Publication
Elmwood Park, IL : Dalkey Archive Press, 1990.
Physical description
234 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
0916583570 / 9780916583576
Language
Collections
Description
"Alive with the pleasures of language . . . terribly funny, formidably intelligent."--Washington Post
Genres
Subjects
User reviews
LibraryThing member franoscar
This novel was published in 1977. It is perhaps self-indulgent. The author uses a mannered style, with big words and an unusual number of contractions. Pretty much everything that can be contracted is. So the end of the previous sentence would be "contracted's". That slows down the reading so the
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reader gets more involved in the plot. The plot is a 47-year-old writer with a decent marriage gets involved in an affair with a younger woman. He is extremely self-indulgent, lives off his wife, spends every night in a bar drinking & having one-night stands, and then he falls in love with this younger woman. It is hard to see what she sees in him, he has lots of words and he is a published writer, so maybe that is it. He seemed like the person who is attractive but who everybody involved with would be better off not involved with. Show Less
LibraryThing member piccoline
This is a less experimental novel from Markson, but the intelligence still leaps from the page. It's also damn sexy. A blurb calls it Joycean. Yes, I can see that. Funny, allusive, dirty, sensual. (But don't be scared off. It's a lot easier, quicker read than anything ol' Jamesy ever wrote.)
Original publication date
1977