Customer Reviews

Palladio: A Novel

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

 

 

This is everything a novel should be. Although at first glance the subject and characters were far from my usual interests, I was pulled into it and rapidly became entranced by it. It has many dimensions, is flawlessly written and structured, and transforms you. In some respects it is an extended meditation on Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which is central to the theme, but it is hard to characterize the whole book as it is bigger than any simplistic summary. The author understands Madison Avenue, the enigmatic rich, thirty-something bright but warped people, and much more and is able to make them come alive. In many ways this is a sad book. There are five sets of parent/child relationships at all stages of life, from infancy to the death or disintegration of parents in old age, explored in some depth, all different, all seriously flawed and at times heartbreaking. The author needs to break away from the lingering university scene (too much of the book is set at Berkeley, NYU, Columbia, Spokane, and Charlottesville) but this is not irritating as he gently deflates the pomposities of each place and all feel different in his descriptions.
May Dee live a thousand years and write a thousand books every year. Buy it at once; you will not be disappointed.

This is a finely wrought novel of love and relationships in the 21st century--with a twist of irony and cynicism. Originating in upstate NY, the story follows John and Molly as their lives collide in an all consuming love affair and the aftermath of Molly's disappearance.

The first story in the novel deals with the unreachable (and unsinkable?) Molly. She is largely apathetic to her life and surroundings, even though she is a femme fatale whom no man seems able to resist. She recognizes her power over men and enjoys eliciting passion and emotion from them, but she seldom has any feelings apart from a gentle curiosity towards those with whom she has sex.

Molly meets John, and she falls in love--albeit in her own way--comfortable in that he demands nothing of her and seems content to spend his life loving her and trying to figure her out. Because she cannot form significant emotional ties to others, even John, she uses her father's nervous breakdown to disappear from John's life--only to reappear in the latter part of the novel that deals with Palladio itself.

Palladio is the company formed with the goal of using art as advertising. There is no pitch to the potential consumer--the company produces art of any kind--be it written or painted, cinematographic, etc. John ends up as a personal executive to Mal, the founder of the company. The idea of getting rid of traditional advertising seems very appealing, and one longs for a world where commercials on television or ads in magazines appeal to our artistic sense instead of trying to "trick" the consumer into purchasing a product.

These two stories come together in a predictable fashion, and the reader is fascinated by the concept of Palladio and whether or not it can succeed with such a bold corporate philosophy. More importantly, we are excited to see if John and Molly can come together again and mend the rift in John's soul caused by Molly's disappearance many when they were young.

Unfortunately, the ending does not prove satisfactory and just sort of fades into a series of bumper stickers the origins of which are unknown to the reader. If there had been a less esoteric ending to this well written and thoughtful novel, I could easily have given it four stars. Dee has a lot of promise, but this would not be a novel I'd recommend to start reviewing his work.

this book is so well written that the novels i read following didn't have a chance. what is so beautiful and haunting about dee's new novel is the quiet, lurking, lingering feeling of love between two people exclusive of others. not that THE PRIVILEGES is a straight up love story, per se, but more of a study in the juxtaposition of idealized life and realized life. the great thing is this novel isn't a glimpse into a life of privilege so much as it examines the motivation behind having (financial and social) privilege and the choices once you have reached the privileged status. the real guts of the story is the connection and commitment betwixt adam and cynthia morey regardless of their money or status.

"Palladio" held my attention--and held it well. I wish it were a bit more compact (okay, shorter) and the end kind of drifted off for me, but the core elements of "Palladio" are fascinating, particularly the inscrutable Malcolm Osbourne and his ideas about art and advertising. This novel carries a bundle of treasurers. The relationships are taut and vivid. I think Dee's writing style is an acquired taste. He's a big story-teller. He shoots high. He has a feel for big, sweeping moments and "Palladio" has its share of well-pitched drama. Dee's writing includes lots of "telling." It can feel dispassionate at times. (I liked the switch to first-person at the end of this one and don't usually care for such changes.) "Palladio" is about the messages being sent everyday by individuals, corporations and advertisers. It will make you stop and think about the messages you receive every day--which ones you tune out and which ones you agree to contemplate. "Palladio" is about posing and salesmanship and it's about where art and commerce collide.

I love the ambition of this book. Although it's far from perfect, it's a very smart book--riding the line between reality and satire and asking a lot of smart questions along the way. And questions are always more important than answers.

The novel starts with two story threads: In the first, Molly Howe, a teenage girl in a small town has an affair with the father of the family for whom she regularly babysits. When the affair is revealed, she becomes a pariah and is shamed into running away. She ends up in Berkeley, where she lives in a house with her brother. In the second thread, John Wheelwright, an art director at a New York advertising agency is invited by one of the agency's eccentric partners to join in a new venture in Charlottesville, Virginia--an experimental enterprise, part advertising agency, part thinktank, part artist collective. Palladio, as the new company is called, essentially re-imagines modern advertising model as a revival of the patronage system, with companies funding avant-garde art projects, placing no limitations or control on the work.

Without giving too much away, the two plotlines overlap in a well-structured story that shifts perspective and jumps around in time. It deals with family relationships, romantic relationships, business relationships, and the relationship between art and commerce. The personal relationships are deep and well thought out, although Dee spends a little too much time psycho-analyzing his characters. In the end, the personal relationships feel like they bog down the book a little. But the interesting part of this book, and the real crux of the story, is Palladio. Dee's depiction of the ego and bombast of the advertising world is spot on. And although the idea that companies would blindly fund experimental art projects would have been slightly more absurd when this book was published in 2002, Dee was somewhat prescient as "content creation" is quickly coming into vogue. Which makes one question the true role of marketing, the nature of "message," and the importance of meaning. All good questions.

I picked this up randomly, have not read Dee's other books, nor was I aware of the hype surrounding him as the 'next Great American author'. In a way, this was good, because I was able to just read the book, without any expectations at all. And for me, it was fantastic, one of the best things I've read in awhile.

It is conceptual in the sense that it encompasses so many themes - contemporary art, the line (or lack of one) between advertising and art, perspective, religion, the subcultures of America, parent/child relationships, sex and subversion, intimacy and more. These themes are represented through both the form and content of the book, and even the characters. This may have been why some reviewers found the characters non-compelling, or the changes in perspective from section to section distracting. Personally, I felt they were brilliant, each laying open another layer to a theme that wouldn't have surfaced otherwise. I feel this book is like a prism - you keep viewing the themes and the story from different angles, first looking through one side of the prism, then another.

From a purely psychological perspective, the ending is not very satisfying - the two main characters don't get together, and no one really gets to ride off into the sunset. But I don't think it could have ended any other way. It's true that the slogans/quotes used in the final section are hard to follow (as one reviewer stated), but they make their point if you spend some time with them, and the whole last section is a natural evolution from the prior two.

I think what really makes this book a worthy read is that it is able to cover so much conceptual territory while still keeping you engaged in the story. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and I don't think there are that many novels taking on these themes that manage that. So read, think, and be amazed!

Maybe I'm just a counter-contrarian, but Palladio isn't half as bad as many of the reviews posted would suggest. (Neither is it as good as much of the hype to which people are reacting suggested.) Rather, it's a perfectly decent, fast-moving, entertaining story about reasonably rounded characters working in the fairly interesting world of modern-day advertising. Does Palladio achieve the author's transparent ambitions for it? Not by a long shot. Will it change your life? No. On the other hand, it's a decent book and might -- might -- get you to think about some pretty obvious media-related issues that are at least worth considering.

I loved the premise of the book, the idea of creating serious art without using irony, but it really didn't feel like this book was ultimately about that. It was really more of this love story between a character I really liked (John) and a character I initially liked (Molly) but who became more thoughtless, unreasonable and selfish as the book wore on.

I was very dissatisfied by the end. Nothing changed with most characters, which was infuriating after all the havoc they wreaked on other people's lives, and the one character I did like seemed to have lost virtually everything. I never could understand what in the world was wrong with the Howe family, particularly what would drive both kids to never speak with their family members again. I don't feel like I understood who anyone in that family really was. And I didn't understand what on earth that message gibberish interspersed at the end was. Worse, I didn't even care anymore.

This book hooked me from the start. The premise was unique, the topics current and of interest to me, the characters well developed. I spent my entire weekend with them, genuinely concerned about where this story would take them next....UNTIL (argh!)...the ending. I found the conclusion odd, "gimmicky" and unsatisfying. It was a big let down after such a satisfying story.

I had high hopes for this one. While I really didn't like The Lover of History, I loved The Liberty Campaign (also about advertising) and liked St. Famous. But Palladio is just not successful, for a number of reasons. For one, the female characters seem rather interchangable, which is a big pet peeve of mind. Another more basic issue, at least for me, is that the story just didn't seem plausible. It's difficult for me to believe that these "revolutionary" PR campaigns would've worked. Another reason that the novel failed for me was that Mal, the character who was supposed to be this fascinating enigma, was just a big yawn. Finally, I found the change in tense halfway through the novel distracting and fairly pointless. So a big Thumbs Down for this one. Read The Liberty Campaign instead