![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Best book *ever*
I have just read a brief, strange, and wonderful novel. And yes, by novel I mean something that would never be considered science fiction, or fantasy. Something, in fact, that does not have a brightly colored cover, heaving bosoms, vile enemies, or any of the other things I am so often fond of. Picture, if you will, a happy cross-breed between Milan Kundera's book "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and C.D. Payne's "Youth in Revolt". That is, picture a book that is intelligent, philosophical, steeped in European intellectual tradition. At the same time this book is full of a lively sense of the ridiculous, of coincidence heaped upon coincidence.
Now give this imagined cross-breed the pleasant, unjudgemental character that both of the above lack.
The result, ladies and gentleman, to be observed in ring #3 to my left, is a mere little trifle of 160 pages or so called "How I Became Stupid".
This is the story of one bright young man who is very oppressed by his intelligence. Empathy is a horrible burden to him. He attempts to become alcoholic, but fails. He can't bear suicide. At last, through a combination of drugs and retail therapy, he approaches stupidity, but is pulled back from the brink by his old friends, who perform an exorcism using the works of various intellectual authors.
It's a strange, charming, entertaining, and silly book. And it is also morally serious.
I like it very much. It made me do the little happy dance all around my kitchen.
Ok. Breathing in, breathing out. That was my brief intellectual moment for the day. Now back to your regularly scheduled program of trash novels. Up tonight - a smorgas board buffet of Elizabeth Moon's science fiction and Eileen Wilks first mainstream full length romance novel. yah! and Ben and Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with coffee-caramel sauce. Have to counterbalance that brief moment of thought as quickly as possible. *grin*
Now give this imagined cross-breed the pleasant, unjudgemental character that both of the above lack.
The result, ladies and gentleman, to be observed in ring #3 to my left, is a mere little trifle of 160 pages or so called "How I Became Stupid".
This is the story of one bright young man who is very oppressed by his intelligence. Empathy is a horrible burden to him. He attempts to become alcoholic, but fails. He can't bear suicide. At last, through a combination of drugs and retail therapy, he approaches stupidity, but is pulled back from the brink by his old friends, who perform an exorcism using the works of various intellectual authors.
It's a strange, charming, entertaining, and silly book. And it is also morally serious.
I like it very much. It made me do the little happy dance all around my kitchen.
Ok. Breathing in, breathing out. That was my brief intellectual moment for the day. Now back to your regularly scheduled program of trash novels. Up tonight - a smorgas board buffet of Elizabeth Moon's science fiction and Eileen Wilks first mainstream full length romance novel. yah! and Ben and Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with coffee-caramel sauce. Have to counterbalance that brief moment of thought as quickly as possible. *grin*