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Summary: New Sound New Voice A Whole New Genre Too
Review: Read this now so that you can say you were there for the arrival of the first legitimately new voice of the 21st century.
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Summary: New Generation = A Whole New Genre
Review: Part poetry, part biography, part meditation, part memoir, part travelogue, part literary criticism, HALLS OF FAME technically isn't anything all that new, but in the American nonfiction world (the category under which the book's oddly presented, and one which seems mired in the sludge of myopic, dull, and badly written personal essays) the seemless breadth of interests expressed in this book are about as startling an innovation as any I've seen in decades. Cross England's WG Sebald with Canada's Anne Carson, throw in a little John McPhee from the U.S. and you'll come close to the hybrid literary genius found in John D'Agata.
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Summary: Cut That Edge!
Review: No one is exploring that tenuous, exciting, little-tapped terrain between the essay form and poetry better or more daringly than D'Agata. This is a writer with obvious roots in both of these genres, but with an ambition at striking out on his own and establishing himself the leader of the pack. The book's got a head on its shoulders, indeed (lots of reviews have pointed that out), but what impresses me most is how much heart is in the book too. This is a post-modern writer--or a post-post-modern writer--who isn't just using the form to be "weird" or "new" or "different" in ways the market calls for; he's using the form because--and we feel this on every page as we read--this stuff is in his blood. These are stories that are both organic and cutting-edge.
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Summary: Mold? No Mold.
Review: Oh! how excellent to see this book being taken up in the arms of America! Especially a book of such daring wit and heart and literary adventurism. John D'Agata is breaking molds unlike anyone else in any other genre in American literature at the moment, and this collection--his very first, I think--is testament to a voice that is changing, to use Jorie Graham's words, "our conversation with the world." An absolute triumph!
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Summary: Nothing Like It
Review: Read it and you'll be reading a classic-in-the-making, a literary genius come of age.
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Summary: Cry
Review: It seems besides the point to rave about this book, but I will anyway!It's phenomenal! Truly. What seems at first like another twenty-something ironic paradoy of the world becomes actually a heartfelt song to the world, and spefically to those in it who are often laughed at. Take D'Agata's gentle and deft portrayal of the disturbed artist Henry Darger, who's been called by recent critics a "psyco-path" but who in reality was a just a quiet, reclusive, psychologically awkward painter. The writer's ability to recreate scenes from this other artist's life are unassuming, unimposing, but beautiful. The essay made me cry when I first read a month ago, and after copying it (ooops!) and passing it along to other friends, they've all reported the same thing. If this isn't one of the best biographies (but is it really a biography? it's really so much more!!) then perhaps I don't even know what a biography is. The truth is, D'Agata is the real thing, and this book, a toughie for sure, but one with all the right pay-offs, is going to be a classic.
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Summary: joan didion has a soulmate
Review: this is maybe the best collection of essays i've read since the publication of joan didion's masterful slouching towards bethlehem, thirty years ago.
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Summary: Nonfiction Has Now Found a Path
Review: After those few years of memoir this and memoir that, nonfiction just might be able to claim legitimacy at last, thanks entirely--as I see it--to this pure work of genius. To be honest, I hesitate to be too congratulatory in my response to the book here, because it could actually sound much too over the top, but the reality is that this book is unlike any other in the nonfiction world. What John D'Agata has done is employ the forms and inventions of fiction and poetry from the past few decades and combined them with the tried and true old fashioned forms of literary journalism and the personal essay. The result is something that is fiercly innovative, and nothing less than an achievement of originality unlike any other book of its kind. The book is not, it must be said, for the weak-minded. Certainly not. It is instead for readers who like to be challeneged as they read, and who want to go along with John D'Agata on his ride, coasting through the cutting edge of American literature.
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Summary: Old Fashioned Stories Are for Old Fashioned Artists
Review: John D'Agata is a storyteller the way Picasso was a storyteller. The way Coltrane was a storyteller. The way Altman is a storyteller. And the way Martha Graham, one of his great and glorious subjects in this book, was a storyteller. In other words, John D'Agata tells stories not in the "old fashioned way," as I heard recently one dimwit of a reviewer wishing he'd do, but in the new way. He tells the stories of the earth the way the stories on the earth truly happen: in collage, in bits and pieces and dead ends and the surprising discoveries that we bump into, accidentally, along the way. Form is incredibly difficult to pull off nowadays I feel, and form applied to NONfiction, as D'Agata does here, is nearly impossible. Or, at least, it WAS impossible, till now. I don't want you, John D'Agata, to tell stories "the old fashioned way." If I want old fashioned stories I'll turn to Prairie Home Companion. Thank God for variety in American literature; and thank God that this young bloom of a talent is telling stories in his very own way.
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Summary: If I were a book, I would want John D'Agata to write me...
Review: He has a grace with words that no other writer our age can carry off. We're too "hip" and self-conscious, I think. What's brilliant about this book is that it addresses subjects which, on the surface, seem totally ironic, or as if they could only be addressed ironically, I mean. The power of his writing though is that instead he approaches his subjects with earnestness, seriousness, and language most poets would die for. And yes, I said "poets," because that is what he is. He isn't so such interested in storytelling as he is in trying to trying to figure out why some things in the world exist, why he's attracted to them, why others not, why beauty pops up in the ugliest of places. His style is collage and the associated, mind-snapping leaps that that form causes a reader to experience. Trust me: if you like books that invite you to participate in their very making, you will be made something thrilling while reading this peach.
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