The Lost Scrapbook is arguably the most highly praised, but least known, American debut of the last several decades. Originally published by a non-commercial house, the novel received exactly one review in the mainstream media. But that review called The Lost Scrapbook the most accomplished first novel since William Gaddis' The Recognitions, from 1955. Since then, The Lost Scrapbook has garnered exceptional acclaim, in particular from alternative magazines and from literary sites and readers' groups on the internet. Chosen by William T. Vollmann as winner of The National Fiction Competition.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This artfully disarrayed first novel reads like literary channel-surfing over a multitude of characters' first-person monologues and casual conversations. Dara flings a cacophony of voices at his reader in a passionately nonlinear novel whose elements-be they characters, themes or dotted plot lines-come together only in the culminating narrative of a chemical company's accident and cover-up in a small town. When creating voices and characters, Dara displays extended range with a cast that includes a pirate radio deejay tracing his own signal, a schizoid eco-hermit on a rant and a tobacco-industry spokesman retorting to unspoken questions. For great sea-like expanses of the book, the only connecting links are thin leitmotifs-e.g., references to music theory or a running variation on a casual joke. Then the detached voices finally merge with the chemical-disaster plot; and this most conventional portion of this unconventional novel disappoints since the final environmental catastrophe, though intended to unite the voices in endangered and complicit community, does not so much integrate Dara's voices as overwhelm them. Dara is a talent with a clear gift for voice-throwing-some of his extended passages of dialogue approach the virtuosity of William Gaddis in their ability to implicitly advance action and character without benefit of narrative exposition. But he still needs a sturdier novelistic structure-even if unconventional-in order to redeem his obsessive themes and anxious variations from all that exhilarating white noise.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
A vast accomplishment. --Richard Powers
An encyclopedic masterpiece that invites comparisons to the big books of postmodernism. --American Book Review, Stephen J. Burn, author of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide
Evan Dara's magnificent novel [is crafted] as if James Joyce had widened the narrative ear of Ulysses. If this really is Mr. Dara's first novel, then he is either a young phenom or a well-practiced, reclusive treasure. --Chelsea Review
Powerful, hysterically funny and evocative. Stretches the boundaries of what novels can be and mean. --The Los Angeles Reader
An encyclopedic masterpiece that invites comparisons to the big books of postmodernism. --American Book Review, Stephen J. Burn, author of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide
Evan Dara's magnificent novel [is crafted] as if James Joyce had widened the narrative ear of Ulysses. If this really is Mr. Dara's first novel, then he is either a young phenom or a well-practiced, reclusive treasure. --Chelsea Review
Powerful, hysterically funny and evocative. Stretches the boundaries of what novels can be and mean. --The Los Angeles Reader
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
There are no words. . .,
This review is from: The Lost Scrapbook (Paperback)
. . . to describe the incredible force and beauty of this book. It is almost impossible to believe that this is Dara's first novel, for the facility with which he interweaves superficially disparate but fundamentally similar vignettes into a cohesive whole is breathtaking. As you read, you can feel that you are in the hands of a master. The Lost Scrapbook (an apt title both because of the books collage style and because this amazing book has inexplicably been lost amid heaps of lesser works) combines the first-person narratives of artists, blue-collar workers, academics, mothers, possible lunatics, justified malcontents, and average joes, eventually becoming the voice of a community facing a terrible crisis, which brings the books to its gripping, gut-wrenching conclusion. And with this final narrative, of the battle of Isaura, MO and the Ozark Photography Corporation, Dara reveals that he is not only brilliantly talented, he is also brilliantly moral.The Lost Scrapbook is a deeply-felt, deeply moving novel.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dara's intellectual masterpiece raises the literary ante.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Lost Scrapbook (Paperback)
In a just universe, The Lost Scrapbook would dominate the wealth of hype currently afforded to lesser novels, or at least share the excitement over recent, comparable novels(and I've read them too) such as Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Delillo's Underworld, and Gaddis' A Frolic of His Own. But it seems that the world wants to ignore The Lost Scrapbook, the work of a vastly talented writer, whose interwoven, first person narratives not only evoke lucid characters, but often reveal meaning through what is omitted -- as in whole sets of dialogue -- rather than what is written. Film students discuss Piaget's theory of object constancy. One listens to the voices of factory workers, artists, cable repairmen, television interns, microbiologists, even an entire town, all quilted together into an elegant comment on humanity's permutative expansion, information-wise and, subsequently, disaster-wise. I held back on rating this a 10, if only to dare Dara to discover room for improvement. So avoid The Lost Scrapbook at your own peril. If there is such a thing as a millenial masterpiece, Dara has written that book with which to usher in the 21st century, not to signal the end of the 20th. Because of that, The Lost Scrapbook will not be forgotten, whatever the status of its availability or obscurity.
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Novel of the Decade,
This review is from: The Lost Scrapbook (Paperback)
Don't worry yourself that this masterpiece'll be overlooked-- even in today's mess of praise for books that are as billboards for soulessness the good stuff eventually surfaces word-of-mouthwise. So let me be the 2nd to here sound the call to all literature thirsties ready for something more hurricane than novel: Build yourselves from this perfect thumping upon the ceiling of our world; read it in the prisons and on the beaches; read it wherever there is love and/or chemical dumping; read it bravely, whatever the cost may be.
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