Dan Rhodes / Danuta de Rhodes

Timoleon Vieta was pretty bad. I read the whole thing and I'd call it puerile. It seems like Rhodes is acting out his aggression for the world on paper. Create characters that are impossible to like, completely manipulate your reader and abuse her trust, make the story go nowhere, slap on a contrived ending. What the hell is the point of that?

As bad as I thought Timoleon Vieta was, I've heard that The Little White Car is even worse. Even people who thought Timoleon Vieta was a great book really don't like White Car. I guess turning the death of a beloved international icon into a running prank for a pointless book gets to people.

I suppose that Rhodes has some actual writing talent in him somewhere. Maybe one day he'll get over himself, or stop hating the world, or whatever, and write a book that has more emotional value that your average summer blockbuster movie

I thought 'don't tell me the truth about love' was awful, ann.

Hm... I guess not many people have read either. I thought Timoleon Vieta was a good deal too self-serious -- the author leaves his object of derision as a perfect monster, leading to that revolting, if sturcturally correct, ending. In The Little White Car he goes for the same kind of loathsome upper-middle-class character but since the parody takes him deeper into her point of view, he falls into making the character much more real and sympathetic (if still not the kind of girl I wouldn't want to smack in person). My point being that the "goof-off" is the better book; the distance created by writing through a persona does help Rhodes get over himself. But I guess getting over yourself means you aren't being generally Serious enough, so he's being discouraged. A shame. Just what we need, more writers straining even HARDER to MAKE GREAT ART. I see the literary corps perched on toilet seats, red-faced and grunting...