Word: reader
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...have successfully avoided actually discussing my thesis, and I understand that you might reach a lull in the conversation. I know the problem--I was once the one posing these questions to thesis-writing seniors. I know better now. So I inquire, fair reader, why bother...
...from real life. In the cumbersomely title "People Like That are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk," a couple undergo the horrific experience of discovering and dealing with cancer in their infant son. Subversively poignant in its subtle bitterness and desperate hope, the story draws the reader into a nightmare world of clean rooms. IV's N-G tubes and veteran parents of sick children, parents weary and glass-eyed but determined to fight for their children to the happy or bitter...
...inside the other, with every link hiding yet more stories." Garuda's musings may be extended to the book itself, which is a collection of all the stories of Hindu mythology--some bizarre, some beautiful, many grotesque and all thoroughly engrossing--recast with an eye for the postmodern reader and his impatient but eager sensibilities. Taking a cue from the Mahabharata--a seminal Indian text containing many of the major stories of Hindu mythology--Roberto Calasso (here translated from the Italian by noted scholar Tim Parks) has combined the stories from all aspects and ages of Hindu culture to recreate...
...conversations" with inanimate objects, ghosts (such as Billy's) and animals. These are included, in some cases, for no discernible reason, such as this "exchange" with Jean's stuffed animal, the poodle Bojo: "'Scared, Bojo?' I ask him. `No,' he answers, staring straight forward." The author also leaves the reader in unnecessary suspense about what happened during the crucial "perfect summer, awful summer," includes characters with dubious importance to the plot and tells the reader too much about them. This is Ray ostensibly talking about Jill Thompson, one of his eighth grade teachers and a character which could be eliminated...
While reading Billy Dead, the reader is trapped with Ray's skewed vision of the world and, what is worse, his sometimes hideously rambling narrative. To pull a novel off with a hero or heroine essentially isolated from society, the protagonist has to be vivid and interesting, which is why this novel suffers by any comparison to Bastard out of Carolina or any other tale of an abusive childhood. While Ruth Anne Boatwright remains in the reader's memory, Ray Johnson is easily forgotten, with only the horrible tales of abuse to vaguely haunt the readers, tales of suffering with...