January 14, 2007

Willard and His Bowling Trophies

Ugh.

Generally, I look for a book to have one of two things to make it "good". They are

- Character Development (or)
- A Plot

Willard and His Bowling Trophies really didn't have much of either. Fortunately it was a short book, and I read it in an afternoon. It's more of a longish short story than anything else. And, even though it's on the list, and I'm supposed to write a review about it, I'm going to have to say that I really don't have much to say about this book. That's how bad it was. The story went nowhere. The characters went nowhere. There was no "aha" moment that drew it all together. It sort of just was... sort of like this post.

Wretched. Absolutely wretched. The word wretched doesn't even describe it.

Moral of the Story: Good things don't always come in small packages.

Just as a note - I am a few posts behind. I have been liking the books I've been reading recently, so look for some good reviews in the next couple of weeks. :-)

3 comments:

  1. hmmmm...does everything always have to go somewhere to be good?

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  2. Willard and His Bowling Trophies is one of the books by Richard Brautigan that confirms his remarkable and unique literary contribution.

    Plot and character are not the point; and he has always seemed extraordinarily artful in his ability to suggest that. Like the great playwrights Pinter and Chekov, Brautigan reinvents the act of writing a novel as they did writing plays. His "anthropological stance," as Roland Barthes has claimed in Writing Degree Zero, is courageous and compelling.

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