Scan barcode
briandice's review against another edition
3.0
I cannot remember the last piece of fiction I’ve read that had required reading as a prerequisite. Yes, it is possible to read this work of Coover without first having read A Death in Venice and Collodi’s Pinocchio, but the reader would unfortunately miss out on entirely too many jokes and plot points divined from those works. The more recent the reading of those two, the better.
I just did a search on the bizarro genre of fiction and it looks like the form is credited to having begun in 1999. I think Wikipedia is missing a trick; if Pinocchio in Venice isn’t the progenitor of bizarro fiction then it is certainly its godfather. This work meets the basic criteria: it’s absurd, it is ribald, it is rife with satire. It has rollicking scenes heading pell-mell through a narrative that the reader can’t help but think the whole thing is going to screech off the page. Like the first time you listened to Total Eclipse of the Heart and you weren’t entirely sure whether Bonnie Tyler’s larynx would hold out through to the end of the song. Coover isn’t just undressing a classic novella and children’s story, he’s slathering it in mineral oil and making it wrestle naked with angry bobcats. His lurid images blaze in the mind like retinal echoes from staring at the sun.
In rating this book I’m stealing from Vonnegut grading of his own novels. My 3 stars are strictly within the Coover Galaxy, much as Vonnegut says he can give himself an A+ for Cat’s Cradle “while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare”. This was my least favorite Coover but still one of the better books I’ve read this year.
I just did a search on the bizarro genre of fiction and it looks like the form is credited to having begun in 1999. I think Wikipedia is missing a trick; if Pinocchio in Venice isn’t the progenitor of bizarro fiction then it is certainly its godfather. This work meets the basic criteria: it’s absurd, it is ribald, it is rife with satire. It has rollicking scenes heading pell-mell through a narrative that the reader can’t help but think the whole thing is going to screech off the page. Like the first time you listened to Total Eclipse of the Heart and you weren’t entirely sure whether Bonnie Tyler’s larynx would hold out through to the end of the song. Coover isn’t just undressing a classic novella and children’s story, he’s slathering it in mineral oil and making it wrestle naked with angry bobcats. His lurid images blaze in the mind like retinal echoes from staring at the sun.
In rating this book I’m stealing from Vonnegut grading of his own novels. My 3 stars are strictly within the Coover Galaxy, much as Vonnegut says he can give himself an A+ for Cat’s Cradle “while knowing that there was a writer named William Shakespeare”. This was my least favorite Coover but still one of the better books I’ve read this year.
lnkc's review against another edition
1.0
Normally I really like books that take a known character/tale and expand on it but this one was not for me.
ktb071's review
I want to give this book more of a chance and not have to rush through it. It’s more complex than I anticipated and want to give myself more than 4 days to read it
More...