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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
This was a good book, but I couldn't finish it. I had a limited amount of time and a bad attitude about reading it in the first place.
Not my favorite Wolfe book, but still worth a read. I know so many people who really are caught in the more is more trap. If for no other reason , I have to give Mr. Wolfe credit. He may have gotten me to read "the Stoics".
With big laughs and bigger characters, Tom Wolfe's intriguing story telling and fantastical caricatures will have a reader engaged and entertained throughout this long novel.
Like most of my “reviews” this is really notes for me to remember how I felt reading this thing.
Does it reveal too much to say I had to keep notes on who was who? Probably. It didn’t help that I would only read a few pages at a time and then go days without reading.
I was Goodreads recc this book due to the Stoic references and for that it was fine.
There were times I was drawn in and others where I was indifferent. And that equates to a “fine” middling review.
Does it reveal too much to say I had to keep notes on who was who? Probably. It didn’t help that I would only read a few pages at a time and then go days without reading.
I was Goodreads recc this book due to the Stoic references and for that it was fine.
There were times I was drawn in and others where I was indifferent. And that equates to a “fine” middling review.
Unusual for me to read fiction but this was prompted by my current reading around the subject of Stoic philosophy.
730 or so pages of small type flew by. Great characterisation of the protagonists in multiple interconnected story lines and a rich sense of place. (I even went so far as to peer into some of the areas of Atlanta described in the book in 3D in Apple Maps!) All held lightly together by the practical philosophy of The Stoics.
730 or so pages of small type flew by. Great characterisation of the protagonists in multiple interconnected story lines and a rich sense of place. (I even went so far as to peer into some of the areas of Atlanta described in the book in 3D in Apple Maps!) All held lightly together by the practical philosophy of The Stoics.
The discussions of the Stoics are interesting and Wolfe has occasional flashes of insight on the racial politics of Atlanta. However, this book signals his growing distance from the ebb and flow of modern culture and basically makes him look like an old fuddy-duddy. In his efforts to distance himself from certain subcultures that appear in the book (notably black American street culture), Wolfe's attempts at haughty clinical descriptions instead read like an old man who doesn't really understand what he's talking about. This book is clearly intended to be a satire like his older works, but you can't satirize something you don't understand. Unfortunately, Wolfe is too out of touch to realize that he doesn't understand, which is perhaps the Greatest Sin.