Everything is Illuminated= premium & famously written, or does it spleen you?

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Induvidually I am experiencing it in a pleasing way. It is manufacturing a few premium funnies on an infrequent schedule.

― turner, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am being spleened by lack of response to my premium thread! What's up, ILE? Has no-one read this yet?

― turner, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry you are spleened. What is this, please?

― felicity, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've read reviews and it sounds like exactly the type of thing that would annoy the fuck out of me.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Help me I am in the Bizarro Universe!

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 7 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hmm. Boggles the mind that i am first person to read this...

― turner, Wednesday, 8 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Look! It's reviewed by Travis Elborough of Baxendale friend fame!

― N., Wednesday, 8 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ooo! ooo! I read it and loved it v. muchly. like tracer hand, I read the reviews and thought it sounded intensely irritating--lots of po- mo tricks, the author-as-character, epistolary novel meets magic realism, &c &c--what else is this Saffran Foer going to think of? footnotes? (happily, there are none.) while I admit that the Trachimbrod sections could get slightly exasperating, the tragicomic genius of Alex's parts more than made up. some of the funniest writing I've ever come across, only Flann O'Brien's in the same league for me, and at the same time immensely poignant. everyone should read it!!!

― erik, Wednesday, 8 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

three weeks pass...

Actually - to respond to Erik - there IS one footnote in the book of Antecedents about the Jews not inventing the love poem, but the other way around...thought it funny that you mentioned it. :)

This book does not spleen me at all! I LOVE THIS BOOK. It's one of the most inspiring things I've read in a long time.

― Teresa, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two months pass...

does anyone have ideas about the symbolic naming of the dog, sammy davis, junior, junior?

― cindy lou, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

This book is really spleening the heck out of me.

Take The Prarie Home Companion, ship it to the Ukraine, and get Woody Allen to write half the chapters and Keanu Reeves to write the other half. Finally, run the whole thing through babblefish...

OK, OK, I'll keep at it, but I really don't like reading books about people making fools of themselves.

― Argent, Thursday, 3 October 2002 16:43 (twenty-three years ago)

PS: what the hell is "spleened" supposed to mean?

― Argent, Thursday, 3 October 2002 16:44 (twenty-three years ago)

The socalled pomo tricks are a lot less blatant and more integrated into the narrative than I thought it would be... Along with Alex's faux-English, the trix are disruptive, but that gets settled quickly, and the stories themselves gradually move into prominence. The Brod stories were tremendously affecting, but then again, I'm a sap. But the Alex plot is far and away the soul of the book.

And the best Alexism: "Masticating box," surely!

― Leee (Leee), Thursday, 3 October 2002 18:25 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

I reread this, and it was terrible.

Not terrible, but very very not good.

― Wolfcastleee (Leee), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

The guy's obviously talented, but it was such a blatant first novel by a recent graduate, particularly the way he threw in every high falutin stylistic trick he learnt in his creative writing seminars to show how smart he is. Some of the threads taken on their own were quite good, but put together they made for an incoherant mess of a novel.

An example of how to do this kind of thing right: any David Mitchell novel.

― chap who would dare to tell uninteresting celeb spotting stories (chap), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 03:05 (twenty years ago)

Anyone read his new one? It's a 9/11 book

― voe marshall, Wednesday, 9 November 2005 03:36 (twenty years ago)

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