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Bookreport and my updated movie-collection
I've been a very good girl today: I cleaned up and redecorated the livingroom, the guestroom and the attic. I also had a proper breakfast, lunch and diner, following the doctor's instructions. I didn't do the dishes, but instead I finally updated the index of my movie-collection
Another thing that has been on my to-do-list since I finished the book last year was to write a review of Until I Find You by John Irving. I'm gonna cheat and use other people's words: why try and write my opinion when others have said it much more eloquently than I ever could? I was planning on linking to the reviews I found through this wonderful site full of book-surveys but some of them are dead-ends now. So here is a summary of one of them:
by Natasha Tripney - New Statesman, august 2005 - www.newstatesman.com
'Although Until I Find You is permeated by a keen sense of melancholy, it lacks the controlled sentimentality of Irving's previous work. There is nothing here to match the emotive power of The World According to Garp, or the gut-punch finale of A Prayer for Owen Meany. [...] Although this is an extremely long book, none of the characters is especially well developed, including Jack, who never shakes off an essential blankness.' [...] Until I Find You falls a long way short of his best work. Unlike Daughter Alice's tattoos, it fails to get under your skin.
And for those of you who are interested, I'll paste a longer review behind the cut.
Until I Find You by John Irving
"Irving by the numbers" - Joe Neumaier - Originally published on July 10, 2005 - www.nydailynews.com
Is it time to create a "Bad John Irving" contest, like the "Imitation Hemingway" competition? Entrants could pack their parodies with such Irving mainstays as the mother-smothered male; the boarding school wrestling meet; sexual grotesqueries and sensible prostitutes; people making passes at girls who wear glasses; and normal, everyday cross-dressing.
But any spoof would have to top "Until I Find You," Irving's 11th novel and the first to really show that what were once his habits are now his vices. The book reads like a clunky riff on "The World According to Garp," "The Hotel New Hampshire" and "A Widow for One Year," to name three superior works (there are tinny echoes of "The Cider House Rules," too). Even weaker Irving books like "A Son of the Circus" and "The Fourth Hand" avoided leaving an impression, as this one does, that they were written by an author led astray by his obsessions.
This is unfortunate, because at 800-plus pages, "Until I Find You" is certainly heartfelt. In fact, it wears its autobiographical elements on its sleeve. (Irving first wrote it in the first person, then scrapped that device, so now the protagonist, Jack Burns, no longer tells his own tale.) And its celebrated writer still has the ability to create a colorful, all-enveloping world. But the book is emotionally barren, antsy in its execution, and too precious by half.
Jack - whom we first meet as an overly alert child - is a Johnny Depp-like actor, a young man whose physical allure is so sublime it's best expressed in movie roles requiring transvestism. Beauty defines his parents as well: Jack's mother, Alice, is a famous second-generation tattoo artist who drags her young son across Europe in the late 1960s and early '70s to find William Burns, the womanizer who left her to raise Jack alone. A church organist, William is supposedly shuttling from city to city, playing in cathedrals and leaving conquests in his wake.
Alice, for her part, is a Canadian bohemian who takes up with female lovers as Jack searches for stability; in one tone-deaf scene, the boy's sexual initiation comes courtesy of a middle-aged woman when he's 10 (Irving has said that he was similarly abused at 11). Growing up, Jack is haunted by the mystery of what his father is like, and has confusing relationships with women (some of which are surprisingly shortchanged by this epic book). By the time Jack is winning Oscars, revisiting the older women he has loved and retracing his mother's journeys, everything has fallen flat.
Perhaps because the theme of lost fathers and psychically damaged sons strikes closer to home than usual, Irving puts the plot on autopilot, even throwing in a trendy fixation with fame that never feels real. It's not that modishness and John Irving don't mix - in the later sections of "Widow," especially, he hit a terrific new high in extracting comedy from modern sexual politics. But this time, his muscular narrative manipulations go in circles, looking for dizzy deliverance but ending up stalled in IrvingLand.
You're welcome to discuss the book or ask for my favorite John Irving;)
I'm planning on keeping a reading-diary: starting tomorrow I will write down the title of the book I'm reading plus the page I'm on. I'm hoping that will be an extra incentive to keep reading, since I've been seriously lacking in that department lately. It's all part of the big plan to get my life back on track: Go me.
Another thing that has been on my to-do-list since I finished the book last year was to write a review of Until I Find You by John Irving. I'm gonna cheat and use other people's words: why try and write my opinion when others have said it much more eloquently than I ever could? I was planning on linking to the reviews I found through this wonderful site full of book-surveys but some of them are dead-ends now. So here is a summary of one of them:
by Natasha Tripney - New Statesman, august 2005 - www.newstatesman.com
'Although Until I Find You is permeated by a keen sense of melancholy, it lacks the controlled sentimentality of Irving's previous work. There is nothing here to match the emotive power of The World According to Garp, or the gut-punch finale of A Prayer for Owen Meany. [...] Although this is an extremely long book, none of the characters is especially well developed, including Jack, who never shakes off an essential blankness.' [...] Until I Find You falls a long way short of his best work. Unlike Daughter Alice's tattoos, it fails to get under your skin.
And for those of you who are interested, I'll paste a longer review behind the cut.
Until I Find You by John Irving
"Irving by the numbers" - Joe Neumaier - Originally published on July 10, 2005 - www.nydailynews.com
Is it time to create a "Bad John Irving" contest, like the "Imitation Hemingway" competition? Entrants could pack their parodies with such Irving mainstays as the mother-smothered male; the boarding school wrestling meet; sexual grotesqueries and sensible prostitutes; people making passes at girls who wear glasses; and normal, everyday cross-dressing.
But any spoof would have to top "Until I Find You," Irving's 11th novel and the first to really show that what were once his habits are now his vices. The book reads like a clunky riff on "The World According to Garp," "The Hotel New Hampshire" and "A Widow for One Year," to name three superior works (there are tinny echoes of "The Cider House Rules," too). Even weaker Irving books like "A Son of the Circus" and "The Fourth Hand" avoided leaving an impression, as this one does, that they were written by an author led astray by his obsessions.
This is unfortunate, because at 800-plus pages, "Until I Find You" is certainly heartfelt. In fact, it wears its autobiographical elements on its sleeve. (Irving first wrote it in the first person, then scrapped that device, so now the protagonist, Jack Burns, no longer tells his own tale.) And its celebrated writer still has the ability to create a colorful, all-enveloping world. But the book is emotionally barren, antsy in its execution, and too precious by half.
Jack - whom we first meet as an overly alert child - is a Johnny Depp-like actor, a young man whose physical allure is so sublime it's best expressed in movie roles requiring transvestism. Beauty defines his parents as well: Jack's mother, Alice, is a famous second-generation tattoo artist who drags her young son across Europe in the late 1960s and early '70s to find William Burns, the womanizer who left her to raise Jack alone. A church organist, William is supposedly shuttling from city to city, playing in cathedrals and leaving conquests in his wake.
Alice, for her part, is a Canadian bohemian who takes up with female lovers as Jack searches for stability; in one tone-deaf scene, the boy's sexual initiation comes courtesy of a middle-aged woman when he's 10 (Irving has said that he was similarly abused at 11). Growing up, Jack is haunted by the mystery of what his father is like, and has confusing relationships with women (some of which are surprisingly shortchanged by this epic book). By the time Jack is winning Oscars, revisiting the older women he has loved and retracing his mother's journeys, everything has fallen flat.
Perhaps because the theme of lost fathers and psychically damaged sons strikes closer to home than usual, Irving puts the plot on autopilot, even throwing in a trendy fixation with fame that never feels real. It's not that modishness and John Irving don't mix - in the later sections of "Widow," especially, he hit a terrific new high in extracting comedy from modern sexual politics. But this time, his muscular narrative manipulations go in circles, looking for dizzy deliverance but ending up stalled in IrvingLand.
You're welcome to discuss the book or ask for my favorite John Irving;)
I'm planning on keeping a reading-diary: starting tomorrow I will write down the title of the book I'm reading plus the page I'm on. I'm hoping that will be an extra incentive to keep reading, since I've been seriously lacking in that department lately. It's all part of the big plan to get my life back on track: Go me.
no subject
Have not read any John Irving, sadly. I'm currently reading anything by Brett Easton Ellis;
no subject
I'm a big fan of John Irving, but his last book was a big dissapointment. If you read one book by him, read The World According To Garp, it's a classic.
I've only seen movies of books by Brett Easton Ellis (Rules of Attraction and American Psycho), are all of his stories that intense?
no subject
And well... The movie American Psycho can't be compared to the book. I still haven't finished the book, I keep having to put it aside because it truly is the most terrifying thing I've ever read. Haven't seen the movie version of The Rules of Attraction (just the first five minutes, for obvious reasons :p) but I'm a bit hesitant. It's such a brilliant book, I can't imagine the movie going anywhere near that. Even if it's so filled with pretty people... Hmmz. If only I wasn't so shallow!
Lunar Park by BEE is also very good, and next on my list is Glamorama ('cause Chem says it's his best book, and I must obey my What Would Chem Do? bracelet :P).
[/book geek]