欧宝娱乐

Granted, I did not pick this book, but I did blindly and eagerly consent based on the fact that I had heard of Murdoch's work and as a result of my experience with other British/Irish women novelists being so rich and rewarding, assumed I would love it. Oh, folly! Iris Murdoch is a philosopher (and a lover of Sartre, worst offender of all, if you ask me), and I generally make it a rule never to read the novels of philosophers because they know shit about character development and even less about plot. Now, mind, as a lover of Joyce and Woolf, I can worship and venerate a plotless novel like it's my job (which it kind of is) as long as there is some lyricism and some wordplay. Not so The Black Prince . Now, all the faux editorial prefaces and postscripts would suggest that I am supposed to hate Bradley and feel that the narrative has no centre. But I hated everyone from the vacillating, talentless Baffins to whining homosexual stereotype Francis Marloe. It's 1973: take a Valium, see a therapist. As such, I resented the hell out of this novel: its endless pontificating on art and existentialism, its mangling of Shakespeare and Dante, its endless reliance on Freudian paradigms only to ridicule them ex-post-facto. I don't see how creating a cast of miserable, despondent, self-obsessed people merits a Booker Prize. I learned nothing from this book and will never read her again. It could've done with a lot more preface/postscipts and a lot less novel. Bottom line: lame.