(Kindle). I'll blame This American life on this one. In 2013 I spent so many commute hours listening to episodes of This american Life, that when contributor David Rakoff died, and they read a fragment of his novel to be published posthumously, I decided to get it.
It sounded good, canadian born, Manhattan jewish gay writer creates a modern novel completely in verse. How could it be bad? It turns out, it could be very bad. The worst thing is that the fragment they read in This American Life was superb, sadly, was the only good fragment on the book. Earlier in the year, Rakoff also read a short fiction in verse, the hypothetical epistolary exchange between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss. In that case, the verse format was natural and it worked brilliantly.
But this book is only about the form, it falls flat, not to mention that in his obsession to use the most obscure words of the english language, it alienates readers. I consider myself the owner of a decent vocabulary in English, and I had to use the dictionary function 5 times per verse! (Tanks god for e-books, it would have taken years to read by putting the book down and picking up the dictionary).
I still have an appetite for a good modern book in verse, so I'll be in the lookout. BTw, I thought this was not a very popular book, yet I found that Munish was reading it as well, you have to love a party guy who reads!
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