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A review by jrabbit12
Ship of Theseus by Doug Dorst, J.J. Abrams
3.0
It is my love for book/reader interaction and history that initially attracted me to Ship of Theseus. I mean, I once spent an entire semester researching the marginal inscriptions of a book from the 1690's to discover, in the end, evidence of a newly wed rural woman in 1810 becoming literate and learning to spell and write her own name (sorry for the plug, I'm just really proud of that paper and like reliving the dream whenever I can). The presentation was also spot-on, with the 18th century publishers-cloth binding being so authentic in appearance (even down to the yellowed from the fore-edge-in text block paper) that I initially though someone had stolen the Abrams/Dorst book and put a thrift-store holder in its place. So, yeah, the idea of this book was really, really, appealing.
'Ship of Theseus' is a collaborative concept by J.J. Abrams, Doug Dorst, and fictional (? - oh so mysterious) author V.M. Straka. Typically, I am slightly turned off by more kitschy publications and find co-authorship a generally foreboding omen of quality. At this point, you're probably anticipating my saying 'However...' and launching into how this book defied my jerk-expectations. *coughs**clears throat*
Sooo, anyway, this book is actually fairly comparable to Abrams' 'Lost'. Abrams, who is truly talented at generating some pretty engaging and interesting ideas, begins strong - with plenty of momentum; plot ideas and narrative potential really take a solid and promising form. This exciting progress then slows a little over half-way and becomes a little repetitive, as if the story is trying to regain previous footing and return to the path its initial trajectory was promising. But sadly, in the world of Abrams, a lost path is never to be seen again and the story flails through the wild with the most tenuous grasp of what it was originally doing or where it was going. And like Lost, this book finishes with a 'huh' - of either the huh=meh or huh=WTF variety, depending on the reactants commitment to things like narrative arc, plot, and the general cohesion of ideas posed throughout the experience.
You'll have to excuse my tone, but it's so frustrating to see something with so much potential just kinda lay-down and quit. Instead of having a solid cohesive story, where all points intersect in a kind of everything-is-connected whole, the reader is left with fragmented pieces of various ideas that, with just a liiittle more fleshing out could have ended with a definitive *bang!* and not a *ttthhhhhhppp*.
I know it may not seem like it, but I did not dislike this book, it's just exactly what one has come to expect from J.J. Abrams - a strong start with a good solid set up and then...? It's not that it's a swing and a miss, it's more like a swing and a deep-field hit, but instead of running the bases, he just cracks a beer and watches Wheel of Fortune.
Abrams is an ideas-man, there is no doubting that. He's just not a finisher and thus I was left struggling to finish this book, and didn't even care by the end. In fact, I was kinda hoping, all the way up to the last pitifully corny page, that one of the wunderkinds of the marginalia emo couple would do something, I don't know, interesting. Huh=meh.
(On a professional note, I do feel woefully sorry for the Catalogers who have to deal with this. God speed, my friends.)
'Ship of Theseus' is a collaborative concept by J.J. Abrams, Doug Dorst, and fictional (? - oh so mysterious) author V.M. Straka. Typically, I am slightly turned off by more kitschy publications and find co-authorship a generally foreboding omen of quality. At this point, you're probably anticipating my saying 'However...' and launching into how this book defied my jerk-expectations. *coughs**clears throat*
Sooo, anyway, this book is actually fairly comparable to Abrams' 'Lost'. Abrams, who is truly talented at generating some pretty engaging and interesting ideas, begins strong - with plenty of momentum; plot ideas and narrative potential really take a solid and promising form. This exciting progress then slows a little over half-way and becomes a little repetitive, as if the story is trying to regain previous footing and return to the path its initial trajectory was promising. But sadly, in the world of Abrams, a lost path is never to be seen again and the story flails through the wild with the most tenuous grasp of what it was originally doing or where it was going. And like Lost, this book finishes with a 'huh' - of either the huh=meh or huh=WTF variety, depending on the reactants commitment to things like narrative arc, plot, and the general cohesion of ideas posed throughout the experience.
You'll have to excuse my tone, but it's so frustrating to see something with so much potential just kinda lay-down and quit. Instead of having a solid cohesive story, where all points intersect in a kind of everything-is-connected whole, the reader is left with fragmented pieces of various ideas that, with just a liiittle more fleshing out could have ended with a definitive *bang!* and not a *ttthhhhhhppp*.
I know it may not seem like it, but I did not dislike this book, it's just exactly what one has come to expect from J.J. Abrams - a strong start with a good solid set up and then...? It's not that it's a swing and a miss, it's more like a swing and a deep-field hit, but instead of running the bases, he just cracks a beer and watches Wheel of Fortune.
Abrams is an ideas-man, there is no doubting that. He's just not a finisher and thus I was left struggling to finish this book, and didn't even care by the end. In fact, I was kinda hoping, all the way up to the last pitifully corny page, that one of the wunderkinds of the marginalia emo couple would do something, I don't know, interesting. Huh=meh.
(On a professional note, I do feel woefully sorry for the Catalogers who have to deal with this. God speed, my friends.)