Rating: 
Summary: Poetic Prose at the Pinnacle of Nonfiction!
Review: The silly label next to John D'Agata's name on the cover is dead wrong. There's not a lick of "essay" in here!But you'll be relieved to read in his biography that this extremely young author was trained as a poet at the Iowa Writers Workshop, because no average writer of "creative nonfiction" could manage what D'Agata does with subjects that range from a story about the brightest light in the world to a sperm bank (where he apparently worked as a donor) to a luscious history of how lists of the wonders of the world are made. His appetite for "stuff" seems unquenchable, and his love of language is obvious. Really this is a 250 page book of poetry. Read it and you'll change your mind about that old fart genre called the essay. Read it aloud and you'll set the next few days of your life to music!
Rating:
Summary: My Life is Different Now (a melodramatic testimony)
Review: In the ranks of those young writers who altering the form of other genres--Ben Marcus in fiction, Doug Powell in poetry, Jonathan Safran Foer in the novel, etc.--John D'Agata's HALLS OF FAME has not only altered the way contemporary essays are viewed, but based on a brief review of what's being published today in small literary journals, he's effected the very stuff being written in the genre. Long before most writers are usually said to have a tangible effect on their forms, D'Agata seems to have done it with his first book. It basically changed my life when I first read it, luring me out of a PhD in English, into a writing program where finally, thanks soley to this writer, I have realized that both the artful and the intelectual can sit side by side in essay writing. He does it better than anybody else. Not only better than any other young writer; better than ANYBODY. The first five pages of this first startling book will show you why. The rest of the book, I suspect, will change your life.
Rating:
Summary: Judge the book on its own terms
Review: Let me preface this by saying I was a classmate of John's at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the mid-90's. I remember discussing several of the essays included in this collection, and being incredibly impressed with both the work and the author. The time, imagination, detail, obsession, intelligence, honesty and humble nature of both the essays and the essayist should at the very least inspire a more attentive read than several of the other negative reviewers chose to give. It's time to give the Iowa Workshop a break. Just let it go. I mean, really, whether it's jealousy, or a rejected application, or just some strange anti-MFA vendetta, there seems to be a pervasive, generic attack on all who spent time at the school. People, it's just a school, good or bad. It's not some factory that automatically frankensteins each poetry student into some Jorie Graham/Michael Palmer avant-guardian. We actually have our own minds, styles, and ideas, and some of us even hold onto them well after we graduate. Imagine that. I can assure you, there are few labels that would accurately portray all Iowa workshop students across the board, especially in the poetry program. You have no idea what it was like there unless you were there, and it varies from year to year. I would be uncomfortable judging people who've just graduated the program on the same standards, attitudes and practices I found during my '95-'97 term. I'm not saying you have to like it, but review the work itself as it is given to you, not the Workshop or the writer's personal life. Why do people have to dismiss or attack writers and their works simply because they come out of a specific school, or because they are popular, or because the author has some success at an early age? Good writing has come out of Iowa, bad writing has come out of Iowa, just like every other MFA program, publishing house, school of thought, or geographical area. This is an incredible work. Truly dazzling. And to the reviewer who slams John for "plagiarizing" Dave Eggers, I can tell you that John had already written several of these essays, and published at least one of them in a journal (the Martha Graham piece)years before "A Heartbreaking Work..." was even published. John is an exceptionally gifted writer and person, but even with all of his talent and imagination, I don't think he has the ability to steal work that didn't even exist at the time. To that reviewer, do your homework before you use serious words like "plagiarism" - John has clearly done his.
Rating:
Summary: Like Nuthin U have Read B4
Review: When I was first assigned this book in October in my fiction class I didn't really know what I was in for. The book isn't fiction, first of all. It's creative nonfiction, and there's a huge difference. Creative nonfiction, as I define it, is about the use of the real world as a basis for literary musings. Or something like that. I guess I should have a better definition since I'm majoring in writing and specializing in CNF, as we like to call it. But now whenever anyone asks me what creative nonfiction is I just point them to this book by John D'Agata, inventor of lyric essays and one of the most readable experimental writers of Generation X. The books starts out with what seems like a pretty straight forward travel essay about Hoover Dam. But even that safe-seeming subject is pure fodder--and nothing but!--in D'Agata's wily prose. In fact, the travelogue about Hoover Dam never really arrives at Hoover Dam, never even discusses it even. Instead the essay wanders fascinatingly through the idea of a wonder, in terms both literal and imaginary. It's this tone that the book intitially hits and maintains that makes me so in awe of the book. From the non-Hoover Dam essay, to a biography about Martha Graham that's really about D'Agata himself, to an interview with the President of the Flat Earth Society told in footnotes, to the spectacular long title-essay "Hall of Fame" about the 3000 halls of fame that D'Agata tells us are in America, to what must be the longest sentence in the English language in the single-sentence essay about Deep Springs, to the first truly admirable essay about Henry Darger (that wacko self-taught guy who became an artist in Chicago), to the final meditation on the brightest light in the world, the book becomes itself a kind of wonder. Unassuming, delicately toned, musically thrilling, and hyperintelligent, this is the best essay collection that I've ever read, and I've read them all.
Rating:
Summary: Poetic Prose at the Pinnacle of Nonfiction!
Review: The silly label next to John D'Agata's name on the cover is dead wrong. There's not a lick of "essay" in here! But you'll be relieved to read in his biography that this extremely young author was trained as a poet at the Iowa Writers Workshop, because no average writer of "creative nonfiction" could manage what D'Agata does with subjects that range from a story about the brightest light in the world to a sperm bank (where he apparently worked as a donor) to a luscious history of how lists of the wonders of the world are made. His appetite for "stuff" seems unquenchable, and his love of language is obvious. Really this is a 250 page book of poetry. Read it and you'll change your mind about that old fart genre called the essay. Read it aloud and you'll set the next few days of your life to music!
Rating: 
Summary: No Hype for you
Review: Now that the hype is over, please can we finally agree that John D'Agata is 100% the worst writer this country has ever produced!
Rating: 
Summary: hermits are suppose to write well
Review: Let me give you the scoop on John D'Agata. I am a student of the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. Before I came I made a point to read everyone's books. I haven't had John D'Agata as a teacher and haven't even seen him yet because he's a freak and a hermit. But this is what I think about his "brilliant" book. Halls of Fame is D'Agata's first book, and you can tell it is. Now that the love fest with him seems to be over, I hope people will be willing to think about this book intelligently. It is a waste of paper. And definitely a waste of money. His "essays" ,if that's what you want to call them, are just hodge podges of bits of information and "observations" that are about as profound as a bowell movement. Just because a guy uses some "experimental" styles while writing in a conventinoal form doesn't make him a "breakthrough!" Get with it people. This is not a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Halls of Me Me Me Me Me Me Me!
Review: If Halls of Fame is what publishers are calling literature these days, then I don't want to read another word of contemporary writing. This book is ugly, self-centered, immature, and complicated just for the sake of being complicated. It's as if this writer was trying to make sure the world was paying attention to him by being as obscure as humanly it is possible. I think Graywolf better go back to printing the books they used to print instead of all this name-dropping. And the author's new book, an anthology, is just the same. An anthology that's all about the person who edited it! Wow, how interesting. It's as if all the other wirters who are in the anthology are just nick nacks for his amusement.
Rating:
Summary: Defining Genre
Review: I discovered this book last semester in a course called Border Genres. It's categorized as "essays" but it's really a work of philosophy. Really excellent! He's not interested in thesis statements like most essays, he wants to make this form a creative genre. I recommend it a lot!
Rating:
Summary: Get your essays that are fun to read!!
Review: Flecked with something very different then most other kinds of nonfiction, Halls of Fame: Essays by John D'Agata, offers a unique perspective on America that is always smart and yet also often moving. I found myself laughing while reading, and then just a few pages later I was crying my eyes out. For someone who isn't an english major, I found some of the writing hard, but it pays off if you give the book some time. A challenging and engaging book!
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