A review by catdad77a45
Blue Self-Portrait, by Sophie Lewis, Noémi Lefebvre

2.0

I'm really at a quandary to say ANYTHING about this book, largely because so much of it flew right over my head (... and Wilt Chamberlain's). I mean - I kinda/sorta got the gist of it, but since my idea of 'degenerate music' begins and ends with Madonna, the whole twelve-tone theme and structure was meaningless to me - and shamefully, I even had to look on Wikipedia to remind myself what the Wannsee Conference was all about (I know, I know!) ... as well as to read the bios of many of the historical figures invoked (but hey, I did know Thomas Mann and Brecht & Weill at least! 3 points!). The extreme run-on sentences (why, hi there stream-of-consciousness!) annoyed the crap out of me, as they always do, and often I would just kind of give up on making literal sense of what was going on (I'd have said to myself "Was zum Teufel passiert?" ... but I don't know any German) and just look at it as the literary equivalent of jazz rifts - which maybe was the intention? Regardless, I WILL say I could ADMIRE it, but didn't really ENJOY it much - which seems to be the majority view amongst my GR cognoscenti... and it MIGHT - at some point, justify a quick re-read as many have done, to see if I can make better sense of it on a second go-round. Finally, my sincere thanks to my buddy, Jill, who so generously sent me her copy, since I doubt I would have mustered enough enthusiasm for this to have purchased a copy myself (cheap bastard that I am).