Nothing the slightest bit subliminal about the sex and violence implied in this advertisement for Peter Benchley's novel The Island, eh? As George Carlin quipped in an unrelated bit about sex in advertising, "You don't have to be Fellini to figure that out."
I tried reading The Island several times before finally making it all the way through to the end, which did not happen until after I had seen the movie adaptation.
The generous read on why, at the ages of twelve and thirteen, I kept bouncing off the book might have been the lack of a fantastical threat. A pack of inbred, feral pirates just did not seem all that scary to me. Maybe if Jack Ketchum had given the book a look and polish it might have been more interesting.
Which brings me to the less generous reason for why I kept bouncing off The Island. It read as pedestrian as a sidewalk, as dull as dishwater. It remains the Peter Benchley novel that I least enjoyed reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment