Customer Reviews

The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: Poems

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I tend to get my Kleinzahlers mixed up with my Leithausers (and then Seidel comes sidling along..) but I'm working on it. August has some of Frederick's effeteness (their names are a bit of a giveaway!); this is a marked improvement on the lifeless Red Sauce, which was a bit 'turismo', detached, heartless (not unfeeling merely, but lacking that vital organ), but that was already his *6th* book! This is more engaging but hardly gets the juices going - an easy, light read. And is it worth pointing out (An Englishman Abroad) that to the English an ass is something Jesus rode on? Arse. Arse. I'm not sure 'c'est complet' (A History of Western Music #26) is quite right either; complet has usually the sense of complete/no bits missing (as in un complet, a suit) rather than complete/ready; 'c'est complet', while ambiguous, suggests 'you can't come in'. The Hereafter packs a punch (and how could such a topic fail to be funny?) but AK's arch stab at the archaic (p70) is grim; though I admit the visual pun on 'undo' only works in American English, it is still feeble. There's a place for slight books but like light verse they should be uppers rather than downers; this one exudes froideur

And I see, catching up on the London Review of Books for April 14 (I've been away), that AK gets his French wrong on both attempts in the excruciatingly laboured Rain, a would-be jokey take on Ponge, the chief emotion evoked by which is embarrassment. If you want the interface with Europe to be more than window-dressing, stick to the GI Bill veterans or the New York School and steer clear of this old poseur!