The Journey to the West arrived today, but I wound up knocking this out first. It took about eight hours, and not much of that was reading.
I didn’t like it that much, but it was better than I enjoyed. You know the feeling of seeing something well done in a way that doesn’t affect you and appreciating it while you don’t enjoy it? This was that book. It’s like a marvelous dish I don’t like, or a well done play in a sport I find boring. It’s a jamming country song with all of the twang.
The prose was thick, the writing thick, and it defied modernist style. Things are said but also faltered. The sensuality was of an odd, rough form, more like amateurism done well than the modernist way. It reminds me an awful lot of fanfic, and yet the fanfic written like this usually isn’t very good. This one was well done, but done as a child might, as a junior high kid thinks of sex put to well written words. It’s rough and overly polished, covered in jagged edges and pieces that don’t line up, buffed to a glossy shine.
Lee was often rejected by publishers for her style. I understand why.
And yet there’s something here.
It’s not magnificent, but it’s worth reading.