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Boston: Sonata para violín sin cuerdas
William Fisher lleva una vida tranquila en Boston, trabaja como administrador en el Instituto de Ciencias, tiene pareja y, ocasionalmente, toca su violín (don Chirridos). Un buen día, durante una excursión a la laguna Walden (y tras la inesperada aparición del fantasma de Thoreau), Fisher resbala sobre la superficie helada del lago, se golpea la cabeza y pierde el conocimiento. Desde ese instante, todo parece conjurarse para que nada en la existencia de William vuelva a ser como antes. Le esperan una sucesión de extrañas coincidencias y bochornosas trifulcas que, en menos de una semana, lo empujarán a liderar una estrafalaria revolución y a participar en una espectacular persecución policial, en esta particular y satírica huida del mundo moderno y sus absurdos.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
8 people are currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Todd McEwen
14 books14 followersTodd McEwen (b.1953) is an American writer. A graduate of Columbia University, he has been a resident of Scotland since 1981 and is married to novelist Lucy Ellmann. He has published four novels: Fisher's Hornpipe (1983), McX: A Romance of the Dour (1990), Arithmetic (1998) and Who Sleeps with Katz (2003). He has also written for Granta magazine and contributed book reviews to The Guardian and other newspapers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 9, 2018
McEwen’s premier prose effort is the sort of freewheeling merrily unhinged performance that reminds one of the wondrous possibilities of the comic novel for chronic digression, deviation, and snubbing of the norm. After sustaining a head wound on a frozen Walden Pond, violinist and administrator Fisher staggers around Boston setting his office on fire, fleeing from his part-time girlfriend, and hitting the bars with barfly philosopher Frank of Oregon who prefers to be addressed by his full title. Mixing dialogue, internal monologue and McEwen’s frenetic narration into one soup unburdened by speech marks, lends the novel a European flavour (Beckett is the author’s hero), and creates a strange, exultant tone of concussed lunacy.
August 10, 2009
Ha-ha, the crazy coincidence of reading this one right on top of Dubin’s Lives. Even with the bleak northeast, Walden and Thoreau in common, I’m scared to even lay the two books side-by-side, like they could somehow come alive and beat the crap out of each other.
I haven’t read a book this zany and insane since Heller left Pianosa— not that it’s the same perfectly orchestrated riotous insanity as Catch-22, but I loved it and how could you not, the disaffected overanxious and all too sincere Fisher unwittingly (and then also willfully) stirring up riots from the flapping bloody bandage on his head?
My soft spot intact, apparently, for an ill-fated, certifiable antihero with questionably massive head trauma and a doomed violin.
(By the way, I stumbled across this book trying to dig up McEwen’s essay, “Cary Grant’s Suit,” an old favorite essay from an old lost copy of Granta. Not a fitting trade, but a fair and enjoyable one.)
I haven’t read a book this zany and insane since Heller left Pianosa— not that it’s the same perfectly orchestrated riotous insanity as Catch-22, but I loved it and how could you not, the disaffected overanxious and all too sincere Fisher unwittingly (and then also willfully) stirring up riots from the flapping bloody bandage on his head?
My soft spot intact, apparently, for an ill-fated, certifiable antihero with questionably massive head trauma and a doomed violin.
(By the way, I stumbled across this book trying to dig up McEwen’s essay, “Cary Grant’s Suit,” an old favorite essay from an old lost copy of Granta. Not a fitting trade, but a fair and enjoyable one.)
January 30, 2013
Just the funniest book ever written, that's all. Read it peeples!!!
March 15, 2019
Uno de los libros que más recomiendo y que me ha arrancado sonoras carcajadas.
March 10, 2008
The funniest book I ever read!
June 20, 2008
This is the funniest book I've ever read! Loved it
June 9, 2011
Hilarious. Just hugely energetic and fluent hilarity. LOVE.
April 14, 2010
Fisher seems to live in a perpetual nervous breakdown. You can take his absurdities in reason and action as real, understanding him as a self-destructive neurotic, perhaps trying to heal himself, perhaps not. Or you can take the absurdities as exaggerations that are not literally true but reflect both his feelings and his effort to purge the clutter in his life-- just as we can enjoy the singing in opera and take it as a reflection of feelings without believing that the story is about people who always communicate by singing to each other and reptitively, at that.
Either way, the book is funny. A sense of the comedy is always uppermost because, unlike James Wilcox’s “Modern Baptists,” this book gives us Fisher’s miserable craziness, his reactions to the foolishness and flaws in himself and in the outer world without inviting us to feel Fisher’s really intimate yearnings. We are in his mind a very high percentage of the time, but what we find there are his rages and complaints, not the hard hurt that generates these feelings. In other words, McEwen doesn't allow you empathy that will dampen the comedy.
McEwen moves Fisher through Boston and its environs, starting with Walden Pond and moving on to Newbury Street, Boston, the Harvard Club, a low drinking establishment in Cambridge, Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall and more. Not all in a single day, to be sure, but in three or four. These erratic movements take Fisher through quite a few different social classes, too, including a rich friend who speaks in aristocratic accents, a series of bums represented by Frank of Oregon, a law student/girl friend, a daddy’s girl from the yachting set who says things like “oh goody” and has an perfectly decorated apartment, and Rachel, the commune girl.
Fisher’s nutty behavior seems to attract women. If you substitute “sex” for “love,” the message seems to be like Carson McCullers’ – sex can overcome all the differences between and on behalf of those who’ve been maimed in mind or body. So what if Fisher’s crazy as a bedbug and rather destructive, too?
The women attracted to Fisher, unsurprisingly, have harmless sexual needs of a specialized order, one involving what I imagine must be a standard fantasy involving doctors and patients, the other perhaps a less common one. Fisher’s actual sexual acts with three women are not described pornographically or in terms of body parts, but with attention to detail in the play-acting and in Fisher’s feelings. Funny, of course, because this book is all about funny, but some people may think some of the scenes (there are not many) manage a modicum of eroticism, too, although in general I tend to think it is an either/or thing–either the humor dominates or the eroticism.
Part of the book’s humor lies in the absurdities of Fisher’s behavior, part in the behavior of others, and part in the absurdities McEwen satirizes – everything from artsy French movies to the politically correct food in a kind of commune, not to mention several Establishments. In a way the cast of characters seems unusual. This is definitely not in the pattern of one sane man surrounded by comic nuts; nor is it the pattern of one comic nut surrounded by ordinary people. Most of the people here are a little nuts, not just Fisher. You might even wish for a straight ordinary person to contrast with Fisher from time to time.
The one underlying thing that makes all of the humor work is McEwen’s language. He writes funny sentences, of course, like other comic writers, full of unexpected ways of seeing things and witty expressions of the insight. But more. He really likes words and what can be done with them and I think he plays with little secret or at least obscure layers or messages. The book’s name, “Fisher’s Hornpipe” could be read to mean only “Fisher’s Dance,” the main character’s dance through Boston (and life?). But hornpipe is not only a type of dance; “Fisher’s Hornpipe” is the name of a specific hornpipe tune. I think McEwen enjoys getting layers of meaning and enhancing ambiguities.
Lots of allusions, not just puns, but allusions to all kinds of things. Fisher’s encounter with Thoreau himself might be funny even to people who never heard of Thoreau, but funnier to those who have. Late in the book McEwen runs a riff on the famous lines about Christopher Robin’s teddy bear, which begins this way:
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head.”
(A.A. Milne's "Winnie-The-Pooh," Chapter I.)
McEwen’s riff:
“Balluno dragged Fisher up the steps Bump! Thump! Bump. . . up the narrow stairs BumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpBump! Bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbump! Into the sitting room.”
(P. 240). I think McEwen likes the sounds words make and he makes up some; and as this example maybe shows, I think he likes the very appearance of words on the page, which can prompt a different kind of laugh. I also suspect that he likes making obscure, maybe almost secret allusions that carry little messages to the reader about themes of the book. I’ll mention a couple of possibilities in a moment.
The book opens with a quotation from good old cranky, self-righteous Thoreau: he threw out some belongings because they required dusting when he hadn’t even managed to dust the furniture of his mind. Sure enough, Fisher literally and repeatedly throws away real furniture and metaphorical furniture--relationships with individuals and with the larger community. Walden’s in his head.
In a way, the book, though funny, is also a layered tale about simplification of Fisher’s chaotic inner life. Thoreau’s admonition was to “simplify, simplify” (a line which, Mr. T, you yourself could have simplified by 50% if you’d truly favored simplicity). Simplification by dumping furniture and friends doesn’t seem to get Fisher anywhere as he goes from place to place, but at the end we might think that maybe someday it will and that his craziness has been, after all, a purge and simplification.
One justification for saying so is that McEwen seems to point to changes in Fisher toward the end of the book. Fisher hears quartets by Haydn and Mozart. However lively those quartets, there is order in them, not chaos. And in one of McEwen's half-hidden hints that remind us of the theme, both are in 4/4 time. Musicians call that simple time though McEwen doesn’t say so. (I don't read music, but as best I can make out, the tune called Fisher's Hornpipe is also in 4/4 or simple time! Lots of cryptic clues here.)
Not only does all this suggest that Fisher has managed to simplify his life a little in obedience to Mr. T’s repetitious imperative, but the quartets are played by ghosts --which is to say by beings (OK, non-beings, then) whose bodies, those dying animals, have been discarded like other useless furniture. More simplification, then.
And finally McEwen lets us see glimpses of order and simplification in a stylized Navajo rug that somehow characterizes Fisher’s new thinking. So maybe the beatitude of order and simplicity is in store for Fisher after all. Happily for readers, though, we are not burdened with Fisher’s prospective peace; if he is actually working to discard the chaos along with his other furniture, we get to enjoy his chaos in the process.
As much as I liked and admired this humorous novel, I thought it sagged in places. We are in Fisher’s mind a high percentage of the time and sometimes his anger, general neuroticism, social criticism, and self-involvement just are not enough. I got bored reading over and over how Fisher and a companion had a drink and then, to steal McEwen’s style, anotheranotheranotheranother,andAnother!
Will you like it enough to want to read it? My advice is to read the first four pages standing first on one foot and then the other in the aisle of some ancient second hand book store. If you are grinning when you’ve finished four pages, buy the damned thing. In fact, if you are lucky enough to find it in a second hand bookstore or a thrift shop, I say buy the thing whether you grin or not. Or, if you can afford the fines for late returns, my friends, there’s always the library.
Either way, the book is funny. A sense of the comedy is always uppermost because, unlike James Wilcox’s “Modern Baptists,” this book gives us Fisher’s miserable craziness, his reactions to the foolishness and flaws in himself and in the outer world without inviting us to feel Fisher’s really intimate yearnings. We are in his mind a very high percentage of the time, but what we find there are his rages and complaints, not the hard hurt that generates these feelings. In other words, McEwen doesn't allow you empathy that will dampen the comedy.
McEwen moves Fisher through Boston and its environs, starting with Walden Pond and moving on to Newbury Street, Boston, the Harvard Club, a low drinking establishment in Cambridge, Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall and more. Not all in a single day, to be sure, but in three or four. These erratic movements take Fisher through quite a few different social classes, too, including a rich friend who speaks in aristocratic accents, a series of bums represented by Frank of Oregon, a law student/girl friend, a daddy’s girl from the yachting set who says things like “oh goody” and has an perfectly decorated apartment, and Rachel, the commune girl.
Fisher’s nutty behavior seems to attract women. If you substitute “sex” for “love,” the message seems to be like Carson McCullers’ – sex can overcome all the differences between and on behalf of those who’ve been maimed in mind or body. So what if Fisher’s crazy as a bedbug and rather destructive, too?
The women attracted to Fisher, unsurprisingly, have harmless sexual needs of a specialized order, one involving what I imagine must be a standard fantasy involving doctors and patients, the other perhaps a less common one. Fisher’s actual sexual acts with three women are not described pornographically or in terms of body parts, but with attention to detail in the play-acting and in Fisher’s feelings. Funny, of course, because this book is all about funny, but some people may think some of the scenes (there are not many) manage a modicum of eroticism, too, although in general I tend to think it is an either/or thing–either the humor dominates or the eroticism.
Part of the book’s humor lies in the absurdities of Fisher’s behavior, part in the behavior of others, and part in the absurdities McEwen satirizes – everything from artsy French movies to the politically correct food in a kind of commune, not to mention several Establishments. In a way the cast of characters seems unusual. This is definitely not in the pattern of one sane man surrounded by comic nuts; nor is it the pattern of one comic nut surrounded by ordinary people. Most of the people here are a little nuts, not just Fisher. You might even wish for a straight ordinary person to contrast with Fisher from time to time.
The one underlying thing that makes all of the humor work is McEwen’s language. He writes funny sentences, of course, like other comic writers, full of unexpected ways of seeing things and witty expressions of the insight. But more. He really likes words and what can be done with them and I think he plays with little secret or at least obscure layers or messages. The book’s name, “Fisher’s Hornpipe” could be read to mean only “Fisher’s Dance,” the main character’s dance through Boston (and life?). But hornpipe is not only a type of dance; “Fisher’s Hornpipe” is the name of a specific hornpipe tune. I think McEwen enjoys getting layers of meaning and enhancing ambiguities.
Lots of allusions, not just puns, but allusions to all kinds of things. Fisher’s encounter with Thoreau himself might be funny even to people who never heard of Thoreau, but funnier to those who have. Late in the book McEwen runs a riff on the famous lines about Christopher Robin’s teddy bear, which begins this way:
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head.”
(A.A. Milne's "Winnie-The-Pooh," Chapter I.)
McEwen’s riff:
“Balluno dragged Fisher up the steps Bump! Thump! Bump. . . up the narrow stairs BumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpBump! Bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbump! Into the sitting room.”
(P. 240). I think McEwen likes the sounds words make and he makes up some; and as this example maybe shows, I think he likes the very appearance of words on the page, which can prompt a different kind of laugh. I also suspect that he likes making obscure, maybe almost secret allusions that carry little messages to the reader about themes of the book. I’ll mention a couple of possibilities in a moment.
The book opens with a quotation from good old cranky, self-righteous Thoreau: he threw out some belongings because they required dusting when he hadn’t even managed to dust the furniture of his mind. Sure enough, Fisher literally and repeatedly throws away real furniture and metaphorical furniture--relationships with individuals and with the larger community. Walden’s in his head.
In a way, the book, though funny, is also a layered tale about simplification of Fisher’s chaotic inner life. Thoreau’s admonition was to “simplify, simplify” (a line which, Mr. T, you yourself could have simplified by 50% if you’d truly favored simplicity). Simplification by dumping furniture and friends doesn’t seem to get Fisher anywhere as he goes from place to place, but at the end we might think that maybe someday it will and that his craziness has been, after all, a purge and simplification.
One justification for saying so is that McEwen seems to point to changes in Fisher toward the end of the book. Fisher hears quartets by Haydn and Mozart. However lively those quartets, there is order in them, not chaos. And in one of McEwen's half-hidden hints that remind us of the theme, both are in 4/4 time. Musicians call that simple time though McEwen doesn’t say so. (I don't read music, but as best I can make out, the tune called Fisher's Hornpipe is also in 4/4 or simple time! Lots of cryptic clues here.)
Not only does all this suggest that Fisher has managed to simplify his life a little in obedience to Mr. T’s repetitious imperative, but the quartets are played by ghosts --which is to say by beings (OK, non-beings, then) whose bodies, those dying animals, have been discarded like other useless furniture. More simplification, then.
And finally McEwen lets us see glimpses of order and simplification in a stylized Navajo rug that somehow characterizes Fisher’s new thinking. So maybe the beatitude of order and simplicity is in store for Fisher after all. Happily for readers, though, we are not burdened with Fisher’s prospective peace; if he is actually working to discard the chaos along with his other furniture, we get to enjoy his chaos in the process.
As much as I liked and admired this humorous novel, I thought it sagged in places. We are in Fisher’s mind a high percentage of the time and sometimes his anger, general neuroticism, social criticism, and self-involvement just are not enough. I got bored reading over and over how Fisher and a companion had a drink and then, to steal McEwen’s style, anotheranotheranotheranother,andAnother!
Will you like it enough to want to read it? My advice is to read the first four pages standing first on one foot and then the other in the aisle of some ancient second hand book store. If you are grinning when you’ve finished four pages, buy the damned thing. In fact, if you are lucky enough to find it in a second hand bookstore or a thrift shop, I say buy the thing whether you grin or not. Or, if you can afford the fines for late returns, my friends, there’s always the library.
April 1, 2013
La apertura de “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” (publicado en nuestro país por Automática) es francamente espectacular: el protagonista, William Fisher, pasea por la laguna helada de Walden y se topa con el mismísimo Henry David Thoreau que, bajo el hielo, dentro del agua, le pide ayuda para poder salir de nuevo hacia la superficie. En su huída a la búsqueda de auxilio, Fisher da un traspiés y cae estrepitosamente sobre el hielo, abriéndose la cabeza… Imposible pensar en un arranque más espectacular: un punto de partida poderoso en lo argumental pero a la vez magnéticamente metafórico, ya que lo de sacar a la superficie a Thoreau es algo que seguirá planeando sobre el libro de Todd McEwen hasta su explosivo final. La brecha en la cabeza de Will Fisher será un síntoma aparatoso (con su eterna venda empapada de sangre) que indicará al resto del mundo que el protagonista, definitivamente, “no está bien”. Por mucho que él se esfuerce en probar lo contrario verbalmente, sus acciones van por delante: a partir de su accidente, todo el mundo alrededor de Fisher parece desmoronarse. Su trabajo como burócrata de segunda no tardará en desintegrarse en una concatenación de malentendidos rayana al slapstick, y su relación de pareja terminará de hacerse pedazos revelando que, de hecho, tampoco es que estuviera de una pieza desde el principio. Eso en lo concreto. En lo general, el protagonista acabará por encabezar un movimiento de desobediencia civil puramente homeless que, de nuevo, entronca con Thoreau.
Además de con el autor de “Walden“, no es difícil tender cuerdas desde “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” hasta otros autores de los que bebe su particular revolución hobo: el manuscrito de McEwen explora un area de valores esencialistas ajenos a la sociedad de consumo de una forma muy similar a la de William Kotzwinkle en “El Hombre Ventilador“, aunque también hay aquí mucho de exaltación de cierto hippismo idealista que puede rastrearse desde la ficción de Tom Wolfe o Jim Dodge hasta las vivencias narradas en primera persona de otro revolucionario anti-capitalista como Jerry Rubin en su “Do It! Escenarios de la Revolución“. Y lo más sorprendente de todo: la dialéctica que se establece entre William Fisher y el vagabundo Frank de Oregón, que será el hombre a la sombra que espoleará los eventos contestatarios in crescendo, es inevitable pensarla como un precedente muy sugerente de lo que posteriormente conoceríamos en “El Club de la Lucha“: una relación esquizofrénica en la que el personaje que alimenta la locura del protagonista acaba siendo poco más que una quimera mental de este. En este caso, aunque la posibilidad está ahí (Frank desaparece en el momento crucial de la novela), parece que hay menos paja mental y mucho más humor como desengrasante de una acción que cada vez se va desquiciando más y más.
Sea como sea, más allá de las múltiples coartadas literarias y de la puesta al día de las teorías de Thoreau, “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” acaba siendo también un retrato de la vida en la ciudad, tanto en abstracto como en concreto (no es azaroso que el nombre de la ciudad en la que transcurre el libro encabece el título). Más allá del fresco que McEwen pinta para capturar Boston como una ciudad gris, fría y claustrofóbica (es muy gráfica su descripción meteorológica como El Culo), el escritor consigue plasmar a la perfección el absurdo de una vida urbanita obsesionada con las apariencias (como las del restaurante al que Fisher va en compañía de su nuevo ligue y donde la acción explota por primera vez en dirección a su grand finale), con la vida laboral e incluso con un rollito eco-consciente que, por mucho que debería verse refrendado por el corpus teórico de Thoreau, es ridiculizado aquí con bastante sarna. El autor lo hace, además, con una prosa que huye de las normas gramaticales básicas para crear un lenguaje original que al principio descoloca pero al que, finalmente, tampoco resulta tan difícil encontrarle unas normas básicas que lo ordenen y le den sentido (una experiencia similar a la de Anthony Burgess en “La Naranja Mecánica“).
Tampoco hay que dejarse guiar, sin embargo, por el cúmulo de referencias esnobistas esgrimidas en esta reseña: “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” es un libro que se disfruta de forma primaria, que ataca antes al estómago (que es donde se origina la risa) que a la cabeza. Como toda buena experiencia literaria, el libro de McEwen presenta diferentes capas de sentido. Te corresponde a tí decidir dónde te quedas: en la risotada… o en el momento en el que los músculos se congelan y te das cuenta que, detrás del humor, hay algo más chungo.
Además de con el autor de “Walden“, no es difícil tender cuerdas desde “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” hasta otros autores de los que bebe su particular revolución hobo: el manuscrito de McEwen explora un area de valores esencialistas ajenos a la sociedad de consumo de una forma muy similar a la de William Kotzwinkle en “El Hombre Ventilador“, aunque también hay aquí mucho de exaltación de cierto hippismo idealista que puede rastrearse desde la ficción de Tom Wolfe o Jim Dodge hasta las vivencias narradas en primera persona de otro revolucionario anti-capitalista como Jerry Rubin en su “Do It! Escenarios de la Revolución“. Y lo más sorprendente de todo: la dialéctica que se establece entre William Fisher y el vagabundo Frank de Oregón, que será el hombre a la sombra que espoleará los eventos contestatarios in crescendo, es inevitable pensarla como un precedente muy sugerente de lo que posteriormente conoceríamos en “El Club de la Lucha“: una relación esquizofrénica en la que el personaje que alimenta la locura del protagonista acaba siendo poco más que una quimera mental de este. En este caso, aunque la posibilidad está ahí (Frank desaparece en el momento crucial de la novela), parece que hay menos paja mental y mucho más humor como desengrasante de una acción que cada vez se va desquiciando más y más.
Sea como sea, más allá de las múltiples coartadas literarias y de la puesta al día de las teorías de Thoreau, “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” acaba siendo también un retrato de la vida en la ciudad, tanto en abstracto como en concreto (no es azaroso que el nombre de la ciudad en la que transcurre el libro encabece el título). Más allá del fresco que McEwen pinta para capturar Boston como una ciudad gris, fría y claustrofóbica (es muy gráfica su descripción meteorológica como El Culo), el escritor consigue plasmar a la perfección el absurdo de una vida urbanita obsesionada con las apariencias (como las del restaurante al que Fisher va en compañía de su nuevo ligue y donde la acción explota por primera vez en dirección a su grand finale), con la vida laboral e incluso con un rollito eco-consciente que, por mucho que debería verse refrendado por el corpus teórico de Thoreau, es ridiculizado aquí con bastante sarna. El autor lo hace, además, con una prosa que huye de las normas gramaticales básicas para crear un lenguaje original que al principio descoloca pero al que, finalmente, tampoco resulta tan difícil encontrarle unas normas básicas que lo ordenen y le den sentido (una experiencia similar a la de Anthony Burgess en “La Naranja Mecánica“).
Tampoco hay que dejarse guiar, sin embargo, por el cúmulo de referencias esnobistas esgrimidas en esta reseña: “Boston. Sonata para Violín sin Cuerdas” es un libro que se disfruta de forma primaria, que ataca antes al estómago (que es donde se origina la risa) que a la cabeza. Como toda buena experiencia literaria, el libro de McEwen presenta diferentes capas de sentido. Te corresponde a tí decidir dónde te quedas: en la risotada… o en el momento en el que los músculos se congelan y te das cuenta que, detrás del humor, hay algo más chungo.
Read
July 13, 2018ok yeah!!! this type of cartoonish-but-literary quasi-picaresque (complete w/ don martin sound effects) is extreeeeeemely my jam so if anyone has recs (besides confederacy obvi) kindly hmu. i can testify from personal experience that writing slapstick is harder than it seems so s/o to my man todd here for wringing every drop of hilarity from, e.g., getting stuck in a loom, a catastrophic french press mishap, &c. all that being said there's no earthly justification for the last page of this thing, which beyond doing no justice to the preceding ones is exactly the kind of bland pretense lampooned in the rest of the novel. part of me is like "if only he'd stuck the landing!" but most of me is extremely pleased
February 14, 2023
Very funny.
"You can't go back there, they're combing Massachusetts for you. Ah well, it needed combing, said Fisher."
"Oh, I didn't go to Harvard silly, she said. I'm a Buffalo dropout. I know what drops out of Buffalo, he said, and I've seen it blowing across the prarie in dry cakes."
"ANYONE CAN MAKE FOLK MUSIC, read a sign. True enough said Fisher. But nobody knows what do with it once its made. They just stand around with it dripping all over the floor."
"You can't go back there, they're combing Massachusetts for you. Ah well, it needed combing, said Fisher."
"Oh, I didn't go to Harvard silly, she said. I'm a Buffalo dropout. I know what drops out of Buffalo, he said, and I've seen it blowing across the prarie in dry cakes."
"ANYONE CAN MAKE FOLK MUSIC, read a sign. True enough said Fisher. But nobody knows what do with it once its made. They just stand around with it dripping all over the floor."
August 16, 2019
This has been my favorite book for a long time now and I periodically re-read it, and it makes me double over with laughter every time. I used to dislike the ending but, the more I've thought about it over the years, the more I've come to think it's a very fitting ending after all.
January 21, 2024
An absurd novel poking fun at all things Bostonian; if you thought the movie "The Graduate" was hilarious, then you will love this. Lots of wordsmithery cleverly jousting for attention; literary yet somewhat a waste of time.
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August 28, 2007"This Bandage has nothing to do with my behavior!"
Having experienced both Boston and a head injury, i have a certain fondness for this title.
Having experienced both Boston and a head injury, i have a certain fondness for this title.
December 3, 2023
Possibly one of the funniest books I’ve had the pleasure of reading What a fantastic character William Fisher is and his zany exploits are riotous
May 9, 2021
Qué bien todo, oye.
El libro promete ir de transgresor por cómo se reinventa la puntuación para crear una sensación diferente entre los diálogos y la narración, y parece que todo va a girar en torno a esa manera de contar la historia. Luego resulta que este es solo uno de los muchos accesorios que hacen este libro una delicia.
El protagonista es una persona hecha un delirio. El narrador lo acompaña tanto en este recorrido que, por momentos, parece indistinguible del protagonista, con comentarios estridentes y apasionados. Y, al tiempo, el texto incluye tantísimos otros pasajes cabales, sosegados, descriptivos, que hacen que no sea una simple composición de historias estrambóticas en un mundo aparentemente alejado del nuestro.
El libro, además, se hace divertido y ameno de leer. Desquiciante en el sentido más hilarante del término. No hay página en la que no puedas preguntar cuál será el siguiente despropósito que nos será relatado.
Para rematar, la edición y, en concreto, la traducción, están especialmente mimadas; han decidido tratar este texto como un ejemplar de culto y dotarlo de papel de calidad y notas al pie muy bien escogidas para que el lector no se pierda ni un solo detalle relevante. Ojalá tanto mimo en más libros.
El libro promete ir de transgresor por cómo se reinventa la puntuación para crear una sensación diferente entre los diálogos y la narración, y parece que todo va a girar en torno a esa manera de contar la historia. Luego resulta que este es solo uno de los muchos accesorios que hacen este libro una delicia.
El protagonista es una persona hecha un delirio. El narrador lo acompaña tanto en este recorrido que, por momentos, parece indistinguible del protagonista, con comentarios estridentes y apasionados. Y, al tiempo, el texto incluye tantísimos otros pasajes cabales, sosegados, descriptivos, que hacen que no sea una simple composición de historias estrambóticas en un mundo aparentemente alejado del nuestro.
El libro, además, se hace divertido y ameno de leer. Desquiciante en el sentido más hilarante del término. No hay página en la que no puedas preguntar cuál será el siguiente despropósito que nos será relatado.
Para rematar, la edición y, en concreto, la traducción, están especialmente mimadas; han decidido tratar este texto como un ejemplar de culto y dotarlo de papel de calidad y notas al pie muy bien escogidas para que el lector no se pierda ni un solo detalle relevante. Ojalá tanto mimo en más libros.
March 18, 2021
I first read this masterpiece a year or so after after it came out and I've dipped into it regularly ever since, committing plenty to memory; I'll never know how much it reflected my own sense of humor vs how much it formed it; regardless, it's been my litmus test for humor since.
Naturally, when it came to chaining myself to someone for life, it had to be clear that she fully appreciated FH before we joined our lot. She and I shared laughs over it for a full six or seven years prior to marriage. Well, I had to be sure! Also, she was married to another at the time. Coming up on our 30 yr. anniversary, I think the book has shown it's worth as an an indication of compatibility.
If your prospective mate thinks this book to be silly, vapid, or even anything less than a comic tour de force, run away. If you feel the same, sneer at this review and continue on your grim and gloomy way.
Thank you T. McEwan.
Naturally, when it came to chaining myself to someone for life, it had to be clear that she fully appreciated FH before we joined our lot. She and I shared laughs over it for a full six or seven years prior to marriage. Well, I had to be sure! Also, she was married to another at the time. Coming up on our 30 yr. anniversary, I think the book has shown it's worth as an an indication of compatibility.
If your prospective mate thinks this book to be silly, vapid, or even anything less than a comic tour de force, run away. If you feel the same, sneer at this review and continue on your grim and gloomy way.
Thank you T. McEwan.
April 25, 2021
Vertiginoso y genialmente hilarante. "Mi vendaje no tiene nada que ver con mi comportamiento."
August 18, 2021
a very fun and entertaining read. not very deep, but occasional moments of depth, and sometimes a very surprising vocabulary.
October 4, 2007
very silly, slapstick fiction but fun. like a light weight Confederacy of Dunces
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