God I hate the cookie cutter nature of those covers and those books. Not only are they barely more than wordy outlines, they are written in an inexcusable cultural shorthand that assumes that not only does the reader have the attention span of a gnat but that they will sympathize or relate to characters who can only relate to things in terms of what they've seen in magazines or on TV.
And when did it become a crime for a character to have some redeeming - or even slightly human quality that makes them relatable to the reader? The cast in the chick lit (brought to two dimensional "glory" in The Devil Wears Prada could only barely be called people. They were character sketches with clothing labels. Where as that MIGHT have been a choice for the nature of the book - it's continued to be the practice in most of these books. You don't need to flesh out characters, locations, situations if you cna just say what designer they are wearibng, who ate there last or a movie/TV special that covers it.
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Date: 2005-11-01 03:03 pm (UTC)And when did it become a crime for a character to have some redeeming - or even slightly human quality that makes them relatable to the reader? The cast in the chick lit (brought to two dimensional "glory" in The Devil Wears Prada could only barely be called people. They were character sketches with clothing labels. Where as that MIGHT have been a choice for the nature of the book - it's continued to be the practice in most of these books. You don't need to flesh out characters, locations, situations if you cna just say what designer they are wearibng, who ate there last or a movie/TV special that covers it.
Wretched.