Autoclette > Recent Status Updates

Reading the new Wakefield Press Edition.

Just an incredible read, brilliant emotive depth, Schulzian even Proustian arabesques.

Reading with interest, but the construction seems a bit apparent, though it is early days yet.

Will it be just as nice twice?

The straight forward quality of the writing is pleasantly disarming; it enhances the subject matter.

Fagunwa isn't even mentioned in the similar authors to Tutuola Goodreads list! Talk about adding insult to injury.
This book fits into some rarefied air in terms of its inventiveness. Pure enjoyment.

How are more of this man's works not available in translation?
I find it a little odd that Amos Tutuola is so well known, but Fagunwa is not. Not to diminish Tutuola at all. What a masterpiece of invention.

I want to read everything Can Xue has ever written!!!!

I am really enjoying this, it falls into a very singular niche on my bookshelf inhabited by the likes of Amos Tutuola, and Gisele Prassinos!

Inevitable, comparisons to Ishmael Reed, who is hard to top. So far really enjoying it, in the sense one might a bad trip. That though can also be a shortcoming like the redundancy of porn or gore movies, that numb you. Still leaning towards 4 stars though.

I am amazed.

There is something in the writing, like a stylistic self consciousness that seems to keep me from ever getting truly lost in the prose, and narrative.
This is, I think possibly only a matter of taste, but I find it surprising as his writing is of a style that I am always in search of.

I think I was won over by the charm of Kis's ideas around page 65.
Stylistically, (issues aside), the motion of the novel matches the prose.

Chopin, or Liberace? Verdict still out, enjoying the confectionery confusion.

What brilliance and originality! What mastery of words.
The revenge we take in our minds articulated from every angle like a mandala. Another one for the misanthropic and world weary.

I don't think I can continue with this one. The anti-Mormon sentiment and casual reference to gays as faggots is a little hard to bear. I am neither Mormon, nor gay but just can't dig it in these times.Live and let live. Any of my friends who have read this, can you tell me if it is worth finishing?

....quite slow going for me, a strange combination of slogging through and being fascinated at the same time by this book of ideas.

This book elicits in me, a sort of mildly irritating confusion, not entirely unpleasant.

The uniqueness and eccentricity of this writing is just incredible. Do you remember when you first read Pessoa, Tutuola, Perec, Carrington, Walser, Cavazzoni? Those writers whose voices are so unique that you constantly search for others of their caliber of singularity? Here you go! I am amazed.

I will never stop reading this, now that's progress!

I always find books like this so fascinating and perplexing. That a scholar can presume to know someone ,or so confidently project himself into another time and culture with such pompous certainty is fascinating to me. This is neither a positive or negative comment really. I actually find this to be an interesting aspect of the reading, an elaborate fantasy. Kafu the Scribbler.