#44: Larry's Parents and Grandparents

[Bekah]

I don't understand your problem with Elmina and Leo.   Homer and Marge  
are pretty likable, too, in their own way - people have watched them  
for years.    Somehow I can't see the portrayal of the Sportellos as  
being "the most innovative experimentation of the author."    Leo and  
Elmina are a nice touch - they're homey and it's satirized and it's  
okay with me.   They add a  personal and human dimension to the  
character of Doc - he's more grounded or something.   ("Hippies did  
not issue forth from the north side of trees" - that sort of thing.)

Bekah


On Oct 4, 2009, at 8:01 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> While I think Elmina and Leo seem relatively likeable,
>
> Despite attack after attack on the traditional and conventional
> character in genre after genre ...despite the zapping of traditional
> and conventional plots, settings, themes, moods, tones, narratives ...
> readers continue to Stencilize with remarkably conservative
> expectations the most innovative experimentation of the author.
>
> The novel is not all that interesting and it's prose style is flat
> and, for most of the read, ugly. Yet, there are reasons to analyze it.
> Fitting it to conventional or traditional modes is not one.