Not Pynchon but not unlike and maybe was influenced AND IS AN UNRESERVED RECOMMENDATION

[Charles Albert]

Thanks.....was at a conference of fellow Vassals of Mammon last week and,
after I carelessly drew a fish in the sand with my staff, one of the
participants confessed to reading fiction and raved about this book.

love,
cfa

On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 7:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Got THE SELLOUT, the new Man-Booker Prize winner out of the library, but
> will now BUY; It needs UNDERLINED a lot. it is a paperback.... I remember
> The White Boy Shuffle from Mr Beatty and, I gotta tell you --if you don't
> believe the judges-- his book is off-the-charts brilliant, witty as three
> stand-up comedians---like Carlin, Pryor and Silverman--she actually blurbs
> it---, a smart choice by the publisher. His so-alive prose of witty verbal
> lists and conjunctions can remind of Pynchon and Reed (among others). I’m
> laughing here; I'm guffawing here; the hair on the back of my arms is
> rising risibly. Funniest book since the last Portis i read.
>
>
> SPOILER ALERT BUT HARDLY, GIVEN THE PROSE DOES IT:
>
> The riffs, the surprising, obliquely apt lists of comparisons he applies
> to various surreal situations: The prologue is him getting high, while his
> car is illegally parked outside, in front of his Supreme Court appearance
> (!) where the OTHER BLACK GUY disses him like a superior white guy in the
> power structure. Then we learn he was raised in a farm (!) area of the city
> of Los Angeles---Dickens, a ghetto community in South LA!--, where his dad
> was a psychologist who ‘conditioned’ him with his experiments, such as
> trying to prove that the Kitty Genovese Bystander Effect did not apply
> among negroes who "supported each other" but then had to admit he
> overlooked “the Bandwagon effect’ when all the bystanders jumped into
> hitting his kid after he started hitting him in public! ...earlier he wrote
> of someone for whom ‘everything was a jazz comparison”..."childbirth is
> like jazz; even jazz is like jazz” among a longer list of other comparisons
> that are not sticking with me until I underline them...and I've already
> forgotten the best of some of this list riffing because I laughed so hard
> because I compare too many things to jazz....LOL...
>
>
> I have not read a review of this, just got because BIG AWARD and knowledge
> of his earlier one and wanted to read something new while I continue my
> belated classics
>
> self-education BUT
>
>
> The conditioning chapter, and the prose, does make me think that the TRP
> of Gravity's Rainbow, at least, is an influence, a source--in this section
> at least-- because of Slothrop's conditioning chapter and because there is
> shit in it, running down his legs and more. "My bowels evacuated me".
>
> [aside to Morris and Ian, if he's still on the list; narrator alludes to
> Jung in asides almost wistfully, nostalgically, surely as a contrast to
> Americans' conditioning psychologists]
>
>
> I UNRESERVEDLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ALL ON THE PLIST WHICH IS REAL EASY
> TO DO BECAUSE MAN--BOOKER AND WISH I WAS RICH ENOUGH TO SEND (ALMOST)
> EVERYONE ON THIS LIST A COPY.
>
>
> I would love to read this as a Group but we can't seem to do that well.
> Our conditioning must be too individualistic --or something.
>
>
> So there, happy holidays. Treat yourself or ask for it. No, i am not
> getting paid to promote it. I did not even (yet) ask for a free copy from
> someone at the publisher, my old one, although I've written someone about
> it, but I will now after I buy at least one, surely a couple-three, the
> writer deserves that and more. I hope he gets to, ah, well-off in the
> economic status world. I will give that free one and some others away.
>
>
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