Saturday, September 24, 2005

There are darker sides of life

Finished Little Children and I will agree that CG's complaint is probably valid. If you are not married with kids this is probably less entertaining. If you are then, great. You will get little jokes like the hidden scariness of Thomas of the Tank Engine, the way children's music seeps into your head slowly taking over and the petty rivalries with other parents.Despite the humor, the heart of the novel is rather dark, the titular children are the adult characters who cannot make good choices. Some chase after Internet pornstars, some have affairs with people they meet at the playground and some devote their existence to their child getting into Harvard. None of the characters can be described as happy, at least not in the long term, except maybe the Internet perv. Still the humor of it all keeps it from descending into Happiness land (although this story also has a child molester).

The book is good but isn't going to change your life. But really, do you want to read a lot of books that change your life? What a pain in the ass for your family and friends if your life was changing all the time.

2 comments:

Brack said...

Totally OT:

Perhaps it's because I am growing old, but I am presently Viagrating to Mission o' Burma's resurrected ROWMC-Outedness:

http://www.matadorrecords.com/mission_of_burma/music.html

in particular, check the bridge from Wounded World, which reminds me a bit of latter day P/i/L:

"If, you laugh, at my jokes .... "

I don't give a rat's ass about what, if anything, the lyrics mean . . . I just think the words, the cadence, the New Ordery guitar sound kinda cool. Reminds me of the time that I wrote by ear, and the rhythm of the text meant as much to me as the substance of the words.

Tripp said...

Yes, this song rules. Matt played it for me last year and I had forgotten about it.

Hee hee, just recalled what ROWMC out means.

Head over to
http://hype.non-standard.net/
for ENDLESS songs. It is all streaming, but you can get some sweet stuff. Like the new Broken Social Scene and new Franz Ferd. Check the FF in particular.