Traffic & Laughter

by Ted Mooney

From the author of Easy Travel to Other Planets , here is "a work of high art—intelligent, sophisticated and funny, a truly original book" ( New York Times Book Review ).

From the hills above Los Angeles to the French town where Hitler once danced his victory jig, this alluring novel cruises the intersection between the farcical and the tragic.

Praise for Ted Mooney

“[A] combustible literary cross between Hawkesian avant-garde and Don DeLillo’s post-modern cool.”—The New York Times

“Unsettling, coolly intense. . . . Mooney is a risk-taking adventurer in novelistic possibilities.”— San Francisco Chronicle

“Equally enchanting and disorienting.”— Boston Book Review

Genres: Fiction, Novels

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Like most fiction writers, I write to *discover* what I think, not to to report on what I already know.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I did not finish this book. I gave it 240 pages before realizing I couldn’t bear slogging through another 160. I was promised a glimpse of the apocalypse, but all I got was diplomatic banter. Unlikeable characters putter around Los Angeles lying, cheating, and whining without anything significant happening. There were a few loose ends and unexplained coincidences I would have liked to see resolved, but I didn’t want to waste any more of my time with a book that utterly failed to captivate me. Between the characters I couldn’t trust, overly ambitious prose that rambled too much, and a non-existent plot, this book was a fail.

[cartercam · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into this one. It is very dreamy and surreal, and the people bothered me in the beginning. But about halfway through I found the book's stride and I'm glad I did. The people still bothered me, but there was enough else going on that the annoyance was minimal. Not really sure what the "real" story is because it is kind of mixed up, but I think that is kind of the point.