taurustorus's review against another edition
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
yapxinyi's review against another edition
3.0
The overwhelming feeling was that I didn't know how much was fiction and how much was real/autobiographical. I think this style of "autofiction" is interesting – I was drawn into reading this book because I enjoyed The Golden Vanity on The New Yorker, which apparently features in his other book, [b:10:04|20613582|10 04|Ben Lerner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405301226l/20613582._SY75_.jpg|39894949].
Some very nice writing, but on the whole, the narrator wasn't that likeable – I often found myself questioning his life choices as much as Adam questioned himself. But I suppose that was the point of the book, that no one truly knows what they're doing. Much less Isabel. Much less Teresa.
Anyway, some sentences I liked:
and
and
and
and, finally
It was kinda hard getting into the reading, but I liked that the events unfurled with a sort of unrhythmic flow, such that you feel compelled to read on even if nothing really happens. And if you ask me, what is the point of this book, I'd like to quote the last sentence (gave me such feels):
Some very nice writing, but on the whole, the narrator wasn't that likeable – I often found myself questioning his life choices as much as Adam questioned himself. But I suppose that was the point of the book, that no one truly knows what they're doing. Much less Isabel. Much less Teresa.
Anyway, some sentences I liked:
I told myself that no matter what I did, no matter what any poet did, the poems would constitute screens on which readers could project their own desperate belief in the possibility of poetic experience, whatever that might be, or afford them the opportunity to mourn its impossibility.
and
But by reflecting your reading, Ashbery's poems allow you to attend to your attention, to experience your experience, thereby enabling a strange kind of presence. But it is a presence that keeps the virtual possibilities of poetry intact because the true poem remains beyong you, inscribed on the far side of the mirror: "You have it but you don't have it. / You miss it, it misses you. / You miss each other."
and
My distress about Isabel and Teresa, coupled with my guilt about my parents, opened onto larger questions about my fraudulence; that I was a fraud had never been in question–who wasn't? Who wasn't squatting in one of the handful of prefabricated subject positions proferred by capital or whatever you wanted to call it, lying every time she said "I"; who wasn't a bit player in a looped informercial for the damaged life? If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak.
and
Now I realized Teresa wasn't speaking but was humming and playing with my hair but still I heard: To embrace the tragic interchangeability of nouns and smile inscrutably or to find a way of touching down, albeit momentarily, and be made visible by swirling condensation and debris and to know that one pole of experience is always caught up in the other but to know this finally in your body, cone of heat unfurling. to take everything personally until your personality dissolves and you can move without transition from apartment to protest or distribute yourself among a shifting configuration of bodies, saying yes to everything, affirming nothing, your own body "giving up / Its shape in a gesture that expresses that shape."
Then I was on my back and Teresa was on her back beside me and all of the jealousy was gone or so far away I no longer thought of it as mine. I could see a particularly bright star that I then saw as a satellite but ultimately I knew it was a plane.
and, finally
In other moments, however, the discourse of the real would seem to fall on the side of Spain; this, I would say to myself, referring to the hemic taste of chorizo or the aromatic spliff or both of those things on Teresa's breath, this is experience, not because things in Iberia were inherently more immediate, but because the landscape and my relation to it had not been entirely standardized.
It was kinda hard getting into the reading, but I liked that the events unfurled with a sort of unrhythmic flow, such that you feel compelled to read on even if nothing really happens. And if you ask me, what is the point of this book, I'd like to quote the last sentence (gave me such feels):
Then I planned to live forever in a skylit room surrounded by my friends.
vsb's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Que raro es leer un libro sobre tu ciudad en la perspectiva de un extranjero. // super aburrido y pretencioso hasta que empezaron los eventos del 11M
stierwood's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Main character INSUFFERABLE yet a scary amount relatable I moved to Madrid 3 months ago from the states and let's just say I am looking inward
ajpepski's review against another edition
3.0
There are lots of smart and original nuggets in this book. I also thought a lot veered toward the cliche. I only began to like the narrator at the very end. This book is definitely worth another read. 3.5
samanthaash_'s review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
dcmr's review against another edition
1.0
This book is one indulgent sentence after another.
I loathed the narrator. Did the author intentionally create an awful American male poet/traveler/poser character? Is the point of this novel to confirm that Americans really are lazy, self-centered, and pretentious?
If the aim is satire, it only works for a very short time and only with some sort of payoff at the end — and not, as this story suggests, that the pseudo-intellectual poet is not a bumbling idiot but rather a brilliant fountain of creativity. Give me a break!
I loathed the narrator. Did the author intentionally create an awful American male poet/traveler/poser character? Is the point of this novel to confirm that Americans really are lazy, self-centered, and pretentious?
If the aim is satire, it only works for a very short time and only with some sort of payoff at the end — and not, as this story suggests, that the pseudo-intellectual poet is not a bumbling idiot but rather a brilliant fountain of creativity. Give me a break!
kaibastos's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.5