Stephen Thomas (Author of The Jokes)

Stephen Thomas is now friends with Caila
May 05, 2026 06:51AM · like
Stephen Thomas rated a book liked it The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Basically forgettable but I really liked the portrait of Elliott the aging social climber who is drawn with such sympathy. He’s a much more compelling character than the proto-beat American “Larry,” in whom a portrait of a life spiritually seeking be ...more
Apr 25, 2026 10:02PM · like · see review
Stephen Thomas rated a book it was amazing A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
When you’re young you really don’t know anything. Amazing to think that in 1972 as America was rounding out its decade of blonde-haired collegiate psychedelia on green grass and calling each other from new office jobs, in Austria and Germany they wer ...more
Aug 20, 2025 07:58AM · 1 like · like · see review
Stephen Thomas wants to read The Atomic Human: What Makes Us Unique in the Age of AI by Neil D. Lawrence	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 19, 2024 12:48PM · like
Stephen Thomas wants to read Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 13, 2024 09:09PM · like
Stephen Thomas rated a book it was amazing Early Work by Andrew Martin (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This book made me melt down about my own abilities, which is about as high praise as I have. The closest thing I’ve read to what I imagine I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and which I now see I’ll never come close to. As I was reading this I kept thin ...more
Dec 12, 2024 09:34AM · 2 likes · like · see review
Stephen Thomas wants to read Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 10, 2024 11:33PM · like
Stephen Thomas wants to read The Novelist by Jordan Castro (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 10, 2024 11:33PM · like
Stephen Thomas wants to read The Swedish Theory of Love: Individualism and Social Trust in Modern Sweden by Henrik Berggren	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 08, 2024 07:54PM · 1 like · like
Stephen Thomas wants to read All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Dec 08, 2024 07:53PM · like

Stephen Thomas is now friends with Caila

Stephen Thomas rated a book liked it

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Basically forgettable but I really liked the portrait of Elliott the aging social climber who is drawn with such sympathy. He’s a much more compelling character than the proto-beat American “Larry,” in whom a portrait of a life spiritually seeking be Basically forgettable but I really liked the portrait of Elliott the aging social climber who is drawn with such sympathy. He’s a much more compelling character than the proto-beat American “Larry,” in whom a portrait of a life spiritually seeking becomes campy and imho a crime against anyone interested in “the contemplative life” because it makes it look mystical and kind of supernatural and therefore unattainable. The portrait of the upper class suburban socialite from Chicago let loose on Paris (Isabel) is a bit interesting.

The story is that Isabel is Elliott’s niece, and Isabel and Larry are in love and engaged when young; and then Larry fights in WWI and sees his best friend die and becomes a mystic, and Isabel instead marries a dull sweet tall rich man named Gray. The whole thing is narrated by Somerset Maugham, as himself, the famous and successful novelist—Elliott is a friend of his, is Maugham’s connection to these characters. Maugham just happens to be in Chicago, London, Paris, and various ports of the riviera where all these scenes unfold. It’s literally autofiction in 1944, which is interesting to see. He makes a big deal of it being ‘really true’.

There’s also some minor characters who have mini-arcs that are welcome as the main arcs are fairly weak. 171 pages into a 310 page novel we are introduced to Suzanne, a professional mistress in Paris. We are walked through the men she has depended on since the age of 17 until the present, age 40. It’s very interesting and when it comes in it feels like we’re being introduced to a third variation on the theme of “how people conduct their love lives.” Isabel wants a very typical marriage and children; Larry wants to be ascetic with the occasional dalliance; now we meet Suzanne, for whom relationships are a way to survive.

The book basically feels like Maugham is freestyling it—the plot is thin as hell and it’s not clear to me that he knew who the main characters would even be when he set out writing it. Eventually all the plots get their final beats, in very tidy order, but this feels like an artifact of subsequent editing. I will say though that it never sagged, which feels like a miracle for such a random-feeling book as this. One thing I think helped this is that he wasn’t afraid to introduce new characters in the second half, or characters that had been mentioned only very briefly earlier (Suzanne and another woman, Sophie).

Maugham said he was 75% gay, and it’s very clear to a modern reader that he and Elliott are gay as a Mexican hat band in this book, though it is never mentioned. As Elliott becomes queenier in his old age, though, one struggles to imagine how, say, a precocious young fan of Of Human Bondage in 1945 might have made sense of him.

A considerable step down from both Of Human Bondage and Cakes and Ale, but still “good” and not “bad.”

After looking it up, I see Maugham’s lifelong male partner died in 1944; one wonders about the death scene of the old queen in this 1944 book. ...more

Stephen Thomas rated a book it was amazing

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
by Peter Handke

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

When you’re young you really don’t know anything. Amazing to think that in 1972 as America was rounding out its decade of blonde-haired collegiate psychedelia on green grass and calling each other from new office jobs, in Austria and Germany they wer When you’re young you really don’t know anything. Amazing to think that in 1972 as America was rounding out its decade of blonde-haired collegiate psychedelia on green grass and calling each other from new office jobs, in Austria and Germany they were still in abject shock from their fathers intentionally destroying the bodies of millions of living humans. And the mood of a 30-year-old in America in 1972 was directly and intimately connected to an interpretation of a war in Europe whereby that American lived in a continent of morally righteous victory. And a 30-year-old in Austria lived in an entirely different universe, an opposite one.

When you’re young you really don’t know anything. In Jeffrey Eugenides’ introduction to my edition of this book, he explicitly compares the postmodernism of this book to the Americans’ version of postmodernism at exactly the same time, full of exuberant playfulness. John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis. I always hated these Americans and I never understood how anyone could like them, their popularity and prestige seemed to defy logic. In university in Toronto I made myself read some of it. But our instincts should always always be trusted. Canada is not America and I didn’t know that and nobody knew that and nobody had theorized or explained this, and it was assumed the opposite was true. But I could feel it, I could feel the difference. The world of rural conformity Handke describes in this book, and his defensive parenthetical explanation that some of these scenes resemble what you’d read about in 19th century books because people’s lives in that area of the world in that time were still like that—that was also my upbringing. My life 1982-1995 was still like the 19th century, the walking along the side of the road to a small country school with ill-educated teachers, the black gusts of snow outside the window in deep winter as a wood-burning fireplace is being fed with scraps of newspaper and blond wedges of pine. I’ve thought since I left Norway that Canada is much more like Northern Europe than America—the shared restraint, socialism, quiet individualism enabled by its wealth redistribution. Nobody knows this because it’s still understudied and it doesn’t matter to anyone and no one who has the broader context is incentivized to think or publish about it.

This was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It feels to me like a key of sorts—it feels like home. The super-strict bare-bones honesty feels like a doorway away from the overwrought gaudy commercialism of American writers chasing Netflix deals and into a world where a book is like a long email of your most emotionally intelligent friend going through the most important time of their life at the peak of their expressive abilities that you want to keep reading and reading and you wish was longer.

It also strikes me that I should add this book to a short list of books or writings which are among the best things ever written and happen to be (to varying degrees) about the author’s mother:
1. The Glass Essay by Anne Carson
2. Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
3. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
4. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke ...more

Stephen Thomas wants to read

The Atomic Human: What Makes Us Unique in the Age of AI
by Neil D. Lawrence

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Stephen Thomas wants to read

Birnam Wood
by Eleanor Catton

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Stephen Thomas rated a book it was amazing

Early Work
by Andrew Martin (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This book made me melt down about my own abilities, which is about as high praise as I have. The closest thing I’ve read to what I imagine I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and which I now see I’ll never come close to.

As I was reading this I kept thin This book made me melt down about my own abilities, which is about as high praise as I have. The closest thing I’ve read to what I imagine I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and which I now see I’ll never come close to.

As I was reading this I kept thinking, this book is absolutely the best book ever at something very specific, and I kept trying to name what that thing was. By the end I realized it certainly contained the best drunk-and-or-high dialogue I’d ever read, by a long shot.

I noted two of these. This is one where a character is drunk and high on weed:

“Movie,” she said abruptly. “I mean... what? I’m talking now. Are you tired of the movie?”

This is when a character is just drunk:

“All grievances are local,” said Blob. He stared searchingly into the fire. “Couple years ago, I would’ve jumped over this motherfucker. That’s not me right now. I’ve lost a lot of shoudler mobility. Starts to catch up with you. Now it’s like, no matter how much you may want to ride somebody’s motorcycle when you’re drunk or whatever, just, like, fucking, don’t.”

By the time I finished the book I realized I thought it was probably the best realist writing I’d ever read, possssibly with the caveat of, ‘in my particular milieu/context’. But really I’m not sure who I’d place above him. Previously I thought the best current realist writer was Sally Rooney, but I’m not sure who I thought a better one from another time was. I think there are better writers than both Martin and Rooney, but I don’t think I’m aware of anyone who can create a scene that feels more real than either of them. And I think Martin is distinctively and inarguably better at it than Rooney, by a considerable margin. Which isn’t a knock on Rooney, who I think is a better overall writer—it’s just that realism is more the point of Martin’s writing than it is Rooney’s. Rooney is a more compelling storyteller, but her world seems like a cartoon world compared to Martin’s, which is as close to the real world as I know. The only fantastical element to Martin’s world is how literary it is, in the sense that everyone—bouncers, bartenders, random girls on dating apps—are into high literature and have their MFAs. But this is clearly done intentionally to make the world more fun and funny, and isn’t a shortcoming.

Finally, and you'll have to forgive me for making this distinction, and for even making these two very talented writers fight like this, but I would argue that Early Work is fundamentally more 'art' than at least the first two Rooney books (the only ones I've read), because of how Martin uses 'form'—namely, the sections from the POV of Leslie, which represent important stages in the relationship from the POV of the main character. This requires a lot more unpacking than I'm going to do right now. ...more

Stephen Thomas wants to read