Finished this one before our trip to San Francisco. I had never heard of Milhauser before, but the blurb on the cover about being by the same author as "Eisenheim the Illusionist" allowed me to talk dad into buying it, he having enjoyed the film The Illusionist so much. The book sat on a shelf for a while until I finally started it after having read the final story from the compilation "The Wizard of West Orange" in Best American Short Stories 2008 and "The Invasion from Outer Space" on The New Yorker website.
So - yes, I loved this book. I want more - I'm so hungry!
Because I am lazy, I'm going to quote and revise the facebook review I wrote about the book:
i'd like to read some more of those stories. read the first one or two. should pick it up soon. anne would also dig on it. i'm trying to read some updike tome about quantum mechanics and aging and it's really not doing anything for me -- no vibrations in the heart, crotch, or mind on that one. i can't even remember the title. just got bolano's savage detectives in the mail, though and picked up the new pynchon detective novel for anne. looking forward to reading both of those.
ReplyDeletebtw, boys, in a compromise between the megalomaniacal side of me that wants to build a comprehensive memory palace to house every one of my memories and intellectual consumables and the overwhelmed side of me that wants to disappear into the appalachian backcountry and have sex with unwilling tourists for the rest of my life, i've decided to start keeping hard copies of notes/papers/relevant portions of books/etc. in binders.
maybe i could just mail you our copy of Dangerous Laughter. I've been book swapping with Rob recently (through the mail and in person) and the next book I have to blog about came from him.
ReplyDeleteAll I know about Bolano is that he's got some sweet book covers and I only know about Pynchon from recommendation blurbs on other books - you'll have to let me know how those are
Also - I've been thinking it'd be fun to transcribe old notes/papers/journals onto yet another blog (I think I mentioned this when you were reading your 7th grade journal out loud to us will). That way you'd have a second, virtual copy of what you are talking about, which in and of itself sounds like a great project!