Stupid Stupid Amazon reviewers
Feb. 2nd, 2004 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiSo, I was looking at the reviews for Valdine Clemens' The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from the Castle of Otranto to Alien. And one of the negative reviews reads:
. . .suddenly Clemens starts assuming the most outrageous things. When Mr. Hyde starts destroying Jekyll's library and in the process tears the portrait of Jekyll senior off the wall, Clemens identifies it as "an attack on the Father" that already started with Otranto. Likewise, she identifies "Jekyll" is a pun, being "je kill", the meaning of which she alludes to but never fully explains.
Okay, I'm willing to accept that the attack on the father (although pretty blatant) is at least debatable. But the "Je Kill" part, one of the more famous literary puns? And the guy's pissed that it's never explained? Sorry, but no. I'd rather an author assume I'm intelligent and decently educated (especially in academic writing) any day of the week.
So yeah, I added the book to my wishlist out of spite.
. . .suddenly Clemens starts assuming the most outrageous things. When Mr. Hyde starts destroying Jekyll's library and in the process tears the portrait of Jekyll senior off the wall, Clemens identifies it as "an attack on the Father" that already started with Otranto. Likewise, she identifies "Jekyll" is a pun, being "je kill", the meaning of which she alludes to but never fully explains.
Okay, I'm willing to accept that the attack on the father (although pretty blatant) is at least debatable. But the "Je Kill" part, one of the more famous literary puns? And the guy's pissed that it's never explained? Sorry, but no. I'd rather an author assume I'm intelligent and decently educated (especially in academic writing) any day of the week.
So yeah, I added the book to my wishlist out of spite.