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Why so serious?
Oct. 11th, 2015 12:08 pmI've just finished reading Claire North's 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August', which I though was okay, if not great (I felt the stability of the history leading up to the birth of Harry - and the other 'rebirthing' characters - was an issue. When I consider how small a change would need to be made to either mine or pennski's lives to ensure that we never met, it feels improbable.)
However, it also reminded me of a particular problem with a lot of books - particularly, but not exclusively, ones that aim to be 'Literature' - and that is no-one seems to have even the vestige of a sense of humour.
Look, I've had some pretty disasterous and/or tragic things happen in my life and even at the worst time you still joke with people, make silly comments, generally find spots of humour. Much serious writing doesn't seem to do this and is as unrealistic as any other common complaint about writing.
This is why The Belgariad books were such a revelation to me when I was a teenager: it was the first fantasy novel I'd read where people joked with each other and teased each other in the way real people often do (I will, of course, admit to the fact that it soon became apparent that Eddings couldn't write any other sort of character, but I didn't know that then...)
It's also one of the reasons I enjoyed The Martian (the movie which we saw yesterday, I've not yet read the book): it's really funny and telling jokes in the face of disaster is very human.
However, it also reminded me of a particular problem with a lot of books - particularly, but not exclusively, ones that aim to be 'Literature' - and that is no-one seems to have even the vestige of a sense of humour.
Look, I've had some pretty disasterous and/or tragic things happen in my life and even at the worst time you still joke with people, make silly comments, generally find spots of humour. Much serious writing doesn't seem to do this and is as unrealistic as any other common complaint about writing.
This is why The Belgariad books were such a revelation to me when I was a teenager: it was the first fantasy novel I'd read where people joked with each other and teased each other in the way real people often do (I will, of course, admit to the fact that it soon became apparent that Eddings couldn't write any other sort of character, but I didn't know that then...)
It's also one of the reasons I enjoyed The Martian (the movie which we saw yesterday, I've not yet read the book): it's really funny and telling jokes in the face of disaster is very human.