Rating: 
Summary: This book is infantile trash.
Review: Rarely have I read a book quite as puerile as this one. The author's masturbatory ramblings are as sophomoric as the novel's supposedly sophisticated subject-matter: a tragically hip slacker who wanders around the city of his past. Grossman articulates the self-indulgent ideation of every collegiate male who has read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," romanticizing erotic and intellectual dorm-room epiphanies in a grotesque charade of introspection. The point of this novel is (how original!) the pointlessness of the main character's life. He (named Hollis) peregrinates around Boston in a Harvardian gloom, thinking about Star Trek and His Life. Somone should tell Grossman that Faulkner did this 75 years ago, minus the fetishistic television references, which add nothing to anything. Postmodern ennui and mass culture overlay were finished by the time that Tama Janowitz hit the scene, so Grossman's utter derivativeness goes beyond the boring into the totally banal. Hollis does nothing, and moans to himself about the inevitability of going "corporate." The problem with this sort of soft, rich-boy literature is that it is underwritten by a mindset that yearns to be in college again, forever. Maybe if the author got a job he would get some real material and not have to mull over his extended adolescence in order to wring out some moisture for his novel.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing to write home about
Review: Read this book in thirty minutes standing up in a bookstore. Didn't seem to demand closer reading than that. Fair to middling, as they used to say.
Rating: 
Summary: sweet, but hold the ice next time
Review: the book isn't ground-breaking, but nevertheless fun to read. If we really wanted to read ground-breaking stuff we'd pick up a medical journal. we need more one-sitting books and less bible length "page-turners." As for the 30 sec reviewer, let's just say I'm glad he's not doing this professionally. But I gotta say, I enjoyed your column for salon about the amazon experience, keep up the good work, you'll get there. In the mean time, here's 5 for the road...
Rating:
Summary: sweet, but hold the ice next time
Review: the book isn't ground-breaking, but nevertheless fun to read. If we really wanted to read ground-breaking stuff we'd pick up a medical journal. we need more one-sitting books and less bible length "page-turners." As for the 30 sec reviewer, let's just say I'm glad he's not doing this professionally. But I gotta say, I enjoyed your column for salon about the amazon experience, keep up the good work, you'll get there. In the mean time, here's 5 for the road...
Rating:
Summary: sweet, but hold the ice next time
Review: the book isn't ground-breaking, but nevertheless fun to read. If we really wanted to read ground-breaking stuff we'd pick up a medical journal. we need more one-sitting books and less bible length "page-turners." As for the 30 sec reviewer, let's just say I'm glad he's not doing this professionally. But I gotta say, I enjoyed your column for salon about the amazon experience, keep up the good work, you'll get there. In the mean time, here's 5 for the road...
Rating: 
Summary: sophomoric or soporific? both!
Review: The deluge of both five- and one-star reviews precludes any sober assessment of this novel.Kudos to the author for his moxie and his admission of sabotaging the amazon reviews. Unlike many commentators, I have read the book. I discovered a flimsy structure, cringingly-poor dialogue, and an adolescent-level understanding of intertext, its importance, its subtlety. As it was a first novel, he will no doubt seek to improve (though not for pedantic boors like myself)
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