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nihilreich's review against another edition
4.0
Their Sizes Run Differently is something else, and besides being something else it is also one of the best short stories ever written. Lutz really has her way with sentences.
rocketiza's review against another edition
2.0
The writing style reminded me of Milhauser but I am just not a fan of short stories that are so short and pointlessly surreal.
thewilyfilipino's review against another edition
5.0
A summary wouldn't do this collection of varieties of domestic disturbance any justice, and of course a parody, as tempting as that might be, would be impossible to do right. To read Lutz is to enter an unfamiliar world tinged uncomfortably with the real. Or more prosaically, the other way around: a real world that's just… off. Kinked, somehow.
How Lutz has his way with language: not by twisting the sentences by force, or taking them apart to see how they work. They're not sentences where clauses flow to other clauses and end up as grand capillary assemblies of logic, as in a Javier Marias novel. Lutz's sentences are plain in structure, perhaps deliberately unpoetic in diction, but demand the rereading associated with poetry, so one can savor the unfamiliar syllables.
One might for instance, focus on the adverbs. Writers are instructed to use adverbs sparingly, but Lutz squeezes them in; you can almost imagine the satisfying pop they make as they slide into the sentences. Here the adverbs are splayed out more conspicuously for consumption.
Lutz conjures similar magic on the level of the sentence, or clause, even. Cliches when you least expect it. Gerunds baked from thin air. Participial phrases that wait for subjects and are found wanting. There's a faint oily undercurrent of humor running through it all, but none of it is found in, for instance, puns. Nothing so immediately obvious. The unsettling quality of the reader's amusement lies in the juxtapositions: of situations with characters, of adjectives with nouns.
His fiction is drawn from two wells: a more mannered, experimental style of writing with a twist of absurdist fiction. The surrealism comes from the situations that arise from the most ordinary settings: offices, bedrooms, convenience stores, apartments. Lutz employs the vocabularies of the same, of the routines of work, but in conjunction with bodies, familial relations. Bodies, especially, with talk of undernesses and perpendicularities. Unlike in airport thrillers, where the reader races ahead, skimming details, one is forced to slow down the rhythm when reading Lutz, to keep an eye out for the lane changes.
How Lutz has his way with language: not by twisting the sentences by force, or taking them apart to see how they work. They're not sentences where clauses flow to other clauses and end up as grand capillary assemblies of logic, as in a Javier Marias novel. Lutz's sentences are plain in structure, perhaps deliberately unpoetic in diction, but demand the rereading associated with poetry, so one can savor the unfamiliar syllables.
One might for instance, focus on the adverbs. Writers are instructed to use adverbs sparingly, but Lutz squeezes them in; you can almost imagine the satisfying pop they make as they slide into the sentences. Here the adverbs are splayed out more conspicuously for consumption.
Lutz conjures similar magic on the level of the sentence, or clause, even. Cliches when you least expect it. Gerunds baked from thin air. Participial phrases that wait for subjects and are found wanting. There's a faint oily undercurrent of humor running through it all, but none of it is found in, for instance, puns. Nothing so immediately obvious. The unsettling quality of the reader's amusement lies in the juxtapositions: of situations with characters, of adjectives with nouns.
His fiction is drawn from two wells: a more mannered, experimental style of writing with a twist of absurdist fiction. The surrealism comes from the situations that arise from the most ordinary settings: offices, bedrooms, convenience stores, apartments. Lutz employs the vocabularies of the same, of the routines of work, but in conjunction with bodies, familial relations. Bodies, especially, with talk of undernesses and perpendicularities. Unlike in airport thrillers, where the reader races ahead, skimming details, one is forced to slow down the rhythm when reading Lutz, to keep an eye out for the lane changes.
ben_miller's review against another edition
3.0
Lutz is a magician with verbs; creating new ones, using old ones in unexpected ways, etc. He tries mightily to do the same with adjectives and adverbs, which I found more often annoying than impressive, but still, there's probably not more than a handful of sentences in this book that you could find anywhere else.
As for plots, characters, emotional resonance, look elsewhere. Lutz isn't interested in that stuff. These are stories in the worst way, and in the loosest sense of the word - objects made of language. Lutz perhaps sums it up himself at one point: "...page after page of permutational wordliness that struck me as overpostponed progress toward a second, fuller language." Fine by me.
As for plots, characters, emotional resonance, look elsewhere. Lutz isn't interested in that stuff. These are stories in the worst way, and in the loosest sense of the word - objects made of language. Lutz perhaps sums it up himself at one point: "...page after page of permutational wordliness that struck me as overpostponed progress toward a second, fuller language." Fine by me.
bhaines's review against another edition
Distinctive but at a point they kind of blend into a big sad thing
Waking Hours, Slops, not the hand but where the hand has been, rims, the pavilion, ThatWhichIsHusbander ThanAnythingPrior,
Every noun is also an adverb.
Waking Hours, Slops, not the hand but where the hand has been, rims, the pavilion, ThatWhichIsHusbander ThanAnythingPrior,
Every noun is also an adverb.
litsirk's review against another edition
4.0
Sometimes I liked his writing a lot. Sometimes it was annoying or unsatisfying. Either way, it was pretty weird. Here's an excerpt!
"In the parking lot, I met a man carrying a basketful of laundry. He explained that he had just washed his clothes but there was something unutterably troubling and unfinished about what had happened. His laundry was not done, he said; it was in error. He set the basket down and tugged a pair of washed-looking pants from the tangle and shook them out in my direction.
'Vouch for me,' he said."
And that's the end of a story.
"In the parking lot, I met a man carrying a basketful of laundry. He explained that he had just washed his clothes but there was something unutterably troubling and unfinished about what had happened. His laundry was not done, he said; it was in error. He set the basket down and tugged a pair of washed-looking pants from the tangle and shook them out in my direction.
'Vouch for me,' he said."
And that's the end of a story.
jasminenoack's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book about how confused the world is when you leave it to it's own devices.
I would love to leave this review at that, but first it looks lazy and secondly next to a review whining about not being able to tell the gender of the characters is is sadly unconvincing. This book is absolutely fantastic just as a start. Not to say it isn't a difficult book to read. It is harder to read than joyce and you can't tell the genders of the characters. but perhaps that doesn't actually matter. This book worked for me because when I read it I felt the same way that I do when I am awake. And I suppose that it is comforting to know that someone understands that feeling.
I would love to leave this review at that, but first it looks lazy and secondly next to a review whining about not being able to tell the gender of the characters is is sadly unconvincing. This book is absolutely fantastic just as a start. Not to say it isn't a difficult book to read. It is harder to read than joyce and you can't tell the genders of the characters. but perhaps that doesn't actually matter. This book worked for me because when I read it I felt the same way that I do when I am awake. And I suppose that it is comforting to know that someone understands that feeling.