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Super Good Awesome Great New Book
July 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment
We intellectual types and artistic folk (please note that I am rolling my eyes as I type that) focus on appreciating good art so much of the time, but what about the bad art? Ok, so reading a bad book wastes a lot of our precious time so let’s not bother with that if we can help it, but looking at a bad painting just takes a second. Shouldn’t we be honing our ability to discern between what’s bad and good, if only for the sake of our own writing? Let’s be frank, if we can’t tell if that line we just wrote is fantastic or terrible, then, well, then what? *Shiver*
To further develop this important skill, let’s consider looking at some “bad” art as a sort of control:
“…making art is too important to be left only to art professionals” – The Museum of Fred (Excellent bad art by some regular people no one knows.)
When it comes to books, thankfully we have the New York Times and other opinion tanks that serve us a little insight before we bother to read a book ourselves – for example, I have not read the book Super Sad True Love Story but I think I just may do so because “Books of The Times” gives it glowing praise. Plus, I cannot resist any book, good or bad (I love “bad” sci-fi) that takes place in the future and also takes a darkly satirical tone. Sounds “good” to me!
Books of The Times
Love Found Amid Ruins of Empire
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Gary Shteyngart’s wonderful new novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,†is a supersad, superfunny, superaffecting performance — a book that not only showcases the ebullient satiric gifts he demonstrated in his entertaining 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,†but that also uncovers his abilities to write deeply and movingly about love and loss and mortality. It’s a novel that gives us a cutting comic portrait of a futuristic America, nearly ungovernable and perched on the abyss of fiscal collapse, and at the same time it is a novel that chronicles a sweetly real love affair as it blossoms from its awkward, improbable beginnings…
For the complete review please click here.