I'm all for the use of repetition as a literary device, but I don't think the overly repeated words or phrases in this book were really going for that. There's chunks of dialogues where one character says another character's name over and over and it drove me crazy. Once I spotted it, I noticed it everywhere. In everyday conversation it would sound odd to keep saying someone's name like a broken record when you are talking to them.
I also had issues when the characters spouted off information like a textbook. I get that Cathy is an academic, but very rarely do I hear my professors talk like the textbooks they assign. Take this quote for example Cathy says, "The classical tradition in which Michelangelo's artistry is steeped-- that is, the humanistic tradition hearkening back to the ancient Greeks-- held that the male body was aesthetically superior to the female." This is just a small example because Cathy goes on to recite a huge chunk of information like this and I just did not believe she talked like that at all. It was too stiff and did not feel like an authentic person at all.
Oh and if I had a dollar for every time the word "pretty" was used I could probably be typing this blog post from a yacht right now. The women are pretty, I get it. Please stop using that descriptor
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These things may seem small, but when they are happening over and over it makes it difficult for one to really get absorbed in the novel. Those things on top of characters without deep layers and depths just did not make a good combination for me. I wanted more than cliches from this novel, but I did not get there.
Christian AKA The Sculptor was so cliche with his super strength, bags of money, and not a care in the world...well except taking care of his father I suppose. I like my villains to have more weaknesses or downfalls than what was going on here. I guess in a way his obsessions, especially that concerning Michelangelo's art and recreating it, were downfalls, but I needed more to really be invested in this story. It just didn't feel like there was enough life breathed into the characters.
Again I will say the idea of a psycho killer obsessed with Michelangelo and using bodies as material for his artwork, the idea of awakening the world from their media-obsessed stupor, are spot on ideas that set up potential for a great novel, I just did not come away with that experience at the end of the novel.
I think all of us from the class agree that the novel is definitely not one that we would emulate, stylistically or otherwise, though I do want to say that I genuinely liked the killer. He had an interesting backstory, and except for the out-of-left-field break at the end where he actually believes Cathy is his mother, I genuinely enjoyed reading from his perspective. Did he need work, yeah, but he was definitely the best, if not the only good, part of the novel.
ReplyDelete"I get that Cathy is an academic, but very rarely do I hear my professors talk like the textbooks they assign."
ReplyDeleteThis drove me NUTS. I could not figure out why these people were talking like this. It's like Funaro never heard another human being speak before.
What saddens me is the message of The Sculptor is so often missed even though the author took the time to plate it for his audience. (Or I could have completely missed the point of the book. It’s possible.) Hildy wrote a book that spoke to a psycho, but what he heard was Hildy’s/ Michelangelo’s despair over what the culture around him had forgotten, and what it was that said culture used as replacements.
ReplyDeleteWhat’s important to Hildy’s/Christian’s culture? That a young boy has vanished and yet, around him, his neighborhood, city, and community are jumping up and down in support of a football player. As author Gregory Funaro asked, of both his readers and his protagonist: “What have we lost?” Keeping up with the Kardashians vrs Shakespeare? Reality TV and the Internet vrs face-to-face connection with friends and family? The answer is also supplied by the author as well as Christian. We’ve lost our humanity; we’ve lost contact with the divine.