Wow, fascinating to hear. Again, haven’t read the book, but it seems to me that you’re pretty clear-eyed about the ways in which it doesn’t work for you. It all just has me curious (like you) about how so many people can be so enchanted by it—a quick Google reveals very positive reviews from some major heavy hitters in literary critique.

I do think that the academy/literary establishment tends to privilege disenchantment and jadedness to a very high degree (so much so that it’s almost integral to literary realism), so maybe that’s the disconnect? I know personally that I also dislike totally jaded writing, and so am turned off by a decent chunk of well-regarded literature because it strikes me as almost disingenuously cool and detached and disbelieving. Like, some works attempt to be so clear-eyed about the human capacity for evil and self-interest that they actually become almost cartoonish, no longer reflecting the positive valences of real lived experience.

Are there any other books with that kind of jaded, detached narrator that you do enjoy? It sounds like this could have been a perfectly bad combination for you of rambling Quixotic travelog and falsely worldly self-affectedly jaded protagonist.