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A review by becleighton
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
1.0
Having seen the glowing obituaries for Harrison, and having loved the film of the third novella here, Legends of the Fall, I thought I'd take a look at the original book. And, oh dear.
Legends of the Fall is mainly worth reading because it's surprisingly hilarious to see a loved story retold like it was written by the living embodiment of GuyInYourMFA from Twitter. It is so bad that, if people I know are familiar with the story, I will read some bits aloud for the comedic value. I have no idea how the screenwriters salvaged such a good film from Harrison's dreadful original, but they deserved some huge plaudits for that one.
The other two were just testaments to the trope of the overrated literary misogynist. "Revenge" has pockets of interesting side characters while being mostly dominated by a "Boys' Own" revenge fantasy with bits and pieces of worse-than-your-average-random-dude-on-the-internet rape fantasy thrown in. "The Man Who Gave Up His Name" is one-fifth the plot of a gender-reversed Taylor Swift song and four-fifths of one of the most boring mid-life crises known to literature.
This is every bit deserving of a one-star review, but I'm still perversely glad I read it because the hilariously terrible telling of Legends of the Fall is quite tolerable when read as unintentional comedy and the only reason anyone should ever bother with this dreck.
Legends of the Fall is mainly worth reading because it's surprisingly hilarious to see a loved story retold like it was written by the living embodiment of GuyInYourMFA from Twitter. It is so bad that, if people I know are familiar with the story, I will read some bits aloud for the comedic value. I have no idea how the screenwriters salvaged such a good film from Harrison's dreadful original, but they deserved some huge plaudits for that one.
The other two were just testaments to the trope of the overrated literary misogynist. "Revenge" has pockets of interesting side characters while being mostly dominated by a "Boys' Own" revenge fantasy with bits and pieces of worse-than-your-average-random-dude-on-the-internet rape fantasy thrown in. "The Man Who Gave Up His Name" is one-fifth the plot of a gender-reversed Taylor Swift song and four-fifths of one of the most boring mid-life crises known to literature.
This is every bit deserving of a one-star review, but I'm still perversely glad I read it because the hilariously terrible telling of Legends of the Fall is quite tolerable when read as unintentional comedy and the only reason anyone should ever bother with this dreck.