I've read almost two novels from László Krasznahorkai, a writer and screenwriter from Hungary. I dislike his name with a passion. He has won all sorts of prices including a Nobel. I say almost because I managed to crawl through the first one, Satantango, which was already a terrible slog but was somewhat redeemed by a smart ending like a Shyamalan movie, but the second one, The Melancholy of Resistance, left me utterly bored. After two hundred pages I stopped reading and sold the book. If it's another one that triumphs with a huge reveal in the end I never know.
Our boy Lazzie writes long sentences like some babbling kid who forgets to breathe while describing their whole day. These sentences aren't fun to read nor do they flow well, it's like sitting in a buss that stops every few meters with an annoying jerk. This I could excuse if the content was intriguing and interesting and mind-bending or something, anything that made me want to keep reading, but no, more than two thirds of these books are set-up and the rest tries to salvage the wreck.
Both of these books are miserable, based on some god forsaken small town full of ugly and mean people, suspicious people. These are time travelling books back to the era when men didn't behave and women had to constantly be afraid that they didn't. Speaking of women, most of them have breasts, either large ones or very small. Men on the other hand are distinguished from each other by clothes. There are drunkards, old people and old drunkards. Houses are dilapidated, it's cold, wet and miserable, and people don't really do anything to make things better. Streets are deserted and food is scarce.
Krazna is pretty good at describing things and he paints a vivid image but doesn't really take advantage of it. I get the misery but he keeps on rubbing it in until it gets old. It's impossible to empathize with the characters and I guess you're not supposed to either, so that's another dead angle. In the end I found very little to grasp on to. His writing screams artsy and some people always find that kind of thing interesting, while rest of the fans must consist of people who only read award-winning authors.
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