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The Diviners: A Novel
During one month in the autumn of election year 2000, scores of movie-business strivers are focused on one getting a piece of an elusive, but surely huge, television saga, the one that opens with Huns sweeping through Mongolia and closes with a Mormon diviner in the Las Vegas desert; the sure-to-please-everyone multigenerational TV miniseries about diviners, those miracle workers who bring water to perpetually thirsty (and hungry and love-starved) humankind. Among the Vanessa Meandro, hot-tempered head of Means of Production, an indie film company; her harried and varied staff; a Sikh cab driver, promoted to the office of -theory and practice of TV; a bipolar bicycle messenger, who makes a fateful mis-delivery; two celebrity publicists, the Vanderbilt girls; a thriller writer who gives Botox parties; the daughter of an L.A. big-shot, who is hired to fetch Vanessa's Krispy Kremes and more; a word man who coined the phrase -- inspired by a true story; and a supreme court justice who wants to write the script.A few true artists surface in the course of Moody's rollicking but intricately woven novel, and real emotion eventually blossoms for most of Vanessa's staff at Means of Production, even herself. The Diviners is a cautionary tale about pointless ambition; a richly detailed look at the interlocking worlds of money, politics, addiction, sex, work, and family in modern America; and a masterpiece of comedy that will bring Rick Moody to a still higher level of appreciation.
580 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2005
25 people are currently reading
515 people want to read
About the author
Rick Moody
165 books345 followersHiram Frederick Moody III is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought him widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into the film The Ice Storm. Many of his works have been praised by fellow writers and critics alike.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
October 30, 2009
Just because you can describe a sunrise in 14 pages doesn't mean you have to.
January 4, 2025
CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 2020'S POST-POSTMODERNISM):
Characters Without Narrative
Narrative has frequently been scorned by postmodernism, so much so that there is often little dynamism in postmodern novels.
There are 33 chapters in "The Diviners", two of which purport to be "opening credits and theme music" and "epilogue and scenes from upcoming episodes".
This artifice suggests that the novel itself is the foundation of a television miniseries.
Each chapter relates to one or more characters, though there is not necessarily any discernible narrative that occurs with respect to the characters, either during the chapter or over the course of the novel as a whole.
This means that the author's or narrator's focus appears to be to identify and describe each character, without necessarily positioning them in a narrative or a story.
As a result, the novel contains little or no dynamism (even if gambling, werewolves and U.F.O.'s are adverted to). It is little more than a static wax museum or a collection of pictures at an exhibition. It contains too few verbs and too many adjectives and nouns.
Paradoxically, a character who is a film producer argues that, in general -
What is puzzling is that the achievement of the novel is the complete opposite of a miniseries. It lacks the dynamism and appeal of spectacle.
You have to question whether the novel warrants 567 pages of writing or reading.
Rick Moody
CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 1980'S POSTMODERNISM [FRANKIE SAY]):
Fragments of a Rainy Season
Whatever your thirst, "The Diviners" is unlikely to quench it.
Bandwagonesque
If "The Diviners" was a TV series, it would probably feature (if not star) actors like Edward Norton (1) and Nicole Kidman Not forgetting Courtney Love
Many Happy Returns
Tears are not enough.
Non-Stop Erratic Cabaret
Say hello, wave goodbye.
Deck the Halls with Holly Johnson
This novel lacks the working class spunk and authenticity of the cover version of "Born to Run" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
What's missing is both "The Power of Love" and "The Look of Love".
When you want to suck it, chew it.
Frankie say no more.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) I am nevertheless looking forward to seeing Edward Norton playing Pete Seeger in "A Complete Unknown".
SOUNDTRACK:
OF 2020'S POST-POSTMODERNISM):
Characters Without Narrative
Narrative has frequently been scorned by postmodernism, so much so that there is often little dynamism in postmodern novels.
There are 33 chapters in "The Diviners", two of which purport to be "opening credits and theme music" and "epilogue and scenes from upcoming episodes".
This artifice suggests that the novel itself is the foundation of a television miniseries.
Each chapter relates to one or more characters, though there is not necessarily any discernible narrative that occurs with respect to the characters, either during the chapter or over the course of the novel as a whole.
This means that the author's or narrator's focus appears to be to identify and describe each character, without necessarily positioning them in a narrative or a story.
As a result, the novel contains little or no dynamism (even if gambling, werewolves and U.F.O.'s are adverted to). It is little more than a static wax museum or a collection of pictures at an exhibition. It contains too few verbs and too many adjectives and nouns.
Paradoxically, a character who is a film producer argues that, in general -
"every single citizen [is] either part of the spectacle or part of the audience. There are...two categories of [person], the entertainers and the entertained."
What is puzzling is that the achievement of the novel is the complete opposite of a miniseries. It lacks the dynamism and appeal of spectacle.
You have to question whether the novel warrants 567 pages of writing or reading.
Rick Moody
CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 1980'S POSTMODERNISM [FRANKIE SAY]):
Fragments of a Rainy Season
Whatever your thirst, "The Diviners" is unlikely to quench it.
Bandwagonesque
If "The Diviners" was a TV series, it would probably feature (if not star) actors like Edward Norton (1) and Nicole Kidman Not forgetting Courtney Love
Many Happy Returns
Tears are not enough.
Non-Stop Erratic Cabaret
Say hello, wave goodbye.
Deck the Halls with Holly Johnson
This novel lacks the working class spunk and authenticity of the cover version of "Born to Run" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
What's missing is both "The Power of Love" and "The Look of Love".
When you want to suck it, chew it.
Frankie say no more.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) I am nevertheless looking forward to seeing Edward Norton playing Pete Seeger in "A Complete Unknown".
SOUNDTRACK:
August 16, 2007
I should have loved everything about this book. Lots of quirky characters, strange happenings, reality with heightened senses and observations…if that makes sense. So why did I dislike it so so much and it take me nearly 3 months to finish? Couldn't say. Stay away from this one…Sorry Rick Moody, you're boring.
December 27, 2020
Outside of some amazingly crafted passages of prose (Moody is a good writer) interspersed between pages and pages of grandiose literary diarrhea (his editor was obviously asleep on the job) this is a loosely plotted novel about loosely connected individuals all driven by thirst of some kind whether it be sexual, artistic, or success driven.
Upon my first attempt at reading it I couldn't get past that long winded god awful first chapter about light on this and light on that. After five pages of that light on bullshit I put the book down.
I stuck it through the second time around and probably should have stuck with my first instinct.
It not a really good read.
It's a shame. There are some really great characters. Some really great subplots. And, at times, some really great writing.
Unfortunately it comes together as a disappointing whole.
Upon my first attempt at reading it I couldn't get past that long winded god awful first chapter about light on this and light on that. After five pages of that light on bullshit I put the book down.
I stuck it through the second time around and probably should have stuck with my first instinct.
It not a really good read.
It's a shame. There are some really great characters. Some really great subplots. And, at times, some really great writing.
Unfortunately it comes together as a disappointing whole.
November 23, 2009
So is this a good book? Tough to say. I think it's fair to say that in spite of its frequently remarkable badness at all levels of execution –– from the maddening pretension of individual word choices and the needless circumlocutions that are unfortunately what I suspect most people think of as Rick Moody's prose style all the way up to the relentlessly unfunny jokes (despite the tendency of every other blurb quoted pre–title page to laud its satiric humor, this is not an especially funny novel) and the catastrophically failed experiments (I'm thinking in particular of the preposterously [and preposterously inauthentic-sounding:] pseudo-academic riff on the "Ugly Girl [U.G.:],") –– The Diviners is not a bad book.
I'm not in the mood to write an essay today; I have laundry to hang, and anyway I don't think Rick's in the position these days of needing to have books written several years back defended by the likes of me; what I'll say I'll take from a very famous review written in almost the exact opposite spirit of what I think I want to say here (although, come to think of it, maybe he meant what I mean, too; who knows what lies in the hearts of men?): this is not a bad book, it is in fact probably, in spite of the many times its author seems bent on doing everything in his (considerable) power to ruin it, a very good book, and it is a very good book for the sole reason that this author is transparently, earnestly, nakedly sad, and this sadness saturates every page of his writing, and if it's true that Rick Moody is annoying and simultaneously self-sabotaging and -aggrandizing and absurdly overexposed and all of the rest, I believe that he is compassionate and sad, I know it, there's a kind of sadness you can't fake, and for this reason alone I will nevertheless wade through a hundred terrible Moody sentences in order to get to the one that reminds me why I've picked up yet another one of these disasters and am in the face of a not infrequent yearning to fling the book into the path of an oncoming train (I do much of my reading at the highly efficient Nishitetsu Railway train stations) continuing to read.
This, quite often in spite of itself, is water.
I'm not in the mood to write an essay today; I have laundry to hang, and anyway I don't think Rick's in the position these days of needing to have books written several years back defended by the likes of me; what I'll say I'll take from a very famous review written in almost the exact opposite spirit of what I think I want to say here (although, come to think of it, maybe he meant what I mean, too; who knows what lies in the hearts of men?): this is not a bad book, it is in fact probably, in spite of the many times its author seems bent on doing everything in his (considerable) power to ruin it, a very good book, and it is a very good book for the sole reason that this author is transparently, earnestly, nakedly sad, and this sadness saturates every page of his writing, and if it's true that Rick Moody is annoying and simultaneously self-sabotaging and -aggrandizing and absurdly overexposed and all of the rest, I believe that he is compassionate and sad, I know it, there's a kind of sadness you can't fake, and for this reason alone I will nevertheless wade through a hundred terrible Moody sentences in order to get to the one that reminds me why I've picked up yet another one of these disasters and am in the face of a not infrequent yearning to fling the book into the path of an oncoming train (I do much of my reading at the highly efficient Nishitetsu Railway train stations) continuing to read.
This, quite often in spite of itself, is water.
October 30, 2010
A glorious disaster of a book, Moody pulls together all the paranoia, phoniness and absurdity of early-21st century culture and society and detonates it across 600 pages of sprawling, non-linear prose. Set in late 2000 (and ending on the day before 9/11, I think), Moody levels his sights on the film industry and all the inane bullshit it represents. Every character is majorly flawed, unlikable and seemingly on the brink of a nervous breakdown, making it difficult to care whether or not they succeed in getting their movie off the ground.
It's telling that Moody opens the book with a long-winded description of planet Earth making a full rotation westwards from Los Angeles all the way around the world, and then stopping at New York City, "that metropolis of insomniacs". What Rick, do us chumps in flyover country get no love? And is he implying that so many cops were at the World Trade Center on 9/11 because of the Kripsy Kreme franchise located there?
Again, like Lethem's Chronic City, it's a shame to waste all this beautiful writing on self-obsessed, dysfunctional New Yorkers. And yes, we all know reality TV sucks, mainstream movies are completely idiotic, and wine snobs are hilarious (though I did love the Werewolves of Fairfield County chapter).
Written in 2005, it must've seemed dated to readers at the time, and read now, it feels downright ancient. Put this in a time capsule.
It's telling that Moody opens the book with a long-winded description of planet Earth making a full rotation westwards from Los Angeles all the way around the world, and then stopping at New York City, "that metropolis of insomniacs". What Rick, do us chumps in flyover country get no love? And is he implying that so many cops were at the World Trade Center on 9/11 because of the Kripsy Kreme franchise located there?
Again, like Lethem's Chronic City, it's a shame to waste all this beautiful writing on self-obsessed, dysfunctional New Yorkers. And yes, we all know reality TV sucks, mainstream movies are completely idiotic, and wine snobs are hilarious (though I did love the Werewolves of Fairfield County chapter).
Written in 2005, it must've seemed dated to readers at the time, and read now, it feels downright ancient. Put this in a time capsule.
May 2, 2020
Sometimes when you are on a roll, and the ideas for a story keep coming to you, awake or asleep, one of the worst things that can happen is you pick up a good book, one that grabs your imagination and won’t let you go, won’t let you get on with your own ideas until you’ve turned the last page.
The Diviners is such a book — too unpredictable to let sit, so memorable it clutters your mind with weird characters and unlikely events, all vividly portrayed. It’s a curse of a book. That’s why I’m up at 2 AM writing this and knowing that I’ll have to read the final 40 pages of The Diviners before I can go back to bed.
The Diviners isn’t just a story — it’s half a dozen stories that happen simultaneously, and stories inside those stories. Moody is a huckster, like a movie agent. While telling these stories, he is at the same time delivering a pitch for a collosal TV miniseries full of tales stretching from the days of Atilla the Hun to the foundation of Las Vegas. The outer stories deal with the people involved in creating this bizarre miniseries, and the stories inside, relating to a “currently running” TV drama about werewolves and to the projected miniseries are outrageous, ridiculous, and captivating. Imagine an old lady who hears other people’s cell phone conversatiosn in her head. Imagine a cabdriver in New York who, with no related experience, in a matter of weeks becomes the director of the key episodes of the miniseries. These characters grow on you, become real to you. So real that you get up at 2 AM and have to read to the end…
The Diviners is such a book — too unpredictable to let sit, so memorable it clutters your mind with weird characters and unlikely events, all vividly portrayed. It’s a curse of a book. That’s why I’m up at 2 AM writing this and knowing that I’ll have to read the final 40 pages of The Diviners before I can go back to bed.
The Diviners isn’t just a story — it’s half a dozen stories that happen simultaneously, and stories inside those stories. Moody is a huckster, like a movie agent. While telling these stories, he is at the same time delivering a pitch for a collosal TV miniseries full of tales stretching from the days of Atilla the Hun to the foundation of Las Vegas. The outer stories deal with the people involved in creating this bizarre miniseries, and the stories inside, relating to a “currently running” TV drama about werewolves and to the projected miniseries are outrageous, ridiculous, and captivating. Imagine an old lady who hears other people’s cell phone conversatiosn in her head. Imagine a cabdriver in New York who, with no related experience, in a matter of weeks becomes the director of the key episodes of the miniseries. These characters grow on you, become real to you. So real that you get up at 2 AM and have to read to the end…
tasted
December 23, 2019Too much for my taste.
January 16, 2012
Nearly seventy years ago, another Brunonian, Nathanael West, wrote "Day of the Locust", a classic satire about Hollywood culture. Now Rick Moody has wrought a bold, ambitious novel about Hollywood which deserves favorable comparison to West's novel. But "The Diviners" is a bold, ambitious novel which may not find favor with those who prefer linear fictional narratives, but rather, with those, like myself, who prize elegant, stylistic prose, even if it tends to be frequently overwrought; more in the style of a Neal Stephenson than a William Gibson (Though here Rick shares Gibson's recent interest in telling tales that are rather short on plot and are much more fascinating as stylish, well-written character vignettes.), for example. It's because I truly treasure Rick's lyrical prose that I regard him highly on my list of favorite authors (He ranks third in fiction after William Gibson and China Mieville; I will also confess that he was a classmate of mine in a writing seminar taught by a visiting professor, novelist Angela Carter.), and here in "The Diviners", he doesn't disappoint at all.
Set around the time of the 2000 American presidential election, "The Diviners" is ostensibly the tale of Vanessa Meandro, the ruthless, dictatorial head of the independent film production company "Means of Production", who believes that she has found the next hot property; a sprawling television miniseries about dowsers, "The Diviners", which is a veritable history of Mankind and his insatiable search for water. But the delightful Ms. Meandro, addicted to Krispy Kreme donuts, doesn't know that neither a treatment nor a script exists for this NEXT BIG THING emanating from Hollywood. She must rely upon the able assistance of her assistant - and aspiring filmmaker - Annabel Duffy and a Grade B film actor, Thaddeus Griffin, best known for his roles in Doug Limonesque action thrillers, in conjuring up the script. Along the way she has to contend with her hospitalized mother from Park Slope, Brooklyn, who has "visions" in her hospital ward, hires a Sikh cab driver as her television guru, deals with some rather vain and pretentious New York City publicists, and a larcenious accountant who steals tens of thousands of dollars from the production company, illegally writing it off as business expenses. Meanwhile, Annabel's brother (They are the adopted Afro-American offspring of a WASPy Boston minister and his sociologist wife.) is the prime suspect in the attempted murder of an Asian-American art dealer in Manhattan. And Thaddeus Griffin heads out to Sonoma County, California to meet with the world's greatest writer of wine, Randall Tork (He's a hilarious doppleganger for the "greatest" literary critic of our time, one Dale Peck, who thinks of himself as the next Walter Kirn or Michiko Kakutani.), seeking his assistance in writing the script for "The Diviners".
"The Diviners" may be a bloated gem of a novel, but it is also irresistably hilarious. It's the funniest book published this year that I have read so far. To his credit, Rick offers an amusing sendup of Joss Whedon's "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" in his fictional popular television drama "The Werewolves of Fairfield County" (And perhaps you, the reader, might have thought that he has forsaken completely his fictional roots in suburbia as evidenced in his novels "Garden State", "The Ice Storm" and "Purple America"? I think that you're in for a splendid, downright silly surprise!). Although "The Diviners" may not be the genuine literary classic which "The Ice Storm" has become, without question, Rick Moody has written his best work of fiction since that slender, elegantly-crafted novel.
(Adapted from my 2005 Amazon review)
Set around the time of the 2000 American presidential election, "The Diviners" is ostensibly the tale of Vanessa Meandro, the ruthless, dictatorial head of the independent film production company "Means of Production", who believes that she has found the next hot property; a sprawling television miniseries about dowsers, "The Diviners", which is a veritable history of Mankind and his insatiable search for water. But the delightful Ms. Meandro, addicted to Krispy Kreme donuts, doesn't know that neither a treatment nor a script exists for this NEXT BIG THING emanating from Hollywood. She must rely upon the able assistance of her assistant - and aspiring filmmaker - Annabel Duffy and a Grade B film actor, Thaddeus Griffin, best known for his roles in Doug Limonesque action thrillers, in conjuring up the script. Along the way she has to contend with her hospitalized mother from Park Slope, Brooklyn, who has "visions" in her hospital ward, hires a Sikh cab driver as her television guru, deals with some rather vain and pretentious New York City publicists, and a larcenious accountant who steals tens of thousands of dollars from the production company, illegally writing it off as business expenses. Meanwhile, Annabel's brother (They are the adopted Afro-American offspring of a WASPy Boston minister and his sociologist wife.) is the prime suspect in the attempted murder of an Asian-American art dealer in Manhattan. And Thaddeus Griffin heads out to Sonoma County, California to meet with the world's greatest writer of wine, Randall Tork (He's a hilarious doppleganger for the "greatest" literary critic of our time, one Dale Peck, who thinks of himself as the next Walter Kirn or Michiko Kakutani.), seeking his assistance in writing the script for "The Diviners".
"The Diviners" may be a bloated gem of a novel, but it is also irresistably hilarious. It's the funniest book published this year that I have read so far. To his credit, Rick offers an amusing sendup of Joss Whedon's "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" in his fictional popular television drama "The Werewolves of Fairfield County" (And perhaps you, the reader, might have thought that he has forsaken completely his fictional roots in suburbia as evidenced in his novels "Garden State", "The Ice Storm" and "Purple America"? I think that you're in for a splendid, downright silly surprise!). Although "The Diviners" may not be the genuine literary classic which "The Ice Storm" has become, without question, Rick Moody has written his best work of fiction since that slender, elegantly-crafted novel.
(Adapted from my 2005 Amazon review)
Read
February 5, 2009The "almost freakishly gifted stylist" Rick Moody concocts his latest as if it were The Bonfire of the Vanities as written by James Joyce (or so says The Washington Post). Most critics (at least those on the coasts) agree that the author's writerly gifts give new life to the age-old practice of Hollywood satire. As always, he does go way over the top (for example, the overlong prologue waxes poetic about the sun rising across the globe, and don't we already know that the god of pop culture is a false god?), but most reviewers could forgive the lapses. More important, Moody seems to be having fun. And there's something divine in that alone.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
November 3, 2009
Rick Moody's character's are connected by the idea of 'thirst,' whether it be a social, political, artistic, or entirely superficial struggle. oh, and occasinally by plot as well. They are sad and beautiful, specific yet mysterious. often funny. I've never read him before and I am impressed...he is able to capture the essense of an entire douglas coupland novel in a chapter. not that D.C. isn't incredibly pleasurable to read. Moody uses the platform of the arts to portray contemporary society and the ways in which it seeks satiation.
December 23, 2007
This guy sucks, and this book sucks worse. Classic Example of how money can buy you a publisher, agent, and good reviews, but unfortunately it can't buy you the ability to write. The opening sentence is quite possibly the worst sentence ever composed in the entire history of the English Language. I could only read a quarter of the book before vomiting and laying in bed for a week.
November 8, 2010
I really hated this book and had to force myself to finish it. It's frenetic drivel, which I think is supposed to be funny but isn't. I suspect the disjointedness of the narrative and odiousness of all of the characters is supposed to reflect the state of American society or the entertainment industry, but it makes for rather dull and painful reading. I'd skip this one.
June 23, 2007
While I think Rick Moody is technically a good writer, I hated this book! It had no focus and nothing was resolved regarding the very vague and rambling story. Do not waste your time.
July 31, 2007
I really wanted to like this book. I even got past the first 20 pages of that lady shitting. But there just weren't enough victories after that, so I gave up.
April 3, 2008
I used to like Moody, but wow, this one was really terrible. Got about 3/4 of the way through and finally gave up on it.
June 12, 2008
Unbearably pretentious. And just plain bad. I couldn't finish it.
January 20, 2008
I was really disappointed with this one.
March 24, 2020
I liked Rick Moody’s third novel, Purple America, so much that I set about finding and reading everything he’d ever written, which included some wildly diverse and inventive long and short stories, his earlier and more restrained if still enjoyable novels (the second of which Ang Lee adapted), and his highly eccentric memoir. Some of Moody’s more obvious influences include Joyce (the epiphany), Melville (digressions) and Angela Carter (satire) – in short, lovers of language, of theatre, of excess. Eventually all that remained was The Diviners, in which all of Moody’s quirks converge, starting with a 12-page description of day dawning around the Earth.
Though I’ve never been a fan of the epic (Middlemarch might be an exception) and Moody’s previous novels hadn’t prepared me for the slog, towards the end, in the course of his obligatory epiphany (foreshadowed by this description of a film producer: ‘She’s skeptical about epiphany, about the Greek origin of the word, the making manifest.’), he managed to wring moisture from my eyes.
Yet despite this small reward for making it through 500+ pages, I didn’t quite buy Moody’s story. Unlike some outlandish satires (Fight Club comes to mind), this failed to engage – like watching a performance seated too far back from the stage. So though I’ve since been tempted to read subsequent novels from Moody, I’ve never gotten round to following through. While The Diviners delivers sharp social criticism and its scope is admirably ambitious, the humour praised by reviewers falls flat compared to that in his hysterical Purple America.
Though I’ve never been a fan of the epic (Middlemarch might be an exception) and Moody’s previous novels hadn’t prepared me for the slog, towards the end, in the course of his obligatory epiphany (foreshadowed by this description of a film producer: ‘She’s skeptical about epiphany, about the Greek origin of the word, the making manifest.’), he managed to wring moisture from my eyes.
Yet despite this small reward for making it through 500+ pages, I didn’t quite buy Moody’s story. Unlike some outlandish satires (Fight Club comes to mind), this failed to engage – like watching a performance seated too far back from the stage. So though I’ve since been tempted to read subsequent novels from Moody, I’ve never gotten round to following through. While The Diviners delivers sharp social criticism and its scope is admirably ambitious, the humour praised by reviewers falls flat compared to that in his hysterical Purple America.
May 17, 2017
What makes a great book? And by what measure? And who's opinion? A books greatness lies solely in the eyes and heart of the reader. Every experience with every book should be different. The reason I say this is because I read a lot of negativity towards this book.....yet I loved it.
The Diviners is a master class in writing with remarkable characters that I want more of. The plot is merely secondary to the character sketches that are woven throughout. 4.5 stars....maybe 5.
The Diviners is a master class in writing with remarkable characters that I want more of. The plot is merely secondary to the character sketches that are woven throughout. 4.5 stars....maybe 5.
May 27, 2021
Moody has gotten more and more self-indulgent, beginning with Purple America. Parts of this book are brilliantly worded, but one wonders if any cohesive narrative knits anything together. This novel is a ramshackle ensemble piece at best, but wanders and meanders all over the place.
The final ten pages are the most perplexing of all. I was disappointed by the book deeply.
The final ten pages are the most perplexing of all. I was disappointed by the book deeply.
February 26, 2024
It’s bad
April 17, 2018
I'm glad I read this book but I don't think I'd read it again.
February 16, 2011
Christina Zanakos
The Diviners
Ricky Moody
New York
September 2005
Word Count 579
Rick Moody’s novel The Diviners is strategically composed of several people’s lives and the point of their complicated intersections. At 567 pages, Moody takes his time developing each character’s story, though many extraneous details could have been left out and in my opinion, probably would’ve added to the excitement of the tale, as these excessive descriptions and backgrounds drag on and make for a slow start.
The story is written as though it were a play, with the “pre-chapter” in the beginning called “Opening Credits and Theme Music”, simply describing the setting for the story. This is clever of Moody because the plot involves creating a new fresh miniseries that will seemingly enhance many of the characters’ lives. The first chapter begins with Rosa Meandro, who we find out is the ill mother of Vanessa Meandro, an extremely overweight television executive with eating obsessions. The story slowly builds from her character, extending to Vanessa’s life outside of this miserable house and onto her interactions with movie stars, desperate starlets, and a complicated criminal act which will further entangle the lives of several characters, including an adopted pair of African American siblings that know more than they let on, and several sex crazed men including star Thaddeus Griffin and pedophiliac Maiser.
The layout of the story is mildly confusing, and if you misunderstand one important dialogue, several aspects of the story become lost to you. Each section is told through another pair of eyes, and even when the characters are repeated it seems as though personalities and opinions change, uncharacteristic of even the main characters, which there are several. I really disliked the excessive viewpoints and prefer to keep my own stories to one individual’s thoughts, or an omniscient narrator, in which the reader doesn’t need to keep flipping pages to see who is thinking what and why their opinions have all of the sudden changed. Not only is the general story a tangled mess, the lives of the characters become too jumbled to keep track of, and in a novel of this length, the reader can become bored and lost, despite beautiful imagery in Moody’s writing.
What I found to be extremely effective was Moody’s use of repetition. For example, in the “pre-chapter”, the word “lights” is used at least 50 times to describe the overwhelming brightness of the city and introduces the show business feel. “Krispy Kreme” is also repeated to describe Vanessa Meandro’s obsessive eating (52), the same way that “Zero tolerance” is used repeatedly to describe the laws, evoking irony, because this is the same time the brick is launched at the head of the woman on the sidewalk and laws are clearly being broken (99). These repetitions are not overused even though there are at least ten of them when mentioned, rather enforce the idea in a powerful way.
As an aspiring writer, I loved the subtle one liners that appear to be the overall theme of the story at that point, for example, “All of this while they are walking past the two women, as if they and the women have no connection at all, as if the city is not a chaotic network of lost connections and near misses” (279) and “All of them ambitious and successful professionals [speaking of men with sexual obsessions and self mutilation problems]” (308). These lines embody the theme of the novel up to that point and really stand out from the rest of the narration.
The Diviners
Ricky Moody
New York
September 2005
Word Count 579
Rick Moody’s novel The Diviners is strategically composed of several people’s lives and the point of their complicated intersections. At 567 pages, Moody takes his time developing each character’s story, though many extraneous details could have been left out and in my opinion, probably would’ve added to the excitement of the tale, as these excessive descriptions and backgrounds drag on and make for a slow start.
The story is written as though it were a play, with the “pre-chapter” in the beginning called “Opening Credits and Theme Music”, simply describing the setting for the story. This is clever of Moody because the plot involves creating a new fresh miniseries that will seemingly enhance many of the characters’ lives. The first chapter begins with Rosa Meandro, who we find out is the ill mother of Vanessa Meandro, an extremely overweight television executive with eating obsessions. The story slowly builds from her character, extending to Vanessa’s life outside of this miserable house and onto her interactions with movie stars, desperate starlets, and a complicated criminal act which will further entangle the lives of several characters, including an adopted pair of African American siblings that know more than they let on, and several sex crazed men including star Thaddeus Griffin and pedophiliac Maiser.
The layout of the story is mildly confusing, and if you misunderstand one important dialogue, several aspects of the story become lost to you. Each section is told through another pair of eyes, and even when the characters are repeated it seems as though personalities and opinions change, uncharacteristic of even the main characters, which there are several. I really disliked the excessive viewpoints and prefer to keep my own stories to one individual’s thoughts, or an omniscient narrator, in which the reader doesn’t need to keep flipping pages to see who is thinking what and why their opinions have all of the sudden changed. Not only is the general story a tangled mess, the lives of the characters become too jumbled to keep track of, and in a novel of this length, the reader can become bored and lost, despite beautiful imagery in Moody’s writing.
What I found to be extremely effective was Moody’s use of repetition. For example, in the “pre-chapter”, the word “lights” is used at least 50 times to describe the overwhelming brightness of the city and introduces the show business feel. “Krispy Kreme” is also repeated to describe Vanessa Meandro’s obsessive eating (52), the same way that “Zero tolerance” is used repeatedly to describe the laws, evoking irony, because this is the same time the brick is launched at the head of the woman on the sidewalk and laws are clearly being broken (99). These repetitions are not overused even though there are at least ten of them when mentioned, rather enforce the idea in a powerful way.
As an aspiring writer, I loved the subtle one liners that appear to be the overall theme of the story at that point, for example, “All of this while they are walking past the two women, as if they and the women have no connection at all, as if the city is not a chaotic network of lost connections and near misses” (279) and “All of them ambitious and successful professionals [speaking of men with sexual obsessions and self mutilation problems]” (308). These lines embody the theme of the novel up to that point and really stand out from the rest of the narration.
October 9, 2012
In his first novel in seven years , Rick Moody delivers a sprawling romp that goes for contemporary North America’s jugular with cringe-inducing accuracy. Set in the aftermath of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, the book’s 500-plus pages skewer independent film, television, the cult of celebrity, yoga, contemporary art, food and sex addiction.
Its plus sized anti-heroine, Vanessa Meandro (nicknamed Mini-van), is the head of independent New York film studio Means of Production and an unstoppable Krispy Kreme-addicted force of nature.
She uses a combo of blunt intimidation and incomprehensible theoretical art-speak to wrangle the rights to an elusive television script, an epic saga that follows a tribe of water dowsers from the steppes of ancient Mongolia to modern Las Vegas.
Meandro is convinced the script, promising a loyal audience and endless spinoff potential, will allow her studio to recover money stolen from her production firm by a disgruntled spinster accountant. Problem is, there is no actual script.
In Meandro’s terrified employ are a comely black assistant secretly working on a script about the Marquis de Sade’s wife, a silken-tongued Sikh cab driver whose cosmic philosophy of media wins him a job straight out of his cab, and a louche action film star (star of 'Single Bullet Theory') who hangs at the studio for intellectual cred when he isn’t banging yoga instructors.
Scrambling for love, integrity, recognition and the golden script, all these characters, essentially screens on which Moody can project an endless stream of his skewering zingers, gallop along in Moody’s singularly stylized, marathon-length sentences.
Which is its ultimate weakness. The twisting tale builds up a lot of steam with its dozens of subplots and characters, but ultimately it can’t deliver the mighty comic ending we might have hoped for, showing us more about the varieties of modern vanity than its effects.That doesn't mean that the entire novel's length isn't peppered with painfully sharp, laugh out loud moments, (a sex scene described entirely in sanctimonious Yoga pose English, acerbic references to Avital Ronnell, a subplot about the murder of a young gallery assistant) that run the entire gamut from trash culture to arcane theory.
In the end, and despite all its magnificent and zany foibles and failures, this is a novel about our bottomless thirst in the desert that is contemporary life, and Moody’s prose paints a mean mirage.
Its plus sized anti-heroine, Vanessa Meandro (nicknamed Mini-van), is the head of independent New York film studio Means of Production and an unstoppable Krispy Kreme-addicted force of nature.
She uses a combo of blunt intimidation and incomprehensible theoretical art-speak to wrangle the rights to an elusive television script, an epic saga that follows a tribe of water dowsers from the steppes of ancient Mongolia to modern Las Vegas.
Meandro is convinced the script, promising a loyal audience and endless spinoff potential, will allow her studio to recover money stolen from her production firm by a disgruntled spinster accountant. Problem is, there is no actual script.
In Meandro’s terrified employ are a comely black assistant secretly working on a script about the Marquis de Sade’s wife, a silken-tongued Sikh cab driver whose cosmic philosophy of media wins him a job straight out of his cab, and a louche action film star (star of 'Single Bullet Theory') who hangs at the studio for intellectual cred when he isn’t banging yoga instructors.
Scrambling for love, integrity, recognition and the golden script, all these characters, essentially screens on which Moody can project an endless stream of his skewering zingers, gallop along in Moody’s singularly stylized, marathon-length sentences.
Which is its ultimate weakness. The twisting tale builds up a lot of steam with its dozens of subplots and characters, but ultimately it can’t deliver the mighty comic ending we might have hoped for, showing us more about the varieties of modern vanity than its effects.That doesn't mean that the entire novel's length isn't peppered with painfully sharp, laugh out loud moments, (a sex scene described entirely in sanctimonious Yoga pose English, acerbic references to Avital Ronnell, a subplot about the murder of a young gallery assistant) that run the entire gamut from trash culture to arcane theory.
In the end, and despite all its magnificent and zany foibles and failures, this is a novel about our bottomless thirst in the desert that is contemporary life, and Moody’s prose paints a mean mirage.
December 27, 2008
I knew very little about Moody going in, except that he was responsible for The Ice Storm, the basis for the movie by Ang Lee. The Diviners reminds me very strongly of Don Delillo's books. Both Delillo and Moody tackle the somewhat difficult task of talking about "non-literary" things like modern pop culture, in a literary way. The Diviners centers around an independent production company whose breakout project might just be a miniseries about divining throughout history. The book switches rapidly from one perspective to another, with almost every chapter focusing on a different character who is in some way related to the employees of the production company. This constant shift in perspective can be exhausting in some ways, but seems to fit the subject matter -- after all, how many times do we get perspective shifts during a movie or television show, as we hop from one camera to another? Like Salman Rushdie does in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Moody introduces minor characters who are obvious nods to real people (or amalgamations of real people). The writing itself consists of an awful lot of long sentences, or lists in the form of sentences, so that even reading it silently you find yourself running out of breath from time to time. This style is also reminiscent of Delillo -- presumably because both authors are trying to capture the frantic, constant movement of pop culture. On a larger scale, the pacing is pretty good, with things picking up a little in the second half of the book.
March 12, 2022
Very disappointing book. I have read books by Moody before but this one should have been severely edited. The only interesting characters, Vanessa and her mother Rosa, disappear for hundreds of pages and the other characters, many of whom are either not interesting or fully developed, seem like just sketches, with no follow through as to their stories.
The beginning and end, the so-called 'opening credits' and epilog are supremely boring and tedious and I found myself skimmimg them. How I made it through this 500+ page book is still a question. Hopeless optimist I guess, having enjoyed Moody before. .
The first chapter with Vanessa was hilarious and the parody of a miniseries called The Werewolves of Fairfield County were very both funny and the sections with Vanessa's mother were also good, but there are probably 300 plus pages that seem to go nowhere. It's almost as if these were the starts of novels or short stories that were never completed. Can't believe the blurb rave reviews.
The beginning and end, the so-called 'opening credits' and epilog are supremely boring and tedious and I found myself skimmimg them. How I made it through this 500+ page book is still a question. Hopeless optimist I guess, having enjoyed Moody before. .
The first chapter with Vanessa was hilarious and the parody of a miniseries called The Werewolves of Fairfield County were very both funny and the sections with Vanessa's mother were also good, but there are probably 300 plus pages that seem to go nowhere. It's almost as if these were the starts of novels or short stories that were never completed. Can't believe the blurb rave reviews.
May 26, 2015
Although I ultimately enjoyed this book, it kind of pales in comparison to earlier, and better, Rick Moody. It's certainly better than his short fiction. This maximalist novel is difficult to swallow, indeed the first chapter I nearly gave up on the book. However, as you proceed gems start popping up here and there and ultimately the book feels satisfying as a Hollywood satire. He seems to be trying to be Pynchonian here too, what with conspiracies, weird names, setting in during a particular period of time to make a commentary on..something (in this case it takes place on the eve of the Bush/Gore election and a year before 9/11). It's a frustrating book, definitely, but for such a glorified mess I love it. I'll take an utter disaster of an ambitious novel than competent mediocrity any day. Not to say this is a total trainwreck, but the book gets better, trust me. If the beginning is too much just push forward and work your way through it. But, honestly, don't do as I did and let this be your first Rick Moody novel. Try Purple America or The Ice Storm instead!
June 8, 2011
I can't believe so many readers hated this book; I thought it was wonderful--a mad rollercoaster ride through contemporary man's pursuit of anything that will fill that internal emptiness that plagues most of us. Yes, Moody seems to lack focus, and yes, he skips around from one seemingly random subject to the next, but isn't that an accurate picture of the world we live in, with its ADHD, its frenetic activity, and its pointless search for the ultimate in satisfaction? We've all been sold a bill of goods, and we're therefore all looking for a stake in something, whether it be a TV mini-series about the history of diviners, or anything else that is said to exist but doesn't.
Oh, and by the way, Moody's writing is fresh, fast-paced, and fun--just the right combination to pull off a novel like this. I suggest you take another look at this--Moody's really more in tune with our world today than most fiction writers.
Oh, and by the way, Moody's writing is fresh, fast-paced, and fun--just the right combination to pull off a novel like this. I suggest you take another look at this--Moody's really more in tune with our world today than most fiction writers.
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