I don't think there's much of either in Thursday (and I'm pretty sure that if he saw how his working class hero stuff was being used by the current far right, he'd first throw up and then start punching heads).
My whole life, I only ever got one person to read it: a Jewish SF geek who called me the next morning to say, "God damn it, I stayed up all night reading it, and this is the novel I've been wanting to write my entire life." He tried to get his probably-identical twin brother to read it, and the brother got three pages in and shoved it back with a scornful remark about how it redefined twee.
JZ, it's one of my very favorite novels as well.
I read it, and it completely went over my head.
Did you read it on a Wednesday? It's a common mistake.
I think it's one of the all-time classic examples of "If you like this kind of thing, this is just the kind of thing you'll like."
But I tried! I remembered how much you loved it.
Raymond Chandler can be just as sexist as Hemingway...I'm not sure why I like him better...Maybe because Philip Marlowe doesn't take himself very seriously.
Also, I never had to take a test on "The Long Goodbye" or "The Lady in The Lake"(Which is just as well...I read someplace that, Chandler, in alcohol's grip pretty much full-time by then, forgot to reveal who killed the Lady in the first place.)
I totally don't fault anyone for trying and not liking it. It's literary cilantro -- either you utterly groove on it, or it's soap, and there's not much in between.
And now I'm wondering what else is literary cilantro.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,
probably.
Ulysses
and
Finnegans Wake,
possibly.
Some Virginia Woolf. All the stuff with an incredibly distinct flavor to it, that's going to be right from the first paragraph either entrancing or gag-worthy, and once that first reaction hits there isn't much that's going to make the reader change hir mind.
Erika, I think the not taking it too seriously is a big part. And another things is that it is one thing to have the prejudices of your day. Another for them to be fundamental to your world view. If Chandler had learned not be a sexist he could have written essentially the same books - with significant tweaks, but completely recognizable. If Hemingway had stopped being a sexist, he would have had to change his books fundamentally. His view of what a woman was and what a man was were fundamental to his writing and world view. My 2 cents.
And now I'm wondering what else is literary cilantro.
Unless it's just me - Thomas Pyncheon. I read
The Crying of Lot 49
after we name-checked it here. I read the whole thing, but it was mostly Not Enough Huh? In the World for me.