From reading other reviews of this book on LibraryThing and from briefly skimming through the book I did not expect to enjoy it as much as it did. After all the first two essays are about a young adolescent boys early forays into sexual experimentation so I expected mostly prurient humor. I certainly did not expect to laugh out loud several times (as I did). It turned out that the first two essays dealt with a more universal adolescent experience, that of feeling self conscious and in the spotlight. I felt that Almond dealt with these two admittedly mortifying adolescent experiences with intelligence and wit.
I found the third essay “How to write a sex scene to be relatively weak but his essay “Why I crush on Vonnegut which made up bulk of his booklet was his strongest essay out of the five that made up the booklet. It turns out to be a criticism of conventional literary critique and Almond opinions of why Vonnegut remains relevant to readers even though he is not universally loved by critics.
Of course I looked forward to reading the imaginatively titled “Ham for Chanukah” which turned out to be about the effect that the Almond Family’s rather lukewarm and dysfunction holiday celebrations had on the author growing up and why now he is now practicing his Jewish faith with his family with more faithfulness than he experienced growing up.
This is how most of the essays turned out to be. Underlying most of his essays was a commentary of what is was like growing up in the suburbs of California as a member of generation X, which as a generation Xer myself spoke volumes to me. I will definitely read the rest of the book when it is released.
No comments:
Post a Comment