Is it worth the read? Most people say it's essential, but

whatever man, you do you.

>>9662094
Its pretty decent.

The main character is a complete pussy who feels inadequate due to his friends, family and hyper masculine Afghanistan society. I was rooting for him but I knew he could never find what he was looking for.

Apparently the author had survivors guilt from all the awful shit he's seen but never experienced himself. The novel is one big mental exploration of redemption that you can never quite grasp.

It's shit. Absolutely not essential, unless you are a middle aged woman and a cultural tourist.

>>9662094
Who the fuck told you this was essential?

It was alright but that's about it. You could watch the movie and lose nothing.

>>9662209
/r/books

>>9662222
>/r/books
Dismissed.

The Kite Runner is in fashion and serves the needs of our moment. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for seven years now, and the recent resurgence of the Taliban means we may be embattled there beyond the horizon of my likely span of life (I am seventy-eight as I write). Someday we will be out of Afghanistan and no one will return to reading The Kite Runner, which is a grindingly sincere narrative in the shape of a memoir.

All of The Kite Runner, like all of, say, Isabel Allende or J.K. Rowling is composed in clichés. I open the book at random and confront smiles that “wilt,” lines “etched” into aging faces, “things . . . cooling off again” between former friends, “gnawing” of nails, all on pages 92–93. Though I have just compelled myself to read through the book, I cannot regard it as writing. That there is redeeming social value is unquestionable. Many people have gotten through it who cannot absorb serious scholarship about Afghanistan or even responsible reportage. But my own function cannot be to commend mere sincerity or public utility. Literary fiction requires mastery of language and its nuances, sustained cognition, skill in characterization.

What can be used necessarily can be used up. One does not expect every attempt at a novel to give us Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo or The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. But characters cannot be only names upon a page, and the interests of art cannot be set aside without irreparable loss to the cry and image of the human.

>>9663146
Great post, and honestly really cool that there are septuagenarians out here on /lit/

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>>9663146
>I am seventy eight as I write