Customer Reviews

The Cosmology of Bing

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Coming on the heels of his third novel "Tideland," Mitch Cullin returns with his best effort to date, offering a novel that is as funny and insightful as it is sad and moving. Alternating chapters between downbeat alcoholic astronomy professor Bing, and undrgrad student Nick (the oblivious object of Bing's affection), "The Cosmology of Bing" chronicles the complicated relationship that can form between student and teacher. Throughout the characters are carefully rendered and true, even the ghostly wife Susan, and never once does a false note ring.

When Bing's unwelcome advances finally reach a head, we learn too that Nick's own being is in question. As a result, Nick's touching relationship with his gay roommate opens a door for forgiveness and real affection. Careful never to lecture the reader or hammer his opinions home, Cullin touches on several key issures: the differences between welcome advances and unwelcome ones, the betrayal of the trust between a teacher who should know better and the young student who blindly admires him, and the consequences of those who lie to themselves rather than face inevitable truths. Added to this are beautifully written sections dealing with astronomy and short chapters containing Susan's haunting prose-like poems, both of which push the story forward smartly and suggest, as Susan writes in one section, that human affection is "a most confounding and mystifying thing."

Without question, this book sits comfortably beside Cullin's first novel Whompyjawed, both of which rank higher to my taste than his darker "Branches" and "Tideland." His look at a larger city's university cliques is so dead on, yet like "Whompyjawed," he gives the reader an accurate feel for places as much as people. I recommand this mature, accomplished effort highly.

Cosmology of Bing is a brilliant and fascinating read with compelling perspectives on the lives of students and faculty at a top private university, covering both their separate and intertwined worlds. There are rare, compelling, revealing and often painful perspectives on life and realities. There is Professor Bing Owen and his once beautiful wife, a brilliant poet struck prematurely with tragic health, and Nick Sulpy, a student Bing loves, and Nick's roommate Takashi. The book has wonderful characters and is spun through a yarn with fascinating metaphors on the realities of life on this earth and the vast universe beyond. Cullin's book is not what one always reads about universities, but is a rare insight into what literally occurs on campuses. I bought it via the NYT review, and found the super assessment to be be monumentally valid.

I bought this book based solely on its New York Times Review, and, for once, I can honestly say that that glowing review does justice to Mitch Cullin's incredibly funny, skillfully executed, and at times sad novel.

Focusing on the lives of students and teachers at Moss University in Houston, though mainly examining the relationship between astronomy professor Bing Owen and his young student Nick, Cullin deftly brings to life a man who is his own worst enemy, and, in the most humorous and intelligent of ways, creates a devastating parody of academic delusion, infighting, and lechary. This is a smart novel, filled with smart people who trip miserable over their own feet--written clearly by someone who has spent a fair amount of time observing. And while the "happy" ending is perhaps my only minor qualm with this otherwise fine work, it still left this reader oddly disquieted and sensing Bing's world remained only briefly at ease.

Mixing rich astronomical detail, curiously moving poetics, and accurately depicting jaundiced age colliding with naive youthfulness, Cullin has put together a fascinating story, one which sits comfortably in the ranks of Graham Swift and William Trevor. I look forward now to reading his earlier novels.

Cullin's "Cosmology of Bing" is quick read. It is filled with insight on how unrequited longing cripples happiness. The silent character of the novel, Susan, sits like the Greek chorus, observing events and making comment via her poetry, which is quite beautiful and good. The mixing of the two forms, poetry and fiction, is a major accomplishment of this smart novel. The subplot of Nick's adventures in college with the gang of pie throwers who attack the Christian right with cream pies is marvelous diversion. Bing Owen comes across as the bisexual counterpart of George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe," an emotionally stunted alcoholic aging professor who has substituted outward propriety to mask inward anger and longings. Where the novel is weak for me is that Bing is so humanly flawed that he's not likeable. Nick's naieve association with the professor reads well, and is counterpointed by Nick's relationship with his soulmate/roommate Takashi. Cullin has created a wonderful tale, a bit on the dark side, that explores the inner emotional landscape, and keeps it fun with the surrounding events of college pranks. This is a very good book; one you won't want to miss.

Loved this book!!! A sharp satire on leching academic types and their prey. Would be a lot funnier if it weren't unfortunately too true at times. A great summer read.

As a fan of Mitch Cullin's fiction, I am continually surprised and entertained by the structure of his novels. THE COSMOLOGY OF BING with its introspective young-old characters best reveals Cullin's broad skills as a writer, storyteller, poet, and an appreciator of fine art. Cullin appears to be exploring his own possibilities and creatively expanding his style. However, without doubt in any format he is a keen observer of life, whether that life is a cat's, or a cactus, or a complex set of wants and needs.

This, Cullin's fourth novel, seems to pick up where WHOMPYJAWED, his satisfying first, left off. Willie, the hobbledehoy of the first, manifests as Nick in the fourth. Since Cullin's second book, BRANCHES, aggravated next by TIDELAND, an anxious anticipation accompanies my reading of his fiction, whether COSMOLOGY's plot situations call for it or not. Cullin creates a worrying, subtle suspense. Questions arise from the reading.

Some answers appear,then vanish, like the eerie lights of Marfa,Texas. Cullin does not disappoint, and he doesn't make excuses for his characters' foibles, no more than those mystery lights disappoint, or can be explained away. Just why did Bing's grandmother bite him? Pittances of cash for effort and petty exchanges of self between Susan and Bing are annoyingly funny and believable. The importance of meaningful work,the interdependence of friends and lovers, students and teacher, the essentials of trust in give and take -- these issues are the woof and warp of the novel. All are deftly woven into whole cloth.

THE COSMOLOGY . . . is tender, sly, and amusing in ways that readers of Larson's "The Far Side" cartoons can appreciate. No football. No boy in a not-so-abandoned well. No Barbie doll heads, or human taxidermy. A bit more grope and grizzle than I generally choose for pleasure reading. (No denying humans being human.) With Cullin one must un-expect the expected. Nothing he writes is merely gratuitous. Cullin's contract with readers is a contract of beneficence.

How can one find fault in a book so well-written and realized? And how can one of our best young writers be faulted for using his considerable talent to probe the troubled life of an alcoholic professor? Still, I found myself wishing Mitch Cullin had chosen less weighty subject matter to fashion this novel. In looking so closely at the behavior and internal gyrations of his characters, we find ourselves overwhelmed by too much neo-realism, wishing instead for a little distance in which to view them. Not that this under-the-skin form of fiction is a bad thing, but it rarely makes for enjoyable reading. Yet there are moments of relief and beauty throughout, best evident in the astronomy metaphors and the poetic chapters. What also shines through is Cullin's incredible empathy for all of his characters: no one is too good or too bad; they are simply people like everyone else. All the same, I believe this novel would have resonated more strongly for me had the author aimed his sights a little higher above the sticky minutia of human despair and longing.