Do you read Jonathan Lethem?
Like most of his books, Feral Detective is densely layered with allusion and metaphor. There's multiple meanings to find in the text, and it can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.
Coming off a Donald Westlake/Lee Child binge, I went at this one kind of simple. Perhaps that's not entirely fair to Lethem's genius. Luckily his genius is up to the task of writing a complex story that can be taken simply.
This is one of those novels that sets out to do for the 2016 election what other novels and movies have tried to for 9/11 - give some emotional context and catharsis. I think it succeeds.
When I say I took it simply, I mean this: The story allows for several interpretations, all interwoven. But I realized partway through, still trying to make sense of it, that the story could be interpreted as an adaptation or re-imagining of Heart of Darkness. But who is traveling up the river, who is going native, and who needs to be rescued, all shift and change depending on how you're looking at the story, and how your view of the story changes while you're reading it.
This book is towards the more realistic end of Lethem's body of work. Close to Motherless Brooklyn. If you liked that one, you may like this one. On the other hand, it shares an undercurrent of surreality that is always threatening to break free. I enjoyed the tension this brought to the story.
Like most of his books, Feral Detective is densely layered with allusion and metaphor. There's multiple meanings to find in the text, and it can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.
Coming off a Donald Westlake/Lee Child binge, I went at this one kind of simple. Perhaps that's not entirely fair to Lethem's genius. Luckily his genius is up to the task of writing a complex story that can be taken simply.
This is one of those novels that sets out to do for the 2016 election what other novels and movies have tried to for 9/11 - give some emotional context and catharsis. I think it succeeds.
When I say I took it simply, I mean this: The story allows for several interpretations, all interwoven. But I realized partway through, still trying to make sense of it, that the story could be interpreted as an adaptation or re-imagining of Heart of Darkness. But who is traveling up the river, who is going native, and who needs to be rescued, all shift and change depending on how you're looking at the story, and how your view of the story changes while you're reading it.
This book is towards the more realistic end of Lethem's body of work. Close to Motherless Brooklyn. If you liked that one, you may like this one. On the other hand, it shares an undercurrent of surreality that is always threatening to break free. I enjoyed the tension this brought to the story.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/36J93Nh
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