What’s the opposite of magical realism? A sense of unreality permeates The Sellout, but it’d be hard to describe it as magical. Not when the setting is a minority-majority LA County community so down on its luck that the state of California wipes it off the map in shame. Not when the nameless narrator is the product of a sociologist single father whose cracked worldview and constant experimentation has permanently altered his son’s relationship with reality. And certainly not when that son attempts to save […]
That’s Patricia to You
Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of the newspaper magnate who inspired Citizen Kane, was kidnapped from her apartment in February 1974 by a group of far-left crackpots who thought of themselves as revolutionaries. They called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, and they had little to no idea what to do with their heiress once they had her. Thanks to their lack of foresight and a badly botched FBI investigation, Hearst’s ordeal dragged on an on until something curious started to happen. Patricia, who had always had a […]
Who Turned on the Lights?
I’m a commuter, so a lot of my reading gets done while riding on or waiting for trains. When I’m stuck on the commute, I pretty much have to read or I’m stuck looking around at the strangers who surround me, imagining what kinds of communicable diseases they have. No matter what I think of the book I’m carrying I can guarantee I’ll get a certain amount of reading done on my way too and from work. The real test of a book’s quality, to […]
Good Year for the Roses
This is what in less P.C. days would be called a boys’ book. It’s a tale of outlaws and adventures, bravery and chivalry, fair maidens and feats of strength. Set in the midst of The Wars of the Roses, Robert Louis Stevensons’s episodic novel follows young Dick Shelton, a ward of the lord of his manor who comes to be torn between his various loyalties in an uncertain time. Shelton has been under the protection of Sir Daniel since the death of his own father […]
Pigskin and Broken Limbs
Aren’t men generally kind of stupid? And the things they like, aren’t those pretty meaningless too? All those silly, pointless traditions: the nicknames, the rituals, the insults, the posturing. Nonsense, right? That’s basically the point and the premise of The Throwback Special, a strawman construction in which Chris Bachelder creates the silliest, most pointless male ritual imaginable merely to demonstrate how easily he can knock it down. It’s boxing against a tomato can you filled yourself. In its own way, this book is as pointless […]
The Long Con
This is going to be pretty brief because I read this novel and then went on a two-week vacation, so it’s not exactly fresh in my mind. Jim Thompson is an acknowledged master of noir fiction, and this novel, filmed in 1990 starring John Cusack and Anjelica Huston, is perhaps his best known. The book centers on Roy Dillon, a young con artist who works the short grifts for quick money but has nevertheless built up quite a stash doing so. However, a con gone […]
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