While being a fun and interesting story, K&C does not feature deep character development and was IMHO about 100 pages too long. That being said, I fouWhile being a fun and interesting story, K&C does not feature deep character development and was IMHO about 100 pages too long. That being said, I found it highly entertaining and even instructive about the origins of comics. The descriptions of New York in the 30s, 40s and 50s was nice and the comics Chabon invented to tell the story were very creative. There is a bit of sentimentality here, but not too much and it was interesting to read this book just after Roth's I Married a Communist as the commission at the end was inspired by the same inquisitorial period of the 50s. Overall, I did enjoy it but wonder if Joyce Carol Oates or Joy Williams fans felt ripped off but I have read neither Blonde nor The Quick and the Dead which were respectively their books that were Pulitzer runners up when Chabon won in 2001. Perhaps someone else has? How about Chabon’s other books?...more
Oh my god, this was awful. It was like, why pull out a Chekhov's gun if you ain't gonna fire it? Why develop a whole mystery and then just suddenly loOh my god, this was awful. It was like, why pull out a Chekhov's gun if you ain't gonna fire it? Why develop a whole mystery and then just suddenly lose interest in it? What was McCarthy thinking? It's like everything he wrote since the big ones (The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West, No Country for Old Men, and The Road) has been a downhill slide. Sort of similar to Delillo who, for me, has never reached the heights of White Noise, Libra, Mao II, and Underworld ever since. This one is just so BORING and so self-masturbatory. It is like channeling the writing style of Meridien but via The Man Without Qualities with this incestuous obsession. I just couldn't. I am glad that it did not receive accolades from the Pulitzer committee because it is truly awful and I will NOT attempt the apparently even more excruciatingly boring sequel.
Merged review:
Oh my god, this was awful. It was like, why pull out a Chekhov's gun if you ain't gonna fire it? Why develop a whole mystery and then just suddenly lose interest in it? What was McCarthy thinking? It's like everything he wrote since the big ones (The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West, No Country for Old Men, and The Road) has been a downhill slide. Sort of similar to Delillo who, for me, has never reached the heights of White Noise, Libra, Mao II, and Underworld ever since. This one is just so BORING and so self-masturbatory. It is like channeling the writing style of Meridien but via The Man Without Qualities with this incestuous obsession. I just couldn't. I am glad that it did not receive accolades from the Pulitzer committee because it is truly awful and I will NOT attempt the apparently even more excruciatingly boring sequel.
Merged review:
Oh my god, this was awful. It was like, why pull out a Chekhov's gun if you ain't gonna fire it? Why develop a whole mystery and then just suddenly lose interest in it? What was McCarthy thinking? It's like everything he wrote since the big ones (The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West, No Country for Old Men, and The Road) has been a downhill slide. Sort of similar to Delillo who, for me, has never reached the heights of White Noise, Libra, Mao II, and Underworld ever since. This one is just so BORING and so self-masturbatory. It is like channeling the writing style of Meridien but via The Man Without Qualities with this incestuous obsession. I just couldn't. I am glad that it did not receive accolades from the Pulitzer committee because it is truly awful and I will NOT attempt the apparently even more excruciatingly boring sequel....more
Update: This book did win Kingsolver her long-awaited Pulitzer (along with Hernan Diaz’s Trust) so, for the first time, I made a good guess :-)
I trulyUpdate: This book did win Kingsolver her long-awaited Pulitzer (along with Hernan Diaz’s Trust) so, for the first time, I made a good guess :-)
I truly hope that this book will give Kingsolver the Pulitzer that she deserved in 1999 for The Poisonwood Bible. Demon is a fabulously imperfect protagonist and his David Copperfield-type story is moving and utterly human. I mean, this could have been an incredibly boring book if it tried to follow Dicken's David Copper Field too much and without enough skill, but that didn't happen. It could have been a rubbernecker trainwreck of a novel with a voyeuristic view of addiction and teen sex and it avoided that too. Instead, it just gives us a uniquely vulnerable protagonist who we follow from becoming an orphan to losing it all to gaining it all back piece by piece and then losing it all again and hitting rock bottom. The Pilgrim's Progress of Demon works also to dispel some of the more common and negative stereotypes about "mountain people" by at least explaining the economic and pharmacological background in which they live. It is also a fantastic indictment of the oxy wars on the American poor of the late 90s and early 00s (and ongoing today). I loved Aunt June and was in love with both Emily and Agnes/Angus, heartbroken over Matthiew/Maggot, and disgusted with U-Haul, Fast Forward, and Stoner. I mean, jeez, the names of these characters were excellent.
First, a quote about tobacco in rural Virginia (really all of the South):
Around the time I topped and cut my first tobacco, we noticed the cigarette ads stopped playing. No idea why. If we'd known it was people thinking tobacco was dangerous for kids even to see on TV. with their eyes, we'd have found that dead hilarious. Our schools had smoking barrels. Teachers smoked on their breaks, kids at recess. The buyers were telling us the cancer thing was a scare, not proven. Another case of city people trash-talking us and our hard work, like anything else we did to feed ourselves: raising calves for slaughter, mining our coal, shooting Bambi with our hunting rifles. Now these people that would not know a tobacco plant if they saw one were calling it the devil. If Philip Morris and them knew the devil had real teeth, they sat harder on that secret than you'd believe. Grow it with pride and smoke it with pride, they said, giving out bumper stickers to that effect. I recall big stacks of them at school, free for the taking. Grow and smoke we did, while the price per pound went to hell, and a carton got such taxes on it, we were smoking away our grocery money. We drove around with "Proud Tobacco Farmer" stickers on our trucks till they peeled and faded along with our good health and dreams of greatness. If you're standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight. (p. 104)
Next quote is this beautiful passage about Demon and the wheelchair-confined genius, Mr. Dick:
"I didn't ask how he usually did it, who helped him or what, because I had my own plan. He wheeled outside, down the porch ramp and its the flagstones of the front sidewalk, this being all the farther his wheelchair could go. But still in the yard. No running room. He motioned me to take the kite and go on with it, but I said, My man! We can do better. I wheeled him off the sidewalk onto the grass, which wasn't hard with him weighing probably not much more than a bale of hay. Out over the bumpy grass we went, Mr. Dick working his mouth until what came out was "Heee, heeee!" Which I took to mean Hell yes! I unlatched the back gate and wheeled him plumb out into the stubble of the hayfield behind the house. Then the going got pretty rough, wheelchairwise, so we didn't go far, just to where I could get the runny-go I needed to send that sucker to the moon. The clouds were scooting by, throwing shadows like a herd of wild monsters rumpusing over the field, and I was right there with them. I hefted the kite and let out the string, more and more till it was not but a speck in the sky. I could feel rain starting to spit on us, and who cared. Let it thunder. The string was pulling hard in the wind, but I towed it back to Mr. Dick and put it in his hand. "Hang on tight." I said, and plopped on the ground beside him, panting like a dog. He was quiet, holding that string and kite with everything he had. The way he looked. Eyes raised lip, body tethered by one long thread to the big stormy sky, the whole of him up there with his words, talking to whoever was listening. I've not seen a sight to match it. No bones of his had ever been shoved in a feed bag. The man was a giant. (p. 210)
Here is a nice passage about finally deciding to give up the monkey on your back: I needed to wish her happiness. Fly away and don't fall back into the slime I'm trying to crawl out of here, and also drinking on the sly, calling it my life's blood. Too scared to leave the last place where people looked at me and saw their son or blood brother or their shot at a winning season. I knew what she'd say about that. Trust the road. Because nobody stays, in the long run you're on your own with your ghosts. You're the ship, they're the bottle. I spent the night curled up on the sandy floor with my back pressed against cold rock, thirsty and hungry and in the end not sufficiently doped. Every cricket that inched along the cave face was a copperhead, every squirrel rustling dry leaves was a bear. If I lived till morning, I would walk down the mountain, find June, and tell her I was ready to fly. (p. 502)
And finally, I liked this passage about Demon finding his groove: I'm not saying there was a market for any of this. But the days of the big village were just starting. If there's a shoe out there for every foot, the lonely and oddball foot by means of the internet had a vastly improved chance of finding it. My weird cartoons got a little following that grew, and after a year I sold subscriptions. Not very many. Luckily, I wasn't in it for the money. One thing I learned from Mr. Armstrong while striving heartily to remain uneducated: a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's why guys like Chartrain wear their clothes too big and their teeth edged with gold, why Mr. Dick puts words on kites and sends them to the sun. It's why I draw what I draw.
My favorite moment in Dicken's classic was the epic storm, and the one proposed here by Kingsolver at the climax is worthy of its model. Great writing with both dramatic effect but also restraint from overdoing it. Majestic.
Overall, Demon is not as epic or historically rooted a drama as Poisonwood was, but all her mastery of language and accents, the way she gets into the heads of her characters, and her mastery of the narrative make this an enriching reading experience.
Best of luck from this reader, I hope she gets a long-awaited Pulitzer for this wonderful book....more
I was honestly a little let down by this new Anne Tyler book. As much as I loved The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, and Dinner at the HomesickI was honestly a little let down by this new Anne Tyler book. As much as I loved The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, this one just never pulled at my heartstrings in the same way. The idea of telling a story over multiple generations is not all that original and as she moves the focus around, we never get to really feel an affinity with the family members. I was impatient to move up to the COVID period, but this section was short and felt a bit truncated. I would have preferred a full novel of that chapter or maybe the camping one, rather than this pot pourri of short stories dealing with the same family. And, I might be really thick, but other than the reference in the penultimate chapter to a character doing her hair in a French braid, I never was able to connect the title to the narrative. I don't think Tyler will be getting a second Pulitzer for this work....more
This was a really interesting read. It takes a while to realize that he really is talking about Netanyahu's father UPDATED! Pulitzer Winner for 2022!!
This was a really interesting read. It takes a while to realize that he really is talking about Netanyahu's father and the former Israeli president as a kid, apparently based on a true story. It is written in a subtle Philip Roth-like self-deprecating tone. We are inside this Jewish family in 1959 and experience the endemic anti-Semitism faced by our protagonist, the only Hebrew professor at a celebrated university - their token Jew of sorts. The denouement is hilarious and the afterward helpful to add perspective to the entire book. Highly recommended.
This book just won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize! What a surprise! I have not heard of either of the runners-up, Monkey Boy or Palmeras. I would note that Cohen is only the 5th Jewish person to win, the others being Michael Chabon (2001) and the holy trinity of Roth, Bellow, and Malamud. Sadly no Latina or Jewish woman has still ever won…
I was not blown away by Lahiri's Pulitzer winning Interpreter of Maladies, but in retrospect, her short stories seem better written than her novels. II was not blown away by Lahiri's Pulitzer winning Interpreter of Maladies, but in retrospect, her short stories seem better written than her novels. I couldn't make heads or tails out of this short and seemingly pointless story. Just a woman drifting between lovers, reminiscing about the past but not really having any agency. It was just uninteresting and I did not understand what the point was. I read it thinking that perhaps it was a Pulitzer 2022 contender, but it obviously feel quite short.
This is a much more lighthearted read than Colson's Pulitzer winning The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, and interesting but I did not thinkThis is a much more lighthearted read than Colson's Pulitzer winning The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, and interesting but I did not think it was as well-written as those previous novels. My favorite Whitehead is still The Colossus of New York so perhaps I am just old school. The invocation of Harlem in the late 50s and early 60s is ok, but has a narrow focus on a small sub-segment of the cultural vibrancy of the period. The protagonist remains relatively two-dimensional and the denoument felt unsatisfying.
This was a great book despite my not being a huge Strout fan. It was an endearing reunion of an elderly divorced couple who both lose their spouses anThis was a great book despite my not being a huge Strout fan. It was an endearing reunion of an elderly divorced couple who both lose their spouses and whose lives intersect. It was more interesting for me as a reader than her two Olive Kitteridge books. Apparently, it is the 3rd of a series and I haven't read the first two....more
Leave it to a writer as extraordinary as Louise Erdrich to follow up her Pulitzer-winning thriller The Night Watchman with a fun, poignant ghost storyLeave it to a writer as extraordinary as Louise Erdrich to follow up her Pulitzer-winning thriller The Night Watchman with a fun, poignant ghost story set during the Trump and COVID madness of 2020. She even includes herself as a character in the story! Erdrich is so incredibly talented and it is incredible how she puts out books of such excellent quality in such short order. The love story of Tookie and Pollux (as an aside, is there an author today with more original, quirky, and interesting character names as this? No, didn't think so) was so realistic and so beautifully evoked. Their evolving relationship with Hetta was moving as well. The bookstore that is haunted in the story is naturally based on Erdrich's own Birchbark Books (which I hope to visit someday) and her promotion of fantastic authors and books throughout the text and in reading lists after the end is a wonderful look into her own inspirations as a writer and appreciation of contemporary writers. There just is nothing here to criticize. I would almost want to put this up for the Pulitzer, but as she won last year, I think it will go to another writer and likely one that has not already won a Pulitzer before. But, they tend to be quite unpredictable over there. In any case, add this one to your TBR and you will not be disappointed!
The story of a recovering alcoholic priest would seem a strange topic for a Pulitzer-winning novel, but O'Connor's book does an extraordinary job. OurThe story of a recovering alcoholic priest would seem a strange topic for a Pulitzer-winning novel, but O'Connor's book does an extraordinary job. Our protagonist is a castaway in many respects trying to return to respectability, and he struggles with his faith, his fate, and his own back story over the length of this novel which transpires over a relatively short time period. It is one of the most Catholic stories that won a Pulitzer (with The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder) and an engaging and thought-provoking read, sort of in the lineage of the Rabbit books by Updike or the books by Russo.
One typical quote: "I've often thought that among all the afflicting sights of the world, none can be much more so than this one short walk along three city blocks, where night after night its possible to see- indeed, its impossible not to see- these faces from which hope and joy and dignity and light have been draining so steadily and for so long that now there is nothing left, but this assortment of indifferent, damaged masks. They belong to human beings who, after a lifetime of struggling to become one thing or another, have succeeded only in becoming the rough sketches of their species, recognizable but empty, the bruised and wretched bodies and souls of the saddest people on earth: the people who no longer care. This is an awful situation about which you know you can do little, but about which you have to do something-because of course you are implicated. As a human being. And, more, as a human being who happens to be a priest. And when, moreover, that priest happens to be someone like myself, someone who but for the favor of God's good grace might not now be discussing this problem with such an easy objectivity, why then, the responsibility, the implication, is rather heavily underlined. Yet how to exercise that responsibility in this situation is one of the great questions. At least it is for me." (p. 156)
The sequel to Pulitzer-winning The Sympathiser is a funny and thought-provoking read. We now see our unnamed protagonist in Paris among ex-pats and inThe sequel to Pulitzer-winning The Sympathiser is a funny and thought-provoking read. We now see our unnamed protagonist in Paris among ex-pats and in-between identities. We meet many of these we recall from the first book and are treated to an acidic critique of the French and of Parisian society, even if there is a bit of love for the city of lights hidden in among the many violent and sad anecdotes. The discussion of post-colonization in Vietnam is fascinating and I also learned quite a bit of the Vietnamese experience in France from reading this challenging and fast-paced book. I don't think it carries the same punch as its predecessor, but definitely worth reading if you enjoyed that one.
Some quotes: "And you? I tried to shake off the sadness of my origins that had settled on me with the inevitability and persistence of dust, but even that little bit of shaking made my head protest. Where are you from?" (pp. 98)
"Organized religion was the first and greatest protection racket, an economy of perpetual profit built on voluntary fear and coerced guilt. Donating money to churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, cults, etcetera, to help ensure a spot for one's soul in the express elevator to that penthouse in the sky known as the afterlife was marketing genius!"
There are some authors that just don't do it for me. Anthony Doerr is, unfortunately for me, on that list. His ideas in Cloud Cuckoo are interesting -There are some authors that just don't do it for me. Anthony Doerr is, unfortunately for me, on that list. His ideas in Cloud Cuckoo are interesting - a Greek text recopied in a Constantinople, stolen by a novice, miraculously escaping the fall of that great city in 1453, appearing in a play in 2020 in "Lakeport" and having some connection to a family on a spacecraft hurtling through the void. And for the creativity of the idea, he earned between 3- and 4-stars. However, his character development as in All the Light We Cannot See, was superficial at best. I never felt very invested in any of the characters and found they were all one- or two-dimensional. The writing itself is ok, but despite an attempt by the author to sew things up in the denouement, some things made little sense to me. Entertaining, but left me wanting. 3.5 stars....more
If you are looking for a moderately depressing and somewhat original dystopian father-son story, then this book might be for you. I would say that it If you are looking for a moderately depressing and somewhat original dystopian father-son story, then this book might be for you. I would say that it is sort of similar to last year's The Bear, but less poetic. I enjoyed it far less than I enjoyed The Overstory, and I truly do not think he deserves a second Pulitzer for this one which is truly closer to a novella than a novel. There was a nostalgic side to it that made the characters endearing, but there is also a bitter hopelessness to the story that belies the truly deep malaise that Powers feels for how we are destroying our planet. The physics and biology here are fun though....more
I read this one because it is the first of a trilogy, the second book of which, The Way West, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize. I found it was an interestiI read this one because it is the first of a trilogy, the second book of which, The Way West, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize. I found it was an interesting story, but was a bit put off by the racism and misogyny. Racism as AmerIndians (and blacks) are presented as inherently inferior to whites and misogynist especially towards female Indians who are portrayed as prostitutes and at best submissive wives. It is the story of the West in the 1830s and 40s, setting the stage for the Oregon Trail story in the aforementioned second book. The characters of Boone, Jim, and Dick are the most developed and yet none of them really grew on me all that much. There was a moment which I found made little sense towards the middle where Boon and Dick narrowly escape a massacre and it is never explained how Jim somehow survived the incident and hangs out with them again. I found that the ending was largely unsatisfactory as well. It still gets 3 stars though because of the more anthropologically interesting writing about life in those frontier days which was fairly well-described. I hope that the next book will be better.
One quote: "You think there is a hell sure enough, Boone? It nigh made me take to God, Boone, hearing Clemens play and sing. If'n I close my eyes I can hear him plain, the nice tunes twangin' out and the voice with them and the mountains theirselves seemin' to crowd round and listen. Hi-yi. Hi-yi. Don't sound so good when I sing it, but even a Injun song was something in Clemens' mouth, like as if it brought God down from the sky. Instead of takin' to God, I took liquor and women, but God seemed all around just the same. Seems like he must have felt good, too, seein' us caper. It's agin nature he would be set against frolics. Sometimes, lyin' with a woman and the night thick and a wolf singing from a hill, I figgered God was close.figgered He must be a friend, Boone, and not no stiff and proper son of a bitch puttin' my name down for hell. Sometimes when I looked out over the plains, so far and mighty it dizzied the eye, I figgered God was there, too. Who made it all and give a body an eye to see with and a heart to feel with if 'twarn't God?" (pp. 290)...more
[image] What a delightful story! Mister Major is able to save the Sicilian town on Adano from themselves following the America. Invasion during WWII. B[image] What a delightful story! Mister Major is able to save the Sicilian town on Adano from themselves following the America. Invasion during WWII. But, in Catch-22 fashion, a good deed is never left unpunished. High comedy and hijinx abound in this wonderful story of the clash of two cultures and one man’s attempt to breathe some sanity into a crazy situation. Absolutely deserving of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize!
My votable list of Pulitzer winners which I have read (only have the 40s, 50s, and 60s to finish!): ...more
I was surprisingly impressed by this early Wouk novel about WWII. I read his somewhat sappy The Winds of War and War and Remembrance when I was a kid,I was surprisingly impressed by this early Wouk novel about WWII. I read his somewhat sappy The Winds of War and War and Remembrance when I was a kid, and so my expectations for this 1951 Pulitzer winner were rather low. Nonetheless, Wouk impressed me with the almost Melvillian descriptions of life on an old minesweeper in the Pacific theater (he actually served for two years of WWII on a similar boat and in a similar post as his protagonist) as well as the plot which went from uninteresting to intriguing as the story progressed. At first, I had little sympathy for the spoiled protagonist, but I felt that we see him grow as a person over the course of the story and that is what really propels the story along. For lovers of WWII literature, this is a must-stop. For Pulitzers, it is in the upper 30% I would say.
My list of Pulitzer winners (nearly finished all of them!): here...more
Coming nearly a decade after A.B. Gutherie's Pulitzer winner The Way West also about the Oregon Trail, Jaimie McPheeters is a more comical, but still Coming nearly a decade after A.B. Gutherie's Pulitzer winner The Way West also about the Oregon Trail, Jaimie McPheeters is a more comical, but still visceral look at this period of American history. In what starts out as more of a Twain-styled story, our hero goes witnesses far more gore and violence than Huck or Tom ever did (in their books anyway) including a particularly graphic, gruesome Amerindian initiation ceremony which the reader will find quite hard to forget. The tone remains somewhat light and Jaimie makes it out to California where things do not always work out as Steinbeck's protagonists could have warned him. It makes for a good story and avoids many of the racist and sexist stereotypes that litter the Western genre. It is not perfect, but was probably a deserving winner of a post-WWII prize in the midst of McCarthy and the Cold War when folks were looking backwards to seemingly simpler times. The other contenders included The Dharma Bums by Kerouac which was IMO less engaging than its predecessor, the masterpiece On the Road for which he or arguably Elizabeth Spencer (The Voice at the Back Door) were both robbed a Pulitzer in 1957, and Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories by Capote which I would say was more deserving despite its short length which is what likely disqualified it. Capote would be robbed of his Pulitzer some 8 years later when In Cold Blood lost out to a good but inferior The Fixer by Bernard Malamud and join the ranks of splendid American authors denied the big prize with Francis Fitzgerald.
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