Admirers of Calvino, Perec, Duchamp, et al. will enjoy the literary lunacy.
“Morphism / Homomorphism / Endomorphism / Automorphism.” For readers with a yen for continental esoterica, this gathering of work by the Oulipo writers of the 1960s and beyond is just the thing.
Founded in 1960 as a descendant of the Dada-like “pataphysical” school of Alfred Jarry and company, the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop of Potential Literature) movement experimented with mathematical formulas, palindromes, wordplay, language games (such as George Perec’s Les revenentes, the only vowel in which is “e”), and other such proto-postmodern pursuits. Sometimes the effects were arid, sometimes entertaining. Sometimes, as editor Monk writes of the opening piece by Oulipo co-founder Raymond Queneau, the results even approached an “elliptical evocation of the whole of existence,” though that may be a rather grand claim for prose that includes the line, “I also pooed: in my linen.” If anything, forced by its constraints, Oulipo work is often absurd, with an anthropologist-from-Mars quality: “The nail varnish to the left of the machine is not exactly nail varnish,“ writes Michèle Audin, “but a product of the same kind, called a ‘corrector’ and intended to make good the ‘typing errors’ on the fine stencil sheets.” Or, as a poem by Daniel Levin Becker has it, “I barked like a bear, skipped like a spud. / I braised a baked Alaska. / I parked a kids’ bike beside a biker bar.” And so on. Readers attuned to the playful excesses of Situationism or to the goofier of Andrei Codrescu’s essays will enjoy Monk’s anthology, but newcomers will probably feel as if left slightly on the outside of a private joke. As always, some pieces are better than others; as movement member Jacques Duchateau notes, “some tricks are traps; some writers are bad.” He then goes on to wonder, “But, if all literature contains artifice, since artifice can be mechanized, at least in theory, does this mean that literature in turn can be mechanized as well?” It’s worth pondering….
Admirers of Calvino, Perec, Duchamp, et al. will enjoy the literary lunacy.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944211-52-3
Page Count: 353
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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