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THE WRECKAGE OF AGATHON

Name: THE WRECKAGE OF AGATHON
Author: John Gardner
ISBN: 052548180X

by John Gardner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 1970

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Mad, raving old men with elegant pasts can make lunacy worth listening to—like a Shakespearean king or Mr. Gardner's Agathon, a self-styled seer holding forth at the time of the ascendance of Sparta. Again as in his Resurrection (1966) Mr. Gardner is concerned with rummaging among the meatier matters of human existence—the nature of reality, the relation of the individual to the scheme of things, the meaning of it all. His philosopher is rimey old Agathon orating to his likable, despairing, unstrung young disciple, Demodokos, who more or less against his will had followed his master into prison. In a kind of suspension amid the rats and refuse (one never learns the exact nature of his crime) the old man, with cheerful obscenities, flashes of brilliant wit and dreams, remembers and instructs his reluctant pupil. Before his assumed "idiocy" Agathon had stumbled through a life of some deceit, the love of two women, cruelty and betrayal. In repressive Sparta he had listened to the capricious wisdom of Solon and had been an indifferent adviser to the Spartan ruler Lykourgos. But the deaths of friends, wars and the warrior mentality had awakened him to the "monstrous foolishness of human beings," "the creative destruction" which is the law of the universe; and his own "Destiny"—in rags, filth and ancient antics—is simply to say "no." After a "rescue" and Agathon's death Demodokos begins to understand that, as he had said earlier, "People make too much of hate" Although distended with cerebration, the narrative offers some fine flights of inventive garrulity. Impressive thoughts on important concerns, but not always succeeding on fictional terms.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1970

ISBN: 052548180X

Page Count: 243

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ON WRITERS AND WRITING
by John Gardner

- BOOK REVIEW
STILLNESS AND SHADOWS
by John Gardner

- BOOK REVIEW
GILGAMESH
translated by John R. Maier & edited by John Gardner

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.