An ambitious, breathless rush of a novel, written in one sentence with line breaks standing in for punctuation, capturing the petty, humdrum, and luckAn ambitious, breathless rush of a novel, written in one sentence with line breaks standing in for punctuation, capturing the petty, humdrum, and lucky life of an engineer in a sequence of poetic and exhilarating set-pieces that range from the funny and the chatty to the overblown and pseudo-profound. A tremendous exercise in mesmeric autofiction with the star the rhythm of the writer’s sentences, capturing the speed of thought with the same skill as Foster Wallace or Bernhard or other masters of the interior world. ...more
I put myself in the underwhelmed category with this novel, a rambling and unhinged ranty riff somewhat about the son of a crank academic trying to resI put myself in the underwhelmed category with this novel, a rambling and unhinged ranty riff somewhat about the son of a crank academic trying to resurrect segregation in an extinct Californian town. African-American satirist Ishmael Reed (whose Reckless Eyeballing is namechecked) is the closest colleague in terms of the riotous flippancy and verbal froth on the history of blackness in America, and in the careening satirical lunacy present. Beatty states that the novel took five years to write, which may explain the piecemeal nature of the story, and the lack of willingness to tether the rollicking streams of frequently hilarious prose to any plot. The novel unfortunately won the Man Booker Prize in 2016, prompting this ludicrous reasoning from historian and chair of the judges Amanda Foreman:
“The Sellout is one of those very rare books that is able to take satire, which is in itself a very difficult subject and not always done well” [Satire is a genre of literature, not a ‘subject’, who knows what she is blathering about]
“with absolutely savage wit, of the kind I haven't seen since Swift or Twain” [implying that she was around in the age of Swift or Twain . . . also showing an stultifying ignorance of the fecund history of comic writing since those two authors ... authors critics like to cite when trying to lend credence to their opinion]
“manages to eviscerate every social taboo and politically correct, nuanced, every sacred cow” [the novel doesn’t eviscerate many social taboos or sacred cows at all, in fact the satire is riotous but fairly tame]
“it is really a novel of our times” [novels published in ‘our’ times are all of our times … a nitpick, but this sort of moronic, lazy drivel proves that people like this shouldn’t be allowed to preside over dishing out literary awards]....more
The reviews here attest to the pointlessness of sending ARCs to randoms unfamiliar with the author. Chris Sorrentino is the son of Gilbert Sorrentino,The reviews here attest to the pointlessness of sending ARCs to randoms unfamiliar with the author. Chris Sorrentino is the son of Gilbert Sorrentino, the finest post-60s American innovator and novelist, period, important to know. Chris walks the tightrope between the formal playfulness of the paterfamilias, a rage at the publishing world (like father, like), and a more mainstreamish mystery plot and character-driven narrative. The result is an uneven stew of Mulligan—writer-protagonist—propelled by Sorrentino’s stylish and sensational prose skill. The novel wrongfoots with plot and delights with waspish anecdote, in-depth exploration of two personnel, the arrogant lying writer and the skittish sexually loose hack. A rambler, a gambler, a backslider, the novel collapses towards the end (plot is not Chris’s forte, and having promised one, has to conclude one), but for the duration is a tremendous poke around in liminal worlds....more
A short, underdeveloped nibble of emotional manipulation that renders the bland premise of a nondescript man’s loss even less interesting by filteringA short, underdeveloped nibble of emotional manipulation that renders the bland premise of a nondescript man’s loss even less interesting by filtering the whole thing through semi-whimsical Ted Hughes references. ...more
Read ten of the twelve. None of the stories attempt to capture the comic exuberance or picaresque spirit of Cervantes, nor the linguistic ambition or Read ten of the twelve. None of the stories attempt to capture the comic exuberance or picaresque spirit of Cervantes, nor the linguistic ambition or blood-curdling drama of Shakespeare. Instead these are first-person stories written in plain and unexciting prose, with tenuous links to the homaged author of choice. Some (Nell Leyshon) indulge in awful staccato sentences in a cringing faux-poetic register (one of the viruses of modern writing), some read like stories crowbarred in for the star-author cred (Deborah Levy), some make irrelevant topical references (Soledad Puértolas), and most are lacking in humour (a crucial trait of the two titans), with Rhidian Brook’s flat meta-doodle the one comic contribution. The mix of Spanish and British voices is interesting, however, each writer has their own particular thematic or stylistic preoccupations they seem reluctant to depart from, and few of them seem energised by the challenge....more
A handbook for those who want to write like DBC Pierre, a one-time Booker Prize writer of black comedies and winner of the Annual Richard Madeley LookA handbook for those who want to write like DBC Pierre, a one-time Booker Prize writer of black comedies and winner of the Annual Richard Madeley Lookalike Contest seven years running. This was a foul-mouthed and entertaining anti-writing manual livened up with personal reflections and punchdrunk motivational shrieks from a 2AM barroom floor. The actual writing advice is prosaic and tends towards the usual how-to stuff found elsewhere (something that Pierre seems to realise, and yet continues to serve up, contra to his subversive intentions). But I liked the hard kick in the pantaloons that Pierre was offering. The Scotsman reviewer Stuart Kelly wrote an entertaining hatchet job on this one, regardez-vous....more
Alongside the equally splendid Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded in two volumes, Leg Over Leg (in four), is tremendous feat of tranAlongside the equally splendid Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded in two volumes, Leg Over Leg (in four), is tremendous feat of translation by Humphrey Davis. This scatty encyclopedic epic, a huge proportion of which is written in rhyming prose, and constitutes lists of obscure Arabic words or phrases, is clearly something that only the most ambitious and unhinged translator would take on, and thankfully, Davis was the man. Following the adventures of a semi-autobiographical character as he widely traverses various terrains and takes on many occupations, ruminating on the anatomies and pleasures of women, the sore points of Arabic grammar, the manners of the English, and all kinds of amusing and sometimes tedious matters of deportment on the way, the book is a fairly sprawling and maddening effort, serving up hundreds of pages of ribald, repetitious, rumbustious prose, rendered in heroic English with more endnotes than anyone could possibly stand. Brains Confounded is perhaps the more hilarious and entertaining of the two, this the more innovative and layered masterwork....more
An ambitious and bold first novel and winner of the 2016 Ronald Sukenick Prize for innovative fiction. The blurb says “an artist returns to the dystopAn ambitious and bold first novel and winner of the 2016 Ronald Sukenick Prize for innovative fiction. The blurb says “an artist returns to the dystopian city to tend to his invalid mother, only to find himself torn apart by memories and longings”, which sums up the “plot” in a novel whose commanding feature is an acrobatic, logorrhoeic, linguistically playful and poetic, occassionally symbolic, style that runs on and on across a sequence of chapters titled after the Latin names for features of Earth’s Moon. And if that wasn’t ambitious enough, the novel also incorporates 38 attributed quotations from sources as diverse as the Book of Luke, Jean Cocteau, and the Black Panthers, in addition to abstract watercolour paintings from artist Hollis Heichemer. The music and bounce of Richardson’s prose is wonderful, and takes the reader into a range of brooding and biblical scenarios, most of them too enswathed in the densely wrought language to really present a clear picture of characters or events, instead thriving on the emotions wrenched up from the poetic heft of his images and descriptions. This stylistic assault and wanton opacity leaves the reader at times yearning for something a little more concrete, although humour and slang and wordplay make welcome appearances to add levity to the proceedings, in a novel that successfully showcases the author’s gutsy talent....more
