Why the Kite Runner is Awful Compared to William Golding and the Essex Green.

I am still on my Essex Green kick that began in the later hours of yesterday afternoon. Since early this morning I have been listening to their albums Cannibal Sea and The Long Goodbye nonstop with exception for around 10 o'clock when I broke away for awhile to listen to Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. I had this strong urge to sing along with "Satan Said Dance." You know the words, and if you don't, well, you should. Well anyways, I had one of those urges, you know, to hear that mumbling voice. Its kind of soothing. However, after only a couple of song from Some Loud Thunder, I switched back to Essex Green. I suppose I'm just in a melodic kind of mood . . . and oh yeah, I'm posting today a real picture of them, rather than those very green photos of Essex that I posted yesterday.

Along with listening to Essex Green, this morning I finished the book I was reading, Darkness Visible by William Golding, the master of all things wordly. If you haven't figured out I am a complete and total Golding fan. When I found Pincher Martin on the shelves in some used bookstore I had a mini-frenzied-joy-attack. I started jumping up and down in the aisle, because you would believe how hard Golding's work is to find, almost all of it is out-of-print, so the only way I have made my way in finding the collected works was to search out of print book sellers on the Internet. So anyways, more to the point, I finished Darkness Visible and it was either beautiful, wonderful, mind-blowing, or everything, I can't decide. It was just so poignantly written . . . it evoked every emotion in me . . . stunningly.

Here's a passage from the text:

"The figure was a child, drawing nearer. As they picked their way past the new crater they saw him plain. He was naked and the miles of light lit him variously. A child's stride is quick; but this child walked down the very middle of the street with a kind of ritual gait that in and adult would have been called solemn. The captain could see --and now, with a positive explosion of human feeling --why this particular child walked as it did. The brightness on his left side was not an effect of light. The burn was even more visible on the left side of his head. All his hair was gone on that side, and on the other, shrivelled to peppercorn dots. His face was so swollen he could only glimpse where he was going through the merest of slits. It was perhaps something animal that was directing him away from the placed where the world was being consumed. Perhaps it was luck, good or bad, that kept him pacing in the one direction where he might survive."

And another:

"Matty was now fixed in a different position so that skin could be transferred from one part of his body to the other. It was a condition of some absurdity and the other children in the burns hospital, none of whom had much to laugh at, enjoyed his plight. Grown-ups came to entertain and console him but no woman held his undamaged side to her breast. She would have had to contort herself to do so. His smile went unused. There was rather more visible now to the casual visitor; and these, hurrying to their own unfortunates, were repelled by the sordid misery in which Matty passed his days, and they flashed sideways at him and uneasy smile which he interpreted with absolute precision. When at last he was cut loose, and having been as much as possible repaired was set on his feet, his smile seemed to have gone for good. The blasting of his left side had given him some contraction of the sinews that growth had not yet redressed, so he limped. He had hair on the right side of his skull but the left side a a ghastly white, which seemed so unchildlike it was an invitation by its appearance of baldness to discount his childishness and treat him as an adult who was being stubborn or just silly. Organizations ground on round him for his benefit but there was little more that could be done with him. His background was probed and probed without result. For all that the most painstaking inquiries could find, he might have been born from the sheer agony of a burning city."

Weren't those so . . . powerful? Now just imagine the entirety of the book being like that, as these passages only came from the first chapter. For me, they seem to be proof enough that Golding was and is the Master of prose, and well-deserving of his Nobel Prize for literature. The only thing that irks me is that most only know him for Lord of the Flies, and treat him as if that was the only book he ever wrote, because he wrote much more, and in some cases his other works are undoubtedly more poignant and powerful than Lord of the Flies. My personal favorite is The Spire . . . I think it demonstrates everything he demonstrated in Lord of the Flies only it was better.

Now I am in the beginning chapters of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. A friend of mine gave it to me, because she said that it was wonderful. I, of course, had heard of it, but was never much into it . . . I wasn't even into the movie when it came out, so I never saw it. However, I thought I should read it anyways . . . for the experience, if not, just to be nice. I will say that the only Burroughs for me is William Burroughs, though, he fills the spot completely.

I just keep telling myself that it won't be as bad as The Kite Runner, which was one of those mainstream books, now turned movie, that everybody loved . . . except me. I hated it . . . no, I slightly loathed it. The situation was one of those comparable to the Seinfeld episode where everybody but Elaine loves "The English Patient" and as a result they shun her for it. People would go, "what? you don't love the kite runner? why not? are you crazy? its great! oprah loves it! you should to!" It would actually get very intense these verbal sparrings that others and myself would have . . . I would defend myself continually pointing out everything in the text that I . . . disliked . . . and they would with things like "well, the new york times loves it and they're smarter than you," as if that was an actual defense.

I'm hoping that this book doesn't do turn into one of those . . . the beginning is okay . . . I hope it gets better.