books (Horace Afoot)
by Frederick Reuss
This book is best described as the literary equivalent of a Jim Jarmusch film. By this, I mean that it's somewhat plotless, meanders greatly, and doesn't really seem to be about what it purports itself to be about, but a viewer (or reader, in this case) is left with the overwhelming impression when all is said and done that they've just witnessed an artistic stroke of brililance, even if they can't explain why. The difference here is that I am actually a great admirer of Jarmusch's work.
Horace is a man of ambiguous past. While hitchhiking, he becomes enamored of a town named Oblivion and decides to make it his home. Shunning automobiles and human contact, he spends his days and nights making random phone calls to strangers and memorizing the words of the great Latin philosophers. Along the way, he befriends a cancer-stricken librarian, he rescues an injured crow, he saves an assaulted woman from what seemed at the time to be certain death. And that's just about it...
Well-written and occasionally thought-provoking, this book is enjoyable but never nearly as briliant as the critics and blurbs would leave you to believe.
This book is best described as the literary equivalent of a Jim Jarmusch film. By this, I mean that it's somewhat plotless, meanders greatly, and doesn't really seem to be about what it purports itself to be about, but a viewer (or reader, in this case) is left with the overwhelming impression when all is said and done that they've just witnessed an artistic stroke of brililance, even if they can't explain why. The difference here is that I am actually a great admirer of Jarmusch's work.
Horace is a man of ambiguous past. While hitchhiking, he becomes enamored of a town named Oblivion and decides to make it his home. Shunning automobiles and human contact, he spends his days and nights making random phone calls to strangers and memorizing the words of the great Latin philosophers. Along the way, he befriends a cancer-stricken librarian, he rescues an injured crow, he saves an assaulted woman from what seemed at the time to be certain death. And that's just about it...
Well-written and occasionally thought-provoking, this book is enjoyable but never nearly as briliant as the critics and blurbs would leave you to believe.