Damascus Gate

Rating:
Summary: Godawfully boring
Review: Such drek! If you want to have your spiritual house rocked to its foundation, read THE LAST DAY by Glenn Kleier. Without question one of the most celebrated, controversial, interesting, intelligent and suspenseful philosophical thrillers ever written in this genre.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but ultimately sloppy work
Review: Stone tells an interesting story, but ultimately leaves lots of loose threads. Characters are never developed fully, and even the main character, Chris Lucas, remains something of a cipher-- we learn about him at age 10, but that's it-- nothing to fill us in on where he's at. Stone knows the Arab Old City very well, but his descriptions of the rest of the city, and of the rest of Israel are sparse and sound like they were written after consulting a Frommer's Guide. It's as if he wanted to set up a Casablanca-esque Jerusalem in the Old City, and was annoyed by the Westernized and not-very-picturesque country that surrounds it, so he just ignored it. Having spent time in Israel, I was surprised at how little he seemed to know about the country-- while a decent portion of the novel takes place in a night club in Tel Aviv, it could have been a nightclub in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for all the local color Stone captures. The book does do a good job of depicting the insanity of the religious fanatics in Jerusalem, where on some days you feel as if you're wandering throught the wards of a mental hospital. And the narrative is compelling in that you are curious to find out what happens at the end-- although the letdown is you never really do and you never really know the characters. I agree with reviewers who complained that Stone assumes the reader has an intimate knowledge of Jerusalem and Israel-- I often found myself wondering how someone who hadn't lived there would know what he was talking about.

Rating:
Summary: This book was awful!
Review: How could such a fascinating subject be rendered such a dull and dreary read? I read some of the "professional" reviewers comments here and I wondered if I had read the same book!Reading this book can be likened to trudging on a long journey through intellectual mud- and at the end it is ulitmately an unsatisfying journey.

Rating:
Summary: This book gives me hope for contemporary literature.
Review: I have to admit I am flabbergasted, no: stultified, by some of the reviews of this book (and of some other books on this site, as well). Robert Stone is one of our five or six greatest living American authors (DeLillo, of course; I was going to say William Gaddis, but he, of course, is no longer with us; Cormac McCarthy; Denis Johnson...). This book is difficult, it is not easy, its dialogue and even its narrative structure are heightened and reach pitches of hallucinatory intensity, then slow down (or speed up even further) and let the characters talk to one another the way I hear people talking or trying to talk to one another all day long. Who talks like this, another reviewer asked. I'll tell you -- almost everyone around you every moment of every single day -- the problem is, most people nowadays won't listen, even to their own inner thought processes. The problem is, everyone expects dialogue in a novel to replicate the lobotomized rhythms of a television show. Robert Stone not only writes like a poet in terms of the intensity of his language and the facility of its movement and the power and depth of his imagery, but he also is one of the few working novelists out there labeled brilliant who know how to construct an old-fashioned plot (and I mean old-fashioned in the sense that it can contain anything and make sense -- by the end). The man can just plain flat-out write, and if people don't want to work hard at their art, then they should be quiet and turn on the television. The most difficult pleasures present us with the most difficulties, but they are the most rewarding. Easy pleasures are, well, they're all around us, and that's why no one is happy. We think we're fulfilling ourselves, when we're just letting ourselves off the hook. Robert Stone, I'm not embarrassed to say this (though I'm sure you'll never read this -- why would you?): I WANT TO WRITE LIKE YOU. Not imitatively, but with your spirit, restless questioning, your soul-expanding and mind-boggling sinuousness. Thanks for making me take a closer at myself, my own life, the way I'm living it, and the world around me. Everyone interested in humanity should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Good culture, psyche, and spirit. Poor start and end.
Review: "Damascus Gate" offers the reader a good look into the culture, psyche, and spiritual lives of its characters. The description of Jerusalem is appealing and believeable. The narrative sometimes is unclear and psychedelic, like some of its characters, and the story gets off to a rather slow start. The denouement is, unfortunately, rather banal and a bit of a letdown after all the effort in detailing the activities of the main characters and their struggles. Character development and the description of religious life and culture in Jerusalem are done well.

Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the hype
Review: I had two hopes for this book: (1) that it would offer some interest to the religion aficionado in me, and (2) that it would at least make decent beach reading. Unfortunately it failed on both counts. Stone's character's are only hiply "religious" or "doubting," kind of like the black-turtleneck-wearing, Valium-popping, chainsmoking deconstructionist kids I remember from college, and the plot doesn't hang together well enough to be considered a good action novel. Save your time and money.

Rating:
Summary: Possibly the best book of the year
Review: Stone takes us to the heart of the oldest conflict at the twilight of the millenium, when many are waiting for the second coming (and some trying to speed it along). His ruminations on faith, fanaticsim, loyalty, and betrayal are deftly intertwined with a relentless plot. Ripped straight from the headlines yet as timeless as any history , Damascus Gate is astounding.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful
Review: A silly book. The first Stone novel I have read. Amazing that this book received such excellent notices.

Rating:
Summary: Unmittigated trash
Review: Trash; a trashy pot boiler -- ahem, pot-simmerer. Where to start? The characters. Haphazard in every which way; cut from shirt cardboard with the dull scissors you used in kindergarten. The dialogue. Gadzooks!, who speaks like this? -- on this planet anyway. The plot is structured like the webs of those spiders that were given experimental LSD. The diction and narrative quality, well, you could save yourself a lot of time if you just sent for a J. Petermann catalogue. Stone's heart (possibly) could have been in the right place, but whatever that place was, he never found it.

Rating:
Summary: A VERY BAD BOOK
Review: Mr.Robert Stone has taken one too many artistic liberties and the result has been disasterous!...the book entirely looses its continuety and the purpose of the book is completely lost towards the end. Even the plot unfolds very late after a monotenous description of the unnecessarily too many charactors. Mr.Stone this ones a looser as far as i am concerned. I will not recomend theis book even to my worst enemy!....sorry...better luck with your next book.