Abdullah Elenany Elenany itibaren Dholavira, Gujarat 370165, Hindistan itibaren Dholavira, Gujarat 370165, Hindistan

Bu kitabın tadını çıkardım, ama bunun yarısını karıştırdığımı itiraf edeceğim. Charcter bazen gerçekten sinir bozucu olabilir ama kitap momento gibi geriye doğru çalışıyor, bu yüzden sanırım hepsi onun hatası değil.

İlkokul öğrencileri için çok güzel bir masal gibi hikaye. Bu kitabın tamamen hikaye anlatımının gücü ile ilgili olduğunu ve ana hikaye ile ilgili bir şeyler yapmak için bir araya gelen iç içe geçmiş tüm anlatıların gerçekten iyi yapıldığını sevdim. Bence bu iyi bir çocuk kitabı kulübü kitabı olacak.

Birlikte çalıştığım insanların aldatmacalarından sonra, ve Brooks, Mart ayında Pulitzer'i kazandığında, Harikalar Yılı ile inanılmaz derecede hayal kırıklığına uğradım. Sıkıcı, sıkıcı, sıkıcı buldum!

I was concerned Macdonald's stance would be so elitist it would feel very dated. But the essay for which he's most famous, Masscult and Midcult, is actually very readable still, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. The book's title is somewhat misleading - "the effects of mass culture" aren't really the topic here, as Macdonald mostly (fortunately) ignores television and music. These are essays about books. Along with Masscult and Midcult, the best essays here are on Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and a long-forgotten novelist, James Gould Cozzens, and his bestselling 1957 book By Love Possessed. Although there seems to be little point in brushing up on one's Cozzens expertise, the essay is relevant because Macdonald tries to explain how such a terrible novel (absolutely unreadable, judging by the excerpts he provides) got so many rave reviews even from some fairly respected and learned critics. It's actually very easy to see the same thing happening today. The quality of the essays seemed to fall off toward the end of the book, or perhaps they just didn't age well, and I skimmed the ones on Amateur Journalism, "Howtoism" (about how-to books), and America's love of facts. This excerpt from the Hemingway essay seems spot-on to me, and gives an idea of what I consider Macdonald's best writing: [Hemingway's] one talent was aesthetic - a feeling for style, in his writing and his life, that was remarkably sure. But the limits of aestheticism unsupported by thought or feeling are severe. Hemingway made one big, original stylistic discovery - with the aid of Gertrude Stein - but when he had gotten everything there was to be gotten out of it (and a bit more) he was unable...to invent anything else... Hemingway's opposites are Stendhal and Tolstoy - interesting he should feel especially awed by them - who had no style at all, no effects. Stendhal wrote the way a police sergeant would write if police sergeants had imagination - a dry, matter-of-fact style. Tolstoy's writing is clear and colorless, interposing no barrier between the reader and the narrative, the kind of direct prose, businesslike and yet Olympian, that one imagines the Recording Angel uses for entries in his police blotter. There is no need for change or innovation with such styles. But the more striking and original a style is, the greater such necessity. Protean innovators like Joyce and Picasso invent, exploit, and abandon dozens of styles; Hemingway had only one. It was not enough.

The first time I read this was in college for a Victorian Lit class. I loved it then. I recently re-read and, yep, still love the drama and romance.