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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4929842" data-attributes="member: 15538">*sigh*, last time I checked, Rape The Dog was deleted. Unmerged? Ironically, once of the stronger arguments was that the name itself led to the overuse of the word "rape" in conversations about the topic. I do enjoy Vance's work. I intuit that he's probably a good person. I laugh, I cry, I say, "Eww." I consider myself a person of above average literacy. If Vance's work is inaccessible to you, I will put forth the proposition that it's not because the work is inaccessible to everyone, or because you must be dissolute to enjoy it. I think it's just not a story for you, and if you can't find some way to digest the irony and the humor and the horror and the commentary on the human condition all in one wry little platter, then read something else.I've been told by someone that they cannot enjoy "Bridges of Madison County" bascially because it's about an adulterous affair. That's fine. Now I gather that you consider yourself past that barrier, that you are willing to consider a story of a certain theme if the story is good enough. I believe you.But again, your criticism of the story or the scene does not, itself, make it bad. You have to construct an argument that other people will likely consider it bad. I, personally, would not hesitate to recommend the books to many people I know. In fact, the likeliness I am to recommend it roughly corresponds to how much sophisticated a reader I consider them, with other factors also influencing my decision. Obviously, you can dislike the story for perfectly legitimate reasons, but to enjoy the story, you probably have to achieve a certain level of poetic sophistication, or manage to misinterpret the story.To call it bad writing, you are going to have to argue either that I should not have enjoyed it, or that I am not a competent lay critic. Fair warning: in high school, I wrote a 25 page term paper on Kafka's Metamorphosis.  I am likely to value my own literary judgment to a fairly high degree. Why should someone enjoy Vance's work? Among other reasons, they are steeped in existential themes. The story of a woman being raped, sold, and then killed under absurd circumstances very elegantly encapsulates the themes of loneliness, mortality, and the uncaring universe that characterize existential works. Human beings like stories of the Devil. Even that wretched movie "Mad Money" ends with a wink at the thieves.</blockquote>

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