Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful, funny, delightful, and brilliant, May 19, 2008
The highly digressive mode employed by the author is often one of the most telling signs of a sloppy writer, but when wielded as superbly as it is in this book it is obviously the product of an astute thinker and a stylist of rare brilliance. This book was recommended on a website that I happened upon while looking for information on SF's Tenderloin (which does not figure in this book): although recommended compellingly enough to cause me to order it, I had the usual reservations afterwards, as such impulsive purchases on my part tend to be worthwhile only 10%-20% of the time. To my happy surprise, the book more than lived up to the glowing recommendation.
So what is it? It's a memoir that might as well be a great novel (or maybe it's a great novel in the guise of a confessional memoir: I assume it's a memoir because the ring of truth was evident throughout) about Mormonism, nuclear testing, academic freedom in China, Hiroshima, Japanese culture, writing, popular delusions, and much more, expressed with great insight and charm.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fissile Material, January 17, 2008
This dude knows satire. He dances like a butterfly, stings like a bee. He's a demented professor in more trouble internationally (with his mind) than all his students combined. The Chinese want him out, the Japanese want him out, the Mormons want him out. And as a result he's the eternal outsider, now living in exile in Japan. Professor Bradley goes after everything that's phony and empty and forces itself in your face: religious proselytizers, Chinese execution styles (for body parts), the Nagasaki literary scene, the trash world of English language teachers, pop fads and the zombie world known as "students." With a nose tweak here, an eye jab there, along with strategic happy caps and wedgies, you'll laugh yourself off your chair. It's a beautiful routine of scholarship and killer punch lines. After the Bradley treatment, the culture bullies will stand for what they are and you'll feel a whole hell of lot better knowing writers like this are willing to risk dismissal, jail and worse to bring it to you. This is the last book you'll ever want to turn loose of.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
unearthly, timeless literary motivations, April 23, 2008
On page 289 of FISSION AMONG THE FANATICS, this remarkable passage appears, which reveals almost everything one needs to know about Tom Bradley, and all other genuine writers:
I tell you that Dr. Bradley has devoted his existence to writing because he intends for every center of consciousness, everywhere, in all planes and conditions (not just terrestrial female Homo sapiens in breeding prime) to love him, forever, starting as soon as possible, though he's prepared to wait thousands of centuries after he's dead.
Real writers have always been motivated this unearthly, timeless way. After the overdue fizzling-out of the current age, this degenerate age of seven-figure advances against royalties, of fawning obeisance to Oprah and the Great Eye of Horus (aka television), and the duly purchased patriarchal benedictions of Harold Bloom, it will be writers like Tom Bradley who are remembered.
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