Dons... donkey dongs

Everything can be bought, we know that, except if we fight it, our hearts. No one will ever love the Milton Keynes Dons. How could they?

It is a sad thing that when they cannot buy our hearts, they break them.

I do not know how the fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers can stand that their team plays in LA. Is it that Americans can more readily be bought? Are their hearts for sale?

It seems to me that they believe -- I'm generalising -- that money is the measure of all things. I often see it in those I correspond with. They seem dissatisfied with unrewarded sharing or effort that does not lead to the dollar, and overly excited by the idea that what should have meaning inside can be paid for. I don't mean they cannot, or will not, do voluntary work, or help their neighbours. I'm sure they do.

Maybe we have all become Americans in this way. Am I really part of a dwindling band who believe it is worth trying to create for its own sake? Are there only few who believe that it can be worth the world without being worth a cent?

*

I have been reading You shall know our velocity. I am very disappointed. If you'd paid attention to the hype, you'd think Eggers really was the new Bellow. Well, he's not. He can write -- I mean, he can put words together in sentences one after the other -- but it is arsenumbingly pretentious writing. Ultimately, his characters are such dull arsewipes that you simply don't care for them. I could not be bothered turning the page to find out what happened to them.

I've said it before. All the pretty writing in the world is worth nothing if it's yoked to emptyheaded spifferings. Eggers spiffers. He doesn't have much of anything to say but he is clever enough to look like he does.

It infuriated me that he gave his characters silly names. It doubly infuriated me that he made them such twats. I couldn't help it. I don't have to sympathise with a character to love them (who doesn't love Raskolnikov or Pecksniff?) but they do have to not bore me rigid.

I wanted to like it. Eggers cuts a figure on the internetweb. As we all do, I love McSweeney's and would kill your mother to be published in it. He does good things for kids. He genuinely loves writing. I did want his novel not to suck donkeys.

So, anyone who wants a barely used copy of YSKOV...

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:44 pm