The Art of Book Reviewing

Over ten pages of notes on a yellow legal pad, handwritten, black ink on some evenings, blue ink from a fine point Pilot pen on others. The author of the novel, I observe on the yellow paper, is writing of a time in U.S. history (1905-1915) of great catastrophes and “the rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of management of industries into fewer and fewer hands.”

He writes a lot about language, this guy. He writes about “inventing new language for the unspeakable.” His protagonist believes — or is that the narrative voice speaking? — that “words create thought, not vice versa.”

The author’s use and abuse of alliterations is documented both on the legal pad and in marked passages of the book:

” … the piped peeps of the peepers.”

And the doozy, the one where the book reviewer just knows that the author had Roget’s Theasurus in his lap, the book of synonymous words propped open by the massive erection sustained from such careless — but perhaps, the author believes, deliberately chosen – flinging about of words:

“… certainly he never communicated the sense to his son, but then, he wasn’t the sort to share his counsel or strut it, commend consolation, ignite debate or stroke it, proffer congratulation, talk sex, politics, business, or religion, cajole or gladhand, trade barbs or bon mots, josh around, or call his one and only affectionate nicknames — horsefly, piss ant, buzz cut, bullethead, bucko, bucky, buckaroo, spike, spud, sluggo or stretch, slim or stubby, satchmo or socks or sprat or sprout …”

How many hours spent with this miserable, overwrought, near-500-page sodomizing of the English language? Who knows. Many. Many massive moonlit monkeyshine minutes spent reading and ruminating the rhapsodizing wrath of a writer who, in his last published novel – his book, his bane, bold, bawdy, bibliographic biography — the last one that the critics almost uniformly remarked was way too full of alliterations … well, sometimes, sir, the critics are right.

Damn. I wish this were my actual review instead of the one I have to write.