Being difficult to please (and why I hate 'A Little Life')
I've finally got out of my reading slump this year and have been reading a ton. I have a long backlist of books I'm making my way through, but I'm always looking for recommendations outside of the popular, critically-acclaimed "hyped" books. Because honestly, I've found myself feeling disappointed in a huge chunk of those.
A recent book I've finished, Martyrs!, is the latest book to join my list of disappointments. After reading such a book, I always scan Goodreads for opinions that reaffirm my own. After finding one, I then click on the reviewer's profile and search for A Little Life. If they read the book and gave it more than two stars, I know they can't be trusted.
Words can not describe how much I hate A Little Life.
I read it back in 2015 when it was THE book everyone talked about. I read all 800 pages while on the subway, my face probably making the craziest expressions. But I persevered because the public said it was good and I wanted to feel like I was a part of the zeitgeist.
Every literary/bookish person who spent any time in NYC has experienced that feeling of walking into Strand Bookstore and seeing that big table in front of the doors that displays all the books everyone's reading. You walk around thinking, "Hmm, what should I read? What should I read?" You see a handwritten recommendation written by a store employee praising a book and, without thinking, you buy it, telling yourself it's going to be the best book ever. After all, some underpaid employee you don't even know said it was good, so it has to be!!!
I'm embarrassed at how gullible I am sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if it's genuine naivete or just a desperate attempt to stay connected to other people through the books they read.
That feeling is even worst now with BookTok, with millions of young readers now driving contemporary fiction right off a cliff. Do people genuinely like these books or are we just letting the car drive itself? The rest of us are in the backseat looking out the window and "vibing." That's genuinely how it feels, which makes me feel less trusting of 90% of recommendations these days.
But back to A Little Life - it's probably my most-hated book. If you haven't read it, I recommend reading Andrea Long Chu's scathing takedown of it. She goes not only into the book itself, but also the author's weird obsession with torturing gay male characters:
This is ideal for Yanagihara: pure suffering, undiluted by politics or psychology, by history or language or even sex. Free of meaning, it may more perfectly serve the author’s higher purpose. Reading A Little Life, one can get the impression that Yanagihara is somewhere high above with a magnifying glass, burning her beautiful boys like ants. In truth, [the character] Jude is a terribly unlovable character, always lying and breaking promises, with the inner monologue of an incorrigible child. The first time he cuts himself, you are horrified; the 600th time, you wish he would aim. Yet Yanagihara loves him excessively, cloyingly. The book’s omniscient narrator seems to be protecting Jude, cradling him in her cocktail-party asides and winding digressions, keeping him alive for a stunning 800 pages. This is not sadism; it is closer to Munchausen by proxy.
So whenever I'm on Goodreads and I find someone who seems to have similar opinions to mine, if they also hate A Little Life, then I know they can be trusted. It's my litmus test. If you like that book, sit down — I don't want to hear your opinions on anything.
I'll be honest, sometimes it feels isolating being "difficult to please." I just never feel like I'm on the same page as everyone else, and sometimes I wish I could partake in this thing we call "literary hype." Like, why can't I be moved by On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous? Why can't it move me to tears? Why do I have to find it overwritten struggle-prose cosplaying as fiction? How easy it would be to just say, "Yes, I love it. Yay, I'm in the club!"
But maybe there's some merit to being overly critical. Vladimir Nabokov, regarded as one of the greatest writers, was notoriously difficult to please. He hated all his contemporaries, thought Dostoevsky was trash, called Faulkner a "nonentity." Even though I deeply disagree with him on Dostoevsky, I like that he wasn't swayed by others' opinions and wasn't afraid to stand against them, regardless of how harsh or unpopular it was.
But I'm no Nabokov. I'm just someone looking for books that are well-written and with a plot that doesn't fall apart by the second half (ahem, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, cough, Earthlings). I hate most commercial/airport/genre stuff cause I find them formulaic, but I also hate high brow literary stuff because I feel like they use ambiguity and flowery prose to hide weak storytelling. Some books I really liked this year were Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. Everything else has been mid to terrible.
Oh well, what can you do but keep reading?