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53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I really wanted to like this book...., July 3, 2008
This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)
I wanted to like this book. I really did. It sounded like just the kind of book I had been looking for. I awaited it's arrival in the mail with eager anticipation. But it's just not a good book. It's not good at all. It is really and truly one of the worst books I have ever read. And I've read some bad ones.
ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY MEN is a novel about decadence that doesn't seem to know it is a novel about decadence. Ostensibly, it is about three different young Ivy League graduates livining in and around New York, but all three feature the same narrative voice, minimal character development, and barely differentiated story lines. The main literary conceit of the novel is a sort of historical name dropping, ala "But one thing he had learned from the Bolsheviks: history helps those who help themselves." These historical references seem to be thrown in at random; they are never explained, examined, or elaborated upon, and are essentially meaningless. It's sort of like reading movie reviews in The Village Voice, except with historical references pasted in mindlessly instead of pop and alt culture ones. Yeah, being in your 20s is like the Russian revolution, or like the Israelis and Palestinians... nevermind why, nevermind any kind of thought or rational examination of these complicated historical events, nevermind any explanation of the alluded to but never demonstrated "idea"... Mindless stuff.
How bad can it be? Try this sentence opening a paragraph about a main character's reaction to 9/11 [remember these characters live in and around New York City!]: "On the day the World Trade Center was destroyed, Sam watched a lot of television."
There is one good section of the book, pp. 62-75, about a character named Morris Binkel. Read that at the bookstore if you're curious, it's pretty good. The rest of the book is like pulling teeth.
Pseudo-intellectuals would like this book, though, because it is pseudo-intelligent, pseudo-well written, pseudo-deep, and pseudo-literary. It's crap. I've never been more disappointed with a book in my life.
With books like this getting published, we should well and truly pity the sad young literary men in our society, because the publishing industry has really gone to the dogs. Chinese Cresteds.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
All the Sad, Young Literary Readers, August 21, 2008
This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)
I graded on a curve. Gesson is obviously a bright, adept writer. Nobody knows this better than he does. Or, should I say, his thinly disguised, POV-adled protagonists, who are so thinly disguised, they might as well be naked. I bought this book because of the favorable cover blurbs from two contemporary literary gods, Franzen and Karr, and I want to say to Franzen, you've got a correction coming, and to Karr, Gessen made a liar out of you, join the club. And to anyone, in the future do not invoke the sacred name of F.Scott Fitzgerald for a meandering, plotless, emotionally stakeless novel, no matter how much potential the novelist has.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A novel?, June 13, 2008
This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)
The reviews so far give fairly accurate descriptions of the book: it's basically a collection of short stories of the New Yorker Jewish intellectual slacker variety blah blah blah. And it is indeed a fairly entertaining read. But Gessen, it seems, is not quite novelist material. The stories, each of them built on some fairly clever conceit, the comparison of Israel-Palestine or the Russian Revolution to mid-20s relationships, for example, fail to lend depth to any of the characters. Gessen seems to be about what most inexperienced writers are about: themselves. We have a fairly quick-paced, cursory overview of a few forgettable characters, probably loosely based on the author's post-. The subject matter, the territory itself, is worthwhile, but Gessen never quite slows down to really write, to capture a moment. I was not surprised to learn the author mostly writes magazine articles and reviews for prominent magazines. There are few sublime moments, there is little in the way of vivid imagery, no signature voice. One is left with the feeling that pretty much anyone could have written this, given some time. And yet Mr. Gessen seems to know enough of the right people to get some preferential treatment for his debut novel, as it is prominently featured in all the right bookstores and heavily (and positively) reviewed. Not that it's a ghastly read. It certainly isn't. But its prominence is not quite commensurate with the actual content.
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