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Choosing a book for March 2013
By New York Revi… · 8 posts · 78 views
last updated Mar 02, 2013 09:53AM
Choosing a book for August 2013
By New York Revi… · 33 posts · 86 views
last updated Aug 13, 2013 08:00PM
What Members Thought
Oddly enough, this book doesn't rock for me. In theory, and reading past reviews, this is a book I would go for - but alas, it didn't do anything for me. There are seven chapters or stories - and there is no real chapter narration, but more of a writing that is fragmented and jumps around a lot. Most of the stories, if not all, were published in the New Yorker, in the early and mid - 1970s. It is very much the fiction of its time - there are traces of Donald Barthelme's sense of narration or jok
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This is like reading someone else's memories, jotted down, connected in some way you don't understand, from a specific span of time.
There were little bits I really liked. The thing about experimental fiction that I'm not always sure about is if it's actually telling a story. Thus my discomfort and confusion. I wish more of my GoodReads friends had read this so we could chat. ...more
There were little bits I really liked. The thing about experimental fiction that I'm not always sure about is if it's actually telling a story. Thus my discomfort and confusion. I wish more of my GoodReads friends had read this so we could chat. ...more
Oh man. I couldn't figure out how a book that had won so many awards could be out-of-print. After trapping myself on a bus for several hours with only this as entertainment, now I know why. This writing style is totally insufferable. I can deal with staccato impressions-of-life, and even vague pronouncements in the midst of apparently unrelated observations. I can't help but think that Lorrie Moore must have been a Renata Adler enthusiast. But the difference is that in this book the observations
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Incredibly good. It feels like a manic, funhouse version of a Joan Didion novel that's been put into a blender. Different, crazy, and so creative and fascinating.
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Renata Adler, or Jenn Fain, whatever you want to call her, is the ideal hipster. Amazingly perceptive, very curious, open-minded, strong and brave and naive and a just a little bit neurotic. She walks through the streets of 70s NYC and misses nothing, from conversations and advertisement jingles to rats in a restaurant and arrogant men. It is really her powerful observation that makes the books so good, more than the famed episodic writing style, though I think this is part of what makes its obs
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I don't know why this book is called a novel, but I love it.* It has no plot, but it is a collage about urban life & "how we live now". It works by accumulation to make a picture of, more specifically, life in NYC in the late 60's/early 70's among the artsy/literary set. It reminds me of Donald Barthelme; partly by association (both wrote for the New Yorker), but also, a shared bemused tone and attention to the language coming out of tv sets and people's mouths.
*if I love it so much (and I do!), ...more
*if I love it so much (and I do!), ...more
Much of it reads like a stand-up routine composed by Joan Didion. The same kind of inert “irony” that does little more than take note of a minor disorder in an eccentric individual and hypostasize it into a Statement on modern life.
I liked this book but I didn't get it. It went in one ear and out the other, and I wish I had taken notes and underlined and marked it up for future re-reads. As it is I'll just have to read it again sometime.
It started slow, took me a while to get used to the format and understand it as a novel, then it was smooth sailing for a while, then I lost whatever traction I had found and just felt like I was floating.
That said I loved isolated excerpts and am looking forward to reading it again sometim ...more
It started slow, took me a while to get used to the format and understand it as a novel, then it was smooth sailing for a while, then I lost whatever traction I had found and just felt like I was floating.
That said I loved isolated excerpts and am looking forward to reading it again sometim ...more
Feb 28, 2013
Will
marked it as to-read
Mar 14, 2013
Patrick Brown
marked it as to-read
Sep 26, 2013
Seán
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
brick-city-library,
2013
Jul 20, 2019
Anthony
marked it as to-read
