The Emperor's New Clothes

[raefinlay]

Sometimes, reading "literary" fiction, I feel like the child at the edge of the crowd. I watch the emperor parade by in his fancy carriage, holding himself in proud posture purely by his elitist will, listening to the adoring but vacuous cheering. I'm the only one pointing out the fact that he's NEKKID as a brand new baby. (But stoopider-looking.)

Ok, let me back up a bit. I just read a short story in a consumer mag known for its literary fiction. (I won't tell you which one, but it starts with a "New" and ends in a "Yorker.") And I wanted to pour kerosene all over its formless, existential wallowing. *pyro*

Can't people see the nakedness here? How long until we have the nerve to point and laugh appropriately?

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

It brings us back to the "the readers (or viewers) 50%."

LIT was hilarious to me, because point-by-point it was almost exactly the experience I had when visiting Tokyo a few years earlier (with the exception of me not being a big star on a photo shoot or sleeping with, well, anyone).

I saw it accompanied by my best friend, who is Japanese-American, and who had lived in Tokyo for 5 years; also accompanying us was her husband, a Japanese native, though not from Tokyo. Both of them laughed harder than I did.