So, I'm reading this novel (The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields), and I get to the middle of the book, and there's a section of .......... photos. Of the people in the book. Except the book is a NOVEL. Which means that the people are made up. Which means that unless someone has come up with some technology that somehow photographs FICTIONAL PEOPLE, the author or her publisher took a bunch of random photos of people and stuck them in the book and said, "This one's Mercy, and this one's Cuyler, and ........ "
And for reasons I can't quite figure out, I am so put off by this that now I don't even want to finish the damn book. The photos of, well, whoever they are look NOTHING like I pictured the people in the book to look like, and I just don't understand the whole concept of photos of FICTIONAL PEOPLE. Do I need to say again that the characters are FICTIONAL??? No? I didn't think so.
Is it just me, or is this really strange? Or is it just me who's strange?
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4 comments:
Nope, that's strange. One of Kid's books also has this photo album -- she finds it intrusive. ("But I like to imagine them how I want to, not be told how they look.")
I read a lot, and I'd never seen this in a novel before. It just seemed .... well ..... bizarre.
I've never seen that. I have seen maps of fictional places in books, but that's about as close to a photo as I've gotten. It's a bit strange, in my opinion. Books aren't supposed to be visual themselves--that's why they're books. It's like watching a movie version of the book and being dissatisfied because it wasn't how you imagined, only worse because it's in the middle of the book. No good.
You know what's just as bad? When you're reading a NON-fiction book, and they slap a bunch of photos right in the middle that give away what happens in the rest of the book. (i.e., photo caption of "Kate and Jane at Bill's funeral.") Grrrrr......
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