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Title: Beemer: A Novel by Glenn Gaslin ISBN: 1-56947-329-3 Publisher: Soho Press, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A book to satisfy Americans of all stripes
Comment: When I read that Glenn Gaslin was drawing comparisons to Arthur Miller (The Washington Post), Jack Kerouac (Kirkus Reviews), Lewis Carroll and Douglas Coupland (The Rocky Mountain News) I thought, "That's a little much isn't it?" But Gaslin's debut novel, "Beemer," proves that his name soon will be the one summoned when reviewers are trying to explain a book as simultaneously fantastic and clear-headed as this. We hear much talk about what it means to be American these days. Gaslin's answer is provocative, unpredictable and, despite its politically charged atmosphere, apolitical, so much so that this book should be a hit with the Green Party, the Atlas Society and everyone in between. If you like Julio Cortazar, you'll love Beemer. If you like Mark Helprin, you'll love Beemer. If you prefer watching TV and playing Doom to reading, there's still a pretty good chance you'll love Beemer. How can you not like a novel that begins with a great sex scene? It ends with the creation of a desert Eden. Along the way, Beemer explores a child's disillusionment with his parents, the rapidly widening gap between generations and, in a bit of pre-9-11 prescience, the marketing power of domestic terrorism. The Washington Post wrote: "It would be easy to make "Beemer" a manifesto, in which a flat glyph of a character dutifully incants none-too-subtle broadsides from his creator's fevered brain. Such indeed is the run of consumer-hip pomo lit, from Bret Easton Ellis to Chuck Palahniuk. But Glenn Gaslin, who toils by day as an editor for Entertainment Weekly, is too good a writer to give in to such reflexes, and so "Beemer" is a blisteringly funny satire on the acquisitive self, a welcome detour out of the mounting rubble of Terminators, Hulks and Living Histories into the dark heart of the American dream." I concur.
Rating: 5
Summary: 261 pages of Americana
Comment: This is a fun read. Newbie author Glenn Gaslin takes loving aim at the wonders of America, while poking fun at absurd cultural institutions like monster SUVs, militant gated communities, ... boy bands, giant convenience-store beverages and the emerging, soon-to-be-dominating power of the next generation.
The story centers around Beemer Minutia, a young man alternately living and hunting for the American Dream. All he wants to do is drive and discover, but he's willing to settle down for love. As long as it's in the biggest, most extreme housing development ever.
For the record, my favorite lines are:
"Ask him what kind of name's that: Beemer."
"Hey, what kind of name's that?"
"German."
The story if fun and the cover is pretty. Buy it. You'll like it. If not, the cover is still pretty.
Rating: 1
Summary: a tiresome, snarky pastiche
Comment: I don't understand how this qualifies as a book. It seems more like the web-based ramblings of an overindulged young adult who doesn't realize one can no longer be precocious in adulthood, only insufferable.
This "book" is a tedious read that strings together every '70s and '80s cheesy pop culture reference under the sun and multiple fulminations of snarkiness with the thinnest thread of what might generously be called a plot. This might be Douglas Coupland without the humanity and talent, or Hunter S. Thompson without the genuine gonzo insanity. Or, what (again) a precocious child might produce if he read both and understood neither.
If there's one good thing, this piffle lacks the intellectual heft to spawn the avalanche of post-modernist deconstruction that afflicted David Foster Wallace, for example.
A note to all pretentious young writers: living in a down-at-the-heels, off campus apartment during your college years doesn't confer bohemianism.
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Title: The Descent of Alette (Penguin Poets) by Alice Notley ISBN: 0140587640 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Bram Stoker, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson ISBN: 0451523636 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1982 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel by George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon, Erich Fromm ISBN: 0452284236 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Dealing With People You Can't Stand by Rick Brinkman, Rick Kirschner ISBN: 0070078386 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Managing Technology in the Hospitality Industry by L., Ph.D. Kasavana, John J. Cahill ISBN: 0866122516 Publisher: Amer Hotel & Motel Assn Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $56.95 |
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