Wreybies hated the first book. I think it's very much a love it or hate it series - Covenant is not a paerticularly likeable protagonist. Fortunately, the first series has a co-protagonist who is much better, but I won't spoil it for you. I liked the name system for women in that world - Elena, daughter of Lena, Atiaran, daughter of Tiaran etc, Osondrea daughter of Sondrea etc.
I only said he's the most sensitive character. Who would you say is more so? Not Leia or Han. Not his uncle. You're right, he isn't a big pussy, but that isn't what sensitive means. It means more acutely aware of things, able to sense things with greater subtlety. Emotional sensitivity goes along with it but isn't the enirety of it. And because someone is relatively more sensitive than others doesn't mean they have to be a big whimpering wussbag. It's the story of a sensitive young man who toughens up and learns to become a fighter. Also the story just didn't dwell on it, which I think is a good move. Nobody wants to see him crying or wailing about his aunt and uncle for an extended scene. But their death was the loss that kicked the movie into gear.
If the entire cycle of Harry Potter stories/movies can be described as a bildungsroman (which I've seen done), then so can the OT, and I'd say so can Lord of the Rings. Frodo wasn't the most sensitive, but the character web was largely built around how sensitive the various characters are, since the most pure ones need to be the ones to carry the ring, and they're also the most vulnerable.
That's a whole other discussion - Luke just flipped from one personality to another (in the first film, anyway), from a nice country bumpkin to mass-murdering terrorist (I jest, but you know what I mean). If you wanted to pin me down on a sensitive character - R2-D2. He was the only character who seemed to know what was going on.
These are pretty sensitive guys for heroes. None of them are badass Rambo or Commando types. But maybe I'm misunderstanding what a bildungsroman really is. Maybe it's more about an over-sensitive person coming to grips with society.
I thought about that, and in a way yeah, but I think R2 is really just another caricature. Well, less so than Threepio. He's basically a baby, but a magical baby who solves all the problems magically. But he's part of the comedy team inserted mostly for comic relief.
I've read Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, definitely a bildungsroman, and he's super sensitive. And it's the whole point of the story. I guess that's what it really means, and they gradually grow and learn ways to fit into society better. So I retract my last few posts above, I don't think Harry Potter or any of the ones I mentioned really fit. But learning about this genre and how it differs from standard coming-of-age stories definitely helps you understand each better. I got thrown off by that post I saw claiming the Harry Potter cycle fits. Was he like super-sensitive or something?
Nah, there's nothing political about Bildungsroman. You have to be able to follow the growth of a youth. It can't just be a character arc. That's why I disagree with some people putting books like Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird in there. It's more than just a kid's point of view. You have to show years. The kid has to reach adulthood or get very close to it. He starts off immature and naive and ends as a dependable adult (ideally, I suppose he could fail). Candide would count, and that dates back to the 1750s, so it's not a modern invention. The Goldfinch is a good modern example. I'd never considered it, but Harry Potter definitely counts. It's a fun genre. It lends itself to adventure. I think a lot of the chosen-one YA tropes fit the mold. They've got to explore the trials and failures of years though. It can't just be some kid recruited to fight and then he/she gets tough and skilled. It's more than that. Unrelated . . . my favorite genre is the Picaresque. If Bildungsroman counts then so does this one. Maybe it's more of an approach than a genre . . . I don't know why, but I always wind up choosing books that follow this style. You have a person who is either naive or a troublemaker (either works, strangely, they just need to be an outsider in some way) and they blunder through unrelated scenes. Each scene represents different aspects of life. The MC is either exploited or they cause chaos. The naive characters come to understand themselves more fully. The troublemakers . . . eh, sometimes they don't change, though they can. By true definition the MC is supposed to be the Picaro, the troublemaker. See: Barry Lyndon, A Confederacy of Dunces, Don Quixote, Kidnapped, Candide (one of the originators), The Sotweed Factor. It's kind of related to Bildungsroman. There's often overlap. Here's a good list. I see another 20 books in there I need to read.
I'm going to add that one to the top of my list. I've got read "Invisible Man" first because it's on so many best-novel lists. (Not the HG Wells book.) I think I'll add Sisters Brothers and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as 2 & 3. I've heard the movie adaptation is that book is really good too.
It's very offbeat. Two brothers (last name "sister," get it?) Raise hell across the old west. Lots of robbing, killing, and whoring but in a sort of madcap fun way. Kind of a weird cross between Blood Meridian and Blazing Saddles!
Have we finally stopped tagging everything with "punk" at the end? because that would be great. "Core" seems like kind of a lateral move though, and one that will date itself even faster than "punk" did. Most of the fill-in-the-blank-core names in music have already fallen out of fashion, haven't they? I don't know if that's true. Punk was at its zenith though when they came up with "cyberpunk"
The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas movie is practically beat for beat with the book, even the section he turned in on scraps and napkins that isn't remotely cohesive. The narration translates beautifully into verbatim voice-over monologues, so much so that if you see the film a few times before reading the novel, as I did, you'll hear the whole book in Johnny Depp's voice.
The "core" suffix used to be reserved for music. Guess we're running out of names. Anybody else get the feeling the industry only uses the expansion of genre classification to justify its massive, bloated existence? Like, "Shit, they're going to start laying us off if we don't make this appear more complicated!"
Just reading now about something called Experimental Fiction. It is innovative, intellectually challenging, breaks conventions, is uncomfortable to read and clashes with reader's expectations. It may lack a sympathetic character, may not have a beginning, a middle and an end, may have a divergent narrative style, or use nonconforming language. Example cited are James Joyce's Ulysses and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Seems like this came about with modernist literature. You cite Ulysses, which is certainly a example. I'd add Woolf, particularly works like To The Lighthouse and The Waves. One question this raises for me, given the publication dates of the aforementioned: at what point does it cease to be 'experimental?'
