(no subject)

[serene]

Does it make me a snob that I was enjoying Life of Pi just fine until the author used "flaunting" where he should have used "flouting", and now I'm just not interested any more?

Yeah, probably, huh?

Comments

[baerana.livejournal.com]

probably :)

anyway, did the author use flaunting, or did a character use flaunting?

anyway, you have to finish it! Life of Pi has THE BEST ending!

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

The character, but while in narrative voice, and not in conversation, no reason to use the wrong word except just a mistaken use of the wrong word.

And okay, I'll finish it now. But I tell you, if I see an "irregardless" or a misplaced apostrophe, it's history. ;-)

[baerana.livejournal.com]

lol :)

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how you feel; this sort of thing irritates me beyond reason. But if I swore off reading books that contained this kind of solecism ("he lay his hand on my knee" is another one), I would be able to read hardly anything written after, say, 1975.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I think it might be a spell checker error. If a writer thinks it's "flauting" and the spellchecker autocorrects to "flaunting", it might not be noticed. (Of course, the prufreeder should have caught it.)

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I feel your pain. In fact, having never even read it myself, I now want to bang the author's and copy-editor's heads together. In a sort-of gentlish and non-violent way. Just to knock some *sense* in, y'know?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

But then wouldn't you be flaunting convention? *cringe*

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

*groan* You get +2 Big Meanie points for that, I think.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

like the overly prim :)

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I now want to bang the author's and copy-editor's heads together

The author and who? I'm convinced that there are no copy-editors employed by any publishing house or periodical these days.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Then maybe I'm imaginary. ;-) (And supergee, too, and redbird, I think.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

It does. But, the dirty little secret no one is supposed to talk about, is that it's ok to be a snob. :)

I had a friend who had gotten almost all the way to tend of Tom Deitz's "The Gryphon King" when the two strong-willed, independant female characters the author had so carefully crafted cried out to the male hero. at a moment of climactic crisis, "Jay, do something!" She said the book made a very satisfying thump when it collided with the far wall of the room. :)

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

*laugh* It drives stonebender crazy that I don't finish books. I have this thing -- I declutter my bookcases by taking a book with me to work, and if it sucks, I leave it on the bus. I don't tell stonebender about that any more, because it makes him cringe with pain.

[baerana.livejournal.com]

I don't finish books I don't like either. I mean, there are so many books, why waste time w/ anything not great? I dump them in a "give away" box in my dining room, though, and take it to charity when it gets full

but if you like leaving books on the bus, maybe you'd like http://www.bookcrossing.com/?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I'm signed up at bookcrossing, but I am usually too lazy to label my books. :-)

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

I'm currently in stonebender's camp, but I'm trying to train myself out of it. I'm better at not finishing bad non-fiction, but always find it hard to dump even the worst fiction halfway through, because if I've started to care about any of the characters, I *have* to know what happens to them. But even while I'm speed-reading to finish it as quickly as possible, a part of me is muttering "Life's Too Short To Read Shit".

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

uuuuugh, that's awful.

flaunt vs. flout - that sort of thing does drop my opinion of the amount of care that has been put into the work.

Man, nobody at my school spellchecks their presentations. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe correct spelling is a thing of the past. Bleah.

[baerana.livejournal.com]

hey, if you wind up liking Life of Pi, there are 2 books I recommend w/ a similar flavor

Q&A by Vikas Swarup - short, a very quick read - I read it in one sitting 'cause I couldn't stop :)

A Son of the Circus by John Irving - very long but very worth it.

What these three books have in common isn't just India. It's a feeling, a sort of... haunted feeling. They all have a very charismatic protagonist and very beautiful lucid prose. But it's the almost haunting feeling that I loved so much about all 3.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I got about half way through Life of Pi and just stopped caring - that sort of near physical pain that couldn't make me pick up the book and read one more word.

It was during one of my intermittent 'I should read more Proper Literature' phases. I may have to resign myself to the idea that I don't like (modern) Proper Literature.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

No. Using Standard English in a standard fashion (ie. the words with the correct meanings) is never snobbish. There is nothing snobbish about being correctly understood.

What is snobbish is people saying that "whom" should be used (I use it myself in formal writing, but even that's dying out - and frequently those who attempt to use it, use it incorrectly); or getting wanky about split infinitives (hello, it's English. Our infinitive has two parts!); avoiding "me" when it's correct ("he gave it to my partner and myself" being a common one); or getting high and mighty about ending sentences with prepositions even when it's not formal writing, the meaning is clear, and, frequently, it's more elegant than shoving in an awkward "which" to associate it with. Bad me.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Did he? I didn't notice. I loved Life of Pi.

Oh wait. I didn't actually read it; I listened to a recording. Maybe it got corrected for the reading, or maybe I just didn't notice.

I don't think you're a snob. When I notice that kind of error (or worse), it basically jut puts me on edge because then I feel like I can't, you know, trust the author or something, so my state of relaxed enjoyment is affected. I start looking out for similar mistakes, and anyway, it doesn't get me "not interested anymore" (unless I do end up finding a lot of mistakes), but it does make for a less enjoyable read until I forget about it

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

I'll be the dissenting voice, since nobody else seems to want to be. :)

As mistakes go, "flaunt" for "flout" is pretty mild; Merriam-Webster (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=flaunt) even lists it as acceptable (while Encarta (http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861612075) is purist about it).

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

I'd have thought it was more pedantry than snobbery. Either way I want some flautas now.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

In my unpopular opinion, anything that keeps you from finishing Life of Pi is a gift from your subconscious. I loved the first section (before they're on the boat), enjoyed the second section (on the boat) until it got unbearably long and repetitive, and then was so blindly infuriated by the ending that I really can't recapture my pleasure in the rest of it.

[jessypie.livejournal.com]

I found the ending really frustrating, too. It was like the author wasn't satisfied by telling a good story and felt a need to turn it into something "bigger," which basically killed the experience for me. I really liked most of the book, though, but I don't think I'd ever recommend it to someone, not with so many better books out there to choose from.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Wow; the opinions of this book are all over the map. Interesting.

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

I try to not let things like that bother me for more than a moment, as I feel like I miss out on lots of good things if I worry much about form vs. content. Too many egregious errors make it difficult, but in general, I can ignore things like this.

Also, I've been a psycholinguist and a Language Log (http://languagelog.com) fan for long enough to become something of an anti-language snob. :) Though depending on how it was misused here, the linguists might well agree that it's an error!

[nolly.livejournal.com]

http://nolly.livejournal.com/189115.html

[berkeleyfarm.livejournal.com]

*SMOOCHIES*

[tom-allen.livejournal.com]

A while back, somebody asked for my comments on his blog. In one of his first posts, he went on about how he doesn't care about proper spelling and grammar, because the English language is so fluid and is always changing wrt the rules.

I pointed out that it doesn't change so quickly that people can't agree on some kind of formalized rules; and that if he chooses to ignore such rules, he shouldn't be surprised if people have a difficult time looking beyond the words. I also pointed out that since he boasts of being in the educational field (whatever that means) then people are probably going to look askance at his attitude.

He told me to fuck off.

I'm with serene. While I might not toss the book aside, little things like grammar and usage do effect my opinion, especially when I except too fine a slitely hiyer standard.