![]() ![]() He complains about Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life,” which he says comes in at 215,000 words (compared to a mere 73,000 for “The Catcher in the Rye”). Unfortunately, he says, drugs like LSD - and what he denigrates as “free expression” - tore up the rule book in the 1960s and allowed the way-too-long book to come roaring back into fashion. ![]() In a brief historical summary, he says it was a step in the right direction when modernism superseded the Victorian era and tossed out “all that David Copperfield kind of crap” (that’s him quoting Holden Caulfield) and novels became more succinct and therefore more readable. Sturgis says he’d rather pay twice as much for half as much book. (The Booker winner will be announced Monday.) ![]() His reason for writing seemed to be that the judges for this year’s Booker Prize, the U.K.’s most prestigious literary award, had recently nominated a record-thin 116-page novel, “Small Things Like These,” putting “the short in shortlist” - and making Sturgis’ day. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |