Customer Reviews

Rumored to Exist

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Clever, humorous and extraordinarily weird, "Rumored to Exist" jolts along with a supercharged cyberpunk writing style that's jam-packed with elements of tacky technology fetishism, rabid chunks of Fox TV's weeknight lineup, monster movies gone horribly awry, rewarmed and retwisted conspiracy theories, and--why not?-- horrifically ill-advised scientific research. Among other things.

It's as if the Post-Modern Paul Revere from Richard Linklater's "Slacker" (the guy who drove around blasting the sidewalks with dark warnings via the monster PA system atop his car) was told to crack his knuckles and get to typing... pronto fella. And then he did. With relish.

The squeamish are advised to stay away. There are more fecal jokes here than in a ten-hour South Park marathon. The rest of you should crowd into this here tent and take your seat. The show's about to begin.

An alcoholic hit bottom and remembering the past August 27, 2003
This book is a new concept compared to Konrath's usual "fiction," in that it's a short series of seemingly related bookettes, almost like a long stream of consciousness that you can buy for cheap and read in one pass. I read this during the New York blackout, but I was in Chicago, and it hit the spot because it immersed me in another world, of a Navy dropout at the end of his rope, drinking mouthwash for alcohol and trying to think back as to what went wrong. It's like a good short story, but long enough that you feel like you got your money worth. I also like how he tied it into his book Summer Rain, but also described another side of the demented Konrath world. This is great stuff and well worth the price. PS Jon, congrads on your recent win before the MA supreme court!

This book is a complex and recursively spiraling journey through the mind of the author, refracted through the shattered lens of postmodern society.
Plus it comes in handy bite-sized chunks!
The best of Konrath's books, "Rumored to Exist" is easy to pick up and read thanks to the engaging over-the-top depravity and general sensory overload of the sci-fi tinged text. And despite the fact that the "chapters," if you will, can often be less than a page long, this is a difficult book to set down, since anything can, and often does, happen, including the strangest things that you're likely to ever read.

This is my favorite Konrath book. you can pick it up and open a page and read for a minute, and you get more out of it than if you read an entire Chuck Palahniuk book, which has very short sentences. These sentences are long and complicated and contain references to autopsy paraphrenalia and explosives and japanese monsters and obscure sexual practices. You will be amazed at the range of topics covered in "Rumored."

This is certainly the most bizarre book that I have read since _Catch-22_. Back then I was somewhere in Germany sitting in the driver's hatch of a main battle tank, hypnotized by the enchanting text. Now I'm sitting in the Republic of Djibouti somewhat dazed as if reading _Rumored_to_Exist_ had caused an ethereal brick to be slammed into the back of my psyche.

The twisted adventures of John Conner take unimaginable paths. Most readers would find it difficult to separate this fantasy reality from the hallucinogen-induced ramblings of an autistic author. I took all the facts presented at face value and was cursed with the feeling of anti-euphoria that aroused in me a personal feeling of complete freedom as the bottom dropped out of every roller coaster ride in this novel.

I was genuinely pleased that each of the 272 pages in this beast contained a new idea, a fresh scent, an alien aura. I could identify with John and found myself intimately acquainted with each of his friends in his convoluted life.

Before I picked it up, nothing like this book had ever entered my hands.

My life is better for reading it, but life for my colleagues has just taken a drastic turn for the worse.

After reading some of the other reviews, I found that I did not agree with some of the opinions told. Now, I'm not going to be talking about how much I hated the book. Rumored To Exist was a very interesting read. However, I didn't see this book as surreal or as a book show weighing the inner workings of a psycho mind. This book seemed to be more absurd than surreal. It was a very dark absurdity, but not what I would say to be showing insanity. But, it was definitely experimental. The first 20 or so pages really made me think of Ulysses by James Joyce. However, the rest of the book (after the first 20 or so pages) lost its similarity to James Joyce. Per out the rest of the boat I spot it a lot of influences by John Barth. Now, I'm not sure if the writer intentionally or knowingly wrote that a fiction in the style of John Barth, but it's it was still done very well. One really good thing that the writer did was make the narrator very involved in the plot. In most upsurge of novels, from what I have seen, the riders tend to make the main character more of an observer than anything else. This writer didn't take that easy route. And finally, about the annotations and footnotes. The footnotes to route the bug added to the absurdity of it all kept any potential monotony from happening. At times it seemed that the writer was trying too hard with the footnotes. Sometimes the footnotes to away from the store in. Personally, I failed that the footnotes should have been pressed more so as to outdo the great story. But, the footnotes fell short in that respect. All and all, the book was very good.

When I purchased this book, I was wholly unprepared. This book takes your conception of reality, twists it, bends it, and takes you for a very strange and very interesting ride. It's a fast and furious black comedy unsuitable for those with no appreciation for the absurd.

Hi, I'm Jon Konrath, the author of Rumored to Exist, so my review will be a bit biased, as I spent seven years trying to write this thing. Anyway, this book is a nonlinear fiction story set in the near-future that's about UFOs, the Russian Mafia, church corruption, excesses in life, synthetic drug manufacture, an insane scientist that has invented a Rubik's puzzle that shoots poisonous darts into you if you don't solve it, and about a million other unrelated things. It's filled with dark humor and satire on society in a near-future situation. My biggest influeces writing this were Mark Leyner, Kurt Vonnegut, and Hunter S. Thompson. Anyway, I hope you check out the book, and look at rumored.com for more information on the book.