Turn for the Worse

Turn for the worse. Of course. I made the mistake of going through my novel when I was in a bad mood. The novel’s about fairly ugly people, so it seemed to me like the novel itself is ugly. Don’t know if it’s my mood or what. Don’t know if I should even write this. It is my hope that a couple of people who come to this blog might actually buy the book so I shouldn’t tear down the thing. It’s just as likely that I’ll be excited by the novel in another five minutes.

The first three characters in the book are pretty misogynistic--each chapter is told from another character’s point of view. Put together with last story I posted, it might seem like that’s all I write about. It has been a theme in my recent writing. I’m afraid that people will make the mistake of thinking that a story that is about a misogynist is misogynistic in itself.

It’s ironic because if I hate anybody, it’s men. Men do the damage to other people. Women, by and large, do the damage and degradation to themselves. I write about misogyny as a way of exhibiting dumb, male abuse. I just don’t think other people always see it that way. That’s my fear at least. Maybe this is me thinking about PC critics before it’s even done. Honestly, I’ll be lucky to get any reviews, let alone passionate attacks about the book’s misogyny.



Moving on…Saw "World of the Worlds." Sucked bad. I feel like I’m going to be accused of being an anti-Hollywood, anti-Cruise contrarian, but I was bored. It’s not like I hate all Hollywood movies. I loved "Independence Day." I thought it was a masterpiece of crap. WOTW seemed to be trying to put its foot in two doors--some 9-11 type realism mixed in with over-dramatic Hollywood pandering. Everything’s done for slow, dramatic effect, and I’m thinking, "The fucking ground is cracking beneath you! Why the fuck aren’t you running?!" Why in the hell are you racing to get on a boat? Because something going 20 miles an hour will save you? These things make me less afraid, not more afraid. And there’s super-hero Tom Cruise who is always one step ahead of everyone else, and the only unheroic decision he has to make--choosing between his son and daughter--is made for him. All this bugged me. Oddly enough, everyone else in the movie besides Tom Cruise’s family is faceless and impersonal. It’s like the movie itself is a creepy, destructive machine like the Tripods. It seems ridiculous for me to be attacking this movie for its lack of realism. I was worried that the movie was going to be too close to 9-11 and then I was annoyed that it was too close to an action movie. I cannot be pleased.

(WOTW link via The Presurfer)