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Cormier: Entertaining or thought provoking?
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From: Neil Sklar <rp_mcmurphy>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 15:00:47 -0400
I fail to understand how anybody could state an opinion about a book without having read it. Doing so seems to me to be a much greater "sin" than that of a writer leaving his readers with something to actively think about after reading the last page of a book. For my part, I've held off on joining the discussion until now because I haven't read Cormier in many years and wanted to reread at least "The Chocolate War" and "I Am the Cheese" so that I'd have something valuable (or at least informed) to bring to the table.
Aristotle theorized that everything has a telos, or overriding purpose. He said that a human beings' telos was happiness. (In contrast, a rock's telos is to drop to fall to the ground when dropped.) However, the ancient Greek word for happiness was eudaemonia (sp?). In keeping with the incredible richness of the language, eudaemoina did not mean a simple feeling of contentment or bliss. It involved intellectual satisfaction and completion. I often think of it as being worth pursuing but not actually attainable, like Maslow's self?tualization.
Writers like Cormier entertain us in the intellectual sense. He makes us think and rethink. I'm not always in the mood for such a book - sometimes I'd rather read something that ties up neatly and leaves me without issues to ponder. Sometimes I want to watch Independence Day, and sometimes I'm more in the mood for 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 makes me think, and Independence Day has a good beat - I can dance to it, so to speak.
Everybody had their own preferences. Somebody mentioned that they were upset after spending a long time reading a book and then not feeling a sense of closure at the end. I can understand how that could be frustrating for some, though I don't share the feeling. I'm much more disturbed by the ending of a book like Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, which closed with a long ellipse followed by a melodramatic scene which told the reader exactly what had happened to the characters as a result of their actions. Now THAT was a literary device. A god descending from the ceiling. Boring. But I digress.
If a piece of literature is entertaining fluff, fine with me. If it's thought provoking it's also fine by me because the fact that it's thought provoking makes it entertaining. Even if it doesn't make me feel like dancing.
Received on Fri 10 Aug 2001 02:00:47 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 15:00:47 -0400
I fail to understand how anybody could state an opinion about a book without having read it. Doing so seems to me to be a much greater "sin" than that of a writer leaving his readers with something to actively think about after reading the last page of a book. For my part, I've held off on joining the discussion until now because I haven't read Cormier in many years and wanted to reread at least "The Chocolate War" and "I Am the Cheese" so that I'd have something valuable (or at least informed) to bring to the table.
Aristotle theorized that everything has a telos, or overriding purpose. He said that a human beings' telos was happiness. (In contrast, a rock's telos is to drop to fall to the ground when dropped.) However, the ancient Greek word for happiness was eudaemonia (sp?). In keeping with the incredible richness of the language, eudaemoina did not mean a simple feeling of contentment or bliss. It involved intellectual satisfaction and completion. I often think of it as being worth pursuing but not actually attainable, like Maslow's self?tualization.
Writers like Cormier entertain us in the intellectual sense. He makes us think and rethink. I'm not always in the mood for such a book - sometimes I'd rather read something that ties up neatly and leaves me without issues to ponder. Sometimes I want to watch Independence Day, and sometimes I'm more in the mood for 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 makes me think, and Independence Day has a good beat - I can dance to it, so to speak.
Everybody had their own preferences. Somebody mentioned that they were upset after spending a long time reading a book and then not feeling a sense of closure at the end. I can understand how that could be frustrating for some, though I don't share the feeling. I'm much more disturbed by the ending of a book like Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, which closed with a long ellipse followed by a melodramatic scene which told the reader exactly what had happened to the characters as a result of their actions. Now THAT was a literary device. A god descending from the ceiling. Boring. But I digress.
If a piece of literature is entertaining fluff, fine with me. If it's thought provoking it's also fine by me because the fact that it's thought provoking makes it entertaining. Even if it doesn't make me feel like dancing.
Received on Fri 10 Aug 2001 02:00:47 PM CDT
