You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is not for everyone but it was certainly for me. Parts House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, John Dies at the End, mixed with other satire I don't have a quick analogy for...
It was brilliant and even beyond what I was expecting from Kaufman. If you like his movies, this book is... 10-20 times weirder. And less cohesive maybe. Maybe I need to read it 6 more times... Maybe backwards.
It was brilliant and even beyond what I was expecting from Kaufman. If you like his movies, this book is... 10-20 times weirder. And less cohesive maybe. Maybe I need to read it 6 more times... Maybe backwards.
adventurous
challenging
funny
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
ADDED TO THE SHELF: MOST-NECESSARY. READ THIS BOOK!
The plot concept immediately hooked me. A pretentious, wildly insecure film critic discovers what he believes is the greatest film ever made: a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took 90 years to make. He is the only person that has ever seen it. During the viewing, the filmmaker dies. When he is bringing this back to New York to make his stamp on the industry, it is destroyed. He is put into a coma. He forgets it all. But he has one frame...
** There are spoilers sprinkled throughout the rest **
The main character is B. Rosenberger Rosenberg. He is a (failed) film critic and aggressively self-important intellectual, who has a minor degree from Harvard in everything under the sun. He is insecure, neurotic, and constantly overcompensating for his perceived wokeness while continually failing to actually achieve it. His determination to not offend anyone ends up offending everyone. The story is told from his POV, and he is incredibly unreliable. His descent includes becoming sexually obsessed with clowns, stalking a woman down the street under the guise of romantic intellectualism, and seeking out a carousel of hypnotists.
This is THE funniest book that I have ever read. Maybe the funniest book ever written. You often read review about how funny books are, but rarely do I ever crack a smile. This one, though, I was often literally laughing out loud at the quips, ridiculous moments, and overwhelming satire. There are moments that are purposefully trying to be funny, like Mudd and Molloy, but the funniest bits are just one-off zingers. Pulling this off in literature is nearly impossible.
The satire is biting. The primary focus is over-projecting, privileged, performative, social justice warrior whites. B's greatest accomplishment, when we begin, is his "African-American girlfriend, whose name you would definitely know." He has no positions he holds true to himself, just knows that he must win the game and be the most woke to succeed. The irony lies in the fact that B can finally achieve his success by exploiting the work of an unknown black filmmaker that will never see his recognition (and didn't want it anyway). The movie even accounts for the Unseen, of which Ingo would theoretically become.
However, the movie is such a powerful work of art that B is stripped of these selfish motivations. He is freed by his submission to the art. He WANTS to share this with others, rather than impose his will upon them with a review or novelization. "I can breathe. There is nothing to defend. I am free." B literally becomes a movie. He is reborn at 24 fps. This book is a film, the film is B, Charlie Kaufman is the book, am I the book? Who am I?
"I recognize now that remembering the movie is the movie, that even the pieces I can't remember are the movie. Memory is imperfect. It is imprecise, but it is the only tool we have to maintain contact with the world through time. Without it, life as we know it ceases to exist. I hit the bottom."
The book has beautiful, life-mirroring philosophical moments. There is "the cave." There are copies of him, there are copies of Trump (Trunk ?). There is a self, there is no self. There is time travel. What is time travel? There are anxieties, bouts of depression, moments of elation. "The path down a mountain is simple. One must simply desire it, it seems, and then plummet. But the path back up requires immense reserves of fortitude and perseverance." It explores the "What now?" definition of life.
Charlie Kaufman has an incredible mind. Interestingly, I wasn't really familiar with his work. I had heard of the movies he wrote, directed, or produced, but hadn't seen them. After this, though, I want to see them all. This is such an ambitious first novel, past career success aside, and he knocked it out of the park. I actually feel as if I know him personally now. The book had so many self referential digs, and at points I couldn't even tell if he was writing the book, in the book, or the book itself. LOL. He has an incredibly amount of film knowledge that he incorporates, and the same applies to his literature knowledge. Random characters are reading DEEP cut, WOKE books, and he often brings in literary figures to the story.
I say this a lot (maybe I am a romantic) but I think it might be my favorite book. I love everything about it. I don't even want to pick up another. I just want to start again.
The plot concept immediately hooked me. A pretentious, wildly insecure film critic discovers what he believes is the greatest film ever made: a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took 90 years to make. He is the only person that has ever seen it. During the viewing, the filmmaker dies. When he is bringing this back to New York to make his stamp on the industry, it is destroyed. He is put into a coma. He forgets it all. But he has one frame...
** There are spoilers sprinkled throughout the rest **
The main character is B. Rosenberger Rosenberg. He is a (failed) film critic and aggressively self-important intellectual, who has a minor degree from Harvard in everything under the sun. He is insecure, neurotic, and constantly overcompensating for his perceived wokeness while continually failing to actually achieve it. His determination to not offend anyone ends up offending everyone. The story is told from his POV, and he is incredibly unreliable. His descent includes becoming sexually obsessed with clowns, stalking a woman down the street under the guise of romantic intellectualism, and seeking out a carousel of hypnotists.
This is THE funniest book that I have ever read. Maybe the funniest book ever written. You often read review about how funny books are, but rarely do I ever crack a smile. This one, though, I was often literally laughing out loud at the quips, ridiculous moments, and overwhelming satire. There are moments that are purposefully trying to be funny, like Mudd and Molloy, but the funniest bits are just one-off zingers. Pulling this off in literature is nearly impossible.
The satire is biting. The primary focus is over-projecting, privileged, performative, social justice warrior whites. B's greatest accomplishment, when we begin, is his "African-American girlfriend, whose name you would definitely know." He has no positions he holds true to himself, just knows that he must win the game and be the most woke to succeed. The irony lies in the fact that B can finally achieve his success by exploiting the work of an unknown black filmmaker that will never see his recognition (and didn't want it anyway). The movie even accounts for the Unseen, of which Ingo would theoretically become.
However, the movie is such a powerful work of art that B is stripped of these selfish motivations. He is freed by his submission to the art. He WANTS to share this with others, rather than impose his will upon them with a review or novelization. "I can breathe. There is nothing to defend. I am free." B literally becomes a movie. He is reborn at 24 fps. This book is a film, the film is B, Charlie Kaufman is the book, am I the book? Who am I?
"I recognize now that remembering the movie is the movie, that even the pieces I can't remember are the movie. Memory is imperfect. It is imprecise, but it is the only tool we have to maintain contact with the world through time. Without it, life as we know it ceases to exist. I hit the bottom."
The book has beautiful, life-mirroring philosophical moments. There is "the cave." There are copies of him, there are copies of Trump (Trunk ?). There is a self, there is no self. There is time travel. What is time travel? There are anxieties, bouts of depression, moments of elation. "The path down a mountain is simple. One must simply desire it, it seems, and then plummet. But the path back up requires immense reserves of fortitude and perseverance." It explores the "What now?" definition of life.
Charlie Kaufman has an incredible mind. Interestingly, I wasn't really familiar with his work. I had heard of the movies he wrote, directed, or produced, but hadn't seen them. After this, though, I want to see them all. This is such an ambitious first novel, past career success aside, and he knocked it out of the park. I actually feel as if I know him personally now. The book had so many self referential digs, and at points I couldn't even tell if he was writing the book, in the book, or the book itself. LOL. He has an incredibly amount of film knowledge that he incorporates, and the same applies to his literature knowledge. Random characters are reading DEEP cut, WOKE books, and he often brings in literary figures to the story.
I say this a lot (maybe I am a romantic) but I think it might be my favorite book. I love everything about it. I don't even want to pick up another. I just want to start again.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What the hell charlie
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
It was almost a 2.5. Parts were a solid 3, but overall, it lost me. It was bad enough that I abandoned the book after 616 pages and the book is only 795 pages long. It just didn't seem to have a direction and I figured that no ending or resolution could satisfy my confusion. I should get credit for 3 books.
A borghesian hilarity.
Easily my read of the year so far.
This book is so funny it's EXHAUSTING.
-enhanced reading experience when diagnosed with ADHD-
Easily my read of the year so far.
This book is so funny it's EXHAUSTING.
-enhanced reading experience when diagnosed with ADHD-
This is a weird and crazy book. I loved the first half of it. Then the weirdness got a little much, for about 200 pages. Then the last 100 or so pages were wonderful again. Essentially the story is this: a film critic discovers a film, a super long film, one that takes 3 months to view in its entirety. He longs to publicize the film, make a name for himself as well as the filmmaker, but then he accidentally destroys the film. The rest of the book has him attempting various methods to recreate the masterpiece, with various tangents of varying absurdity.
Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter known for his iconic writing style in films like Being John Malcovich and Adaptation. This book is not a novel, its more like a stream of consciousness rant by a very neurotic obsessive person with no sense of boundaries. You will either find him funny or very tedious. Either way there are 700 pages of unedited Charlie Kaufman.
Still one of my all-time favorites. Gets more and more slippery as it goes along, intentionally so. Mind-boggling, insane, completely ridiculous, and consistently funny. I couldn't love it more