Customer Reviews

Fup

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the book you want to read to that kid in high school who doesn't understand why books are anything.

This is the book you want to read to the person you think might fall in love with you. This is the book you want to read to your friends so you will laugh together like you never have.

This is the book to read when the world is too serious. This is the book to read when you are too serious about yourself. This is the book to read when you feel dull and uninterested.

This is the book to read if you've gotten too big for your britches. This is the book to read if you feel more Christian than someone who cusses. This is the book to read if you want things you can't name.

This is good medicine: a short shot, powerful. FUP is the American book.

I found Fup in a thrift shop, it cost me less than a dollar. It was money well spent and I am gong to buy Jim Dodge's other books when I get the chance.

Dodge's story about Fup, his friends Grandpa Jake and Tiny bought tears of sorrow and laughter to my eyes.

Even Lockjaw the rampaging homicidal boar made me chuckle. It is an easy read I would recommend it most heartedly, especially if you're someone who likes to read when they are eating. Just be careful, you might choke on some of the funnier moments, but its worth every cough and splutter.

Simply put, one of the best pieces of short fiction I have ever read. 'Fup' is pure delight from the first page to the last. The characters are unforgettable and the humor stays with you for a long time to come. Buy it cheap and pass it on; your friends will thank you for it.

Fup is a book rare in that it functions as an oral history--I was surprised to read here that so many people had read it out loud to each other and given it away--I gave my first copy away and met someone two years later who had it--and gave it back to me. Fup is best read aloud, to friends, on road trips, alone. I don't think you can compare Fup to Dodge's other two novels, which are indeed excellent in their own ways, because Fup is different than almost any other book you will ever read. Buy it and pass it on.

What an odd little book this is. Published in 1983, Fup is the story of a cantankerous grandfather, his gentle grandson, and their pet, a 20-pound mallard duck (the grandfather named the duck because he thought Fup duck was funny). Born in 1880 the grandfather spends most of his 100 years tending his stills, sleeping, and drinking his 194-proof whiskey called Ol' Death Whisper, which he believes will keep him alive forever. The grandson is a master fence builder and spends his time building dividing their enormous Northern California ranch and hunting the giant wild boar that keeps tearing up the fences. Compared on the book jacket to Tom Robbins or Mark Twain, Dodge's style reminds me more of a Richard Brautigan. It's not quite as poetic, but is just as original, odd, and hilarious.

We once read exerpts at a college Thanksgiving dinner and discovered that while most of us were soon gasping for breath from laughing so hard at that one part where..., our friends from Germany, Sweden, and Japan thought it was amusing, but didn't react at the same deep level. So although this is the book I give to all my new friends, I know it doesn't work for everyone. It also doesn't work for people who have never had dirt under their fingernails. For the rest of us, it's short and funny and deeply real.

It's a book about a duck. And a boar. And Tiny, who builds fences. And Grandaddy Jake Santee, with his Ol' Death Whisper whiskey.

It's a book about livin'.

FUP, like all of Jim Dodge's work, takes place between rain and sunlight, diamonds and love. Read it. Live a little wiser.

I borrwoed this one from my Girlfriend out of sheer curiosity. It's is beyond doubt a beautiful little masterpiece and makes a train journey that much more enjoyable. After reading it you'll be pining to spend a lazy sunny afternoon on the porch with Grandpa and a bottle of Ole Death Whisper with Fup Duck at your ankles.

2 hours redaing I'm sure you'll spend again and again! A mini masterpiece and beautiful to the core.

I saw a Today Show interview with Jim Dodge shortly after Fup was released back in the late 80's. His story about how the book came to be published was amusing, and based on the interview with Jane Pauley, I assumed Fup was a book that would be appropriate for my 11 year old. Fortunately I read it before I turned it over to my son - that transfer was delayed for a few years! What a treat to read something completely unique, and I have revisited it many times over the last 20 years. It's like getting Kurt Vonnegut's version of Johnathan Livingston Seagull! Fup and A Confederacy of Dunces are the two humorous tomes that will go with me to the deserted island.

This is a very colorful novelette that begins with wounds and ends in a kind of love between two barely functional people and animals, including a duck and wild boar. It is utterly absorbing and beautifully written, the mark of a true writer, dense with detail that is never repetitive and continually surprising. It kept me laughing, but there was also this pathos and aching loneliness and alienation. The tone is both realistic yet fantastical, and I got a sense of life passing that was so bittersweet and lovely. It is almost as strange and textured as a Nabokov piece, with all the surreal seeming believable in its detail.

Warmly recommended.