frogwithlittlehammer's reviews
265 reviews

You’d be surprised how much boring stuff Canadians know about the US, the shock could kill you.

Reading a lot of the reviews, it’s curious to me how the focal theme of the novel for most seems to be brotherhood, fraternity, siblingship, or whatever. Intermezzo felt so much like a novel dealing with grief and loss, and how suffocating it can be for your body to take action over your life before your mind has the capacity to express how it is feeling. I believe this is why Rooney brings up the separation (or the Aristotelian boundedness?) of the mind and body a handful of times, even how chess theory and logic puzzles and Wittgenstein weave themselves so often into the prose. Instead of getting to know the two brothers in their habitudes, we are introduced to them in the throes of grief, perhaps even the most difficult part, when people no longer dole out their condolences. It was jarring, to get to know Ivan and Peter’s romantic interests in this particular setting, but I guess it’s jarring also to have to meet people in our own daily lives in this way, isn’t it. To think about all the relationships we have lost or have gained because of where we were in our lives in that particular randomly fabricated crossing of paths. And at least for me, the most dangerous and difficult part of the haphazard quality of life is the desperate need to create reason out of it all. By deliberately avoiding this, or at least questioning it, Rooney creates an anxiously honest novel. While I don’t think it was a personal truth of mine, I admired it nonetheless. I think I am just slightly disappointed I didn’t develop a crush on either protagonists. 

I feel similarly to how I reacted when I read Ali Smith’s How to Be Both. Goodness, I didn’t know books could be like this—however, I suppose a chunk of the credit goes to whoever assembled the collection of short stories as well... “Here It Is Saturday” is one story that stands out in particular by how completely it took me by surprise, though I can imagine many people saw it coming. I never see things coming. 

Chekhov is one of my favorite writers, and before Lucia Berlin, I didn’t like any other short-story writers. But now I believe I’d like to get into some Raymond Carver and Alice Munro, perhaps Borges and maybe Denis Johnson. Though I worry I would get too used to the cycle of short-circuited gratification that comes after the end of a story, and I also worry that is what draws me to the genre. I am a woman obsessed with shiny satin bows on crisply folded paper wrapped boxes. The story doesn’t have to have a narrative, but it just has to have an ending in sight. I wonder what that says about me. 

Long book deserve short words. Coulda. Been. A. Contender. If only you lost a couple of pounds, you self-aggrandizing whopper of a tome.

John Ganz takes his title to the test while he takes us back and forth disorientingly  through the period of American politics that attempted to bring us to tomorrow while reverting to yesterday. He does this through the thorough biographies of key (racist and classist) politicians of the late 80s and early 90s—David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Rudy Giuliani—managing to make John Gotti, Ross Perot, and even Bill Clinton look sort of cool and reasonable through the spectre of populism. Still, the book left me overstuffed on five-dollar words and extensive quotations mostly relating to campaigning and conspiracies, rather than going deeper into the economic policy and its long (or I guess it’s rather short) term effect. A lot of chapters were sharp and illuminating—my favorite was the bit about Gotti—but a lot of them were straight-up misplaced vignettes. Is it demeaning when I say that my takeaway is apt for a book whose author is most known for his clever substack?

I would marry this man even if it meant going crazy. Oh yes I know very well das bucklicht Männlein. The theses on the philosophy of history were very haunting, especially the idea of the angel of history. He has given me a lot to think on in terms of historical materialism and the role of art and how we interact with it. I’m still a little soft brained and I couldn’t swallow it all but many of the essays warrant a lifetime of rereads, especially once I actually read Kafka and Proust and Brecht and Baudelaire. 

The person with my voo doo doll has grown weary of poking pins in my brain and has moved on to my bookshelf which is honestly much more of a personal affront. I read the chapter about Chicago’s infamous parking meter deal and then I gave up. 

Sisyphean in the sense that the book asks the only question worth asking and also it was a very long novel which didn’t seem to have an end until it came to a stop all at once. So I admired its uninhibited scope, as almost all my favorite books can be characterized as rambling (except Didion the unrelenting razor ship bastard). But The World According to Garp had too much meaning, too cyclical in its nature. I prefer looser epics, especially when it comes to multigenerational stories; where the genuineness is vague and must be earned. Otherwise it may as well be a nonsensical (but not zany!) book like The Crying of Lot 49 or Slaughterhouse-Five, or even Setting Free the Bears! I concur that “The Pension Grillparzer” was Garp’s best. 

Didn’t know I signed up for an Abramovic hagiography ╮(︶︿︶)╭