (I cannot find a better online):
"To make his horror complete, Caesar, pressed to the foot of a statue by the impatient daggers of his friends, discovers among the blades and faces the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, his protege, perhaps his son, and ceasing to defend himself he exclaims: “You too, my son!” Shakespeare and Quevedo revive the pathetic cry.
Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants, symmetries: nineteen centuries later, in the south of the Province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is attacked by other gauchos. As he falls he recognizes an adopted son of his and says to him with gentle reproof and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read), “Pero che!” He is being killed, and he does not know he is dying so that a scene may be repeated."
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