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More on “Mating.”

Norman Rush's 'Mating' sends my BS detector soaring. A sure sign of amateurism in fiction is the info dump, in which the author loads the reader up with back story, world building material, or other facts and figures he feels one needs to understand the central conflict. Rather than being parceled out gradually on a need to know basis, it is dumped on the reader all at once, usually in the first or second chapter. As I read Norman Rush's "Mating" I cannot help but feel I am being subjected Read more [...]

Thoughts on Norman Rush’s “Mating”

I've been reading Norman Rush's Mating, a national book award winner, and for a book that purports to be so learned, this passage in particular struck me as strange. "Nelson would propose to Peter that they each have the power to name the other's firstborns, always assumed to be male, interestingly. During these accounts I felt fortunate having no siblings. I was seeing something foreign. The name would have to be documentable, either by appearing in the sorts of lists of names that are appended Read more [...]