Rick Moody: C or D?

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I think he's a bit of a letdown, but I've only read the short-story collections The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven and half of Demonology. Are the novels better? I liked the film version of The Ice Storm too.

He's a good writer, just uneven. He slips into that D.F.Wallace/McSweeney's gang cuteness from time to time, but when he's good he's more direct and honest than that lot.

― fritz, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i havent read any but have been tempted from time to time... i really enjoyed The Ice Storm (film) but suspect v strongly that a book version of it would bore me on my tube journey to work. did he write Purple America (??) or was that someone else? so i guess uh, like Fritz i would like advice too please!

― katie, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, Purple America is his. It got amazing reviews, but what I know of the storyline (a man caring for his disabled, dying mother) has scared me off so far.

― fritz, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've only read the ice storm, but i enjoyed it plenty. it's a brisk read and, though he's a graceful writer, he rations the literary fireworks. i haven't seen the film, though i can easily imagine it making a good one. I don't remember it having the self-awareness that I'm assuming you don't like about Wallace or McSweeney's, so maybe it'd work for you.

― dave k, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

some of the short stories are all about fireworks (sentences that run pages long & that sort of thing) and mcsweeney's-style game-playing (one is a biography of an "unexceptional american" told as a series of mixed tapes, another story is a series of imagined entries in book catalogues) - neither of which are inherently bad things to me. Just a little cute sometimes. But I'd imagine the novels might have less of that kind of stuff.

― fritz, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

His new book sounds like it's trying to be Ben Marcus' Notable American Women which I can't imagine being topped.

― Mandee, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

His first novel, Garden State, has a stronger narrative voice than his other books, which makes a biographical kind of sense, since the themes are punk rock, Bergen County, and nervous breakdowns. The writing is simpler and maybe a bit better (if you consider what fritz calls "cuteness" to be over-elaborate and tiresome, as I do). But then again, I'm a first novel/first album fan.

― Benjamin, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Vote number 2 for GARDEN STATE. If you've ever taken the Bergen Country train line through Passaic and seen the falling-down factories and obsessed over sneaking inside, possibly to host a punk rawk show, you'll understand everything.

― Pyth, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Purple America' was excellent, despite the rather forced '24 hour' set-up. It's no 'Ulysses' after all, so he shouldn't invite such obvious comparisons. But the one (very long) sentence which makes up the opening chapter, where the hapless, rather dislikeable main character (points for that) has to deal with his mother's illness is unrepresentative of the rest of it, so don't let that put you off. Stranger is the award of yet another grant to the independently wealthy Moody last year. With authors usually on a cut of about 2% of total budget when they work is filmed (unless they've got a very bad agent- I wrote about this for a British newspaper a few years ago) his share for 'The Ice Storm' should have kept him in laptops for life. Or in America are such stipends restricted to those who don't actually need them? Just wondering.

― Snotty Moore, Wednesday, 29 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'The Ice Storm' wasn't really that a big hit was it? I mean I'm sure Moody did ok out of it, but I doubt we're talking Grisham/King paypackets here.

Only thing I've read by him - a not v. interesting intro to the Paris Review collection of Beat interviews. Oh, and he also wrote some of the lyrics on the new David Grubbs alb.

― Andrew L, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

just finished The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven & was TAKEN ABACK; best short story collection I've read in 4eva. is the title novella really Vollmann-esque, or am I being a k-tad superficial?

(Garden State was pretty good)

(McSweeney's&c still suxxor tho; on my RM-inspired goodwill I started Infinite Jest & battled my way past four pages, yuck)

― etc, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 05:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't make it out of the first couple of chapters in Garden State. The Ice Storm was just sort of meh.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 05:44 (twenty-two years ago)

ten years pass...

In which Rick Moody says things about Daft Punk, disco, black music, computers, children, and so on.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 24 March 2014 01:07 (twelve years ago)

can't wait

― balls, Monday, 24 March 2014 01:59 (twelve years ago)

seriously like by and large it's kind of been understood since the dawn of time that you don't let english majors dj at yr party, even if it's not a dance party, even if you're just dropping acid, and w/ that generation (my generation essentially) it's especially true (cf dfw blanching at young ppl actually liking disco in a supposedly fun thing - didn't they know it was bad and was supposed to be dead???)(love dfw but he was wrong about disco and he was wrong about proust)(you get this kind of oblivious blind spot adherence to cw w/ music outside of disco also, eg ppl that still think love of abba or gnr or even mainstream hip-hop if they've really cloistered themselves away has to be ironic, a joke, a pose or at least obv deeply wrong). anyway i enjoyed some of his fiction when he was younger and then he blew it, becoming a very poor man's nick hornby (so we're talking a very poor man indeed). silver lining is that at least he was never the actual rock critic for the new yorker, salon is his peak whereas for nearly anyone else it would be their nadir, where they ended up after they were somebody or where they briefly stopped before they became somebody. if i ever found myself in any kind of dialogue or interaction w/ a member of galaxie 500 and i was the less disco party that someone w/ a shotgun would point it at my head and not stop firing until everything above the shoulders was pulp.

― balls, Monday, 24 March 2014 02:13 (twelve years ago)

But I think an ahistorical imitation of disco that is created by a massive roundup of session players (yes, Nile Rodgers, et al.) does not square with art; it’s just slavish imitation. About as interesting as Interpol’s imitation of Joy Division, or Counting Crows’ imitation of Van Morrison, etc.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 24 March 2014 02:16 (twelve years ago)

Hey English ws one of my majors and I LOVE disco/ABBA/etc, so y'know. Not watching video cos there's no reason for it to even exist

― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Monday, 24 March 2014 02:27 (twelve years ago)

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