Why chicks don't dig TRP

[Bekah]

At 3:50 PM -0400 9/22/04, Will Layman wrote:
>Also, TRP's characters -- men and women -- are NOT particularly 3D.  I love
>it all, but I'm NOT going to make the claim that Slothrop or Zoyd, Oedipa or
>Profane is represented as an emotionally realistic human being.  Even Mason
>and Dixon (the characters) delight us more as "types" and as actors on a
>brilliant literary stage than as feelingly presented people.  And -- AGAIN
>-- the utter stereotyping of this thinking acknowledged, women seem less
>tolerant than men of long books that don't contain any emotionally authentic
>characters.


More seriously. This is true. I think that *most* women like the characters to be  fully fleshed out if they are going to fully involve themselves in a book.  Women read long books too, but I think the longer they are the more relationships and psychological interests, insights, emotional appeal there has to be to hold the reader's interest. The relationships among the characters in these books is very important and can become quite subtle and complex and changing.  It can be slippery stuff to analyze.  "And Ladies of the Club" is a good example.  Yes, I enjoyed that book, too. Not as much as M&D but it was okay; I liked the history. (lol)  

In DeLillo's Underworld we have the long book and no fully fleshed out characters; the relationships seem a tad flattened. Is this similar enough to Gravity's Rainbow?  The characters aren't "types" really, so much as just flattened. In GR they seemed more "types." But Underworld is one of my top 3 probably favorite books of all time.


Gravity's Rainbow was hard emotionally. It just battered away at all my sensitivities. (lol)


The Trilogy of the Rings is another one that appealed far more to men than women (not saying that all women are anything). I liked it to a point but the whole thing got way too long.

Bek