But Do They Have Sex? Dunn, Katherine. (1983/2002). Geek Love. New York: Vintage (348 pp). You have to give this novel credit for sheer originality. The main characters are a U.S. family of performers in a traveling carnival, in the … Continue reading
Deadpan Originality Portis, Charles (1999). The Dog of the South. New York: The Overlook Press (256 pp). I enjoyed the utter originality of Portis’ sentences. How does anybody spin out such interesting details that do not have the stink of … Continue reading
A Fine Pancake, It Is O’Brien, Flann. (1967) The Third Policeman. Champaigne, Ill.: Dalkey Archive (209pp) This strange tale is strongly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. An unnamed narrator in 19th century Ireland tells his first-person story of stumbling into … Continue reading
Postmodern Nihilism Antrim, Donald (1997). The Hundred Brothers. New York: Picador, 188 pp. Ninety-nine brothers convene at their dead father’s estate to find his ashes and bury him (one brother couldn’t make it). They meet in a vast library that … Continue reading
A Joke Disguised as a Rant Irving, John (1989). A Prayer for Owen Meany. 617 pp. Secondary character John Wheelwright narrates the story of growing up with his friend, main character Owen Meany, a small boy who only grew to … Continue reading
Hornby, Nick. (1995). High Fidelity. New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin. Well-written, Non-nutritive Imagine a character, thirty-five, who has the mind of a fifteen year-old. Would that be funny? It is mildly amusing in High Fidelity. Rob runs an obscure, used-record store … Continue reading
Too Subtle For Words Briante, Susan (2011). The Market is a Parasite that Looks Like a Nest. Chicago: Dancing Girl Press. 16pp chapbook. www.dancinggirlpress.com. Susan Briante gave a poetry reading for the U of A Poetry center (http://poetry.arizona.edu/), in the … Continue reading
Life’s Three Great Pleasures Considered Nickles, Sara, & Shacochis, Bob (Eds.) (1994) Drinking, Smoking, & Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 200 pp. This anthology of stories, essays, and poems (many of them excerpts from larger works) recalls a time … Continue reading
Wacky People Doing Wacky Things Toole, John Kennedy (1980) A Confederacy of Dunces. New York: Grove Press. The main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a modern-day Don Quixote, a manic, tragi-comic, delusional soul who believes, or at least pretends, that … Continue reading
A 75-Page Novel Shteyngart, Gary (2010). Super Sad True Love Story. New York: Random House. This is my second attempt to read Shteyngart, a darling of the literary fiction world these days. Earlier, I had attempted to read Absurdistan and … Continue reading