Restored to the author's original version, Loop's Progress is the first of The Loop Trilogy. An uproarious novel about coming-of-age that reflects the gritty reality of modern urban America.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Rosenthal makes a brave debut in this original novel. A family history set in the 1940s and '50s in a deteriorating neighborhood in Erie, Pa., the book is narrated by Jarvis Loop Jr. in a veritably loopy, roundabout manner. His father, Red, is a larger-than-life working man with both a violent and a soft streakhe fears nothing and terrorizes his family and his neighbors out of contrariness. Jarvis's mother has retreated into a confused religious fanaticism, while other assorted family members discover their own forms of escape from the ghetto. Jarvis's voice is acerbically funny; like a slow-acting acid, the humor comes first, the pain of disintegration second. At times hard to follow because it skips around chronologically, this novel will leave a mark; the characters are toughly philosophical and memorable. And Rosenthal hasn't closed off his loop; he is at work on a sequel, which will with luck make things clearer, or perhaps, as he intends, still more provocatively confused.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
Loop's Progress is an uproarious novel about coming of age that reflects the gritty reality of modern urban America. Through a narrative that loops and winds with the elliptical brilliance of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and the wacky logic of John Kennedy Toole, Loop's Progress charts the story of Jarvis Loop's youth and adolescence in a working-class neighborhood that has deteriorated until it is little more than a slum. The memorable cast of characters includes Red, Jarvis's larger-than-life father, who dominates his family with his warmth and incipient violence; Jarvis's mother, Helen, who keeps a bevy of religious statuary in her living room; Neda, his 300 pound sister, who devours books as fast as she does chocolate; and an entire original assortment of strange neighbors and stranger friends.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How did everybody miss this one?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Loop's Progress (Hardcover)
Loop's Progress is a hilarious, thoughtful book about growing up lower middle class in a decaying city. Rosenthal's use of hyperbole and magic-realism accentuates the story and never gets tiring. He assembles some of the most unforgettable characters, and, unbelievable as their actions sometimes are, the reader always wants to find out what they'll do next. FIND THIS BOOK! Then tell all your friends! (Also the follow-up, Experiments With Life And Deaf.)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Luck, Chuck, if you find this book...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Loop's Progress (Hardcover)
Loop's Progress is the first book in Chuck Rosenthal's Loop Trilogy, which continues in Experiments with Life & Deaf, and Loop's End. It's narrated by a kid named Jarvis Loop growing up in a blue collar suburb of Erie, Pennsylvania in the 1960's.Jarvis is a congenial and observant voice, relating the idiosyncracies of his family and everyone else around him with deadpan hipster inflection, kind of like a Beat Huckleberry Finn, a less introspective Holden Caulfield. That doesn't quite get it, though; this is one of the most original and funny voices I've ever read. Jarvis is funnny and odd and streetwise, belying a true sort of innocence. He's surrounded by oddballs; his mother's a Catholic whose miniature statues of the saints sneak around the house when nobody's looking; His father, Red, is a towering volcano of a man who loves kids, spins bowling balls on his pinkies, blasts all the house's doors off their hinges when he's mad. His sister Neda is a genius who can do anything, up to and including building a rocket and putting a neighborhood kid into orbit for a science experiment. Uncle Jon is a lunatic who can float in the air and becomes uncontrollably invisible. Jarvis' street gang, the Dialecticians, concern themselves with "experiments," researches into life & deaf (sic) that bring Jarvis into confrontation with history. The book spins through history; his parent's stories and his grandparents are revealed in increasingly detailed passes through the trilogy, and Jarvis has to come to terms with the living and the dead as the story progresses. This is like Gabriel Garcia Marquez territory; Rosenthal plays with time, and Jarvis' encounters with the past and the dead become almost as commonplace as his dealings with the living present. This trilogy is really, really hard to find, but you might see it laying around in a used bookstore someplace. It's one of the funniest things I've ever read -- not one of those books covered with blurbs that talk about how funny it is, and then turns out not to be funny at all (I'm thinking like Portnoy's Complaint, here, or Confederacy of Dunces) but like really, actually read-it-in-public-and-get-weird-looks-from-total-strangers-funny. I don't see how Rosenthal came in under the radar with these books; I don't know anyone who's even heard of them. Rosenthal's is a distinctively baroque American voice, and I can't recommend his books more highly. I read, incidentally, that he's working on something called Coyote O'Donahue's History of Texas, and I'd love to hear from anyone who knows anything about that. Chris Packham
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Twenty Years Later: Loop's Progress by Chuck Rosenthal,
This review is from: Loop's Progress (The Loop Trilogy: Book One) (Paperback)
Many fine writers slip by without notice: sad, but true. Their books are published and don't sell for lack of publicity, poor timing, bad luck.Some get a second chance. Ten, twenty, fifty years down the road someone will run across one of their books, notice its value and promote it. Martha Gelhorn, Henry Green, Joseph Mitchell, Dawn Powell are recent examples. A shame they're not around to enjoy this appreciation, When Chuck Rosenthal's next book is released, I hope it catches on and resurrects his previously published books as well. When I read the first of these, Loop's Progress, published in 1986, I was amused--what an outrageous family, what an explosive neighborhood, what intelligent, although unbalanced, kids and insane parents, what brilliant writing--until four-fifths of the way through I realized the humorous incidents were anything but. For wasn't the narrator, Jarvis Loop, hanging out with kids (the Dialecticians) who regularly experimented with "deaf." "Dialecticians snorting morphine, Dialecticians smoking pot, Dialecticians debating with the gods, Dialecticians shooting horse, Dialecticians thoughtfully meditating on their veins, on their arteries, on the edges of knives and the barrels of guns." They carried firearms, and supported their activities by armed robbery. The full impact of what was happening didn't hit me until I read the line: "And that's when the gun went off." This is a tragedy of the best and the bravest given a chance to demonstrate courage in WW2 (explicitly, the hand-to-hand Battle of Midway Island), and the aftermath of damage, drugs, and decline. Rosenthal tosses a deck of clowns into the air, but by the time they settle each is human. A brilliant, heart-breaking book.
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