When MH recommended this book in the comments, it rang a bell. Then I remembered when he recommended the book to me about five years ago in person, and I dimly recollected him handing me a red book with a goose on the cover, and my heart sank. Sure enough, his copy of the book was sitting on a bookshelf, covered in dust, having been moved unopened and unread through two or three apartments. I now feel like a terrible friend and a thief.
This book has the atmosphere of Don Delillo’s White Noise crossed with that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf play: you know, the high jinks of ruined old English professors at second-tier universities. Man, say what you will about my job (and it is true that my chosen profession involves a lot of pondering the Authors’ Intent, just like being an English professor) but I am so glad I didn’t go that route, professionally. One issue I had with the book is that the narrator made such a big point of being past the point of caring about anything that it was sort of hard to care what happened to him. Also, I think the book suffered, at least from my perspective, from the inevitable comparison with White Noise because while it was very funny, it lacked the sheer genius of all the professors wearing Oxford-like robes and the Hitler Studies department and that lady with Important Hair from White Noise.
The pacing of the book is pretty good and, like the reviewer said on the back of The Love God (another excellent book), I read it one one long greedy gulp — or rather, the course of four hour-long greedy gulps during my commute on the train. Good stuff. Thank you, MH, and I will return the book to you soon. Sorry about that.
