Wouldn't that rough lovemaking be an appropriate indicator of Michael having fully reconciled the violent and nurturing halves of his nature? It struck me as unified rather than ambiguous.

Mmm, I don't know about that. I've always found that truly effective comedy has a serious objective, an overarching point that lends body and weight to the joke. What makes humor so potent is its relevance and pointed perceptions of the human condition.

Swibble, I'm pretty sure that Dobyns listed Joseph Campbell as part of his "Further Reading" tag at the end. There certainly is a lot of Monomythic structuring afoot in this book, but Dobyns struck me as deliberately imploding our monomythic expectations as he went along. He swaps out the Goddess/Temptress roles,…

WR, the cult is some sort of Dionysian composite cult, and is initially written about as this sinister group. However, seeing as how Michael owes his very existence to that cult, and it is through the machinations of Violet and El insituto estetico that Michael is able to achieve resolution of his quest and his inner…

Swibble, the book's ending definitely inverts a reader's assumptions about how the fairy tale tropes are supposed to go:

Yeah, I see how I was implying in my earlier post that an emotional connection to the material and characters is a prerequisite for my enjoyment of a book. That's not true for me personally. It helps a lot, don't get me wrong, but there are other ways in which I can find a book rewarding.

Wait, are you suggesting that Dobyns was portraying Muldoon sympathetically? Effectively condoning and supporting Muldoon's positions and choices?

Investment
I definitely agree with Zack's post. I felt like Dobyns invested so much time in archly deconstructing his own scenarios and cracking jokes at the expense of his many supporting characters that I wasn't able to make a substantial emotional connection to what I was reading.

I'm fully with you, Swibble, on the power of fiction as a major theme of the book. So many of the book's characters see their daily structures reflected and refracted through the prism of Marduk the Magnificent, which is really his intended function as a popular fictional character, to provide a point of entry and…

Yeah, my criticisms on the narrative voice really amount to a personal interpretation on my part. It didn't work for me, and that's the most fair and accurate way to sum up my issue.

Hmmm…that's an excellent analysis. That bit of Violet's transformation coinciding with Michael's own transformation went completely over my head when I was reading the book. Never occurred to me.

That's a good point about the Gorillas, Mike. Still, I feel like their ultimate disappearance from the narrative conclusion is more an untended loose end than a deliberate choice. That's really all a matter of interpretation on my part, true, but the Gorillas seemed of a piece with other characters that felt…

So, so right about Tim Burton, Mike Strange. Alice in Wonderland was such a dispiriting experience…

The book is such a wild mishmash of physical violence, broad comedy and obscure Gnostic exploration that it would take someone truly committed to batshit craziness, like a Terry Gilliam, to even attempt a cinematic translation.

Finally, the book sprawls across so many characters and subplots without taking the time and care to invest them with dimension or any corporeal depth, at least any depth that stems from a source outside of their philosophical/religious/mythological significance to Dobyns' larger narrative tapestry. I fully agree with…

I think I'm alone on this…
As is becoming my distressing habit, I crammed reading the back half of The Wrestler's Cruel Study into this past weekend, finishing in a 100-page sprint last night. While ostensibly I think that I should give this book a little more time to settle, my impressions were pretty well calcified…

Damn it!
This is the one night of the week when I have conflicts and can't make it!

Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas!!
That's it! I'm sold already on Riddley Walker!

What I was implying was that all books, and more importantly, all genres of books, have the capacity to be worthy of respect and praise. I was speaking to the "high" literature vs. "low" literature discussion that went down, which reminded me of discussions whereby people try to promulgate the notion that certain…

Coming on the 1-year anniversary of WUiB
You know, being a part of this book club has impacted, challenged and deepened my approach to reading. I feel like I say this at the end of every book club week, but it's always appropriate: