View Single Post
Old 09-30-2019, 12:07 AM   #522
gmw
cacoethes scribendi
gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
gmw's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,818
Karma: 137770742
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Australia
Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650
I really don't mind how anyone decides to interpret "Books like onions". But given that it was inspired by Shrek saying that ogres are like onions, because they have layers, the idea was to put forward novels that (appear to) have layers: things going on at multiple levels.

One fairly obvious example (don't worry Catlady, I'm not considering nominating these) are many of the books by John Irving. He made something of a habit of telling stories within stories within stories. Or there are many allegorical books, some intentionally so (a recent book talked about Leaves of Grass and the poem Song of Myself by Walt Whitman), while some have had allegory thrust upon them (thinking Lord of the Rings here).

And if anyone is worried that their preferred option doesn't fit, consider that I think Twilight by Stephenie Meyer could be said to be unintentionally multi-layered. There is the what the author intended (presumably) and what YA audience see (again presumably), and then there is an extensive subtext such as revealed by this impressive deconstruction by Ana Mardoll.
gmw is offline   Reply With Quote