Hotmail Tech Support Number

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Saturday, 17 September 2011

SPL Shelf Life [adult]

Posted on 08:36 by Unknown

This review appeared in The Stratford Gazette on September 15th. Written by Shauna Thomas, Librarian.

Starting From Happy By Patricia Marx
@SPL: FIC Marx

Once, in the final year of my undergrad, I lost my mind in essay format. It was the gruelling end of a weird semester and the course was Linguistic Epistemology (or Underwater Basket-weaving, if you prefer). For the final essay, I was supposed to investigate the possibility of expressing a natural language's functions entirely in symbolic logic.

Long story short, I went barking on stress and 5 different caffeine delivery options, and threw the whole notion out the window with 12 hours to go. Natural language isn't a logically coherent system. Can't be. Humans use it. Have you met humans? Half of them can't figure out how to text each other, and the other half have murdered natural language. I filled 20 pages with a manic ode to joyous illogic in nonverbal communication. For my breakdown, I received a generous mark in the mid-70s.

This isn't a non sequitur to distract you from the fact that there's no book review happening. Honest. The same kind of panic-fuelled adventure in chemistry and extreme sleeplessness seems to have propelled Patricia Marx's Starting From Happy. Right from the get-go, it's apparent that Marx is meeting a book contract the most gleeful way she knows how – as obviously as possible.

Starting From Happyopens with a “PROLEGOMENON” meant, as Marx notes in wistful sarcasm, to have been penned by Philip Roth. Except, he “backed out.” After trying to get several other authors - Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Cormac McCarthy (who was “under the weather, existentially speaking”), Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, and the deceased John Updike - to pen the intro and pad her word count, Marx gives up. She spends the rest of her own intro typing animal sounds to hit word count and avoid litigation. She closes the book with fan/hate mail and an index that uses imaginary numbers to refer to nonexistent people and events. You have to admire the panache.

But how's the book in between? Without question, this is the funniest book I've read this year. Arranged in tiny chaplettes of a few sentences rather than chapters, Marx uses their brevity to create a kind of mosaic sketch of the lives of Immogene and Wally, the couple at the centre of Starting From Happy. It follows their disjointed NYC courtship and social scene through their lives together, stringing together a genuinely touching story out of a series of blisteringly sarcastic fragments of scenes and conversations.

By the time you finish Starting From Happy you might be confused, but you'll also be bowled-over by the sheer blazing postmodernism of the project. By letting all the seams show, Marx constructs a novel that has deeply clever things to say about what literature means in the twilight years of the paper book's reign. If you took Comp Lit and people have a hard time knowing whether you're kidding, you should probably read this book.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in shelf life adult | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • Family Day
  • French resources for you and your family
    Last night, the Stratford chapter of Canadian Parents for French hosted a Parents Success Night at the Falstaff Early Years Centre. There w...
  • The Best Science Fiction & Fantasty
     Image from the NPR    The  National Public Radio has released their list of the top 100 science-fiction, fantasy bo...
  • Blind Date With A Book and CBC Radio 1
    Two weeks of fun, Under-the-Covers! February 14-28 Come into the library to meet your match! We’ve selected some hidden gems from our collec...
  • Shelf Life [adult]
    Leaving Everything Most Loved b y Jacqueline Winspear @SPL: FIC Winsp Maisie Dobbs has come a long way from her start as a kitchen maid in...
  • Shelf Life [kids]
    The Tree that Bear Climbed  by Marianne Berkes, 32 pages. @ SPL:  JP Berke There are many parts to a tree, and all of them have a role to pl...
  • downloadLibrary and the Windows Phone
    Good news for Windows Phone users! There is now an Overdrive Media Console App for your phone too! This new app will allow users of download...
  • Library is a kind of paradise
    [ source ]
  • Shelf Life [kids]
    Wild Colt by Lois Szymanski, 40 pages. @ SPL:  JP Szyma      Full-page pictures created in oil paint bring to life a beautiful new children’...
  • Send Us Your Flower Photos!
    I don't know about you but I'm ready to see some flowers shoot up from beneath the snow and slush. March 20th is the first day of Sp...

Categories

  • 2.0
  • about spl
  • awards
  • BiblioCommons
  • book sale
  • books
  • CLA
  • Cloud computing
  • contest
  • culture days
  • Cyberbullying
  • databases
  • downloadlibrary
  • DVD
  • ebooks
  • education
  • email
  • employment
  • events
  • Evergreen™ Award
  • Evergreen™ Featured Title
  • facebook
  • finance
  • french
  • Friends
  • Friends of the library
  • fundraising
  • get connected
  • Google maps
  • health
  • helpful links
  • hotmail
  • Image Quest
  • intelligent community
  • kids
  • Lego
  • Library Board
  • Library Foundation
  • library life
  • literacy
  • local
  • magazines
  • March Break
  • movies
  • OPLW
  • Paralympics
  • PCIN
  • penny drive
  • Pinterest
  • PLOW
  • poetry
  • Reading
  • school life
  • shelf life adult
  • shelf life kids
  • strategic plan
  • Stratford
  • Summer 2011
  • Tagging
  • tdsummerreading
  • technology
  • teen
  • travel
  • volunteers
  • Waterloo lectures
  • website

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (133)
    • ►  October (9)
    • ►  September (11)
    • ►  August (16)
    • ►  July (16)
    • ►  June (16)
    • ►  May (14)
    • ►  April (11)
    • ►  March (16)
    • ►  February (13)
    • ►  January (11)
  • ►  2012 (195)
    • ►  December (12)
    • ►  November (14)
    • ►  October (16)
    • ►  September (12)
    • ►  August (16)
    • ►  July (14)
    • ►  June (14)
    • ►  May (17)
    • ►  April (14)
    • ►  March (23)
    • ►  February (18)
    • ►  January (25)
  • ▼  2011 (172)
    • ►  December (20)
    • ►  November (16)
    • ►  October (26)
    • ▼  September (22)
      • SPL Shelf Life [adult]
      • Get Connected!
      • SPL Shelf Life [kids]
      • Handmade Culture & Culture Days
      • Thursdays at Noon
      • Happy Birthday...
      • SPL Shelf Life [adult]
      • SPL Shelf Life [kids]
      • Is Facebook charging?
      • Human Library is back for Culture Days
      • SPL Shelf Life [kids]
      • SPL Shelf Life [adult]
      • Waterloo Lectures Are Back!
      • Poetry Stratford Fall Line Up
      • My Reading History
      • SPL Shelf Life [kids]
      • SPL Shelf Life [adult]
      • Everyone has a story...
      • Argh... Science.
      • Whale of a Tale
      • SPL Shelf Life [kids]
      • SPL Shelf Life [adult]
    • ►  August (20)
    • ►  July (20)
    • ►  June (24)
    • ►  May (20)
    • ►  April (4)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile