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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
It was just ok; but I was surprised. When I read the intro, I thought "I'm gonna love this book"! I didn't. But you can't love them all. So many reviews praised the "self-consciousness" of the book as an asset in the telling. The stream-of-consciousness writing style eventually made it hard for me to care about the narrator or his tale. At one point, later in the book, Dave is picking up his confused, wayward friend John, again, and John rips him a new one about his fuck-ups NOT becoming another storyline for him (Dave) and that other people's tragedies or life-events become his fodder (I'm paraphrasing). I agreed with John and felt like he was articulating my feelings about the whole book; the one scene that rang true for me. Dave's neurosis gets kind of boring and his paranoia...well who cares. I'm glad I read it, but I'll be passing this one on to another reader.
This was one of the first books I've read in a long time that I actually just couldn't finish. And I had such high hopes that I would love it. I hate when that happens.
This one did not age as poorly as I thought it would. It's definitely a victim of its more culturally insensitive time (language, racial stereotypes). But damn if it's not still funny and frenetic and, as heartbreaking as the title promises.
I just read Eggers' forward to Infinite Jest. His forward makes it sound worthwhile but I now question that because I hated A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers says Wallace writes with no ego but Eggers writes with nothing but ego. Hmm.
I suppose this style if writing wasn't what I was into. I felt like the author was just going on and on and on. I probably needed to read further into his story but honestly didn't have the patience.
I've been meaning to read this since I came across it in a high school book fair many many years ago, based entirely on the cleverness of its title. I guess, though, that I'm generally bored by self-centered post adolescent male narrators. There was a cleverness to the writing, amusing forays into meta fiction, but, on the whole, the narrator was the sort of person I would have walked away from at a cocktail party to go talk to someone else, so I didn't really enjoy being stuck with him for the duration of a novel.
This book hasn't aged particularly well, especially in regards to how race is portrayed. The writing style was interesting, but I couldn't bring myself to care about a single character.
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
