"famous for the wrong book"?

I love this discussion of how authors are often famous for the wrong book -- Guardian writer John Self points to such classics as Remains of the Day or Catch-22 as not-bests.

What would you add to his list?

I'm hesitant. I feel like often enough, the famous books are most famous for their ability to transcend elitist or snobby particularities. For example, my favourite Atwood novels are The Edible Woman or Cat's Eye, but I'm well aware their experimental feminism and blending of the unrealistic with the everyday appeal to a certain narrow crowd. The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake would generally have wider appeal.

On the other hand, this sort of brings to mind a book club discussion once had in Edmonton, where one member pointed out that, failing to get his points across in books like Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell essentially parades a bunch of farm animals before the reader in Animal Farm, finally entertaining a wider crowd and allowing the political messages he wished to get across to shine through....

Slumdog Millionaire?

Wow.

Sorry, were you watching the Golden Globes Sunday night? Wow. Beautiful movie, but call me completely surprised. ("Hello, Completely Surprised. Nice to meet you." Boo.) I'm glad of the win, though -- I thought the film was so very full and colourful, and it made my heart swell.

Moving on.... I've been slowly making my way through Happenstance, while at the same time working my way through some really fascinating stuff. Like, Alberta's interim report on carbon capture. Also, the province's bill on the delivery of emergency medicine.

And you wonder how I manage to catch up on my sleep these days....

But I'm taking a break from Carol Shields' prize-winning work, even though it's such matters of the heart I enjoy reading most. I love examining the magic and heartbreak of private lives, the greater confusion and misunderstanding that lies within inner assumptions and monologues.

A new year -- I'll get to resolutions later -- brings with it new book club meetings. And so, I am struggling through George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

I'm sorry to say that, 63 pages in, the book makes me cringe, and I find myself skimming even if the prose is all good and Orwellian. I know it's supposed to be good journalism, and more importantly it is good writing. However, that's hardly offset by the fact it sounds like the 1920s version of a punk 25-year-old who's just discovered his adventure on the dark side of society might be, well, dark.

(I'm a jerk, I know. I feel sorry saying all this particularly because we're all friends at book club, and I hate hating the selections. I feel bad offending people. So, I hide my identify and publish my hateful opinions on the internet like a good little 21st century-er.)

Example A:

"The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people -- people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work." (p. 7)

Gah. I want to reach through the pages and shake the young, bourgeois, pretentious Orwell. "Give me a break!" I would cry, "Get on with writing Animal Farm!"

Example B:

"You discover the boredom which is inseparable from poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing. For half a day at a time you lie on your bed, feeling like the jeune squelette in Baudelaire's poem. Only food could rouse you. You discover that a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs." (p. 17)

Argh.

At least we'll all have something to talk about.

Like the fact I'm becoming a pirate in my protestations.