9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A new reading experience, March 10, 2003
This review is from: Lucky Wander Boy (Paperback)
D.B. Weiss' first novel, "Lucky Wander Boy", is a story seemingly about a young man who ruins his life because of his obsession with the video games of his youth, and one game in particular - Lucky Wander Boy. But don't be fooled! The Video games that populate this book are every bit the McGuffin as was the black bird of Hitchcock's "Maltese Falcon". As you read, you will become increasingly aware that the story is really about something very different. It explores the protagonist Adam Pennyman's relationship to life as expressed thru the video games he plays and often worships.
The book is tightly written and cleverly concieved. Unless you have the vocabulary of a William Styron, you may want to keep a Webster's handy. The story alternates between narrative and sections of explanation and exposition about various videogames, some real and some the product of Weiss' quirky imagination. You may find this movement disconcerting or even confusing, but be patient as the confusion is purposeful and a necessary part of the creation of the mindset through which Pennyman views life.
You may also find that the portrayal of the people who populate Pennyman's world are sketchy and poorly defined. This is also an interesting device, as the author brings us to see that Pennyman views the real people with whom he lives (and sometimes loves) as characters in the video games he plays. People who are being moved around the screen of his videogame existance without feelings or real personalities of their own. The clue to this attitude comes early in the book when Pennyman, while watching a TV interview with Kurt Krickstein (a man who will eventually become his employer) remarks, "His childhood features had remained with him, but in the transition to early middle age they had become cartoonish, as grotesque in their own subtle way is the latex F/X creatures in the background behind him. I knew it was hip to like cartoons, but I didn't think it was hip to be one."
This book may grab you by the throat and take you on a wild ride of a reading experience. However, if you are a person who likes formula books where the hero is beset by seemingly unsurmountable challanges and where all the problems are solved and villians vanquished in the last 10 pages, this may not be your idea of a good read. If you are open to a thought-provoking and alternate way of looking at life this intelligent novel will not only be your cup of tea but the entire box of teabags! And the ending may leave you physically and emotionally breathless, as it did me.
Read this book. You may love it - you may hate it. I guarantee that you will turn the final page and feel that you have read something very different.
N. Hernandez
Chicago, Il.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than meets the eye, February 26, 2003
This review is from: Lucky Wander Boy (Paperback)
Quite frankly, this book is far better and far more intelligent than it has a right to be. I read it in one sitting, constantly astounded that what was packaged as "High Fidelity for Atari fans," was actually a genuine piece of literature and social criticism. The book is hilariously funny, but without any of the cloying sarcastic sensibilities of most Gen-X novels. Instead, the author uses Pennyman to depict a kind of isolation and obsessiveness that's very familiar nowadays. He's a truly fascinating psychological portrait, an overly smart man who cannot cope with the inanities of the everyday world. So he finds solace in something seemingly even more inane, yet invests it with the entire weight of his scientific intelligence. He reminds me of those people with IQs too high to fit into everday society--the people who wind up bagging groceries while they muse about philosophers and string theory. But what's most remarkable is that the novel is never pretentious, never forced, never desperate. Weiss is a very assured writer, who unravels his complicated plot with patience, and who shows great empathy for his lead character. In short, this brightly packaged book, this tangle of wires put out as a concept--might just be one of the best books of the year. I can't think of another book that so effortlessly seemed to capture the zeitgeist.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and Original, June 11, 2003
This review is from: Lucky Wander Boy (Paperback)
Saying this book is just about video games is like saying Moby Dick is just about whaling. Video games are just the medium that Weiss uses to explore his protagonist's search for meaning. The results are fascinating, original and pretty funny to say the least. Like other reviewers have said, as long as you know the basics about the classics such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong you don't need to be a video game guru to understand what Weiss is selling. I'd recommend this book pretty highly to anyone who likes to read original, thought-provoking novels.
BTW, for those of you that are interested in this sort of thing, the narrative flow reminds me quite a bit of Paul Auster's "City of Glass" or Samuel Beckett's "Murphy" - chaotic and random, but in a good way that keeps the reader off-balance. I know some people have problems with this style, but I personally enjoy it.
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