End of Days by Brad Taylor. The Summer Proposal by Vi Keeland. It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. If'n you have a notion indulge in a satirical novel this summer, I'd recommend this one. Jul 26, Leo rated it it was amazing Shelves: other-favorite-books. One of the funniest novels I have ever read. Like all good humorists Markson knows how to make each scene funnier than the previous one.
But what makes this book so wonderful is the structure. Markson manages to wind each anecdote back into itself thus doubling the humorous impact. Fans of hard boiled fiction should seek out his very funny early detective novel "Epitaph For A Dead Beat" which has some very funny sequences and marvelous uses of wordplay and literary allusion.
This is Markson at One of the funniest novels I have ever read. This is Markson at his peak as a traditional straight novelist and is much different from his later experiements with minimalist fiction. A pure, old-fashioned farce that works because A. Many a satire with an appealing premise has fallen flat because no attention was paid to the actual writing.
So I enjoyed this. Manages that near-impossible feat of being really funny and really fucking smart at the same time, all the while betraying an outward 'slipping-on-banana-peels' comic flavor that hides the self-referentialism afoot on nearly every page.
Proof that literature doesn't have to be tragic all the time just most. Jun 01, Angela rated it liked it.
Hilarious old-timey Southern insults and expressions in this book, like "bold as a fart in church" or "wick-dipping polecat".
I really want to bring back the phrase, "what in thunderation! So here I am. This novel is written as a kind of love ballad to Westerns. The kind of Westerns you seen in movies, but also used to get written. I wanted to like it more because it had a lot of the elements that I do like in a novel.
But at the same time, it feels a little too on the nose for all of these things. His scalp was gamy. Poised in the saddle, with one freckled hand inside his jeans and several stumpy fingers of the other beneath his sombrero, he relieved himself simultaneously and with vehemence.
He knew this a true fact as he shifted his buttocks athwart the hot leather, waiting while his companion emerged from a sheltered turning on the trail behind him. Nov 13, Rick Goff rated it really liked it. I chose this novel mostly out of curiosity about early pre-postmodern Markson.
Apr 10, Lynn rated it it was amazing Shelves: comical , humor , history-fiction , guns , western. A well written, fun, humorous and entertaining read in a time when there really was no law and how Dingus solves his problem is just pure fun!
Apr 20, Van Roberts rated it it was amazing. Infectiously and contagiously funny horse opera that Frank Sinatra starred in. The humor is terrific. What delightful ridiculousness! Such a fun narrative voice. Extremely bawdy and at all times comical, this was hardly what I expected after Markson s detective novels were so truly nailed-down noir I don t think anyone cracked a smile through either of them.
But the outlaw has hardly ever committed a crime except by accident at least until the bumbling lawman made himself such an easy target. The doctor, who knows just how unromantic the Wild West really is, wants to hire actors and go on tour to bilk more Easterners.
And the respectable unmarried teacher seduces one man after another until the last is entrapped into marrying her. And let s just say that in the end, good does not exactly triumph over evil not that it s clear what that would even mean in this context. It begins with in a very po-faced manner, and early on I was wonder exactly what was this odd Western pulpy thing that I'd somehow ended up reading. Then it finally dawns of you that this is satire, and wry satire at that. Like the very best, it manages to evoke a real sense of the genre the 'mythological wild west , and utterly subvert the general preposterousness of the hoary old tales of Hickok, the James boys, Billy the Kid etc etc.
Moreover, it skews the genre while being incredibly funny. The nature of myth-making, the tendency of those living mundane lives to latch on to ridiculous explanations and tell and retell even more embellished narratives is exploited beautifully here. I really enjoyed it, and can recommend it most highly!
Vanishing Point introduces us to "Author," who sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with note cards into a novel. In The Last Novel, we find an elderly author referred to only as "Novelist" who announces that, since this will be his final effort, he possesses "carte blanche to do anything he damn well pleases.
Popular Books. End of Days by Brad Taylor. The Summer Proposal by Vi Keeland. Ass-breaker Dingus Magee is looking for a gold train when he comes upon old acquaintance Hoke Birdsill on stage to San Francisco, and robs him of his money. Hoke goes to the nearby town of Yerkey's Hole, where Belle Knops is both mayor and bordello-mistress.
She appoints Hoke Town Sheriff and tries to get him to stir up the Indians so the soldiers at the nearby fort the main customers won't go to Little Big Horn. Dingus tries to stir up more trouble and get involved with the pale, baby-talking Indian, Anna. The film is a send-up of the oft-repeated phrase "the Code of the West" and exaggerates it and what it stands for into the ridiculousness that it is.
The Baker and the Beauty Telugu. Vivaha Bhojanambu. Tharagathi Gadhi Daati. Bhuj: The Pride Of India. Sarpatta Parambarai. Kudi Yedamaithe.
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