Shortcomings Archives - Reading the End https://readingtheend.com/tag/shortcomings/ before I read the middle Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:42:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://readingtheend.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cropped-reading-the-end-with-words-2-32x32.jpg Shortcomings Archives - Reading the End https://readingtheend.com/tag/shortcomings/ 32 32 53371782 Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine https://readingtheend.com/2009/01/10/shortcomings-adrian-tomine/ https://readingtheend.com/2009/01/10/shortcomings-adrian-tomine/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:42:30 +0000 http://readingtheend.com/?p=405 I got this out of the library on a whim, as I was passing, because I liked the cover and I haven’t read any new graphic novels recently.  Shortcomings is about a guy called Ben Tanaka and the breakdown of (primarily) his relationship with his community activist girlfriend Miko.  I found it hard to like for two reasons: 1. I do not like alienated protagonists.  I just don’t.  I wanted to take Holden Caulfield and feed him to hungry lions.  So I didn’t like Ben, and I didn’t want to read about him, because he was completely unpleasant. 2. And…

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]]> I got this out of the library on a whim, as I was passing, because I liked the cover and I haven’t read any new graphic novels recently.  Shortcomings is about a guy called Ben Tanaka and the breakdown of (primarily) his relationship with his community activist girlfriend Miko.  I found it hard to like for two reasons:

1. I do not like alienated protagonists.  I just don’t.  I wanted to take Holden Caulfield and feed him to hungry lions.  So I didn’t like Ben, and I didn’t want to read about him, because he was completely unpleasant.

2. And this sounds stupid, but here it is.  This wouldn’t have been an issue if I had liked the protagonist, or really any of the characters.  There’s this scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where the teacher is reading a story to the kids, and it doesn’t make any sense to them, because they live in a certain way, and the story is totally outside their context.  And I sort of felt like that with this.  In addition to not liking anybody, I also didn’t identify with them, because their world is so not mine.

Hm.  This is a very close-minded-sounding review.  Oh well.

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