numail4me's review against another edition
3.0
i liked the book, but some of the references seemed to be off
ashleylm's review
5.0
It's really a 4.5 for me, but I'm rounding up because I'm surprise I liked it so well. Normally anything subtitled "a tale of terror" is probably not going to be my cup of tea, but this was definitely more The Good Place than Saw, to use TV/film analogies! Yes, there were some brutal murders, but when the victims show up in the next chapter complaining in the afterlife, it's hard to take it all too seriously.
So it reads more like a fantasy than a horror, with more attention being paid to events in the afterlife than on earth. We get to follow the ghosts, or spirits, or souls, what have you, and see how they feel about it all. It's funny, it's satirical, it's suspenseful, it's thought-provoking, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.
(Now I want it to be a streaming miniseries, because I'm so looking forward to the episode with the ambulatory Virgin Mary statue!)
P.S. It only took this long to read because it was my read-while-at-work-waiting-for-microwave book. I have Very Specific times that I read books--I even have a read-when-eating-Chinese-takeout-from-CitySquareFoodCourt, believe it or not.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
So it reads more like a fantasy than a horror, with more attention being paid to events in the afterlife than on earth. We get to follow the ghosts, or spirits, or souls, what have you, and see how they feel about it all. It's funny, it's satirical, it's suspenseful, it's thought-provoking, and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.
(Now I want it to be a streaming miniseries, because I'm so looking forward to the episode with the ambulatory Virgin Mary statue!)
P.S. It only took this long to read because it was my read-while-at-work-waiting-for-microwave book. I have Very Specific times that I read books--I even have a read-when-eating-Chinese-takeout-from-CitySquareFoodCourt, believe it or not.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Voices From the Grave
I am fascinated by the abiding religious influence of ‘secular’ writers, especially when they demonstrate a commonality which is otherwise difficult to articulate. The Catholic Thomas Disch, for example, is remarkably like the Jewish Stanley Elkin. Each wrote about the specific cultic guilt of his tribe with profound wit and wry humour. Disch’s epigraph in The Businessman quoting President Eisenhower could have been used by either man: “The issue always and at bottom is spiritual.” They both flippantly reject the modern idea that evil is merely “a quality and not a substance; an adjective and not a noun.” On the other hand, both would probably agree with Disch’s angelic escort, “Who ever suggested that heaven is fair? Is predestination fair, would you say?”
Justice, that is, has little to do with grace. Which is why both writers are fascinated by their respective religion’s doctrines of grace, that mysterious, entirely arbitrary, haplessness-inducing force which seems to control our lives as we bounce from event to event like a cosmic billiard ball. In Elkin, as in his The Franchiser, this shows itself in a sort of persistent fatalism. In Disch’s The Businessman, the tone is almost Zen: “The source of grace has its favorite bloodlines, for which there is no accounting... it has no relation to merit... For the source of grace -- let us be honest and call it God -- is also an ironist and a dweller in paradoxes; He produces good from evil as a matter of course.” Forget the mutual historical objections of Judaism and Catholicism; it is their shared sense of irony that unites them.
So it isn’t surprising that Disch and Elkin share the occasional trope - in this case, the buried body with an axe to grind, and friends on the outside who can supply the necessary oomph to wield it. Elkin’s The Living End as well as The Rabbi of Ludalso have the dead influencing the action from the grave, not as ghosts but as a living presence. The oppressive weight of tradition - the dead in all the multitude of their respective communities of saints - is something else the two share after all. So Disch comments through his narrator: “Time past passed the time.” And “Hell is a tape loop that keeps playing the same stupid tune over and over and over forever and ever and ever” Heaven, on the other hand requires crawling out from under since it is “no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.” Both hell and heaven are ‘merely’ shared metaphors of imaginative thought.
Maybe it’s the imagination to overcome the weight of time and tradition that accounts for the similarity in humour, most notably the dead pan commentary on one’s own prejudices. Disch’s departed female soul could be a character out of several of Elkin’s novels as “She was of the widely held opinion that at bottom everyone believed what she believed, if only they'd be honest with themselves.” Disch’s cultural asides are equally Elkinesque: “not even automobiles require as large and constant a cash outlay as children. The Roman matron who said that her children were her jewels was not exaggerating.” And so too is there a shared presumption of impending salvation in the observation by Disch’s narrator that “The work was the thing that kept him going. The work and the idea that somehow things were going to change, that he was on the verge of something important.”
Being on the verge of something important is, for me, the subtle theme throughout the work of both writers - like an 11 year old with oppressive parents “All they've got is the distant hope of parole.” This barely suggested attitude of anticipation, perhaps even hope - in the first or the second coming of the messiah; it makes little difference - is what I find most fascinating about them despite their frequent irony, sarcasm, tribal criticism. For example, in contemplating the motto inscribed on a five dollar bill, “IN GOD WE TRUST. Yes. Of all possible messages this was surely the most urgent.” Sometimes, in other words, a cigar is just a joke.
I am fascinated by the abiding religious influence of ‘secular’ writers, especially when they demonstrate a commonality which is otherwise difficult to articulate. The Catholic Thomas Disch, for example, is remarkably like the Jewish Stanley Elkin. Each wrote about the specific cultic guilt of his tribe with profound wit and wry humour. Disch’s epigraph in The Businessman quoting President Eisenhower could have been used by either man: “The issue always and at bottom is spiritual.” They both flippantly reject the modern idea that evil is merely “a quality and not a substance; an adjective and not a noun.” On the other hand, both would probably agree with Disch’s angelic escort, “Who ever suggested that heaven is fair? Is predestination fair, would you say?”
Justice, that is, has little to do with grace. Which is why both writers are fascinated by their respective religion’s doctrines of grace, that mysterious, entirely arbitrary, haplessness-inducing force which seems to control our lives as we bounce from event to event like a cosmic billiard ball. In Elkin, as in his The Franchiser, this shows itself in a sort of persistent fatalism. In Disch’s The Businessman, the tone is almost Zen: “The source of grace has its favorite bloodlines, for which there is no accounting... it has no relation to merit... For the source of grace -- let us be honest and call it God -- is also an ironist and a dweller in paradoxes; He produces good from evil as a matter of course.” Forget the mutual historical objections of Judaism and Catholicism; it is their shared sense of irony that unites them.
So it isn’t surprising that Disch and Elkin share the occasional trope - in this case, the buried body with an axe to grind, and friends on the outside who can supply the necessary oomph to wield it. Elkin’s The Living End as well as The Rabbi of Ludalso have the dead influencing the action from the grave, not as ghosts but as a living presence. The oppressive weight of tradition - the dead in all the multitude of their respective communities of saints - is something else the two share after all. So Disch comments through his narrator: “Time past passed the time.” And “Hell is a tape loop that keeps playing the same stupid tune over and over and over forever and ever and ever” Heaven, on the other hand requires crawling out from under since it is “no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.” Both hell and heaven are ‘merely’ shared metaphors of imaginative thought.
Maybe it’s the imagination to overcome the weight of time and tradition that accounts for the similarity in humour, most notably the dead pan commentary on one’s own prejudices. Disch’s departed female soul could be a character out of several of Elkin’s novels as “She was of the widely held opinion that at bottom everyone believed what she believed, if only they'd be honest with themselves.” Disch’s cultural asides are equally Elkinesque: “not even automobiles require as large and constant a cash outlay as children. The Roman matron who said that her children were her jewels was not exaggerating.” And so too is there a shared presumption of impending salvation in the observation by Disch’s narrator that “The work was the thing that kept him going. The work and the idea that somehow things were going to change, that he was on the verge of something important.”
Being on the verge of something important is, for me, the subtle theme throughout the work of both writers - like an 11 year old with oppressive parents “All they've got is the distant hope of parole.” This barely suggested attitude of anticipation, perhaps even hope - in the first or the second coming of the messiah; it makes little difference - is what I find most fascinating about them despite their frequent irony, sarcasm, tribal criticism. For example, in contemplating the motto inscribed on a five dollar bill, “IN GOD WE TRUST. Yes. Of all possible messages this was surely the most urgent.” Sometimes, in other words, a cigar is just a joke.
robotgoods's review against another edition
4.0
I was ready to write this off as another American Psycho, which I did not enjoy, but then the book turned absurd and suddenly I was hooked.
iguana_mama's review against another edition
3.0
One of the more bizarre books I've read in a while. It's part fantasy, part horror and part black comedy. An overweight executive kills his lovely young wife and despite her wishes, she returns from the grave to haunt her murderer. As much as I enjoyed the book, the cast of characters was mostly very unlikeable and I have no desire to spend any time with them again. Still, Disch was an extremely skilled writer and I will be looking for more of his work.
otterno11's review against another edition
4.0
I have to admit, I am not entirely sure what to make of this bizarre, disturbing, humorous, annoying, thought provoking “Tale of Terror.” In the end, I feel that I liked it, though I may have to read it again in a couple years. At this point, I would probably give a 3.5 if possible. I am certainly interested in reading the rest of Thomas M. Disch's “Supernatural Minnesota” series. I have only become aware of Disch in the last two months, after stumbling on the University of Minnesota's 2010 editions of the series and then happening to have read another of Disch's stories in an anthology. I had only heard of one of his previous works in the past, “The Brave Little Toaster,” through the animated film. As a writer and poet, Disch seemed to have had some interesting ideas. In the end, I may have enjoyed the ideas brought up in “The Businessman” more than the actual story or the characters he depicts.
Set mostly in the suburban Twin Cities, “The Businessman” involves a lot more than the blurb would suggest, of the disgustingly bland murderer Glandier being haunted by his apathetic wife Giselle. Equal parts droll comedy and shocking terror (both extremes exist side by side in this genre defying story), there seems to be a lot more going on behind the rather conventional supernatural thriller plot. The events of the book, on the other hand, feel very early eighties, very rooted to the period it was written As a “ghost story,” in that it involves the activities of ghosts, Disch has created an interesting take on an afterlife complete with heaven, reincarnation, ghosts, and a “virtual reality” Limbo with real time TV feeds from Earth. It is interesting to posit that imagination is what truly shapes your afterlife; a more vacuous personality will end up reincarnated as a plant, for instance, as vegetation is the best reflection of a life lived without higher thoughts. Still, life as a tree actually sounds fairly nice. This was the most interesting aspect of the story, reflecting that life after death is what people make of it, whether taking an easy reincarnation as a plant or animal or another human, hanging out as a ghost, spending time relaxing in “the waiting room” watching TV, or dissolve into the bliss of the “higher heavens” or the oblivion of sinking into the vastness of the physical universe.
Generally, on both earth and the afterlife, the innocent suffer almost as much as the guilty, though, truthfully, everyone is deeply flawed, whether through hypocrisy, thoughtlessness, or just plain apathy. Everyone, even the murderer Glandier and the ghost poet Berryman, come off as average, everyday people even as they are surrounded by the utterly bizarre. Even Jesus, in his cameo, seems like a normal guy (but of course, he is being viewed by conventional Minnesotans, so his appearance couldn't be too strange). In particular, the character of the ghost of the poet John Berryman, was among the most interesting. Trapped in Minneapolis after his suicide, the erudite spirit puts aside his quest for booze in order to attempt to fix the injustices of Giselle's death, perhaps with the ulterior motive of being allowed into the afterlife. Disch was a poet as well as a writer, and he, like Berryman, later took his own life. This adds another layer of tragic feeling to the subject matter of “The Businessman.” In any case, the book, though flawed in some ways, was one of the most unusual I have read for awhile.
Set mostly in the suburban Twin Cities, “The Businessman” involves a lot more than the blurb would suggest, of the disgustingly bland murderer Glandier being haunted by his apathetic wife Giselle. Equal parts droll comedy and shocking terror (both extremes exist side by side in this genre defying story), there seems to be a lot more going on behind the rather conventional supernatural thriller plot. The events of the book, on the other hand, feel very early eighties, very rooted to the period it was written As a “ghost story,” in that it involves the activities of ghosts, Disch has created an interesting take on an afterlife complete with heaven, reincarnation, ghosts, and a “virtual reality” Limbo with real time TV feeds from Earth. It is interesting to posit that imagination is what truly shapes your afterlife; a more vacuous personality will end up reincarnated as a plant, for instance, as vegetation is the best reflection of a life lived without higher thoughts. Still, life as a tree actually sounds fairly nice. This was the most interesting aspect of the story, reflecting that life after death is what people make of it, whether taking an easy reincarnation as a plant or animal or another human, hanging out as a ghost, spending time relaxing in “the waiting room” watching TV, or dissolve into the bliss of the “higher heavens” or the oblivion of sinking into the vastness of the physical universe.
Generally, on both earth and the afterlife, the innocent suffer almost as much as the guilty, though, truthfully, everyone is deeply flawed, whether through hypocrisy, thoughtlessness, or just plain apathy. Everyone, even the murderer Glandier and the ghost poet Berryman, come off as average, everyday people even as they are surrounded by the utterly bizarre. Even Jesus, in his cameo, seems like a normal guy (but of course, he is being viewed by conventional Minnesotans, so his appearance couldn't be too strange). In particular, the character of the ghost of the poet John Berryman, was among the most interesting. Trapped in Minneapolis after his suicide, the erudite spirit puts aside his quest for booze in order to attempt to fix the injustices of Giselle's death, perhaps with the ulterior motive of being allowed into the afterlife. Disch was a poet as well as a writer, and he, like Berryman, later took his own life. This adds another layer of tragic feeling to the subject matter of “The Businessman.” In any case, the book, though flawed in some ways, was one of the most unusual I have read for awhile.
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