by Thaddeus Rutkowski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2010
Rutkowski’s arch tone, language play and wacky nonsequiturs gloss over a world of hurt.
Rutkowski returns with his characteristic blend of anomie and epigram.
This collection of autobiographical short-short stories is divided into three sections, roughly covering four stages that could be labeled Childhood, College, City Life and Fatherhood/Maturity. The author’s fictional alter ego, also named Thaddeus, is of Chinese/Polish heritage. His father, a Pennsylvania artist who never wants to live farther than walking distance from a bar, is later described by Thaddeus’ sister as abusive (not least because he paints eroticized pictures of her), but to Thaddeus he seems merely eccentric and manipulative. He teaches his children hunting (always consuming what they kill) and practical skills like window glazing (as punishment for breaking one). At his father’s insistence, a baffled Thaddeus reads the Polish epic poem Pan Tadeusz. Thaddeus’ gainfully employed Asian mother seems mostly bemused by her feckless husband’s rejection of bourgeois mores. In college, Thaddeus dabbles in life-drawing and experiments with marijuana, poetry and pyrotechnics. There is the usual assortment of weird roommates and missed, or never attempted, connections with the opposite sex. The City section is mainly devoted to Thaddeus’ sexual fetishes, which include hanging and bondage and culminate in a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. In one of two funny stories set at artists’ retreats, the participants wax wistful about higher-echelon residencies, but the narrator seems content with “the rinky-dink place we were presently at.” Occasionally Thaddeus reconnects with his two younger siblings, who, in their own retrospective estimation, haven't coped as successfully with fallout from their atypical childhoods. His sister has trust issues with men, and his brother never found his career niche. The last stories, describing Thaddeus’ inexorable descent into a kind of besotted parenthood completely alien to his own upbringing, feel rather listless.
Rutkowski’s arch tone, language play and wacky nonsequiturs gloss over a world of hurt.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9842133-1-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Starcherone Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
Share your opinion of this book
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
Share your opinion of this book
More by John Steinbeck
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
More About This Book
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.