Responding to Lindra in the previous thread:
Actually I agree with much of what you said, even though I liked the book. Like what DavidS (@ 14 in the previous thread) said about propaganda -- I'm also curious how this reads to somebody who's not already of that mindset. Possibly it does sound fanatical and unrealistic; it's hard for me to tell.
He gives advice on how to start learning and gives out springboards to start from on various topics but we don't see him learning anything himself other than getting a few 'oops, I overlooked that' moments (which aren't even internally consistent).
This is also a good point. I vaguely remember reading how-to-write advice that said the hero should start out completely unprepared for the world he was venturing into, and have to learn its ways, etc. But eventually I began to suspect and avoid most how-to-write advice because it interfered with my instincts, and now I'm not so sure it's as simple as that. Maybe it depends on personal preference and what's best for the story. Thinking about it in this case, I wonder if Marcus was allowed to start out with all the answers (tech-wise) so the reader could take on the learning role. Or something. I bailed out of my English major, so literary criticism may not be my thing.
Lindra @ 57: No problem. I think I mostly understood your original post, I just didn't want to make a wrong assumption and end up arguing a point you weren't actually making. If that makes sense. It's early in the morning.
Actually I agree with much of what you said, even though I liked the book.
And now I'll move over to the new thread before I say more.
De-lurking (and yay the site is back) to join in the praise for Little Brother.
DavidS @ 14: I was thinking about leaving copies around, too. Maybe BookCrossing?
Lindra @ 51: Maybe at 23 I'm effectively eons away from 17, but Marcus's voice didn't bother me. I heard the same criticisms about Rob Thurman's Nightlife, though, and although there were instances where I thought the voice was a little overdone, it didn't annoy me as much as it apparently annoyed some other readers. So I think your opinion is completely valid, but also that others, possibly even other teenagers, might not agree. I mean, I was a teen when I started watching Buffy, and though I recognized that the way they spoke wasn't the way I spoke, it didn't repel me.
I'm still trying to parse the rest of your comment, though. Is your main criticism (as far as believability goes) that a real teenager would never be able to get away with challenging "the system" the way Marcus does, would recognize that he wouldn't be able to and would never try? I'm open to discussion/debate over the book (if that's agreeable to our hosts, of course), but I want to make sure I understand your argument.
I realize I can be nitpicky about language, and that it's not a sin to misuse their/there/they're or leave out a comma. However, as Ulrika and RuTemple pointed out, you can't communicate if no one can understand what you're saying.
I couldn't recite more than a couple of vague bits of information from the Prospect post without looking. I can't convince my brain that it's worth sifting out the cliches, and translating the pretentious terms, in order to understand it. So as communication, it fails for me.
I completely agree with Cynthia Wood on the "meaningless fluff" point. And it seems to me that the author of the Prospect post could benefit from reading Roger MacBride Allen's article, "The Standard Deviations of Writing", particularly the bit about "writing to impress rather than communicate". We're all guilty of having done that at one time or another, but we also (hopefully) learn to stop doing it at some point.
Posting this rather late, but...
A. J. Luxton: Thank you for the information. Lately I've noticed other people discussing that part of the MySpace TOS, but it seemed like a good idea to ask people who know more about that sort of thing than I do before overreacting.
Here, at Booksquare, you can see Tina in person pop in to defend her product.
Meanwhile, over at The Magic Formula, the FAQ (the one that said, essentially, that she made up the endorsements) and the disclaimer (Results Not Typical) seem to have been removed.
It's like we're being watched. Eerie. (Well, less eerie considering she has a "statistics program" that apparently keeps up with links to her site, but still.) She could've done a better job responding to the criticisms of her novel-writing product rather than spend four paragraphs proving she exists and wrote a book; but as you pointed out, she took down the only section of her site that addressed such questions (the FAQ).
Julie L.: I had never even heard of a "book packager" before the Kaavya Viswanathan story (and if Tom Tomorrow's 26 April blog post guesses correctly, I suppose most other people hadn't either), so I really have no frame of reference for what they do and how many of them might resort to unethical actions. I wanted to believe Viswanathan when I saw her Today interview, but with that many similarities... I don't know. It does seem, though, like it's more than a simple case of an author stealing material. That's my completely unprofessional opinion, anyway.
Not to veer the conversation wholly off-course, but if anyone stumbles along this who knows anything about intellectual property rights/ copyright/ whatever is actually relevant here, as it relates to sites like MySpace, I've been wondering about section 6 of their TOS and its use of terms like "royalty-free, worldwide license". Because I was thinking of using my blog to post writing excerpts, but I'm not even going to do that if it means giving up rights to it.
Apologies if this random writing-related question is out of place, but you guys seemed to be the right people to ask.
AliceB:
From the disclaimer: "The authors who gave testimonials did so after evaluating the material for themselves."
Maybe the "authors who gave testimonials" (from the disclaimer) refers to the ones on the main page, and the "authors mentioned in my advertisement" (from the FAQ) refers to authors mentioned in a different advertisement. Especially since the FAQ mentions that the ad says "I'll show you how, so you can do it too", which is nowhere on the main page that I can find.
Of course, if she would just be specific about which advertisement she's talking about in the FAQ, there wouldn't be any confusion.
I'm trying to find the ad mentioned in the FAQ, but no luck so far. Maybe it was a print ad. I'd like to find out in what context she mentioned the authors' names, if not for endorsement purposes.
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| 2006 | 4 |
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