Wednesday, November 25, 2015

City on Fire take-down

It's rare that a novel makes me angry but City on Fire did just that. I only refrained from throwing it across the room because 1. it's huge and I didn't want to break something or hurt someone and 2. it was a library copy. So instead, I vented about it here.

4 comments:

Luke N. Atmaguchi said...

Bravo! I went in skeptical and stopped after two chapters. At least as bad as the recent CBGB feature film. Novelists taking on punk, the success rate wouldn't challenge for a batting title.

Elisabeth Vincentelli said...

Excellent comparison to that CBGB movie -- though the novel also has artistic ambitions, which makes its failure somehow more annoying.

Luke N. Atmaguchi said...

Why is fiction's take on punk so fraught, I've long wondered. Because the questioning of bona fides is particularly central to the punk ethos? (Were boomers as judgmental/protective about depctions of the counterculture? I was consumed with dread when I got to the (SF) punk parts of Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad, which were just fine, and I think the book is a masterpiece. I need to get over this. Anyway, thanks for doing 934 pages of dirty work for your readership!

Elisabeth Vincentelli said...

You don't have to directly experience something to write about it, obviously. But you do need to understand the inner workings and motivations of what you're writing about. And that's what's missing from City on Fire.