Books

There is something quite awkward when authors speak with the air of having known great character and try to paint images of people with character traits borrowed from people they found interesting and perhaps admired as this often falls flat. I think such character studies often suffer changing times but quite often it is just down to lack of awareness of their limited life experience. I find this utterly exacerbating in Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. It mainly consists of endless descriptions of characters who frankly I would describe as bores, chancers and those obsessed with social standing. There are so many of them too which means you get little sense of any of them and they don't help draw the protagonist either who is left equally confusingly constructed.

I should point out that I've only read 100 pages of this book and could easily decide to give up on it after another 100 pages.

I'll contrast this with Salter's creation of Verne Rand in Solo Faces who is sharply realised to his peak as an obsessive, determined, able, accomplished and revered young man and then past this.

My point is that a lot of so called classics are just self indulgent and overly long ramblings and reading them because they are classics is idiotic and not funny.