Thursday, December 10, 2009
easy breezy
Almost every course I'm taking this semester, and a good number of the classes I've taken in recent history, have been based in classical texts; renaissance literature or ancient Greek drama or even just fat, golden 19th century novels. In this way it was somewhat refreshing to read Rosario Tijeras, if only for the fact that it was so outside of what I've gotten used to reading. I wouldn't argue that it's a brilliant book, but I'm also holding myself back from ripping it apart as I'm afraid that may just be a visceral reaction to encountering an unusually 'easy read'. All the same, having it as required reading in all Columbian schools strikes me as too high a praise; the comparison thrown out the other day to it being a South American 'catcher in the rye' isn't totally off mark, considering the role it may play to a relatable audience & the parallel of it being standard, required reading, but the caliber and inherent lasting quality of the two coming-of-age tales is so disparate that its almost a sacreligious comparison. Then again, while I can relate to this text more so than I can, say, Belchamber, I don't relate to it like a kid from the hills Medellin would, so who knows?
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I want to defend the Catcher in the Rye comparison. I am not arguing that it is equally "good"--I have personally no interest in evaluating a work's quality. (Sacrilege, by the way, is a critical obligation). Instead the similarities between them are thematic--based, as you point out on their being "coming of age" stories--and stylistic--first person narration, colloquial language, etc. Franco is, obviously, a reader, of American contemporary literature, if not necessarily of Salinger.
ReplyDeleteAlthough i may be bias in my opinion as i am huge Catcher in the Rye fan, i do not really see the comparison even on a thematic level, and further I don't think of Franco's book as a coming of age story, but with its femme fatale main character, drugs, sex, and violence I find it to be more in line with the noir genre.
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