Requiem (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [Paperback]

Curtis White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2001 | Series: American Literature (Dalkey Archive)

REQUIEM is a darkly comic novel about what it means to be human in a culture obsessed with sex and death. With a structure loosely based on the Mass for the Dead, this ambitious novel includes letters-to-the-editor, an e-mail correspondence with a porn queen, scenes from the lives of classical musicians, and retellings of biblical stories. In the process, White charts the rise and fall of the Human from the Bible (pre-human), to the Enlightenment (the invention of the human), to the digital age (post-human). In an America where everyone keeps a secret website, and where a modern Prophet can only weep at the stories he hears, REQUIEM reveals our past, present and future with wit, sadness, and complete honesty.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Divided into six sections to imitate the six sections Mozart wrote for his unfinished Requiem, White's latest novel deals in pattern and frequency rather than character and plot. Each section is made up of brief pieces: seemingly random notes, interviews, stories and dramatic sketches. The notes range from thumbnail biographies of Mozart, Haydn, Saint-Saens and other musicians to pseudo-philosophical reflections; the interviews are usually between a character named the Modern Prophet, who, like White, is an unsung novelist (a point made in a fake Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross), and a murderer, a madman and some Beckett-like bit players. There is also a sequence of e-mails between Honeycomb at teenslut.com and an English professor named Tom. The theme of pornography is woven through the entire book, intensifying in a series of cameos of bestiality involving a Web site, a woman named Michelle, her dog Murphy and her boyfriend, Chad. White is deliberately trying to shock the reader with his misogyny, his hatred of children and his Manichean view of copulation. In this, he is following in the anti-heroic tradition initiated by Dostoyevski's Notes from the Underground, in which the reader is apparently invited to despise the hero, only to find that, gradually, the reader's own smugness is under attack. For Dostoyevski, the point was that there is no virtue without faith. In White's novel, however, the point seems more petulant: excoriation of these supposedly lowbrow times.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Imagine a cross between David Markson and Milan Kundera, and you have White, author of the acclaimed Memories of My Father Watching TV. His latest is a loopy postmodern "novel" of epic reach and encyclopedic method. Assembled from e-mails, letters to the editor, interview transcripts, and other ephemera, Requiem tackles the themes of art, death, and the spirit, suggesting that a transhuman web of consciousness holds together the apparent randomness of the universe. There are flashes of wit here, as well as moments of deep pathos, but the pace is bogged down by numerous passages that revolve around a shadowy figure named Chris, the so-called Modern Prophet. Chris's encounters with various madmen and murderers are supposed to serve as a narrative key but instead distract from the livelier material. In addition, there are certain political messages that in the current climate most readers will find bizarre if not offensive. That, along with the high incidence of bestiality and other forms of morbid sexuality, will limit the audience for this work. Suitable only for the largest collections or academic libraries. Philip Santo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr; 1st edition (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564783081
• ISBN-13: 978-1564783080
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,760,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Lush And Full Of Dogs, December 28, 2001

By 

Reginald Westfahl (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Requiem (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

Curtis White's Requiem is one of those rare works that causes you to stop and rethink the possibilities of the modern novel--a difficult feat in this post-everything world. In a way, the structure, based around Mozart's final work of the same name, functions as a balance (or maybe ballast) to the sytlistically disparate sections. These pieces, however, are fused by intent, so collage together to create a whole work that is impressively unified in aim (just as well (if not better) than White's last remarkable novel, Memories of My Father Watching TV). And in the end, Requiem does what a great novel should, it makes you mull over those things which you had forgotten you should have been examining all along.
Very lush and full of dogs, it is also hilarious.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars dark and funny!, June 19, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Requiem (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

I found Requiem to be quite humorous and shocking
at the same time. It shows the lighter side of people's bad
times and a world that's full of sex and violence. This book
isn't for the easily insulted and closeminded...

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is the strangest book i have ever read, May 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Requiem (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

requiem is one of the strangest books i have ever read. the main character the so called "modern prophet" basically goes around collecting interviewing murderers, madmen and others in an attempt at i'm not quite sure. when i had finished it i was scared. this book is not for the faint of heart, in fact this book is not for anyone, the world isn't ready for this book so go away and save your precious sanity
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.