Comments on "Too cozy for comfort" - Faerye Net

2012-01-03T02:06:05+00:00

Hi, new reader/poster..
You have read John Gardner, and QUOTE him; I like that… Have loved all his works, he died much too young.
Keep on, young writer ;)
I’ll read your work as you publish it. :D

2011-08-23T08:22:47+00:00

It’s delightful to find characters that we like despite their flaws; it allows us to believe that we too will be liked despite our own flaws. The too-nice cast makes us want to throw up our hands in despair at our own imperfections in contrast. Thus, while perhaps trying to show us a better world, the result is that we feel worse about ourselves. Or anyway, I do.

Thanks, Jeannine. I was thinking exactly the same thing. I’ve seen films and read books where EVERYONE was just so awful I didn’t care about any of them. And in other works there are the straw villains. We went to see the film version of THE HELP yesterday and liked it very much. One flaw was the villain was a little too two-dimensionally evil. Explanation was offered for her behavior, but we didn’t buy it, her conflict wasn’t revealed in action. It’s difficult to show evil behavior in a way that we understand it without forgiving it. When I teach THE BLUEST EYE, that’s something I talk about—the cruelty of antagonists in the novel and how Morrison can show how they came to behave that way without demanding we forgive them for the damage they do.

2011-08-22T21:18:37+00:00

This conversation reminds me of why The Simpsons episode “You Only Move Twice” is so funny – because subverting the evil supervillain and making him a super-supportive, nice boss is hilarious. Subverting the dominant paradigm, as it were!

2011-08-22T21:15:54+00:00

But you know, equally unbelievable is a world where EVERYONE is a jerk. I just finished The Imperfectionists, and the irritating tic of the author is that every single character is secretly evil or unpleasant, in a very cliche way (especially the women!)
Can someone write a contemporary novel with actual pleasant people in it? It feels like there is a prejudice now to make everyone and everything unlikable.

2011-08-22T16:53:20+00:00

It does seem like an odd choice. Is there anything about the mystery itself that requires it to be set in that period?