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rymdkejsaren's review against another edition
2.0
There is some beautiful prose in this book, and throughout it maintains a tinge of surreality that brings focus to the events. But the narrative is a headless chicken. I enjoyed the first part the most because then it still felt like there was a direction. That was subsequently lost, and the connections between the different events were either fleeting or deeply obscured to the point where I found it difficult to engage.
I want to give it a higher rating for some of the beautiful scenes in it, but without an overarching story upon which to hang them, they lose too much of their power.
I want to give it a higher rating for some of the beautiful scenes in it, but without an overarching story upon which to hang them, they lose too much of their power.
karp76's review against another edition
4.0
An amazing book by an amazing, underrated author. Highly recommended.
nedhayes's review against another edition
5.0
Rubicon Beach was a book I read in my 20s, and I living a post-college hand-to-mouth existence in the same Los Angeles Steve Erickson lived in (he worked as a film reviewer for the wonderful-at-the-time L.A. Weekly -- I taught school and wrote for a less prestigious alternative weekly).
I was reading a lot of Joan Didion at the time, alongside some old fashioned Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury SF. I was also writing my first novel, modeled after Pete Dexter's crystal-clear and lucid prose. So this was the context of my reading. (I know, I know, quite a combination.)
The book had a tremendous impact on me as an impressionistic fantastical dystopian novel that took my breath away with the way Erickson managed to insert genuine human emotion and pathos into a story that in other hands would have been your basic throwaway SF drama.
Erickson has this beautiful knack for interrupting his straightforward narrative with allusive mystical forays into dreamscapes and memories. In other hands, this would disrupt and destroy enjoyment of the flow of a book.
In Erickson's capable hands, the overall narrative becomes the richer and more meaningful for these asides. He is a marvelously constrained writer, with an eye for emotive detail and for the elisions of time and place and memory.
I recommend the book strongly, especially for those who love Cory Doctorow and his kind of writing.
This is the quintessential L.A. novel, and I still strongly recommend it. It cast a great shadow on me, and made an indelible, haunting impression, a penumbra I still can't shake.
I'm almost afraid to go back and read the book now, given that my life has changed so much, and given the fact that I haven't lived in L.A. for years. ((Any of you 20 year olds out there... let me know what you think of it now, would you? ;-))
I was reading a lot of Joan Didion at the time, alongside some old fashioned Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury SF. I was also writing my first novel, modeled after Pete Dexter's crystal-clear and lucid prose. So this was the context of my reading. (I know, I know, quite a combination.)
The book had a tremendous impact on me as an impressionistic fantastical dystopian novel that took my breath away with the way Erickson managed to insert genuine human emotion and pathos into a story that in other hands would have been your basic throwaway SF drama.
Erickson has this beautiful knack for interrupting his straightforward narrative with allusive mystical forays into dreamscapes and memories. In other hands, this would disrupt and destroy enjoyment of the flow of a book.
In Erickson's capable hands, the overall narrative becomes the richer and more meaningful for these asides. He is a marvelously constrained writer, with an eye for emotive detail and for the elisions of time and place and memory.
I recommend the book strongly, especially for those who love Cory Doctorow and his kind of writing.
This is the quintessential L.A. novel, and I still strongly recommend it. It cast a great shadow on me, and made an indelible, haunting impression, a penumbra I still can't shake.
I'm almost afraid to go back and read the book now, given that my life has changed so much, and given the fact that I haven't lived in L.A. for years. ((Any of you 20 year olds out there... let me know what you think of it now, would you? ;-))
beckalette's review against another edition
3.0
Possibly the most exhausting read I have ever experienced! While I can admire the concept & the imagery, I couldn’t wait to be done with it!
daytonasplendor's review against another edition
4.0
"I'm thirty-eight, thirty-nine," she heard the mathematician say with his usual imprecision concerning personal statistics. He pulled back from the light of the candle on the table as though to hide behind his dark Indianness in the darkness of the room. "I look in the mirror sometimes," he said, "and I think I'm fifty or fifty-five." He shook his head. "I don't know how I got so damned tired. When I was younger I despised anyone who gave up so easily, but that was when the world sang to me, that was when there was a number for everything. I couldn't imagine I'd ever feel this old and this tired." Now he leaned into the light of the candle. "It isn't your fault. It isn't that you're unbeautiful, it isn't that you don't deserve what you want. The humiliation is mine, not yours. In a musicless moor at the end of a numberless world all I can manage now is to grieve for what I once felt and for how much I felt it. How is it I'm so old now and I don't hear the music anymore, I don't find the numbers anymore?"
rebus's review against another edition
2.5
There may be something here, but I'm certain that it's not worth the bother.
Erickson is just another boring and abstract author who prefers to play with words--which always bored me, as it is an abuse of language and not a delight--and honestly has nothing to say about humanity or the world (his characters are ciphers that are so thinly drawn that they make comic book characters look well developed).
Erickson is just another boring and abstract author who prefers to play with words--which always bored me, as it is an abuse of language and not a delight--and honestly has nothing to say about humanity or the world (his characters are ciphers that are so thinly drawn that they make comic book characters look well developed).
ania's review against another edition
4.0
I'm embarrassed to admit that for the entire time of reading I'd been thinking of Styx instead of Rubicon. The story made so much more sense to me then. Now I'm just confused.
I really enjoyed reading it though. Erickson's writing has the same quality I've always admired in Calvino — that of making everything into a tale that sounds familiar like a myth or a parable yet stays entirely unpredictable.
There's a circularity to the plot that I'm still trying to figure out.
I really enjoyed reading it though. Erickson's writing has the same quality I've always admired in Calvino — that of making everything into a tale that sounds familiar like a myth or a parable yet stays entirely unpredictable.
There's a circularity to the plot that I'm still trying to figure out.
ania's review
4.0
I'm embarrassed to admit that for the entire time of reading I'd been thinking of Styx instead of Rubicon. The story made so much more sense to me then. Now I'm just confused.
I really enjoyed reading it though. Erickson's writing has the same quality I've always admired in Calvino — that of making everything into a tale that sounds familiar like a myth or a parable yet stays entirely unpredictable.
There's a circularity to the plot that I'm still trying to figure out.
I really enjoyed reading it though. Erickson's writing has the same quality I've always admired in Calvino — that of making everything into a tale that sounds familiar like a myth or a parable yet stays entirely unpredictable.
There's a circularity to the plot that I'm still trying to figure out.
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