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From a sublime hatchet job of pic related:
>The awkwardness of “which he didn’t yet consider himself among” is, I should say, pervasive. The writing in this book is often atrocious, oscillating between the incoherently ungrammatical—“his mother…had earned her doctorate in education, teaching all the while at the public school near their house that she had deemed JB better than”—and painfully strained attempts at “lyrical” effects: “His silence, so black and total that it was almost gaseous…” You wonder why the former, at least, wasn’t edited out—and why the striking weakness of the prose has gone unremarked by critics and prize juries.
>In the end, her novel is little more than a machine designed to produce negative emotions for the reader to wallow in—unsurprisingly, the very emotions that, in her Kirkus Reviews interview, she listed as the ones she was interested in, the ones she felt men were incapable of expressing: fear, shame, vulnerability. Both the tediousness of A Little Life and, you imagine, the guilty pleasures it holds for some readers are those of a teenaged rap session, that adolescent social ritual par excellence, in which the same crises and hurts are constantly rehearsed.
>For a novel in the realistic tradition to be effective, it must obey some kind of aesthetic necessity—not least, that of even a faint verisimilitude. The abuse that Yanagihara heaps on her protagonist is neither just from a human point of view nor necessary from an artistic one.
>You wonder whether a novel written by a straight white man, one in which urban gay culture is at best sketchily described, in which male homosexuality is for the second time in that author’s work deeply entwined with pedophiliac abuse, in which the only traditional male–male relationship is relegated to a tertiary and semicomic stratum of the narrative, would be celebrated as “the great gay novel” and nominated for the Lambda Literary Award.
>As comical as those particular instances may be, they remind you that many readers today have reached adulthood in educational institutions where a generalized sense of helplessness and acute anxiety have become the norm; places where, indeed, young people are increasingly encouraged to see themselves not as agents in life but as potential victims: of their dates, their roommates, their professors, of institutions and history in general. In a culture where victimhood has become a claim to status, how could Yanagihara’s book—with its unending parade of aesthetically gratuitous scenes of punitive and humiliating violence—not provide a kind of comfort? To such readers, the ugliness of this author’s subject must bring a kind of pleasure, confirming their preexisting view of the world as a site of victimization and little else.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/striptease-among-pals/
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(((Mendelsohn)))
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>>8908408
>The abuse that Yanagihara heaps on her protagonist is neither just from a human point of view nor necessary from an artistic one.
I don't understand how this is acceptable criticism.
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>>8908457
It's not an acceptable criticism on its own, but coupled with the idea later in the passage that the book's audience sees the world as just a place of victim-hood, and the writer is pandering to this, it is a more robust criticism, because the idea of a book that reduces the world to that in order to pander to college kids is something that doesn't appeal to most people. Haven't read it so can't comment on how fair the accusation is, but from my experience of university culture I can believe it.
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>720 pages
can people stop this shit already
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A few people on lit have said this book is actually pretty decent. Haven't heard any criticisms of it until just now. Having said that, I haven't seen any real discussion of it, just that it's "p good" and "sad"
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He's cherry-picking as far as prose is concerned. It wasn't on the level of many Postmodernists, but it had a nice flow. Not everything needs bells and whistles.
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>>8908408
what does a straight woman know about being a gay man?
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>>8908457
If you read the book you understand. Remember, the book is 730 pages. Fully half of it is a pleasant romp through NYC with a group of friends that are sympathetic, likeable characters, especially Jude. The second half she spends dismantling him brutally. In one 20 page span she has him date aa clinically insane hater of disabled people who rapes him repeatedly and throws him down the stairs, and actuallycultivates a main character only to have his death used a jumping off point for having Jude suffer. It reminds me of the violence in American Psycho, except written for bleeding heart New Yorkers in 2012.
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>>8908517
I found it deeply unpleasant to read, and I didnt enjoy it, but it wasnt a bad book. Especially considering the author isnt focusing on story or prose, but almost exclusively in fucking with the reader.
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The point isn't the merits of this particular book (which I haven't read and wouldn't read even for money) but the fact that this guy, even if he's a (((New York establishment))) type and probably doesn't browse /pol/ can still stand up to an industry filled with sycophants and bandwagon-chasers and present some valid criticism. Maybe it's not a sign of large scale change but it's heartening nonetheless.
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>>8908937
Aside from the spooks and /pol/sjw/ tier structures of oppression that you labor under, to say nothing of the intellectual bankruptcy of politicizing a book you haven't read, the real problem with your assessment is that the review isn't some brave stand, it is merely correct.
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>>8908602
>deeply unpleasant to read
>didn't enjoy it
>not a bad book
Is this bait?
"I found the phone book to be a deeply unpleasant read and I didn't enjoy it, but it wasn't a bad book. Especially considering the author isn't focusing on story or prose, but almost exclusively on listing the phone numbers of people and businesses in my city."
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>>8908992
You have to appreciate the depth of emotional response she can extract from the reader. No longer human by dazai is the same type of thing, well written misery isn't fun to read.
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>>8908997
>You have to appreciate the depth of the names, numbers, and addresses the phone book can present to the reader. A long company directory is the same type of thing, well-indexed information isn't fun to read.
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>>8908997
>You have to appreciate the depth of emotional response she can extract from the reader.
But it failed precisely because it was incapable of extracting an emotional response from its reader, for reasons the reviewer explained. People enjoy No Longer Human because it succeeds in extracting an emotion of melancholy from its readers, which to some is pleasurable or "fun"
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