Well, not much happens in Remembrance of Things Past, or, for that matter, in one of my favorite recent books, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. There is plot in both, but it's subtle enough to be secondary to the sensual feel of each.

Anyway, I don't much care for John Irving, but mainly because I feel that the man only has one note and he's ceaselessly striking me over the head with it, like some sort of literary Philip Glass.

But... it is a good note!

I would care a lot less if he didn't write so *much* every time, Corwood. Irving novels are commitments. Of course, the argument could be made I've gone slumming and ruined my attention span.

Interesting I have read two books on that list Winter's Tale

and parts of

The Things They Carried

I love the pictures created in the first. I've read a number of times, and don't ever seem to keep a handle on the action. It is a very viseral reaction. Ditto the secondToo intense for me too read all at once, but really godd and true.

I might have finished on of the Rabbit books, but it didn't stick. ditto DeLillo. and there are others I started, but never got very far.

But I am always surprised and pleased when something that is in the cannon is liked by me.

Irving novels are commitments.

It is funny how different people are, because the Roth/Updike novels feel like a slog for me, while Irving just flies by.

This is a phrase that will never win me over, I fear. There's only so much that clever wording can do to hide a great gaping lack of anything happening. It's very difficult for me to get into certain types of writing, because the writers don't give a shit about anything happening in their fiction, and it is very hard to get past the lack of anything happening. Things happening is pretty much how I understand the concept of fiction.

To be fair, plenty of things happen in Confederacy of Dunces and it does have a plot. I just thought Matt's plot description missed the appeal of O'Toole's writing.

while Irving just flies by.

I find Irving very easy to read also. But then I feel that way about Roth. And there are certainly other novelists (like Pynchon) that I find to be sloggy.

In Jesse's provocatively equable maxim: Different people like different shit.

I think I got about halfway through Confederacy of Dunces and then got distracted and never felt like giving it another try.

I liked the first Irving I read, felt meh about the second, and after the third I hated him violently because I felt like it was the same damn thing every time.

And to echo Corwood, I think there's a difference between "the action is internal" and "nothing happens." But YThingsHappenMV.

I don't know why I don't care more for Irving. There's other novelists who have as few notes in their repertoire that really work for me, like, well, I can't think of any American minimalist novelists I like (short stories are another matter, though), but there's Jose Saramago and Beckett from the European side.

Different people like different shit.

True and poetic.