I made it through the slap - and i decided that from now on, I will not pretend that I have decent opinions on literature and retreat into books that i like.
my problem with the slap is, as i remarked for dfw, that by articulating inner thoughts of people that occur on the periphery (if at all), it privileges them to the point that they seem like the central driving force of each character. E.g., I might walk past a billboard of a sports-woman, and for whatever reason, will imagine her losing her leg below the knee, then perhaps in order for that to happen i will imagine sawing it off with a hack-saw. It's not something i set out to think about, it's not a thought that i entertain for any amount of time, in fact, i will usually move on without thinking that i have thought it, but somewhere in that brain of mine it was there. It's not that i actually want to torture someone, or become a surgeon or anything, though. So - with The Slap, is it really capturing the essence of a character if he sees a girl and then just thinks of aggressively f*ing her? Is it naive of me to think that, in general, most people are reasonably well-intentioned?
Secondly, sometimes the dialogue between characters is just awful. I'll admit that sometimes it's realistic enough, but sometimes I sort of feel insulted that I have to read a passage and buy it.
I'm happy for others to call this good. It's just not something that I get much out of, and in the future I will not be duped into such exploits. I will, instead, read Kurt Vonnegut's posthumous release which has some nice sentimental goings on... but sentiments that I like and am happy to read about.
