Ignorant Ignorant Ignorant

An opinion is an opinion. Not everyone has the same tastes in books. If you were presented "A Million Little Pieces" as a work of fiction, you would either love it or hate it depending on your taste. But the fact that you found out he "lied" about it, makes you hate it no matter what. A good book is a good book to some, and a bad book is a bad book.

If any of you have read "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, then you know that his book was also a "memoir", or set to be told as one. In the book itself, he says "Story truth is sometimes more true than real truth."

That quote applies here. When you tell a friend a funny story, you want to exaggerate thing to make them laugh the way you laughed when you first heard it. You don't want to be the joke teller that's know for the punch line "it was a you had to be there kind of thing..." because you wanted them to feel like they WERE there when you were telling it.

It's the same with AMLP. He wanted to convey the feelings. The emotions that were going through him. Sometimes the only way to do that is to exaggerate. I know he achieved his goal because sometimes I had to put the book down because I had to vomit myself. I was feeling so sad I cried at some points, and at times I had to put the book down for a day because it was too much to handle.

Whether it was real or not, it touched people, and it make people think while reading it. You may not like his writing style of line after simple line. But that's the point. That's the way a person thinks. Line after simple line. It makes you feel more connected with the writing while reading it.

In the end, a book is a book. You like it, or you hate it. For me, I love his style of writing. It's something I love to read and picture in my mind. The feelings come right through the pages for me and I feel as though I know what the characters are feeling and it makes it hard to put the book down. I enjoy all of his work, including his newest "Bright Shiny Morning" which is his first work of "real" fiction. I read that book straight through it was so good. At the end I bawled. I tried to tell myself "It's just a book. It isn't real." But I couldn't because throughout the entire book I had felt like I had gone through all the events WITH the characters. I felt as though they were real people. Even though the characters were cliche, they weren't the point. The feelings they had in their minds were the point. He captures the true essence of writing, of telling a story. Trying to make you understand and feel what the character is feeling.



Now that I've got that off my chest.