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/lit/ - Literature

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15233095 No.15233095 [Reply] [Original]

is The Drowned World accessible and not excessively long? I'm kind of a brainlet

>> No.15233808

>>15233095
It's like 200 pages if that and it's fine. Personally l like High Rise more of his straightforward narrative novels

>> No.15234925

>>15233095
Empire of the Sun is great, but I've never got into his other stuff

At least with Empire it's about is life, everything else is just self-insert fiction though

>> No.15236049

>>15234925
hurr durr you cant draw on personal experience unless its explicitly autobiographical shut up

The Drowned World is "accessible" if by that you mean it isn't particularly difficult to read. If you're an American or you've not read some popular British fiction before and around the time Ballard wrote it (Nevil Shute perhaps) then the prose might seem a little fusty in a prewar British adventure story sort of way. The dialogue is all restraint and "The weather appears to have turned this morning, Sergeant", but it's not a major stylistical or structural obstacle in the way that, for instance, a modernist novel might be. The matters of interest to be found in the book are in the omniscient narrator's description and speculation.

TDW also has a few black characters who speak in "mistah kurtz" phonetics, which I think some on this board would appreciate.

>> No.15236655

>>15233095
Yeah I just read it recently. It is accessible and not long