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kbyanyname's review against another edition
3.0
IRA GLASS: Deaf Sentence on This American Life: a story in three parts, for a novel that seems to be written in three parts. Act 1: Deafness. Comedy gold. Act 2: Age. Death freaks us the heck out. Act 3: Crazy postgraduates. Are they never not relevant? Next, on NPR.
Act 1: Deafness.
KYLE: Being partially deaf myself, I commiserate with Desmond. Unlike him, I still have about half my hearing, but it still leads to all kinds of hijinks, especially in loud, public places. There have been so many times I have been in a loud place, completely unable to understand anything that’s happening except by sight and the other slightly less crowd-useful senses, and someone has said something unintelligible to me, and I’ll say something vaguely approving and pithy in response. There is riotous laughter, and one of my friends will lean over and say very loudly into my ear, “He asked if you are an alien transvestite because you have bad taste in clothes!” Which is a very mean thing to say, I don’t care if you were drunk, John.
Desmond deals with the situation well, especially for an academic explaining it to hearing folk. It’s hard to describe how much of a difference it can have, but the opening scene with the half-conversation in a noisy party is basically something that happens in my life every day. People look at you differently when you’re hard of hearing or losing your hearing rather than if you were completely deaf, too. It’s not so much that they feel pity for you as they just expect you work harder, more often than not. Like Desmond, I have to work at being a part of a lot of public conversations. Especially poignant were the scenes with his wife, and his drive in learning to do some lipreading. I was hoping he’d explore some new territory in dealing with deafness, but more often than not it was a foil than a part of his life, and maybe I might deal better with my own deafness if I think of it as my personal foil. I’m certainly not going around wearing a little “out of order” sign.
Act 2: Age
KYLE: If there’s one positive thing that Desmond’s deafness does do, it encourages him to be introspective in his journal, sharing his thoughts on aging with us.
SARAH VOWELL: Uh, I thought this was my segment.
KYLE: Oh. Er, look! A historic American event that Americans don’t know anything about which needs an expertly-written and really funny book!
SARAH VOWELL: I’ll only fall for that once, you know. But fine.
KYLE: Whew. British spelling aside, Desmond’s life is very much about his age, and he’s uncomfortable in his growing years as his wife and others reach new peaks. While I enjoyed his comments about hearing and dealing with a hearing society making ties between death and loss of hearing (there are many more than you might realize), his thoughts on death wear thin on me quickly. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them as much as they seem to be stop-gaps in places where story should be. I understand that the “campus novel” is a style in play here, but I like a little less soliloquy, or at least less often than at the beginning and end of every plot point: Desmond’s story comes across sometimes as a 65-year old Clarissa Explains It All. That said, in comparison to other stories full of soliloquy, academic quotes and philosophical facts, I’ll take this over [b:Beatrice and Virgil|7176578|Beatrice and Virgil|Yann Martel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275621211s/7176578.jpg|7627945] any day. In fact, I love Lodge's plays on poetry in reference to death and deafness.
I think the problem comes from Lodge writing from actual episodes in his life (as he mentions in the afterword) – the thoughts really do ring true in several situations, but one or the other sounds distinctly hollow comparatively. Desmond considers eventualities in strange ways sometimes that actually makes me think he’s a man about 15 years younger than he is, which I suspect is when Lodge may’ve encountered some of these situations.
Also, and this leads into the next point, out of nowhere during his reminiscing on life and death comes, again, the Holocaust. Just as with the aforementioned Beatrice and Virgil, I’m led into one story and then blindsided by a sudden delving into the – of course – feelings associated with the Holocaust by any rational human. If this were two years ago, before I started running into this over and over in novels as a way to get knee-jerk emotion in relation to death, I would’ve been miffed, but okay with it. Lodge is a man of letters, so to speak, and should understand his responsibility as a writer much better than that. But then, so should all referencing writers.
Act 3: Crazy postgraduates
DAVID SEDARIS: I—
KYLE: No. You just – you just shut up right now.
The opening scene kicks off a third plot, Desmond’s poor hearing getting him involved with a shady young American postgrad who studies the grammar of suicide notes and may or may not be crazy, certainly capricious. She plays pranks and inserts herself into Desmond’s life both as a playmate and a possible kinky paramour, ultimately just about reaching blackmail. Compared to the first two standard plot excitement levels of the novel, this proposal is like lighting the fuse of fireworks next to a couple plot sparklers; but it goes off like a whimper, certainly.
As Lodge describes in his afterword, the character, Alex, inserted herself into the story when he was about halfway done with his original story. I am all about letting your characters drive the story – a little bit of insanity makes a story feel real and chaotic. She threatens his (deafly) quiet retirement and upends his own morals in a few situations, which is exciting and fun. But she ultimately falls completely flat. Not only does Alex not make good on some of the admittedly cruel things she promises if he doesn’t come through, she’s not even a good foil for Desmond in that she just allows herself to get talked out of being a villain. For a devious girl who was supposed to have planned out her moves (and certainly acts that way in a few plot points), she misses so many opportunities to play the wily seductress. And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except Desmond himself repeatedly tells us what she could possibly do to him, how she has him hamstrung even in his innocence. Please don’t let us know that there could be a really intriguing plot going on if you’re just going to make the characters act like a stern grandfather and a misbehaving granddaughter.
DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I liked Alex.
KYLE: No one cares.
Act 1: Deafness.
KYLE: Being partially deaf myself, I commiserate with Desmond. Unlike him, I still have about half my hearing, but it still leads to all kinds of hijinks, especially in loud, public places. There have been so many times I have been in a loud place, completely unable to understand anything that’s happening except by sight and the other slightly less crowd-useful senses, and someone has said something unintelligible to me, and I’ll say something vaguely approving and pithy in response. There is riotous laughter, and one of my friends will lean over and say very loudly into my ear, “He asked if you are an alien transvestite because you have bad taste in clothes!” Which is a very mean thing to say, I don’t care if you were drunk, John.
Desmond deals with the situation well, especially for an academic explaining it to hearing folk. It’s hard to describe how much of a difference it can have, but the opening scene with the half-conversation in a noisy party is basically something that happens in my life every day. People look at you differently when you’re hard of hearing or losing your hearing rather than if you were completely deaf, too. It’s not so much that they feel pity for you as they just expect you work harder, more often than not. Like Desmond, I have to work at being a part of a lot of public conversations. Especially poignant were the scenes with his wife, and his drive in learning to do some lipreading. I was hoping he’d explore some new territory in dealing with deafness, but more often than not it was a foil than a part of his life, and maybe I might deal better with my own deafness if I think of it as my personal foil. I’m certainly not going around wearing a little “out of order” sign.
Act 2: Age
KYLE: If there’s one positive thing that Desmond’s deafness does do, it encourages him to be introspective in his journal, sharing his thoughts on aging with us.
SARAH VOWELL: Uh, I thought this was my segment.
KYLE: Oh. Er, look! A historic American event that Americans don’t know anything about which needs an expertly-written and really funny book!
SARAH VOWELL: I’ll only fall for that once, you know. But fine.
KYLE: Whew. British spelling aside, Desmond’s life is very much about his age, and he’s uncomfortable in his growing years as his wife and others reach new peaks. While I enjoyed his comments about hearing and dealing with a hearing society making ties between death and loss of hearing (there are many more than you might realize), his thoughts on death wear thin on me quickly. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them as much as they seem to be stop-gaps in places where story should be. I understand that the “campus novel” is a style in play here, but I like a little less soliloquy, or at least less often than at the beginning and end of every plot point: Desmond’s story comes across sometimes as a 65-year old Clarissa Explains It All. That said, in comparison to other stories full of soliloquy, academic quotes and philosophical facts, I’ll take this over [b:Beatrice and Virgil|7176578|Beatrice and Virgil|Yann Martel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275621211s/7176578.jpg|7627945] any day. In fact, I love Lodge's plays on poetry in reference to death and deafness.
I think the problem comes from Lodge writing from actual episodes in his life (as he mentions in the afterword) – the thoughts really do ring true in several situations, but one or the other sounds distinctly hollow comparatively. Desmond considers eventualities in strange ways sometimes that actually makes me think he’s a man about 15 years younger than he is, which I suspect is when Lodge may’ve encountered some of these situations.
Also, and this leads into the next point, out of nowhere during his reminiscing on life and death comes, again, the Holocaust. Just as with the aforementioned Beatrice and Virgil, I’m led into one story and then blindsided by a sudden delving into the – of course – feelings associated with the Holocaust by any rational human. If this were two years ago, before I started running into this over and over in novels as a way to get knee-jerk emotion in relation to death, I would’ve been miffed, but okay with it. Lodge is a man of letters, so to speak, and should understand his responsibility as a writer much better than that. But then, so should all referencing writers.
Act 3: Crazy postgraduates
DAVID SEDARIS: I—
KYLE: No. You just – you just shut up right now.
The opening scene kicks off a third plot, Desmond’s poor hearing getting him involved with a shady young American postgrad who studies the grammar of suicide notes and may or may not be crazy, certainly capricious. She plays pranks and inserts herself into Desmond’s life both as a playmate and a possible kinky paramour, ultimately just about reaching blackmail. Compared to the first two standard plot excitement levels of the novel, this proposal is like lighting the fuse of fireworks next to a couple plot sparklers; but it goes off like a whimper, certainly.
As Lodge describes in his afterword, the character, Alex, inserted herself into the story when he was about halfway done with his original story. I am all about letting your characters drive the story – a little bit of insanity makes a story feel real and chaotic. She threatens his (deafly) quiet retirement and upends his own morals in a few situations, which is exciting and fun. But she ultimately falls completely flat. Not only does Alex not make good on some of the admittedly cruel things she promises if he doesn’t come through, she’s not even a good foil for Desmond in that she just allows herself to get talked out of being a villain. For a devious girl who was supposed to have planned out her moves (and certainly acts that way in a few plot points), she misses so many opportunities to play the wily seductress. And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except Desmond himself repeatedly tells us what she could possibly do to him, how she has him hamstrung even in his innocence. Please don’t let us know that there could be a really intriguing plot going on if you’re just going to make the characters act like a stern grandfather and a misbehaving granddaughter.
DAVID SEDARIS: Well, I liked Alex.
KYLE: No one cares.
giovannnaz's review against another edition
4.0
I always enjoy David Lodge. He's one of those writers who is extremely good at seeing--and writing about--social interactions, men and women, parent and child...and he's funny on top of that. Deaf Sentence has the added bonus of bringing deafness and linguistics into the mix, adding two more layers to those relationships.
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in September 2009.
The title by itself makes a lot of what Deaf Sentence is about clear. That it is about deafness, how it feels to gradually lose hearing, how deafness imprisons the sufferer in a solitary world where old pleasures become impossible or difficult; how there will be humour in the story; and even that the grim pun deaf/death (also, of course, a pair of words a deaf person would find hard to distinguish) will be revisited throughout. The use of part of the definition of the word "sentence" from one of the Oxford English dictionaries in the front matter to the novel also indicates before starting that the various different meanings highlighted in the quotation will form themes in the story.
Desmond Bates, narrator of Deaf Sentence, was a professor of linguistics who took early retirement when a good offer from his university co-incided with the realisation that encroaching deafness was causing obvious and embarrassing difficulties with lecturing and teaching. In the first chapter, he has an entire conversation at an art gallery party with a young woman, Alex, even though he is hears only a tiny part of what she says over the background noise of the party - distinguishing foreground from background being one of the problems which deafness brings. Later, he discovers that he appears to have agreed to supervise Alex's work on a doctoral thesis on suicide notes as a genre of linguistic utterance. But each meeting he has with her is increasingly bizarre, and she seems increasingly unstable...
Deaf Sentence is a typical David Lodge novel (unlike his previous work, Author, Author): funny, clever, full of satirical observation of academic life. There is also sadness, partly because of Desmond's feelings about his deafness, and partly because of his relationship with his irascible nonagenerian father. This is not a novel which paints a pleasant picture of what it is like to be old.
The centrepiece of the novel is not really up to his usual standard, however. This is a set piece description of the ordeal of the family Christmas, made worse by Desmond's hearing difficulties. This seems, unfortunately, to have escaped from a seventies sitcom and is not really imaginative enough to hold the novel together as it should given its prominence.
The main observation that Lodge makes about deafness through the novel is that it's tragic for the sufferers, but can often be comic for those around them, because of the misunderstandings it generates. He makes the contrast with blindness, which evokes pity and sympathy from onlookers, rather than laughter, embarrassment and irritation. And there is something undignified about even the most modern battery powered hearing aids (especially as users find it difficult to ensure that they have replacement batteries and do not let those in use drain too quickly), which there is not to the white stick or guide dog.
Not Lodge's best ([b:Changing Places|69933|Changing Places|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347454832s/69933.jpg|1055072], [b:Paradise News|235915|Paradise News|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348313659s/235915.jpg|899030], or, on a more serious note, [b:Thinks . . .|69932|Thinks . . .|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347431973s/69932.jpg|1516234] would be my choices there). But Deaf Sentence is still thought provoking and funny: well worth a read.
The title by itself makes a lot of what Deaf Sentence is about clear. That it is about deafness, how it feels to gradually lose hearing, how deafness imprisons the sufferer in a solitary world where old pleasures become impossible or difficult; how there will be humour in the story; and even that the grim pun deaf/death (also, of course, a pair of words a deaf person would find hard to distinguish) will be revisited throughout. The use of part of the definition of the word "sentence" from one of the Oxford English dictionaries in the front matter to the novel also indicates before starting that the various different meanings highlighted in the quotation will form themes in the story.
Desmond Bates, narrator of Deaf Sentence, was a professor of linguistics who took early retirement when a good offer from his university co-incided with the realisation that encroaching deafness was causing obvious and embarrassing difficulties with lecturing and teaching. In the first chapter, he has an entire conversation at an art gallery party with a young woman, Alex, even though he is hears only a tiny part of what she says over the background noise of the party - distinguishing foreground from background being one of the problems which deafness brings. Later, he discovers that he appears to have agreed to supervise Alex's work on a doctoral thesis on suicide notes as a genre of linguistic utterance. But each meeting he has with her is increasingly bizarre, and she seems increasingly unstable...
Deaf Sentence is a typical David Lodge novel (unlike his previous work, Author, Author): funny, clever, full of satirical observation of academic life. There is also sadness, partly because of Desmond's feelings about his deafness, and partly because of his relationship with his irascible nonagenerian father. This is not a novel which paints a pleasant picture of what it is like to be old.
The centrepiece of the novel is not really up to his usual standard, however. This is a set piece description of the ordeal of the family Christmas, made worse by Desmond's hearing difficulties. This seems, unfortunately, to have escaped from a seventies sitcom and is not really imaginative enough to hold the novel together as it should given its prominence.
The main observation that Lodge makes about deafness through the novel is that it's tragic for the sufferers, but can often be comic for those around them, because of the misunderstandings it generates. He makes the contrast with blindness, which evokes pity and sympathy from onlookers, rather than laughter, embarrassment and irritation. And there is something undignified about even the most modern battery powered hearing aids (especially as users find it difficult to ensure that they have replacement batteries and do not let those in use drain too quickly), which there is not to the white stick or guide dog.
Not Lodge's best ([b:Changing Places|69933|Changing Places|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347454832s/69933.jpg|1055072], [b:Paradise News|235915|Paradise News|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348313659s/235915.jpg|899030], or, on a more serious note, [b:Thinks . . .|69932|Thinks . . .|David Lodge|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347431973s/69932.jpg|1516234] would be my choices there). But Deaf Sentence is still thought provoking and funny: well worth a read.
lorink's review
4.0
Desmond Bates is, on the face of it, a recognizable David Lodge character--a hapless retired professor of linguistics at a fictional northern university--but both he and Deaf Sentence, Lodge's fourteenth novel in which he stars, are, while still funny, more melancholy than Lodge's previous work.
Desmond left the university when a departmental reorganization, along with his increasing deafness (which mirrors Lodge's own hearing loss), made retirement appear to be a good idea. Four years later, he is increasingly restless and plagued by physical problems. By contrast, his wife Fred is running a successful interior design shop; and having updated her appearance to befit an upscale shop owner, she now looks younger and more beautiful than ever. To Desmond, the eight-year gap between their ages--which hadn't seemed very large--appears to be an ever-widening chasm, exacerbated by the fact that he finds it more and more difficult to hear his wife.
Into this vaguely fraught situation comes Alex Loom, a graduate student working on the linguistics of suicide notes, whom Desmond has unwittingly agreed to meet. (The novel opens on Desmond pretending to follow what Alex is saying at a noisy and crowded party.) As Desmond becomes her unofficial thesis adviser, she is gradually revealed to be both mendacious and unstable, in a way that threatens to unravel Desmond's quiet existence.
As the pun of the title suggests, Deaf Sentence makes much of the humor of deafness. Blindness is tragic and deafness comic, Desmond explains, and there are a number of deeply funny situations in which he misunderstands what he is hearing. Milton's lament: "Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon/Irrecoverably dark, without all hope of day" doesn't have quite the same pathos when applied to deafness, he notes: "Oh deaf, deaf, deaf, amid the noise of noon..."
But deafness is in fact tragic. Desmond speaks movingly of Beethoven and Philip Larkin's loss of hearing, and often refers to the similarity between the words 'deaf' and 'dead', in both wordplay and more serious allusions to the eternal silence that looms over him. Gradually, Desmond achieves a kind of acceptance of both.
Deaf Sentence is not all it could be: the Alex Loom story peters out rather than being resolved more effectively. But it is funny and profound and full of lovely and fascinating allusions to linguistics and art and literature; to my mind, it is Lodge's most successful novel since Small World.
Desmond left the university when a departmental reorganization, along with his increasing deafness (which mirrors Lodge's own hearing loss), made retirement appear to be a good idea. Four years later, he is increasingly restless and plagued by physical problems. By contrast, his wife Fred is running a successful interior design shop; and having updated her appearance to befit an upscale shop owner, she now looks younger and more beautiful than ever. To Desmond, the eight-year gap between their ages--which hadn't seemed very large--appears to be an ever-widening chasm, exacerbated by the fact that he finds it more and more difficult to hear his wife.
Into this vaguely fraught situation comes Alex Loom, a graduate student working on the linguistics of suicide notes, whom Desmond has unwittingly agreed to meet. (The novel opens on Desmond pretending to follow what Alex is saying at a noisy and crowded party.) As Desmond becomes her unofficial thesis adviser, she is gradually revealed to be both mendacious and unstable, in a way that threatens to unravel Desmond's quiet existence.
As the pun of the title suggests, Deaf Sentence makes much of the humor of deafness. Blindness is tragic and deafness comic, Desmond explains, and there are a number of deeply funny situations in which he misunderstands what he is hearing. Milton's lament: "Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon/Irrecoverably dark, without all hope of day" doesn't have quite the same pathos when applied to deafness, he notes: "Oh deaf, deaf, deaf, amid the noise of noon..."
But deafness is in fact tragic. Desmond speaks movingly of Beethoven and Philip Larkin's loss of hearing, and often refers to the similarity between the words 'deaf' and 'dead', in both wordplay and more serious allusions to the eternal silence that looms over him. Gradually, Desmond achieves a kind of acceptance of both.
Deaf Sentence is not all it could be: the Alex Loom story peters out rather than being resolved more effectively. But it is funny and profound and full of lovely and fascinating allusions to linguistics and art and literature; to my mind, it is Lodge's most successful novel since Small World.
lisagray68's review
2.0
Bookmarks Magazine described this book as "funny and moving". I found it to be neither, and several times debated quitting it altogether. There was one storyline about a crazy undergraduate that I found mildly entertaining and kept me reading. Horrible resolution, though, and I'm not glad I spent the time finishing.
saras's review
3.0
Good, all his books are good, but not particularly great. Plot with Alex wrapped up too easily.
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