A few things re. my post about Octavian Nothing that came out in emails and comments:

1. I think some people felt that I was saying Laurie Halse Anderson's book Catalyst, which I like very much, was all head and no heart. I was, in fact, only saying that people sometimes say that about the book. I think Catalyst is a good example of an extremely smart book that is also emotionally engaging.

(In fact, Catalyst gets into the whole issue of whether one must be able to directly identify with characters in order to enjoy a book. You hear this all the time, that teens in particular need to 'see themselves' in fiction in order for it to be good. I think this idea is total bullshit, and someday soon, I am going to go off on a completely ill-advised rant about it.*)

2. Phyllis (not my cousin-in-law Phyllis I don't think, although you never know) writes in comments: "John, you said Atlas Shrugged is a failure of a book. I just started reading it two days ago. ... I read The Fountainhead, and loved it. Have you read it? What did you think about it?"

Phyllis, I know that our friendship will be able to withstand this disagreement, but yes, I also think that The Fountainhead is a failure as a book. (I might be wrong, of course.) But I think both of those Rand books are very evocative about their ideas, and that the ideas are very appealing in some ways. But to me the stories and the people are paper-thin, mere vessels for ideas. Stories should be more than that, in my opinion.

3. I said in my post yesterday that my opinion of teenagers has changed a lot in the last two years, and was asked to expand upon that observation. I guess from the videoblog experience, I realized that teenagers were more or less infinitely intellectually capable as an audience, provided the work welcomes them into complexity properly. Which Octavian certainly does.


*Which is just one of several ill-advised rants I am always in danger of going on:
1. The idea that all readings of a book (and opinions on a book) are equally legitimate.
2. The universality of seeing the other, particularly the romantic other, as mysterious.
3. The whole question of whether an author is writing about herself, which is the least interesting question in the whole entire world, and yet the question that is most often asked (and the accusation that is most often leveled against books) in America, but strangely nowhere else.