A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

To me, The Lord of the Rings is unreadable. Not because the writing is bad; it’s not. And not because I am not into fantasy; while it’s not my favourite genre, I don’t run for the hills if someone suggests a good fantasy novel to me. I have not yet read a bad China Miéville novel, if that is anything to go on. I am also not afraid of super-long novels, either – behold, I am the guy who read Infinite Jest and loved it. It’s just that investing myself in a heavy brick of a novel, there is a point where the text has to convince me that it’s worth wading through it for the next couple of days or weeks.

I reserve the right to quit – any series or book that would take me longer than a couple of days or weeks from start to finish and where I am of the opinion that, after getting the first fix, that there is not much more fun to be had later in the story. And since it’s Sunrise Confession Time, let me tell you that I stopped watching Game of Thrones after one season, because there was nothing much going on that I found interesting. I certainly didn’t like any of the characters, and the unsympathetic ones were not shrewd enough to appeal to my dark side. Same goes for Buffy and The X-Files. Yeah, I know.

Let’s say this is the flip side of the coin that you can get royally upset if they cancel your favourite series of all time: I am still pissed off about Southland ending mid-story when it was still going strong. To a lesser degree, I would like to know what other stories the Firefly crew got into. And there must be those who are miffed that Robert Jordan died before he wrapped up his Wheel of Time monster project. And while I am typing this, there are those who are plotting to force George R. R. Martin to get the hell on with his snail-slow writing.

I don’t think it’s laziness or lack of interest or stamina on my part. There are so many worlds on screen or on the page to explore, I reserve the right to pick and choose. I am perfectly happy to watch both parts of Dune and leave Frank Herbert’s many novels untouched. That sounds like I am happy with reading the recipe and refusing to eat, but I do think that a novel demands different ways of collaboration from the reader than a movie does from its viewers. They are different things based on similar premises (plot, characters). It’s a mistake to claim that a bad movie will harm the novel it is based on. The book still exists, and if the movie is not up to the quality of the text, then it will be forgotten or watched as a bad spoof.

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