I found a copy of this fiction novel at Goodwill. Unbeknownst to Irving, I am a man who reads fiction. Anyway, I started this novel and was mildly hooked by Juan Diego’s childhood as a dump reader, and his sister is intriguing enough.
This novel works simply because well it is simple. It is easy to read. You don’t have to think. I find this pleasant. It is a simply abc. The kind of book you read before sleep. I’m a big fan of simplicity. I boil just about everything down to its most basic components. I take a large pizza and I cut it into eight slices and then I cut each slice into four slices. These little slices are delicious and I can eat a million of them.
I had to read novels like this one in college. Coetzee comes to mind in particular. That novel about the writer who gives a lecture on a cruise ship. Yeah, 😑. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Also, Saul Bello. Is it Bello? Some middle aged guys life reeks of all the other things that follow balding. TS Eliot kind of stuff although TS Eliot is a great poet who falls into the cannon with the likes of Mark Twain and JD Salinger. Irving does not. As Holden might have put it, this book is phony.
But then again this is also next level imaginative fiction with some really excellent writing that really screams a mind coming up with what is next in clutch. Shifting seamlessly like a dream car down the boulevard. Some classic sports car. Irving is better than all the creative writing professors. I’d say he is George Saunders Sensi (Japanese teacher or cannabis term: your choice.)