it affected me the way 'open mic night' affects me, on those nights when everyone who gets the urge to perform is in the throes of a marijuana giggle-it affected me the way 'open mic night' affects me, on those nights when everyone who gets the urge to perform is in the throes of a marijuana giggle-fit, and has never read (or written) a poem before, and there are always, always ever-so-many people in the audience who give standing ovations at those sorts of open mic nights, and so this is not necessarily a bad review, in the strictest sense of the term....more
Yeah I just finished and my brain is full of tiny twinky stars. The only thing I’m likely to write next in this review space is going to sound like blYeah I just finished and my brain is full of tiny twinky stars. The only thing I’m likely to write next in this review space is going to sound like blurb garbage, you know, like: “STUNNINGLY ORIGINAL.” Here is a coherent thought I’m thinking, though: this is one of those rare books where there are at least two conversations going on in every sentence. I know what I mean....more
If I wrote here ‘I loved it from beginning to end’ that would be a true statement but also true would be the statements ‘for about half the time I hadIf I wrote here ‘I loved it from beginning to end’ that would be a true statement but also true would be the statements ‘for about half the time I had no idea what was going on’ and ‘I could have picked this book up and begun to read at any page or indeed could have read the whole thing back to front and it would have been at least as interesting, and maybe more.’
The big takeaway for me is that we writers are exactly ourselves and you might as well go with the brain you’ve got, all you writers out there, because you’re the only one who can tell your stories, and probably you’ll be better telling your own stories than trying to write the thing you think you should be writing instead.
(speaking to my Self here, as well, in case you had any doubt of that)
Antkind gave me exactly, precisely the same experience of reality, the same confusions, the same wonder, that watching a Charlie Kaufman film gives me. Reading Antkind was eerily and precisely like being dropped into a set from the film “Synecdoche, New York.”...more
Reading this novel was like I'm sitting in the lobby of the only downtown luxury hotel in a second-tier city, like Cleveland or San Jose, and an interReading this novel was like I'm sitting in the lobby of the only downtown luxury hotel in a second-tier city, like Cleveland or San Jose, and an internationally famous jazz pianist--I'm thinking Herbie Hancock, myself, but you may have another internationally famous jazz pianist in mind, and that's quite ok with me--happens to sit down at the baby grand over there, pushed into a corner, and he begins to riff, casually, magnificently, and seven minutes later he stands up and then walks on....more
I got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'
And I can't answer myself.
More than any oI got to the end (again) and said to myself, 'Okay, have I read this novel now? Am I done with this novel?'
And I can't answer myself.
More than any other novel (possible exceptions: the novels of Volodine and Can Xue), the reading experience I had was like being at a concert, listening to a live performance. It is a contemporary piece of classical music. I'm hearing it for the first time. Sometimes the music grips me. Sometimes I hear repeating themes that I can grab onto and derive meaning from. But there are also intervals where I'm passively listening, and a little zoned out, having my own thoughts that may or may not be inspired by the music coming through my ears. And in the end I've had an artistic experience that swirls inside me and leaves me feeling deeply satisfied, but the experience I had may not be the experience anyone else had, and the experience was not one I could derive definitive semantic meanings from. It was not to be pinned down by words, or summarized in a synopsis, any more than music can be summarized or described as having certain definitive 'meanings.'
I enjoyed it most when I found a sweet spot where I was paying rapt attention to the words, and at the same time was allowing myself to free-associate with their meanings. I even gave myself permission to make up my own meanings, as I wished.
For instance. There is an un-openable box in this novel, and it is very small and nondescript, but, hey, what is inside? Everyone wants to know. It plagues people. They need to know but they can't figure out how to open this box. And this box seemed to fit exactly with how I was plagued to find meaning in the novel, in the words I was reading. I wanted to know exactly what these words were meant to mean. What the heck. I couldn't figure it out because the stories kept leaping and darting forth and then hiding themselves in the grass.
And then I remembered how often I personally imagine words themselves as "boxes." Words-as-boxes fascinates me. Often I find myself thinking about how each word really is just a sound or a string of scribbles, and yet we humans think of words as a kind of container (or box) for a thing we call "meaning," and how weird is that? The way we count on these word-boxes to hold a meaning inside themselves, as they pass from one human ear to the next? It's remarkable. It's not like we can open a word up and see MEANING inside there.
But was I supposed to have had this thought as I read this novel?
Who knows.
The novel travels swiftly along from one vivid scene to the next--but then upends itself, or shifts in a radical way. It was challenging and I loved it but I can't tell you what it was meant to mean. In this review I've used music as a metaphor for my reading experience, but I could just as well have said it was like abstract art. Like a Pollock painting. Beautiful, enigmatic. Whether this work is a messy accident, or completely controlled in its effect, might be a matter for debate. The point is, I never felt guided toward a certain conclusion. I was invited in, to make my own judgments. And that was a wonderful thing.
This is so, so lovely, and it's one of the very few books where I fervently wish I were friends with the author, and that the two of us were together This is so, so lovely, and it's one of the very few books where I fervently wish I were friends with the author, and that the two of us were together on a porch somewhere, with a view of some hills and some valleys, and we're sitting in the dappled shade with no plan except to have one of those conversations, you know the kind, the kind that when you come to the end of it you'll be filled up with so much wonderment, because you finally understand, maybe for the first time in your life and maybe just for a few minutes, that you're not alone--that the person sitting next to you understands you absolutely, and has felt the same lonelinesses, and the same small triumphs, and also, the same absurdities, and if this person sitting next to you understands all these things then maybe more people do, as well, and maybe we're all marching in the same dumb parade together and it's going to be all right....more
Her fate was theirs, and she fought with all she was worth, proudly, defiantly, nobly.
"Her" in this case is a ship called The Wager, and if this senteHer fate was theirs, and she fought with all she was worth, proudly, defiantly, nobly.
"Her" in this case is a ship called The Wager, and if this sentence appeals to you--if you enjoy its anthropomorphic sensibilities and/or have always thought of a ship as a proud, defiant, and noble 'she'--then you'll be delighted to know the book has many more sentences just like it.
For me, reading this book was like being force-fed a frothy dessert where the cook has mistakenly thrown in four times the amount of cardamom that the recipe calls for. Not twenty times the amount. Not so grave a mistake as that. But even a pinch of that particular flavor goes a long way....more
Reading this book is like being left alone in a big old house with somebody's grandma and she has led an incredibly tough life but was raised not to cReading this book is like being left alone in a big old house with somebody's grandma and she has led an incredibly tough life but was raised not to complain and she is proud of her cherry furniture and her very fine penmanship but she tends to rattle on nervously about what happened to her as a child, during the war....more
Given my strongly unhappy reaction to this book I plan to read it again soon because anything that bothers me this much is probably not done with me yGiven my strongly unhappy reaction to this book I plan to read it again soon because anything that bothers me this much is probably not done with me yet. ...more
‘Vivienne woke before Sasha and Jesse. Her need to pee wasn’t super urgent, so she nestled with her back against Sasha's stomach (though in general sh‘Vivienne woke before Sasha and Jesse. Her need to pee wasn’t super urgent, so she nestled with her back against Sasha's stomach (though in general she preferred to be big spoon…)’
This novel is written in one semicolorful declarative sentence after another and there is honestly something appealing about the pah-pah-pah rhythm set up by this kind of prose, like the appeal of reading something written by a teenager who draws little hearts above the i’s instead of a dot, and although I found the story pointless and shallow maybe it’s purposefully pointless and shallow, like those pop art Campbell soup cans that were already passé the first time you saw one, and although this novel is not as interesting as the arrangement of old chewing gums you happen to notice on the sidewalk as you’re walking along, it almost is....more
This book was so far into the territory of 'not for me' that I gave up on attempting a linear read and spent a relaxing and entertaining half-hour opeThis book was so far into the territory of 'not for me' that I gave up on attempting a linear read and spent a relaxing and entertaining half-hour opening pages at random where without exception I would discover yet another sentence that baffled me and made me wonder just what the heck the author meant by it
but then
by continuously following a practice of opening a page and reading one sentence after another, I eventually entered into a Dada-esque semantic dreamscape
(one that reminded me fondly of youthful encounters with magic fungi)
(and to be honest, you should try reading like this, sometime)
and the book in my hands said this to me:
He flinches awake with all his limbs and is struck by a divine astonishment.
He lifted her into the crook of his neck and the viciousness brought on by his fatigue instantly dissolved into something else.
He smiles to himself. The food is warm. He eats.
Shrewd? Stoic? Naive?
Behind her, the car comes spilling over the lip of the flyover and drifts downward with a kind of floating grace....more
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