I'm sure this isn't bad literature, but my god it was dull. I have rarely felt time move quite so slowly. I was at no point engaged in the story, inteI'm sure this isn't bad literature, but my god it was dull. I have rarely felt time move quite so slowly. I was at no point engaged in the story, interested in the characters, or particularly intrigued by anything it had to say.
I'm pretty sure reading this stole like 10 years of my life. It's so dense, but also a very thorough and accessible guide to the problem of The AuthorI'm pretty sure reading this stole like 10 years of my life. It's so dense, but also a very thorough and accessible guide to the problem of The Author. It reflects on and traces the origins of questions of what the author is, how that particular role has changed through time, and what these changes have meant for the way we understand literature.
They are immensely interesting questions, and though we perhaps do not often consider what it means that there is an author or even question the way we think of the author, it is something that permeates much of literary theory and is, in essence, inescapable if you really want to get a good grasp on why we are thinking of literature as we are... and what the crisis of literature, as Bennett puts it, is really about.
I can recommend it. Don't do what I did and read it all in one day because you stupidly underestimated how long it would take and it's required reading for a lecture in two days. Acquire it though, and use it as a reference. Get smarter! Have an existential crisis over authorship!
It deserves a better cover too. Because the one it's got is horrendous, and as this is not actually a terrible book it really shouldn't LOOK like one....more
There's honestly nothing better than sitting down with an Agatha Christie novel on a rainy september day with some tea and a blanket.
And she's impeccaThere's honestly nothing better than sitting down with an Agatha Christie novel on a rainy september day with some tea and a blanket.
And she's impeccable when it comes to getting one out of a reading slump. She's so straightforward in her language and yet always exciting.
This is not at all one of her best novels, although I enjoyed a bit of spy intrigue and, possibly, the fate of England hinging on the capture of the culprit. I would've like to be more engaged by the suspects, but it's still a fine, perplexing mystery that I didn't even try to solve on my own.
Perfectly enjoyable. Now I want to read nothing but Agatha Christie novels all autumn, but I probably shouldn't... They just go so well with the season....more