Rambling Raconteur’s Reviews > Darconville's Cat > Status Update

Crucifer finally gives Darconville a worthy sparring partner, but the characters, here and throughout the book, are closer to Platonic forms than even archetypes. It’s Swift’s battle of the books with volcanic spleen.

Crucifer is a brutal character, a misanthropic excess closer to the eighteenth century or moralizing medieval tales.

The locale switch reveals a different side of Darconville, and the first hints of the outrageous Crucifer are compelling. There is also a shift as fewer characters in MA are named as compared to in VA.

Theroux continues to cram various forms into this novel: a poetic dialogue overheard through a crack in the door, a series of logical statements from a given proposition, and it seems a series of diary entries are around the corner as satire continues.

The one chunk in his intellect’s armor is having a Baptist minister include a quote from Sirach during a series of Biblical references. That would never happen.

The language is abstruse and apposite. The references and puns recall Joyce and Nabokov and prefigure David Foster Wallace. The theme is indebted to Lolita and the dense novels of the 18th century. HL Mencken had the same assessment of the southeastern US that Theroux (and Darconville) displays.