Customer Reviews

Neighbors

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It was with great pleasure that I read that Zoland Books was reissuing Berger's classic dark comedy. I had been looking for this book for many years and it has sadly been out of print. The book still stands as one of the funniest books of the last twenty-five years. Earl Keese is the classic surburban gentleman: well rounded, established, slightly boring. He is living the perfect conventional life until his entire world is shattered by the moving in of Harry and Ramona. These are at first glance the neighbors from hell. Younger, less sophisticated, crass and alluring they are everything Keese is not. The first hundred and fifty pages of this novel ranks as one of the funniest set pieces in modern literature. One has to remember that this is a novel of all out guerilla warfare between two adult neighbors. If the idea seems childish at first one has to remember that these are adults acting as children. The odd thing is Keese grows to like these new people at the expense of his own family whom he begins to see as they really are. Wife Enid is a boozy bore, while daughter Elaine is a petty thief. Nothing is to Keese as it has seemed. By the end of the novel Keese is doubting his own way of life and wants to be more like the neighbors that he started out hating. The book is extemely funny biut sort of sad also and well worth the read.

I just finished reading "Neighbors" by Thomas Berger and am convinced that I should never go back to my favorite coffee house again. Every time I went there to read this book I embarrassed myself with spontaneous guffaws, chuckles, whistles, hoots, hollers, snorts, hee-haws, "pfts!" and knee slaps. I drew a tremendous number of piercing looks and some sad glances of well-wishers encouraged to see a man afflicted with such a debilitating case of turrets emboldened enough to step out in public and try to normalize. This is one of the funniest novels I've ever read. Berger has the wit and darkly comedic outlook of Vonnegut and the surrealism and sheer command of the English language that Beckett displays in his best prose. I hate to say that the end of the novel failed to live up to the rather high expectations I had for it but really, who cares? I'm thrilled to have discovered a new favorite author and can't wait to read some more of his work. Probably "Little Big Man" will be next on my list. I highly recommend this novel especially for authors if for nothing else but to study the work of a master craftsman.

If you're like me you were introduced to the world of Thomas Berger through the movie adaptation of "Neighbors" which featured John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in one of the most ingenious casting decisions of all time. Perhaps it's because I have such fond memories of the film (believe me, I had a long history with it before ever coming to the book) that I was somewhat alarmed at the book's tone.

Both versions have Earl and Enid living peacably in outer suburbia when Harry and Ramona move suddenly into the only other house occupying their street. What ensues is a comedy of manners in which Harry and Ramona make life hell for Earl (Enid emerges strangely unscathed) all the while playing dumb and rebounding the blame back in Earl's court.

You see, in the movie the ridiculous humor is played more or less strictly for laughs, and in my opinion it's one of the finer black comedies of all time (but then, I have a soft spot for compressed little films that have a wealth of material all occurring during one eventful night - ie. American Graffiti, After Hours, Dazed & Confused, etc). Berger's source novel, on the other hand, plays it a little bit more straight, and in fact hints not too subtly that a great deal of the mischief may be entirely a figment of Earl's imagination. This is all fine and well but Berger seems to take it a bit over the top at times. In particular, Enid and (later) their daughter Elaine seem to be picking on Earl and choosing sides against him more or less at random. Similarly, the ending goes for a Kafkaesque (circa "The Trial") bit of nihilistic mayhem that is unconvincing, insofar as similar incidents had been played out throughout the novel without the extreme response scripted in here. This is all the more disappointing considering the more or less realistic repartee between Earl and the Harry/Ramona tangent. Ultimately Harry has not had to prove his manhood for many a year (if ever) and it's this fatal flaw that makes his failures all the more tragically heroic. I still feel the movie managed to smooth out a few of the more incongruous plot points, but the novel is still an engaging read even after all these years.

This is a book that gives us despicable characters in the raw, with such embarrassing moments I felt a little squeamish as I read it. Yet it is undeniably funny and well written, a truly wonderful novel.

Much more rich than the screen version, this book gives us four characters who don't seem to understand each other at all, yet must live next door to each other as new neighbors.

Ollie, the loveable schlub of the Laurel & Hardy films, is essentially a decent man. He is content to mind his own business as long as no one pokes their nose into his affairs. In which case he might just poke back. Let someone push him too far and all hell could break loose.

The essential Laurel & Hardy episode is the silent classic Big Business* (1928), "The story of a man who turned the other cheek and got punched in the nose." The boys have gone into the business of selling Christmas trees door-to-door. A minor misunderstanding develops into destruction on a grand scale.

This kind of comedy picks at the scab of human malevolence. We laugh at what should be regarded as vicious cruelty.

I get the feeling Thomas Berger (born 1924) is a Laurel & Hardy fan. Earl Keese, the hero of Berger's novel, Neighbors, is an archetypal nice guy in the tradition of Ollie. Berger doesn't give you a smooth transition from the normal to the wild and wacky. The madness starts on page one, when Keese glances out his dining room window and isn't sure if he's seen a naked person on all fours or a large white dog. By page five, Keese has already had "quite the most exhilarating encounter" with Ramona, the comely new neighbor he has just met. Her behavior is inexplicably rude and insulting, setting the stage for the hijinks to come.

The narrative piles on wacky incidents like a toddler building a Guggenheim Museum with baby blocks. It is all delivered in a dry, clinical tone like a detective story. It is sort of a comical Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with sparring and one-upmanship between two couples who don't even know each other.

Reading Berger's comic novels (Sneaky People and The Feud for example), you assume every character has a mean streak just beneath a thin veneer of respectability. The fun is in the zany way the respectability gets stripped away.

People who commit unthinkable acts of road rage are probably decent family folks when not behind the wheel. That doesn't apply to me, of course. Road rage is beneath me. Right.

Berger knows something a lot of us are afraid to confront: Those mean people are us.

* Search for "laurel and hardy big business." You can watch the 18-minute classic online.

I've been meaning to read this book for years and finally got around to it. Like most people I am familiar with the story having seen the movie adaptation - famously John Belushi's final movie.

Well - you've seen the film - why not read the book (thirty years later)?

Naturally the book is different than the film - for example, in the book, Vic is Harry. There was some discussion when the movie was released that it was an odd choice to cast the two stars the way they did - perhaps the wild, mad Belushi should have been Harry (Vic). But after reading the original I think the casting was the right on.

Overall I'd say this book is an example of a story with no likable characters - I found I wasn't really empathetic with any of them - not even Earl; but the bizarre story and outcome has left me thinking about the story a lot - so I'd say the story was quit affecting.

A story about one night of confusion, fear and mayhem. It sets up a world of suburban comfort broken by a couple of house intruders; or are they just the new neighbors? The text is all about the madness caused when people jump to conclusions too soon and then act on it straight away. Karl the main protagonist filters his every thought and action through his perception of how people will perceive him, he is caught in a comedy of manners of his own making.

The book is blackly comic and you read it not knowing if it going to spill over into extreme violence at any moment. Thomas Berger has a very individual style of writing that casts a cold eye over the everyday details and habits of modern living but importantly he never seems condescending or cruel.

If you can categorize this brilliantly funny and at times Kafaesque novel, let's call it a modern suburban comedy. The antihero is Earl Keese, 49 years old, and set in his ways in his marriage to Enid. He is a decent man, in the common sense of the word, very conservative, if not timid in his actions. In fact, he proves to be very fearful, nebbish, and at times paranoid. Worse, he seems to lack a strong moral compass to govern his actions so that every thing he does is wrought with guilt and ambiguity. He is a man hungering for moral clarity. In a way he is all of us.

The plot is simple enough. Having retreated into the suburbs, Earl gets a visit one evening from his new neighbors, who bit by bit psychologically torment Earl, not because they are necessarily cruel but because their behavior consist of one comic contradiction after another. At times affectionate toward him, other times menacing and bullying, they present Earl with several moral dilemmas. Earl wants to be polite, as social manners dictate, but finds the neighbors annoying and inexplicable. In his struggle to put up a facade of manners, he shows he's a man with no conviction and is in many ways spiritually dead. Mind you, this is all rendered in a comic, ironic touch.

Unable to deal with the ambiguities presented by his new neighbors, Earl declines into greater and greater dissolution and in doing so his quest for the stable life in the suburbs is put into grave question.
I believe I've read that this is the author Thomas Berger's favorite novel. This is a great start for one of the great comic novel masters.

This book was selected for my book club, and I was looking forward to the read. Initially, I was drawn in to the story and couldn't put it down. After about 75 pages of craziness, I expected some reality to ground the story, and it didn't happen. After 180 pages of non-stop, increasingly unbelievable behavior, and no connection whatsoever with any of the characters, I did what I've never done with a book before - went to the last 5 pages to have it over with already. I don't recommend this book.

Incessant and nonsensical bickering among new neighbors, which for no good reason periodically blossoms into physical violence, is the core of this unnecessary and tiring novel. Mercilessly silly, artistically and in every other way, it should be avoided because although it pedals hard it covers no ground and inspired in me all kinds of frustration and nearly no thought. Years and years ago, I remember liking two or three other Berger novels and still mean to read "Little Big Man" at some point, but after this book I think I'll need a little cooling off period.