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dellaposta's review
2.0
This is definitely a book that is more interesting to read about than to actually read. Janet Malcolm’s New Yorker piece about it was fascinating. Funnily enough, that piece also provided the quote that appears on the back of my edition’s book jacket, where Malcolm describes the book as a “near-impossible feat of reading” (accurate, but hardly an advertisement!). Mea culpa, I only got through 200 or so pages and had to throw in the towel. Judging from other reviews on here, I’m far from alone in that, and there’s no indication that the rest of the book will be a radical shift in approach, so I’m just gonna review it for my own sense of finality.
The book is essentially just descriptions — often (OFTEN) repeating themselves across tens (hundreds?) of pages — of different types of people written in the oddest language you’ll ever see. People are endlessly, repetitively described, and then frequently disappear without actually doing anything. On a sentence level, it’s like it was written in a foreign language and then run through Google Translate circa 2010. The larger structure is interesting, as Stein essentially tries to account for how people become individuals while still sharing so much with millions of others in the world. But even within that ambitious project, I have to say that these first 200 or so pages only had a few brief glimmers of real insight.
The book is essentially just descriptions — often (OFTEN) repeating themselves across tens (hundreds?) of pages — of different types of people written in the oddest language you’ll ever see. People are endlessly, repetitively described, and then frequently disappear without actually doing anything. On a sentence level, it’s like it was written in a foreign language and then run through Google Translate circa 2010. The larger structure is interesting, as Stein essentially tries to account for how people become individuals while still sharing so much with millions of others in the world. But even within that ambitious project, I have to say that these first 200 or so pages only had a few brief glimmers of real insight.
zoracious's review against another edition
1.0
With a good X-acto knife, some one can put something inside it. They can use it, and live it, and I know it. Repeating is often irritating. And to begin again. Repeating can be irritating.
ali0cha's review against another edition
2.0
Je ne sais pas si c'est parce que j'avais pas la tête à lire, mais je n'ai pas réussi à vraiment me plonger dans ce livre. De belles idées, mais répétées, répétées, répétées trop souvent. On s'en reparlera.
molliekami's review against another edition
3.0
Hilarious because, while I did not finish it, I've found myself drunkenly quoting it on multiple occasions.
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