NP: Someone asked to report on The Kindly Ones

[Brock Vond]

I love this book so far... Really tough in terms of content sometimes  
and I'm starting to argue with Dr Aue too... Hoping to find the time  
to really get a good 4 hour session in soon.



On Mar 15, 2009, at 19:25, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> The narrator's voice on the page is immediately believable to me.  
> Littell makes
> him self-aware, conscious of his mental compromises,  
> like....Celine's narrator perhaps,
> in Journey To the End of the Night thinking of Littell's French  
> upbringing.
> [His dad wrote good spy novels, btw] Or fill in your favorite
> self-aware monster-narrator---Richard III or Humbert Humbert and/or
> ....not unlike Vond [although Vond's richness is still debatable] ?
>
> And, the tropes of many of our best books align: He runs a lace  
> factory, with lots of
> words about the dirty, obsessive, metallic two-step beat of the  
> machines...(he won't go near them himself; too dirty)
> they need lubricated but oil ruins the lace so graphite, a fine  
> black powder, is used. Graphite!
>
> on Blue as the color of sad modernity [see Vineland passim]:
> "the room is dark, the filthy windows are tinted blue, since lace is  
> fragile and sensitive to light,
> and this bluish light soothes my mind".
>
> Very Pynchonian images.
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