I just read your review of The Meat and Spirit Plan after reading the actual book The Meat and Spirit Plan. I thought it was one of the best books I'd read in awhile. What was it exactly about the ending that you hated?
You wrote: "I can only hope that Saterstrom’s final paragraphs were forced upon her by the demonseed lovechild of M. Night Shamalamadingdong and Gordon Lish, because, really, I could have stomached “and then I woke up” better."
Discuss.
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I just hate that she had to piund it into our head that yes, what we have just read the narrator wrote. I wish I had it here, but isn't the last line something like "I sat down and wrote 'Listen'"? Ooh, and then look! Listen is the first word of this book, see?
I just hate things like that, where an author comes off as a bit precious about their choices, like Kate Trueblood using the word "arse" in The Baby Lottery even though she's a NW woman writing about NW women. Arse? C'mon, so don't use ass, but arse?
Like I said in the review, I thought Meat and Spirit was well-crafted and I liked the structure, sort of Ondaaatje-ian, but the dreamy, disconnected nihilistic ethos made me yawn, and the ending turned the yawn into a bitter grimace.
It isn't an awful book, but, well, I've taken enough shots.
What else you reading? I'm going to write a review for that site for The Botany of Desire.
She ended with, "But what I wrote is Listen." Listen is italicized, but I'm not sure how to do that here.
One thing I have a problem with is when writers continuously remind the reader that they are smart, which I think Saterstrom does a lot. That whole I-was-a-messed-up-kid-but-everyone-
kept-telling-me I-was-so-smart kind of move. Show me, don't tell me.
I take it, Elizabeth, that you are partial to Ms. Saterstrom's work?
I just thought it would be funny to say arse.
Honestly, after being blown away by The Pink Institution, I was a bit disappointed in The Meat and Spirit Plan. That said, I still think more people should be writing less like everyone else and more like themselves, which I think Saterstrom does. Not always a perfect 10, but always something different than the rabble or canon.
Toooootally.
I'd always rather read a miss with integrity than an easy layup.
Get it? "A miss with integrity"? *knee slap* Ahhhh, unintentional and vaguely sexist but it made me giggle.
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