Average customer rating:
- So Good It'll Make You Wonder
- Yet Another Instant Classic
- unanswered questions
- Keeps you turning the pages
- You can't blame yourself all the time
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Clock Winder (1st Ballantine Books Trade ed)
Anne Tyler
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Tyler, Anne
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The Tin Can Tree: A Novel (1st Ballantine Books Trade ed)
ASIN: 0449911799
Release Date: 1996-08-27 |
Book Description
Mrs. Pamela Evans lives a lonely new widowhood outside of Baltimore, with only a house full of ticking clocks for company. Then she hires eccentric Elizabeth Abbott as a handyman and both discover that parts don't have to be a perfect match to work.
"Anne Tyler is a magical writer."
LOS ANGELES TIMES
From the Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
So Good It'll Make You Wonder.......2007-04-09
You'll be so captivated by the plot, you'll want the story to go on after it's finished. Explore the impact one person can have on another's life.
Yet Another Instant Classic.......2007-03-02
She does so many things so well that I could write thousands of words of analysis. And then I'd never do her justice. If you're going to read thousands of words, read the ones that Anne Tyler wrote. Trust me on this.
And we're in Baltimore. First half of the book there and second half in North Carolina, more or less.
Anne Tyler fills her books with bits that just make me interrupt whatever Jan's reading to relive them with her. She read them before I did. Again, get these books.
unanswered questions.......2007-03-01
"The Clockwinder" started off strong, but after about 1/3 of the way through, I started to get bored. What was the deal with all the information about Margaret pining over her first husband? That was unnecessary. Also why did the book end with Peter and P.J....minor characters.
What made Elizabeth change her mind regarding marrying Mattew? She is shot and then next page skips to 5 years later where she and Matthew are married and have 2 kids.
I'm a fan of Anne Tyler and I understand this is one of her earlier novels. I like her later stuff better, but still, The Clockwinder was ok.
Keeps you turning the pages.......2006-11-05
Set in Baltimore, a well off widow (Pamela Evans)lives alone in an elegant old mansion full of clocks. Her husband used to wind them, keeping them all going. Now that he has died, she has no idea how she is going to keep them all wound.
She fires her lifelong handyman, for some misdeed (unclear if its real, or if she imagined it), and in waltzes Elizabeth, a 20 year old college student, taking a year off to earn money. Elizabeth shows she is able to fix a broken chair, Pamela hires her, and Elizabeth moves in.
Elizabeth becomes much more than the new maintenance person. She digs into (or is sucked, depending on one's perspective) the entire family--all the kids are grown, and moved on--and at the same time become's Pamela's only real friend and confidant.
As the story develops, we learn more and more about the relationship between Pamela and her children (very dysfunctional), but Elizabeth remains a mystery.
After the suicide of one of the brothers Elizabeth has been "dating", she leaves, and we follow her back to the South. She has a disastrous engagement to her long time highschool boyfriend, and calls off the wedding literally at the alter.
She then returns to the Evans household, where her relationship is now entirely different..she is now the glue that holds the family together.
Interestingly, both Pamela and Elizabeth are the "clock winders" of the title. Elizabeth waltzes into one life after another, never becoming attached, and creating an interesting combination of order and chaos. That is, she winds other characters up, and then leaves. On the other hand, it is clear that Pamela is the one who winds up her entire family, They may have moved out, but all of the kids still wait for mom's call, and when it comes, it disrupts their entire lives. So again, Pamela is the one who, without meaning to do so (or does she? its not clear) winds people up, and then walks away, going on with her own life.
Good exploration of the relationship between one's own actions/sense of self, and the impact you have on others.
The weakness here is that by the end of the book, we really don't understand what motivates either Elizabeth of Pamela. What made them so focused on self that they did not grasp what effect their actions had on others? Or is Tyler saying that we are all like that?
You can't blame yourself all the time.......2005-12-15
Basically a novel of self-discovery, the story revolves around Elizabeth Abbott, an aimless college dropout, who is hired by Mrs. Emerson, a wealthy widow in Baltimore, as a replacement for her recently fired handyman. Elizabeth develops romantic interests with two of Mrs. Emerson's three sons, the compulsive and emotionally unsteady Timothy and the much more stable Matthew. When she refuses to break off a date with Matthew to go away with Timothy for a weekend, Timothy becomes jealous and threatens to shoot himself. When Elizabeth tries to stop him, the gun goes off and he's killed.
Elizabeth assumes the guilt for Timothy's suicide and leaves town. After a disastrous relationship with the insecure Dommie Whitehill (which she also blames herself for), she returns to Mrs. Emerson's and gets involved with Matthew again, despite problems from Matthew's twin-brother Andrew. She realizes he's the right one for her and they marry.
Tyler is gaining confidence with each novel she writes (this was her fourth). Her humor is still on the weak side (the killing of the turkey at Thanksgiving time with Timothy is only mildly funny), but her characterizations are stronger and more interesting. Elizabeth's dilemma of feeling responsible for hurting others while at the same time believing she must get involved with people is well-drawn by Tyler. A pretty good novel.
Average customer rating:
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The Clock Winder
Anne Tyler
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JWKXHO |
Average customer rating:
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The Clock Winder
Manufacturer: Popular Library, CBS Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0445040505 |
Product Description
August 1977 printing of 1972 copyright paperback.
Average customer rating:
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The Clock Winder
Anne Tyler
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GE078K |
Average customer rating:
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The Clock Winder
Anne Tyler
Manufacturer: Berkley Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SC10ZO |
Product Description
5 Book Set By Anne Tyler; Breathing Lessons; Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant; the Clock Winder; the Amateur Marriage; Back When We Were Grownups.
Book Description
Betrayed and lonely, Elizabeth flees war-torn England for America and answers an ad for a mail-order bride. Graham is desperate for companionship, needs a caring person to share his lonely nights on the Nebraska prairie and help raise his children. Can a debutante find happiness with a hog farmer?
Customer Reviews:
An earl's daughter and a pig farmer? Believe me, it works!.......2007-01-30
Christa Fairchild and Vintage Romance Publishing give us Elizabeth, an honest to goodness early 20th Century earl's daughter, and Graham, her polar opposite, a Nebraska pig farmer. They begin their romance by getting to know each other through the mail before they take the chance to meet.
Elizabeth and Graham, both fearful of having their hearts broken a second time, warily circle each other, examine their own feelings, and their ability to risk committing their hearts to ensure a future together.
Christa introduces you to the amazing and lovely Elizabeth and heartbroken, lonely Graham, taking you directly into the story, the time in history, the Nebraska prairie through the eyes of the native Graham and through the eyes of the surprisingly down to earth English aristocrat. Their emotions and actions ring true for the times but wouldn't be out of place today. Love, fear, uncertainty are universal themes. Christa does a wonderful job of inviting the reader into a different time in history, so beautifully, in fact, that you are there doing farm chores, seeing the wide open prairie land stretch out endlessly to the horizon, agonizing over Elizabeth and Graham's missteps and miscommunications, but never doubting their underlying growing love.
Their love story unfolds slowly and carefully, as the characters crawl into the heart of the reader. You couldn't be happier for them if you knew them personally.
Congratulations Christa on the beauty of your debut novel, and also congratulations to Vintage, and other small presses, for publishing lovely works like this one.
Can a duchess find happiness with a Nebraska farmer?.......2007-01-16
Elizabeth Edwards has suffered through public humiliation, due to the scandalous affair of her former beau, Barnard Fredrick, Marquess of Bridgechester. Braving an ocean voyage despite the recent sinking disasters of both the Titanic and the Lusitania and the danger of German U-boat attacks, Elizabeth makes the journey from London to Boston for an extended stay with her grandparents. As the daughter of an Earl, it is simply inconceivable that Barney threw her over for a tumble with a nobody.
Graham Ballard has an ad for a wife posted in a newspaper in Boston. As miserable as his marriage had been, he wouldn't be looking for a wife now if it wasn't for his two small children. He needs a helpmate, companionship, and a mother for his children. Graham's happy being a hog farmer in Nebraska, he just hopes there's a woman out there who will be willing to share in his life and maybe, just maybe, even in his bed.
Elizabeth knows she's being followed, the same man turns up everywhere she is and even waits outside her grandparent's house. She received a letter from Barney begging her forgiveness and enclosing a proxy for their marriage, as well as threatening her family's reputation. She realizes that she must find a way to escape both her stalker and Barney's delusional attempts at making her return to England. While in her cups, Gran points out a ÞBrides to Order" ad in the paper for a farmer in Nebraska. Elizabeth finds herself drawn to the ad, sensing a certain familiarity with the man that wrote the ad, she pens a letter to the address posted in the paper.
Graham is stunned when he's handed an envelope with a Boston return address. He's been running the ad looking for a bride for three months with no response. Receiving a response to his ad after all this time gives him a sense of excitement he hasn't felt in a very long time. Since he only makes the trip into town every couple of weeks, he stops off at a restaurant for pen and paper, and then seats himself at a restaurant to read the woman's letter and write her back. While composing a letter back to Elizabeth, he's accosted by the local widow, Bess, who upon discovering the letter from Elizabeth went into a jealous rage and proceeds to rip it up before stalking out of the restaurant. Graham continued writing his letter with the hope that he could remember the lady's name and her address, or at least piece the letter together well enough to read her address.
After returning from a prohibition meeting, Elizabeth and her best friend, Louise return to Elizabeth's home and find two letters. One letter was from Elizabeth's brother, Edward, who is currently serving in the Royal Army. The other is a letter from Graham. Knowing that her brother's alive thrills Elizabeth, she worries about him constantly, but receiving the letter from Graham sends a jolt of girlish pleasure through her. And so, the letter writing courtship begins.
With an idealistic plot and memorable characters, DUCHESS ON THE RUN is sure to earn a special place in your heart. Elizabeth is endearing in her endeavors to find true love. As an Earl's daughter, she could easily have any number of men; however they would only be after her title and money. By corresponding with Graham, they got the opportunity to know each other without being burdened with titles and money. There is also a budding romance between Elizabeth's brother, Edward and Graham's sister, Grace that I would love to see continue in another story. Christa Fairchild had done a beautiful job bringing the early 1900's to life and allowing her readers to feel like they're part of it. This is Ms. Fairchild's first published novel, and I hope to see many more in the future.
Chrissy Dionne (courtesy of Romance Junkies)
Bold Characters and Riveting Emotions.......2006-11-19
Elizabeth Edwards has lived the embodiment of a privileged life. All the money in the world can't secure the heart of her affianced lord though, and she flees England when his betrayal cuts too close to home. When she takes refuge in the Boston home of her grandparents, not even an ocean is enough to thwart his increasingly disturbing actions. An ad out of Nebraska for a mail order bride catches her eye. She knows the man penning it might be the means to her salvation. Through many heartfelt and cautious letters, she begins to know this steadfast and seemingly quiet man.
Graham Ballard needs a wife, pure and simple. His first attempt at marriage was a disaster in all ways except his two children, but he doggedly pursues another through the mail. The only answer to his missive, a young lady of obviously genteel origins, intrigues him like no other ever has. Despite this, can she survive the vast loneliness the long winters and cold nights induce? Graham has reached the end of his tolerance for the wretched emotion and he invites the young miss to visit. Will the shadows of his former marriage haunt his and Elizabeth's budding feelings? Even more alarming, will the long hand of her oppressive duke shake their tenuous beginnings?
Author Fairchild makes it abundantly clear what makes this novel a winner from the very first page--it's marvelous characters and their riveting emotions. Rarely do we see the time taken to delve into the hero's depths as Ms. Fairchild does with Graham. Failure can be a crippling force, one Graham feels almost everyday until Elizabeth bursts into his cold Nebraska nights, and filling them instead with a warmth and vitality he feared long dead. For one so young, Elizabeth displays an amazing intuition or those around her and her and Graham's attraction is endearingly sweet and then blazingly hot at alternating times, tipping the emotional scales from one end to the other. There is a marvelous setup for a sequel involving Elizabeth's brother, one I can't wait to read! Bravo to a wonderful, heartwarming romance that has remained in my memory since reading the first page. Highly recommended for those relaxed, treat filled weekends.
Official Reviewer for the Mystic Castle
4 1/2 stars Can a debutante find happiness with a hog farmer?.......2006-11-11
Christa Fairchild's debut novel marks this author as one to watch.
Elizabeth and Graham are the heroine and hero of this historical, which takes place during the last years of WWI. The story opens in England, moves to Boston and then to Nebraska.
Elizabeth discovers Barnard Frederick, Marquess of Bridgechester, the man she and all society thought she'd one day marry, is a morally corrupt cad. Tired of seeing pity in everyone's eyes, Elizabeth travels to Boston to live with her grandparents. While there, her grandmother circles an ad for a mail-order bride. Elizabeth is not pleased to learn Barnard still intends to wed her and make her his duchess. She responds to the ad.
Graham once before married a woman by mail-order. The result was disastrous, except for the two children produced. Now a widower, Graham craves companionship and the warmth of a good woman.
Because of the fear she might be abducted and returned to England and forced to marry Barnard, Elizabeth travels to Nebraska, surprising Graham. Both are immediately taken with the other.
Before long, doubts surface. Elizabeth, daughter of an earl, wonders if she can be happy with no maid or cook, doing the chores expected of her--and married to a hog farmer.
Graham has difficulty believing Elizabeth is as good as she seems. Didn't his first wife appear perfect at first?
I enjoyed how the author brought in WWI history and made it integral to the novel, yet didn't overwhelm the reader, and how she brought up important, basic questions not usually seen in romance novels.
Duchess on the Run is a sweet, delightful romance and I look forward to reading more from this author. I recommend this book.
good, but.......2006-11-09
I did read some of this book, and found it to be very easy to read. I saw this book advertized in a magazine, and was intrigued, by the location of where this was to have taken place(NE). I had originally ordered it for my mother, but when I found certain words, that would not fit with her christian life style, I decided to keep it.
Book Description
Where do major scientific breakthroughs come from? Do they arise from the logic of the scientific method, or do they result from flashes of genius? Are they the products of some mysterious zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, or do they emerge from chance or serendipity? Dean Simonton provides an answer, not by choosing one explanation and ignoring the others, but rather by unifying all four perspectives into a single theory in which chance plays the primary role, but with the significant involvement of logic, genius and zeitgeist.
Book Description
Although it is appealing to think that fashion turns away from conventions, is this really the case? Or are "pioneering" designs simply part of a cyclical revival of forgotten fashions? Looking at some of the most influential designers of the twentieth century--from Yamamoto to Gaultier to Lagerfeld--Vinken considers the politics and philosophies that have been the driving force directing their sense of style. Vinken shows how fashion trends are informed by the past. Chanel, under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld, is viewed as the only fashion house to have remained fresh after one hundred years, yet is this success essentially proof of the self-referential qualities fashion has adopted? What inspired the fetish for labels at the end of the twentieth century? Answering these questions and many more, this thought-provoking book shows how beauty, gender, sexuality, commerce, and dandyism have persisted in defining the fashion system.
Book Description
From one of the giants of European literature, six essays never before published in English.
Hermann Broch achieved international recognition for his brilliant use of innovative literary techniques to present the entire range of human experience, from the biological to the metaphysical. Concerned with the problem of ethical responsibility in a world with no unified system of values, he turned to literature as the appropriate form for considering those human problems not subject to rational treatment.
Late in life, Broch began questioning his artistic pursuits and turned from literature to devote himself to political theory. While he is well known and highly regarded throughout the world as a novelist, he was equally accomplished as an essayist. These six essays give us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most original thinkers.
Customer Reviews:
A Very Special Wordbook.......1999-12-27
I highly recommend this unusual resource. Kohl compiled these short essays to help his college students build necessary vocabulary in particular study areas, and each chapter deals with a different discipline. His theory was that ordinary dictionary definitions don't give enough "meat" to allow someone unfamiliar with a technical term to really learn to use it. So he not only defines the words, he gives them a context, and sets the whole into a deeper context of a field of study. Thus, the literature chapter introduces "deconstructionism," "incunabula" and "magic realism," as well as "hyperbole," "irony," "simile" and so forth. The arts, the sciences, the social sciences, logic and religion are among the areas he covers. Really useful for a college-level student, or anyone learning about a new discipline.
Average customer rating:
- My personal favorite Bruce book - not your best intro to him tho
- Less of a story, more of an essay
- A very good "What is Reality?" book
- "The Spirit of the Times"
- Eh.
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Zeitgeist (Bantam Spectra Book)
Bruce Sterling
Manufacturer: Spectra
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Binding: Hardcover
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Schismatrix Plus (Complete Shapers-Mechanists Universe)
ASIN: 0553104934
Release Date: 2000-10-31 |
Amazon.com
"Like Tom Clancy on PCP." That's how Bruce Sterling describes his fin-de-siècle head trip, Zeitgeist, a typically Sterling spectacle packed with verbal flash and digerati wit, along with the expected rail-gun-steady stream of well-thought-out ideas and references. His self-appraisal, as it turns out, is right on. This is a guy widely considered "another, hipper Alvin Toppler" (in the words of cyberpunk godfather John Shirley), an effortlessly intelligent master of both style and substance.
Fans will recognize Zeitgeist's antihero protagonist Leggy Starlitz from Sterling stories "Hollywood Kremlin," "Are You for 86?" and "The Littlest Jackal." The well-connected, world-class fixer is part mystic, part sleaze--sort of Uncle Enzo meets Templeton "Faceman" Peck--and his latest hustle is plying the Third World with merchandise from his all-fake, all-girl band, G-7. (Its seven talentless, Wonderbra-wearing members are known simply as the American One, the French One, the German One, etc.)
Starlitz makes use of a shady, flamboyantly weird network of state officials, bodyguards, photographers, and other assorted players to push the merchandise--action figures, lip gloss, shoes, you name it--on what one of G-7's savvier members calls the "Moslem hillbillies." But things get surreal as G-7 girls start dying, characters start explicitly referring to their purpose in the narrative, and one of Leggy's associates conspires to break G-7's most sacred rule: that the whole enterprise must end by Y2K. --Paul Hughes
Book Description
Bruce Sterling is "perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture working today" (Time), offering haunting visions of a future shaped by a madness of our own making. His latest novel is a startling tragicomic spectacle that takes a breathtaking look at a world where the future is being chased down by the past....
Zeitgeist
It's 1999 in Cyprus, an ancient island bejeweled with blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers and littered with rusting land mines, corroding barbed wire, and illegal sewage dumps. Here, in the Turkish half of the island, the ever-enterprising Leggy Starlitz has alighted, pausing on his mission to storm the Third World with the "G-7" girls, the cheapest, phoniest all-girl band ever to wear Wonderbras and spandex. And his market is staring him in the face: millions of teenagers trapped in a world of mullahs and mosques, all ready to blow their pocket change on G-7's massive merchandising campaign--and to wildly anticipate music the group will never release.
Leggy's brilliant plan means doing business with some of the world's most dangerous people. His business partner is the rich and connected Mehmet Ozbey, a man with many identities and a Turkish girlfriend whose beauty and singing voice could blow G-7 right out of the water. His security chief is Pulat Romanevich Khoklov, who learned to fly MiG combat jets in Afghanistan and now pilots Milosevic's personal airplane. Among these thieves, schemers, and killers, Leggy must act quickly and decisively. Bombs are dropping in Yugoslavia. Y2K is just around the corner. And the only rule to live by is that the whole scheme stops before the year 2000.
But Leggy gets a surprise when the daughter he's never met arrives on his doorstep. A major fan of G-7, she is looking for a father--and her search forces Leggy to examine his life before making a madcap journey in search of a father of his own. It's a detour that puts his G-7
Zeitgeist in some real jeopardy. For in Istanbul, Leggy's former partners are getting restless, and the G-7 girls are beginning to die....
Zeitgeist is a world-beat tale of smugglers, paparazzi, greed, war, and a new era of cultural crusades. Here Bruce Sterling proves once again that in the fiction of imagination, he is one of the most insightful writers of our time.
Customer Reviews:
My personal favorite Bruce book - not your best intro to him tho.......2005-07-30
For anyone new to Bruce, you should know that many readers, myself included, think most highly of Bruce's short stories, at least as much as the full novels. I myself couldn't have had a better introduction to him than "Hollywood Kremlin," where Bruce first began the misadventures of modern-day picaroon, Leggy Starlitz.
This late novel, "Zeitgeist," is a continuation of the series of short stories which began with "Hollywood Kremlin," and developed through 3 or 4 others now found in the collections, "Crystal Express," "Globalhead," and "A Good Old-Fashioned Future," in that order. And so if you are new to Bruce Sterling, those are the books I would recommend, rather than this one. Bruce has displayed an extremely sharp wit over the years I have been reading him, and his short stories demonstrate this best, perhaps. You also need to read the earlier Leggy Starlitz episodes to be able to get your bearings in this novel. Me, I would love to see all the Leggy stories gathered together in one publication.
Among many clever, outrageous remarks Bruce has made over the years, I remember reading that nobody has anything useful to contribute after they are 40 (rough paraphrase, sorry.) If I remember correctly, Bruce turned 40 right around this book's publication. So as well as all that everybody else has said, I might add that the book appears to be about Bruce. There has always been a little of himself in Leggy Starlitz.
Bruce is seeking his own transformation as well as that of the world around him. He has reached the age he predicted he will no longer be relevant, yet now approaches the age where a writer should be "coming into his own." Where now? That is the question Bruce is faced with -- or the "People" magazine version of the question: Is there life after 40, Bruce? The end of this story puts me in the mind of the "Schismatrix" story or stories, in a number of ways. The characters all seek to transcend their own limitations and mortality, and one presumes become better people as well. But does "better" mean the same thing to a butterfly as it does to a caterpillar?
I believe the final transformation of Leggy in the end, this represents the challenge we are faced with as modern, post-modern, whatever ... human beings. Can we open our minds and our hearts, or do we continue on with the shallow 20th Century agenda? Or will the question be answered for us soon anyway? Me, I'm putting my ZZ Topp records up for sale right now!
On a side note, several of the reviewers here outdo themselves in demonstrating how far they excel beyond Bruce in semiotics, epistimology, structuralism this and that. Bruce has always attracted such wannabees, and probably always will. He is not so different from them, after all. For me, to say that the writing is no longer intellectual cutting-edge has little to do with whether what Bruce has to say is valid, or more to the point, entertaining. Some reviewers seem to differ on that point.
So if you want Good Bruce Sterling and are unfamiliar with his writing, look elsewhere; my recommendation: "Crystal Express." But I doubt anybody that has read a book of his wouldn't find a laugh or two here. But prerequisite are "Hollywood Kremlin," "Are you for 86?" and "The Littlest Jackal," available in short story collections elsewhere.
Less of a story, more of an essay.......2004-07-30
Zeitgeist is an absolutely fascinating book. But let's face it, Sterling doesn't have half as much interest in the plot as he does in making observations of the modern world. This is pop culture, mass consumerism and culture war wrapped up in a brilliant package, but it seems a lot less like a novel than it does a series of modernistic philisophical conversations.
A very good "What is Reality?" book.......2004-05-21
Not necessarily one of my favorite books, this one has enough "alien elements" to it to, as another reviewer said, to join the sci-fi ranks, such as the Old Masters who gave us "Rendezvous with Rama", "Childhood's End", "I,Robot", "Ringworld", "Foundation", as well as cyberpunk books like "Mona Lisa Overdrive", "Neuromancer", "Snow Crash", "Cryptonomicon", and "Cyber Hunter".
"The Spirit of the Times".......2004-03-27
I totally have no idea that what I have in my hand is actually a sci-fi novel until I get right in the middle of it, because it was one of the rare occasions I never read the spine as it is indicated there. I also have no idea that the lead charachter Leggy Starlitz is actually the authors vehicle to several other stories of his.
The story filled with political intrigue amidst the backdrop of fictional scenarios, turned to centralize its storyline with the lead charachter when the said charachter was subjected to take care of his telekenetic daughter who appeared halfway on the book.
The novel have a thing about Princess Diana's death, a parody of the Spice Girls, mentioning Osama Bin Laden way before the 9-11 attacks... although the book may not hold your attention for all of the time while you try to read right through it - its quite an ambitious fine novel set in a sort of a parallel universe to the one where we are.
In the meantime, im still a pair of chapters short to finish it as I type away right here...
Eh........2003-11-20
Sterling has become a complete pop culture junkie. This isn't a bad thing as he's done some excellent journalism on cultural trends but I have the feeling that his days as a novelist are at an end. I picked up Zeitgeist expecting a novel and got the feeling that he's largely using the main character as a vehicle to make his own observations about media and culture at the turn of the century. It just dosen't hold together as fiction as well. I enjoyed Holy Fire and Distraction a great deal but I think unless he removes himself from his immediate time frame with his fiction, his storylines loose their cohesion.
I'm still an avid fan, I just think he should have dropped the pretense of fiction and just wrote an extended essay.
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From Absurd to Zeitgeist: The Compact Guide to Literary Terms (The Artful Wordsmith)
Kathleen Morner , and
Ralph Rausch
Manufacturer: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company
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ASIN: 0844204013 |
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- Devious and Hilarious
- post-grunge, post-cyberpunk, post-postmodern avant-popness
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Tonguing the Zeitgeist
Lance Olsen
Manufacturer: Permeable Press
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10: 01
ASIN: 1882633040 |
Book Description
So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star? In a future that isn't distant enough, you'll have to sell your soul to MTV just to pick up a guitar. And then they start carving you up, making you over in the mega-media image of glitter and bone.
Poor Ben Tendo, he just wanted to play music and make love to Jessika. . . _Tonguing the Zeitgeist_, finalist for the 1995 Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction novel, is a social satire in the tradition of Anthony Burgess's _A Clockwork Orange_ about the music industry and the commercialization of the arts.
Customer Reviews:
Devious and Hilarious.......1999-09-03
A fantastically devious and hilarious near-future fantasy. It's one part WS Burroughs, one part Genensis P-Orridge, and all Phillip K. Dick style paranoia as we race through this toxic, corporate run world that sits not as far away as we might think. This is a work that can be read quickly as a fun diversion from standard science fiction, but also manages to present some insightful ideas and concepts if you decide to ponder over them. Information overload, corporate control, and the image of the rich and famous are just a few of the ideas stabbed at us as Ben Tendo takes us on a whirlwind tour of his twisted world. For anyone who likes the more subversive side of sci-fi, like PKD or Paul di Pillippo, or slightly expermental fiction like Pynchon or Delillo.
post-grunge, post-cyberpunk, post-postmodern avant-popness.......1997-08-01
_Tonguing the Zeitgeist_ by Lance Olsen is a fun, trippy look into our not-distant-enough future in which it's cool to undergo major body modifications/mutilations.
This is a future in which Robert Redford is President and going outside without the proper filters can net you your own set of pollution sores. This is a time in which most music isn't original anymore, so to make it big, the musicians themselves have to be original.
The main character is a member of a small time
rock band by night, and a telephone order-taker for sex products specializing in mutilated bodies by day. He finds himself caught up in the rush to fame as a rock star, not realizing what price his body will have to pay.
This is post-grunge, post-cyberpunk, post-postmodern at its hippest avant-popness. This book is weird and way out there, but
highly recommended for people who would enjoy an off-beat, satirical look at a future heavily influenced by today's alternative culture.
Average customer rating:
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Alfred Lehmann: Ein Maler gegen den Zeitgeist
Manufacturer: Klett-Cotta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 3608762272 |
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Amper-sand & question-mark: a finite poem (A Zeitgeist publication, 11)
Ken Lawless
Manufacturer: Zeitgeist
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0876490100 |
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- Days of Bitter Strength (Chung Kuo Series , No 7)
- Death Is Lighter Than a Feather
- Delta of Venus
- Digging the Vein
- Dirt Music : A Novel
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