polutrope

A Bend in the River is one of the very few books I haven't finished not out of laziness, but because it inspires virulent hate. Unfortunately, I had to read it for class. I got to around page 150, and then couldn't continue because I hate the characters and don't care what happens to them, and I hate the style, because Nobel prize or not, Naipaul has pretty awful grammar sometimes, and a tin ear for dialog all the time. Most of all, he's painfully addicted to semicolons - more than I am, and that's saying a lot.

His main character is a horrible person who doesn't know the meaning of personal responsibility (one of my main reasons for hating people, I've realized), and is incredibly misogynist. For example, he beats his lover. One of the girls in my class said that she couldn't find it in herself to hate him for it, because Naipaul uses the passive voice to describe it. Aside from it being an obvious authorial ploy, it makes me hate him more, because he doesn't even realize his mistake!

I also get the feeling that Naipaul wants every sentence of his novel to be Deep and Meaningful and Important, and sometimes a detail is just a detail, really. Happily we're done discussing it in class - we're just going to do our term paper by the 21st and then read The Tempest in the last three weeks of school.

So, now I'm going to watch Cenerentola instead of going to sleep, because that is always a good plan, and sleep is overrated, anyway.