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Summary: jeesh...
Review: what are we going to do with john d'agata? he is genreless...and god bless him for it! unquestionably the most original voice of the new century and the best thing happening in "nonfiction"--but don't tell him that's what he's writing!
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Summary: Seductive Prose of an Evocative America
Review: John D"Agata quests to piece together the fragments of his life by observing the cultural wonders around him. He has a painter's eye for color, the good traveler's knack for finding, and seemingly endless talent to adroitly describe engaging people and places apparently wherever he goes. These qualities make his zigzag journey across America in pursuit of its quirkier side nothing like the current Gen X trend to ironically describe the world around them, scoffing all the way. D"Agata's Halls is informative, perceptive, beautifully descriptive. It's clear he cares about his subjects (which is refreshing alongside the likes of David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell & Dave Eggers who seem to be laughing their way to the bank). Whether because of his imaginative thoughts or his gentle prose, the reader will soon be captured. This is unlike anything one has read before.
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Summary: Maverick Scholar
Review: John D'agata's essays, erudite and fascinating at the same time, are like a weird hybrid form of Herodotus' staid histories and Ripley's believe it or not "Odditoriums". The work as a whole is a working illustration of the modernist dictum that the specific is universal. Or can be. And yet also his range of curiosity in "Halls of Fame" (badly titled) is a panacea to the small mindedness that is fostered by all those who use specilization to hide a lack of curiosity for the world--or even a lack of passion. In his varied styles--lists, catalogues, narrative, surrealist images, even journalism it seems at times--D'agata casts a wide aesthetic net. I watched a class of literature students who for a semester hadn't agreed on liking anything at all they'd read in our seminar, pour out their gooey admiration for his essays the way only grad students can when we opened this book for the first time and started discussing it. He's got an ear, wide open eyes, and the mind that can wrestle to the ground, or--better yet--BE wrestled to the ground by all that inspires and intrigues it. He's probably going to be one of the two or three great talents of his generation, oddly staking out terrain, rather vehemently, in this obscure genre that no one's really paying attention to. I mean that as a compliment, I should clarify. The biggest compliment of all in fact: he's working, nose to the ground of the real world, paying attention to a genre that hasn't been this well treated for decades. I applaud this remarkable find.
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Summary: Worth not waiting for the paperback!
Review: If you have a functioning brain and sense of humor and curiosity streak and some extra bucks, buy this book.
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Summary: The "it" book
Review: A memoirist friend said, "I don't get it," of the 7 "selections" in <Halls of Fame>. Yeah, a lot of people haven't gotten it, but there are a growing number of dedicated few who do. "It" with John D'Agata seems to be the operative word. Nondescript, genreless, rambunctious, hard, the so called "essays" in the book are anything but, morphing "it" into a new being at every turn.The central kicker is a line-altering, paragraph-smashing exploration of what D'Agata calls in his notes the vague, amorphous terrain between poems and essays called "Hall of Fame: An Essay About the Ways in Which We Matter." It opens with an Introduction that brings us into the tiny studio apartment D'Agata shared with his brother ("folded into a futon beneath the window") and mother ("into a large walk-in closet beside the door") in Boston. Sad but also oddly inspiring, the work ends with the declaration: 12 It was something perfectly quiet. I, for example, would dream. 13 Quiet. 14 Our heads tossing not. Our tiny room square. Our bruise-deepened sky. 15 We were going nowhere. After several dozen visits to some of the 3000 halls of fame in the United States, D'Agata leaves us with a fascinating exploartion of the word "mercury" by way of a visit to the world's largest thermometer and an intellectual excursion into the etymology of "fame" (a hint: its roots have nothing to do with "celebrity" but rather "hunger"). The effect is a marriage between the classic essays of Emerson and the experimental whimsies of language poetry. It is startlingly fantastic. And when you're sitting at home with your dog at your feet, or listening to your friend complain about his love life, or making love, or sitting in traffic, or taking a test, or looking for something new to read--like my memoirist friend, finally--you'll get "it". Maybe a day after finishing the book, maybe a few weeks. But "it", when it arrives, will nonetheless be a gorgeous place to be. You'll see.
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Summary: John D'Agata's Excellent Challenge
Review: He adventures through the weird things that fascinate all of us, but which few of us take the time to explore. John D'Agata is a writer's writer for his willingness to focus his immense talents and attention on the less literary subjects of the world--the subjects that don't win you prestigious prizes but which win you the attention of serious admirers of talent. Show me a writer in D'Agata's generation with as much talent, patience, vision, gentleness and daring, please! I don't want to imagine that he'll be the only one in the future writing work I care about!
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Summary: The Rebel of Nonfiction
Review: From the rebel of Nonfiction comes a debut that suitably reads less like an essay collection and more like a poetry collection. It makes sense. I've read that his training is in poetry, so it's al the more intriguing that this new wonderkid of the literary world would choose to write in a pretty unsophisticated form, the "essay." That would be the case only if D'Agata's "essays" were traditional essays. They're not. They're something wonderfully other. Structurally they're like The Emigrants, formally like Eros the Bittersweet, intellectually like The Errancy. What I can tell you is that if you've caught all those refernces then this book's for you. If you didn't catch them then take it slow. It's a hard read, but one that pays off in good measure.
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Summary: Jealous
Review: People warned me that this book would be hard but they didn't warn me that it would make me jealous.
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Summary: EVEN THE NOTES EXCITE!
Review: "The first hall in the essay, 'Hall of Fame of You', refers to pre-Hellenic Greek 'kouroi', full-sized marble representations of Apollo, who, in pre-Platonic Greek thinking, was the ideal manifestation of the human body and mind. Scupturally speaking, however, 'kouroi' are important because they represent a link between the stylized Egyptian aesthetics on early Greek sculpture and the climax of natural form during the classical Golden Age in Greek art, a historical transition captured best in the otherwise rigid 'kouros' by the slight displacement of one of the figure's feet beyond the space of the body, into the space of the world. 'A step toward the future of human civilization,' as one Getty docent explained on a tour. Authentic 'kouroi' are rare and thus hot items among collectors. Due to the controversy surrounding its authenticity, the Getty's 'kouros' has been removed from exhibit. The first line in the fifth section of 'You' borrows its syntax from James Tate." James Tate? My god! That last line is my favorite, as if after all that brilliant stuff about the history of art and how it relates to our humanity and the very state of civilization, it would still be necessary to credit borrowed SYNTAX! Who does that? And who cares after the wonders of such prose? What I love about this book is that there are surprises and gifts everywhere for the reader. I'm just noticing this section up above for the first time, for example, even though I first read this book when it came out in this winter. I honestly had no idea there even were notes, which are actually like a whole new set of mini essays on their own. They're separate from the book too because you don't really need them to read the book. I think instead the notes function like a little appendix. Just in case you want to know what was going on in John D'Agata's mind when he was writing. Probably for most people it would be scary to jump into a brain like D'Agata's, but this kid is authentically brilliant, and I found it thrilling to roam around in there. I can't wait for his next. For a primer on what this kind of writing is up to and all about, I would suggest also reading an anthology or special magazine issue the author edited on the Lyric Essay. It's from Seneca Review and also a thill!
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Summary: Think About Prose Poetry
Review: Has anyone thought of that to describe John's work? I know it shouldn't matter, only the work should. But it does seem like he's more interested in the poetic side of things than the essay side. Why is this called essays? Whatever, I just wanted to say thank you John, for writing stuff for those of us who care about literature--even if you are getting "genre f-ed" (insert swear word here) as someone online said.
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