The Stories of John Cheever Review

He seems to have foremost sought to create intricate snapshots of complicated emotions and the situations that make them possible rather than stories portraying sequences of events. Every word, image, and stylistic choice is part of a perfect balance between the appropriately evocative and the necessarily sterile, and nowhere but in Joyce is there an author with symbolism that is as complicated yet intuitive, illustrative yet original, and effective but accessible as in Cheever's short stories.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Review

The most mind-numbingly tedious piece of garbage I've ever read. The only reason I read the whole thing is that I kept thinking there has to be more ...more The most mind-numbingly tedious piece of garbage I've ever read. The only reason I read the whole thing is that I kept thinking there has to be more to it than this. I was wrong.

He is good writer, in a sense. His cutesy, gimmicky, and self-conscious (*wink wink*) sentences can briefly convince/hoodwink you that there is an concept, idea, or at least a thought worth paying attention to behind the naive worldview that they superficially express. Alas, there is not, and it boggles my mind how someone so devoid of genuine self-awareness can sell books marketed to ostensibly intelligent readers.

That being said, McSweeney's is cool, as are his Superhero supply store and the non-profit he runs for kids.

The Portable Conrad Review

Like attempts to reconcile Newtonian and quantum physics, most literary attempts to use particularized human characteristics to explain broader societal phenomena are, at best, wrong and, at worst, ideologies. Conrad may be the only author to simultaneously see clearly into the individual psyche and implicitly explain the significance of that characteristic on a grand scale through his explication of it. It seems that the words he uses are created specifically for his sentences, and reading him is redolent of what it would be like to see a young Mike Tyson fight Andre the Giant.

The Idea of Private Law Review

Inside a box lies a duckrabbit of epic proportions, neither larger nor smaller than the very legal system that we inherited from the English common law. Inside a box lies a duckrabbit of epic proportions, neither larger nor smaller than the very legal system that we inherited from the English common law tradition. Weinrib opens the box, gazes inside, and...gasp...sees a duck. This book brilliantly explains that it's a duck without admitting that it also, when you tilt your head, looks an awful lot like a rabbit.

Equality, Responsibility and the Law Review

This guy really wishes he wrote Weinrib's book The Idea of Private Law.

Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories Review

In my humble opinion, one of the most important functions of literature is to make us more aware of ourselves by cataloging and dissecting the varieties of impaired self-awareness. Almost all of these stories do just that without either villifying or pitying their subjects. We see in his stories that lack of self-knowledge both as a defense mechanism and a pathology, and on a few occasions, shows how painful it is to remove that veil of self-ignorance.

It would have helped to know something about Wagner's operas before reading, but the stories were still amazing, and his last name is fantastic.

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reyes Book Review

This book is to Pessoa what "Joey" was to Friends. If I were the ghost of Pessoa, I'd have haunted this guy and put dandruff in his oatmeal. Unfortunately, I am not a ghost and have to resort to a lukewarm book review instead.

Post-WWI, pre-WWII, and mid-Spanish Civil War Portugal is a very interesting backdrop for something like this, and Saramango's creation of a sort of fantasy poetry league is an interesting and occasionally well-executed technique. The problem is that, just like fantasy sports leagues force you to ignore a lot of what makes sports most interesting and engaging, pretend Pessoa and his heteronyms just aren't the real thing. Also, too many of the haunted house-spooky poetical observations are kind of misguided, and I don't think they were intentionally so. What do I know.

Anyway, it was okay, and it was sufficiently interesting to pique my interest in his other books.