Part of the World is a fugue in both a musical and psychological sense. It is a canonical juggernaut of lyrical language ever dissolving, devolving, shifting, then reconstituting itself into a new knowledge of reality. This language comes straight from a compulsive mind in a Quixotic state ceaselessly harping on the everyday perturbations and peculiarities of our humdrum lives our cars, apartments, health, finances. But if you relax your focus as if staring at some sort of holographic fractal, with each part containing the whole, the superficial meaning is purged, layer by layer, peeling back and revealing the subtext of what the mind is capable of under the burden of trauma and accountability.
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"Robert Lopez has written a darkly hilarious exploration of the trickery of memory, the unreliability of personal history, and the strangeness, even uncanniness, of our daily transactions. As we follow Lopez's hapless narrator about the business of trying to navigate his homely part of the world, we are made to reconsider our own well-mapped relations, the unhygienic corners of our homes." --Dawn Raffel
"Reading Part of the World by Robert Lopez felt to me like standing in front of one of those marvelous, mind-bending exhibits at the Museum of Jurassic Technology that seem at first glance to be doing exactly nothing and at second glance to be dissolving and reconstituting reality as we thought we knew it. Literary pleasures like this are all too uncommon." --Laird Hunt
"In his first novel, Robert Lopez leads the reader into a peculiar part of the world on his own terms. The novel itself deals with the everyday actions of the narrator, from renting an apartment to buying a used car. However, these tasks become yard sticks by which one must measure the narrator himself and his sense of reality. By the end of the novel, the reader is forced to question the validity of everything the narrator has said, as a new, obfuscated yet elucidated reality begins to appear." The rest of the review appears here: http://versemag.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-review-of-ropert-lopez.html --Leigh Murphy, Verse
"Reading Part of the World by Robert Lopez felt to me like standing in front of one of those marvelous, mind-bending exhibits at the Museum of Jurassic Technology that seem at first glance to be doing exactly nothing and at second glance to be dissolving and reconstituting reality as we thought we knew it. Literary pleasures like this are all too uncommon." --Laird Hunt
"In his first novel, Robert Lopez leads the reader into a peculiar part of the world on his own terms. The novel itself deals with the everyday actions of the narrator, from renting an apartment to buying a used car. However, these tasks become yard sticks by which one must measure the narrator himself and his sense of reality. By the end of the novel, the reader is forced to question the validity of everything the narrator has said, as a new, obfuscated yet elucidated reality begins to appear." The rest of the review appears here: http://versemag.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-review-of-ropert-lopez.html --Leigh Murphy, Verse
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More About the Author
Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, and a collection of stories, Asunder. He has taught at The New School, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University and is a 2010 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
publishers synopsis and blurbs,
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This review is from: Part of the World (Paperback)
Part of the World is a fugue in both a musical and psychological sense. It is a canonical juggernaut of lyrical language--ever dissolving, devolving, shifting, then reconstituting itself into a new knowledge of reality. This language comes straight from a compulsive mind in a Quixotic state--ceaselessly harping on the everyday perturbations and peculiarities of our humdrum lives--our cars, apartments, health, finances. But if you relax your focus as if staring at some sort of holographic fractal, with each part containing the whole, the superficial meaning is purged, layer by layer, peeling back and revealing the subtext of what the mind is capable of under the burden of trauma and accountability.
"Robert Lopez has written a darkly hilarious exploration of the trickery of memory, the unreliability of personal history, and the strangeness, even uncanniness, of our daily transactions. As we follow Lopez's hapless narrator about the business of trying to navigate his homely part of the world, we are made to reconsider our own well-mapped relations, the unhygienic corners of our homes." --Dawn Raffel "Reading Part of the World by Robert Lopez felt to me like standing in front of one of those marvelous, mind-bending exhibits at the Museum of Jurassic Technology that seem at first glance to be doing exactly nothing and at second glance to be dissolving and reconstituting reality as we thought we knew it. Literary pleasures like this are all too uncommon." --Laird Hunt "The prose found in Robert Lopez's new novel, Part of the World, is as flat as this piece of paper but as deep as the deepest well. The world this world is a part of is an affectless poetics planet caught in the black-hole gravity of a Stephen Dixon-esque free-falling narrative sink. Stranger than The Stranger, it is a relentless, droll, blinkless, book." --Michael Martone
3.0 out of 5 stars
Underwhelming,
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This review is from: Part of the World (Paperback)
Although there were some interesting parts and some funny ones here and there, the book wasn't very entertaining. It hardly sustained my interest, which is such a shame for a book this short.
As for the narrative itself, it seemed to wander into nowhere and lacked a story which made the book further more difficult to relate to. He does play with some relatable memories and repeatable language, but if you cut out all the vignettes and phrases he repeats, you can cut the book to half what it is: a featherless, tasteless, meatless, hormone-injected, artificially pumped-up chicken of a novel. I do not completely regret reading this book. However, I would not read it again or associate it positively with my other readings. All in all, not recommended.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Superb Debut,
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This review is from: Part of the World (Paperback)
Very droll, very flat affect and very musical in its rhythms and subtly varying repetitions. It's always great to come across a young writer who's talent is so much to one's personal taste that one vows to read, thenceforth, whatever of his makes it into print. Robert Lopez is definitely in that catagory for me.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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indecipherable configuration, watch clockwise, tinier figures, someplace unfamiliar, someone advising, house frock, moon crickets, long coffee table, car seller Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Hard Left, Emergency Medic Alert, Johnny Cash, Ralph the Chinese, The Approach New!
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indecipherable configuration, watch clockwise, tinier figures, someplace unfamiliar, someone advising, house frock, moon crickets, long coffee table, car seller Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Hard Left, Emergency Medic Alert, Johnny Cash, Ralph the Chinese, The Approach New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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