| ||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Writer Writes About Pumping Pulp,
By dme8 "David" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Adios Scheherazade (Paperback)
Westlake in his early career churned out erotica. Adios Scheherazade--about as literary a reference as any title Westlake ever put out there--is a fictionalized first person account of a porn novelist who just can't write porn anymore. Like Scheherazade, his ability to spin yet another installment staves off his inevitable demise, but that demise is coming, and the reader gets a front row seat to watch--very personal, but not prurient (right?).
Over the course of the novel the narrator estranges his wife, his publisher, and most of his friends because, well, he just can't quite manage to perform--er, write another formulaic sex novel--any more. God knows, he tries. We watch him fake it and flail like the villain in The Hook--typing and typing and pretending he's making progress and convincing nobody. What he wants is out: of everything-- the house, the marriage, the job, all this middle class *stuff* that is weighing him down. But if he gives up, he loses everything. And he can't quite stand that, either. The reader sees the narrator's occasional arrested attempts at a few paragraphs of the ostensible erotica, followed by an almost stream of consciousness narrative of how he got where he is, where he'd meant to be by now, and how his life is falling apart around him. The nadir involves him relieving himself in his friend's desk drawer. (It's a great moment. You see it coming and you still say to yourself, 'he wouldn't', and then of course, he does. And while it's as metaphorically laden a piece as Westalke ever permits himself, it's so funny, that, you know, what the Hell.) If you want Westlake on sex, read the old erotica (if you can find it), or Kahawa. If you want Westlake on the craft of writing, there are nuggets to be found in *Adios*. Without its ever getting heavy-handed. The narrator is sympathetic, and the 'novel about how I can't write a novel' premise is played self-consciously, at several levels, and deftly. It doesn't annoy. You laugh, and occasionally groan, but you never say 'oh, yes, yes, I get it. Just get on with it.' Westlake understood high art, but he seldom, if ever, sacrificed a good, engaging story to attain it. He was better than that. This, along with the under-appreciated Sam Holt novels (What I Tell You Three Times especially) is among Westlake's most worthy-of-rereading novels.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
