Literature

★★★★★★★★★★

As close to the completion of literature that a work has ever strived towards. My personal favorite book.

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Vaporous, floating prose creeps through scenes and bodies. Not necessarily pointless, but this left me with little to chew on.

★★★★★★★★★☆

Erudition exceeding necessity. Truly magnificent, pure excellence to behold. A desert island book to last re-readers through unknown lengths of time and a treat for the discerning minds which uncommonly outlasts all other purely critical works. Kenner dives deep and pulls us with him down into the substrate. This experience is not for the uncommitted reader.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Still a worthy classic

★★★★★★★★★☆

Lonely, searching, haunted, truly American, a spiritual brother to the tonal experience of watching a Hopper painting. Worth of the title of a system novel.

★★★★★★★★★☆

Juicy essays to savor and fold your mind through like pieces of psychic clay. Perfect for a non-linear nibble experience in-between other reads. Evokes the internal sensation that the intellectual mind is limitlessly powerful and gloriously inventive.

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Gimicky, but uniquely gimicky. Probably wouldn’t read it again since the experience nauseated me and did not leave me intrigued or captivated.

★★★★★★★★★★

Horrifying, awe-inspiring for all of the wrong reasons. Belongs in the very bottom-rung of hell. Inverted morality, anti-life, precisely the opposite of a bildungsroman.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Eccentric, snarky, electric writing that leaves me feeling like I’ve been struck by lightning.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

The weakest of the trilogy, but the climax of an unbelievable, immaculately composed life. The author is undoubtably fascinating, our ability to witness his experiences is a gift. Flows far better than one would imagine, pages fly by and the peaks and valleys leave the reader with a dynamic, illuminated experience that dazzles anyone with a passing interest in history surrounding the Napoleonic years.

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Unfortunately, this is the weakest Vollmann work. Has the tonal character of a high school essay stretched for 250 pages. Approaches Vollmann’s signature reflections that work well in other moments of output but they fall flat here.

★★★★★★★★★★

Something unnaturally interesting is happening here when Arno writes. It puts me in a trance, the tone on display enables me to believe in interesting, clever applications of cynicism.

★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Obnoxious, caustic, attempts personality in the way a search result returns generic, populous results. The writing upsets me in the same way a movie can be depicting a younger culture than the writers were a part of, and it ends up being cloying, desperate, and sad like a trip through an episode of stranger things. You can blatantly see the attempt at character and place but it just comes off as incredibly fake.

Skip this.

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Awkward, coiled prose resembling Beowulf. Lucious, undeniably written intentionally and with heart. Sparks debate over the meaning of translation vs interpretive translation of which this is most definitely the later. Best read over tea.

★★★★★★★★★★

Red-blooded, vital literature written in such a way as to leave the reader with the impression of a striving, necessary work conveying the weight of civilizational levels of truth and beauty.

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Cute as Tolkien ever gets. Not necessarily unimpressive, just somewhat quaint in comparison to the rest of the body of work it stacks up against.

★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Drained, pathetic, defeatist phantasmagoria. A tired funeral clearly written with intention, but to what end? Misery exhibitionism from a clearly talented writer. This is a dreary slog that saps my vigor.