Ultimately, and lamentably, we wind up not caring about Spooner’s fate.
From Dexter (Train, 2003, etc.), a rambling, improvisatory narrative of a not-terribly-compelling life.
Warren Spooner arrives in unpromising circumstances, after his mother labored for 53 hours and his “better-looking” twin brother was born dead. On the very same day (Dec. 6, 1956), Congressman Rudolph Toebox coincidentally and conveniently dies, leading to an embarrassing sendoff at sea when his coffin refuses to sink. The two stories cross briefly because the commander in charge of the abortive burial at sea is Calmer Ottosson, who eventually becomes Spooner’s stepfather. Throughout the novel, Dexter traces the many stages of Spooner’s development. For example, he has to deal with his much more talented step-siblings, like prodigy Darrow (named after the lawyer), who learns both to read and to play chess while practically in the womb. In contrast, Spooner’s talent, such as it is, is to piss in people’s shoes and to confound the deputy with this anonymous crime. Spooner becomes an indifferent student but, unaccountably, a talented baseball player—until his promise crashes with an injury to his elbow. He then becomes a reporter, again with mixed results. Along the way we witness the uneasy relationship between Calmer, who becomes a teacher when mustered out of the Navy—and later has to investigate a scandal involving remedial students in his school system scoring at the 97th and 98th percentiles on standardized tests—and his stepson, who never experiences much success in anything. Dexter’s technique is to roam around his narrative at a leisurely pace, multiplying incidents until the episodic ultimately devolves into the disorganized. And his ham-fisted comic approach involves such hilarity as the aforementioned shoe-pissing and constantly nudging the reader in the ribs in delight at his own cleverness, coining names such as Dr. C. Elmer Cowhurl and the aforementioned Toebox.
Ultimately, and lamentably, we wind up not caring about Spooner’s fate.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-54072-8
Page Count: 470
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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