Norm's known to delete his tweets, so in case he does with this gold as well, I'll post it here. It works well as an afterward to his novel.
The House Painter, by Terence Keane, Random House, 28 dollars
Reading Paint Dry Michio Kakutani
Mr. Keane's posthumous offering, "The Housepainter" makes it a delight to speak ill of the dead, even perhaps a duty. You may remember Mr. Keane as the author who became famous in New York for a day last fall when he took his own life. We know Mr. Keane took his own life thanks to a 12 page suicide note. A note so filled with tedium it left the reader saying, "Get on with it already," and now we are given the sophomore novel by the suicide, a cliche so depressingly popular it is threatening to become a genre. Before we read a word from Mr. Keane, we must plough through a 30 page forward by the publisher, Ms. Julie Grau. Ms. Grau tells us what a true and misunderstood genius Mr. Keane was in life. This proves imperative as there is not a single word in the novel that might lead the reader to a remotely similar conclusion. That comment is a mite unfair. There is one clue in "The Housepainter" that its author is, indeed, a misunderstood genius. You see, the protagonist of the novel is, you guessed it, a misunderstood genius. This would be too much a coincidence. His name is Jack Marjerrison and he is a housepainter by day,master impressionist by night. The choice to make the hero an impressionist painter is no mistake,as it is clear Mr. Keane fancies his prose spare and elliptical. But Mr. Keane fails on an epic scale, as the children say, and ends up leaving us a portrait of the artist as a dull man. Mr. Keane limns his characters so thinly they become transparent. If Mr. Keane was capable of one deeply felt emotion in his life, it is invisible in this joke of a novel. I pray this not sound mean, but as award season approaches, I nominate the bullet that entered Mr. Keane's skull for Best Editing. Of course, the hijinks of a lovable bunch of losers that surround Mr. Marjerrison is no accident at all. Combined with the author's end, it intentionally forces us to to ruminate upon "A Confederacy of Dunces". In fact, the foreword directly suggests a comparison as Ms. Grau's cynicism appears to have no fence. Well, then, allow me to take the bait and compare the two. I knew John Kennedy Toole, I read John Kennedy Toole. You sir, are no John Kennedy Toole.
I found these while poking around and thought that their look at the texts without the 60+ years of hindsight was really interesting.
Сергій Жадан [офіційна сторінка]:
>The New York Times Book Review вніс нашу збірку до списку рекомендованих книг цього року.
>
>"Те, чим ми живемо, те, заради чого вмираємо", книга вибраних віршів у перекладі Вірляни Ткач та Ванди Фіппс, виходить друком в Yale University Press.
>
>Презентації 9-14 квітня в НЙ, Бостоні та Філадельфії.
>
>Приходьте, читайте!
