Heller observes "a relatively new and very unhealthy phenomenon" arising, perhaps, from "Oprahfication of fiction writing or book clubs: This demand for characters you can root for, inspirational fiction, where you feel like you'd like to climb into the book and be there. There's something slightly infantile about all of that. It clearly doesn't win me any friends to say this, but I feel [like saying] a lot of the time, when I'm answering questions in bookstores, ‘Oh, grow up!'
– from Saturday, March 07, 2009 edition of The National Post
UPDATE: Steven W. Beattie, review editor at Quill & Quire and blogger extraordinaire of That Shakespeherian Rag fame has delved much deeper into the issue of "this demand for uplift and sympathetic characters in fiction". He often expresses so well what I think, but can never quite put into words with such eloquence. That is why he is the embattled literary critic, and I, um, draw goofy cartoons.
But we so need the cartoons just as much, Patricia!
Posted by: Rebecca Upjohn | March 11, 2009 at 11:05 AM
Judging by your intelligence and sophisticated taste, you might want to take a look at this book that a friend of mine just wrote: http://www.booklocker.com/books/3908.html. It's called "Notes of an Underground Humanist"; it's the closest thing to Nietzsche I've read in a long time.
Posted by: James McKenna | March 13, 2009 at 08:38 PM