I never said Time Machine was a terrible book--it is mind rot, it is pulp fiction, but it was fun. I think of books like that as dessert.
LOR is a fantastic achievement.
Well\'s greatest achievment is that he showed people that everything didn\'t have to be beauty and light, that technology was important too. He was an important figure for the turn of the century because of that, but was soon overshadowed by more skilled and talented modernists. The fact is he isn\'t as highly-regarded or as respected as D1ckens, the Brontes, Thackeray et al and not as good as the moderists (Joyce, Wolfe, etc). So if you isolate a ten year period at the turn of the century he was there and prominent, but put him in a grander historical perspective and he dissappears.
Do you really think a book club would be successful?
I guess I have been spoiled. I enjoy very few movies too as a result. I wouldn\'t trade it away for a moment. I have experienced the best that has been thought and written. I pity those who believe that FF7 is the best story ever written, that VGs are a substitute for great literature--they will never take the time to sit down and actually expand their minds.
But it\'s not that I shun everything that isn\'t high art. I enjoyed ICO because it stayed within its own rules and didn\'t take itself too seriously (Square is probably one of the worst, but that will cause a debate that I have no intention of getting into that one). Similarily, I really enjoyed Jurassic Park--it was big and loud, and fun. If you stopped to think a lot of it falls apart, but it was paced just well enough to keep my disbelief in suspension. The problem that most VG writers fall into is trying to write beyond themselves. If they acknowledge their own limitations and stay within them (and not over-write) they can usually pull it off. Unfortunately, very few do.
