The book I’m listening to, Replay, is laying the groundwork to really piss me off.
After living his life over several times, the protagonist, Jeff, sees a movie out in theaters that he’s never heard of before. It is a huge blockbuster that he definitely would have heard of or seen before in his previous lives, so he knows something is up. He tracks down the writer of the film, Pamela, and finds out that she is like him, living her life over and over. He finds out that her objective is to change the minds of the world, to alter the global consciousness with the ideas in her movies, and hopefully awake them to their own repeating lives.
And what does Jeff do, upon finally meeting someone who can understand the depression and confusion of living a life over and over? Upon finding someone who can identify with his pain? Upon finding someone who has the ambition and will to try and make a change in a world that erases any impact they have on it?
He tells her her idea is dumb and pointless, and that she can’t change anything and shouldn’t try, and then throws a tantrum and goes back to being a hermit and doesn’t talk to her.
THIS IS THE PROTAGONIST
Why do you force me to dislike your protagonists so often, writers? Is it some impulse you have? Or do you just expect the reader to like them no matter what they do, because you’ve made them the focus of the story?
Get it through your thick heads. I want to read about Pamela trying to change the consciousness of the world ten-thousand times more than I want to read about Jeff telling her she can’t do it and sulking in the woods.
Why can’t you understand this? What is so hard about this concept??
The book has been good so far, so I hope this is just a way the writer is trying to illustrate the futility of trying to change anything in the repeating worlds (analogous to trying to change anything in the real world, maybe, if you’re a cynic) but still, it would make me like the protagonist a lot more if he was the one trying to change things and being shot down.
Jonas David 