Curtis Seidle

More of a series of thoughts I want to go back over after a second read than an actual review.

- The goodreads 5 star system is terrible, I feel bad giving 3 stars, but don't feel it deserves 4. I would give it a 7 out of 10 or even 75 out of 100, but don't feel it deserves a 8 (or 80) that 4 stars would reflect.

- This book is long. It is too long. I realize the length is part of the experience, but there is a lot of rambling and filler that really adds nothing other than total page count.

- I was honestly disappointed. There is a ton of hype surrounding this book, and I felt while it was good, it just wasn't that outstandingly good. I came into it fully buying into the hype and expecting greatness, and it just did not deliver. It's different and special and brilliant in its own way, but I would hesitate to call it a “classic” or rank it among the best books ever written.

- The next longest book that I have read was Moby Dick, and it is unfair to Infinite Jest to compare the two, but comparing the experience of reading the books, when I was finished with Moby Dick I felt rewarded, it was a long tough read, but well worth it, there was a feeling of accomplishment, of reading something truly great that I was happy to have experienced in my life (the same could be said for Blood Meridian which I also loved). I didn't get that from Infinite Jest. I realize that is a high bar to set, but finishing IJ I felt tired, worn down and just relieved it was over.

- I am not sure if the book lost steam at the end, it was just me, or a combination of the two. To me the E.T.A. and the Incandenza family were the most interesting parts of book, followed by Steeply and Marathe, with Kate Gompert playing a smaller role, but probably ending up as my favorite character in the book. As I neared the end the book seems to focus more towards Gately, who I felt was the least interesting main character.

- The Wraith really through me off, not in an “I don't get it” kind of way, more in a “I read 800+ plus pages and you are going to just throw a ghost at me now?” kind of way. I get the Hamlet references and all that, but it felt weird and out of place, like DFW didn't know what to do at that point, so “here is a ghost that does stuff”.

- One thing really bugs me. I get a feel that DFW is in part JOI. The book seems like a kind of anti-entertainment. It's long and tough and crushing and in parts boring and you need to really put effort in to finish it, and there is little reward, no end, no real resolution. When you get the end, it basically says “you missed a whole bunch of stuff and you need to read it again”. The whole thing reminded me in a way of the “Found Drama” and the JOI non-film “The Joke”. In all the interviews with Wallace he seems worried about creating something like that, a book that is long for the sake of being long and punishing the audience/reader, and to me that is in part at least what Infinite Jest is and does.

- When it is good it is brilliant, there is not denying that. The Kate Gompert sections are amazing and painful and beautiful. The Marathe/Steeply conversations in the desert are great. There is just too much other stuff that seems like it takes 10 pages to set up a joke that is not worth 10 pages.

- I will read it again, not soon though. There were points in the book when I wanted to read something else, just take a break and come back, but that would have been a bad idea, I would not have come back, and I felt I needed to finish this.

I hope that all didn't seem overly negative, it is a good book, and like I said above “It's different and special and brilliant in its own way”, and while I did enjoy the book on a whole, in my opinion, it is somewhat flawed, and for a very specific audience that I am probably just on the fringe of belonging to.

Full disclosure, I did not even finish this book, I feel that I gave it a pretty fair chance, but about 150 pages in, I just stopped caring, and there was no way I was plodding through to the finish.

The appearance of the horns and their influence over people is in interesting idea, but that is a very small part of the first half of the book. Beyond that, there was never really a moment that I cared about the characters. The killer is revealed very early and his motive is fairly obvious, so there was very little reason to read to the end.

I did have enough interest in the story to get a summary off the internet, and I am actually glad I stopped when I did, as it doesn't sound like it gets any better. The “bad guy” is given every “bad guy” cliche from hating his mother to bed wetting to brain damage to animal cruelty to an urge towards pedophilia which is more than a little overkill and really makes a one dimensional character. I am also not sure what the obsession with the term “sex murder” is, it is used constantly and is just a weird phrase that doesn't sound natural. Speaking of not sounding natural, this is an actual sequence from the book.

“EEEEEEEEEE,” Ig Screamed
“He's awful, Ig,” Terry said. “You don't know him. You think you do, but you don't have any idea.” “EEEEEEEEEEEE,” Ig went on.

All “EEEEEEEEE” makes me think of is a 1950's woman standing on the coffee table escaping from a mouse, not the big reveal in a “sex murder” novel.

That being said it's not the worst thing ever committed to paper, it's a easy, fast read not really requiring much thought, if books were food, this would be something like generic brand potato chips, edible enough, but not really providing any nourishment and just leaving you wishing you had something better in it's place.

I don't feel like I read this as much as survived it, as one would survive plodding through safely shallow quicksand, not deep enough to be dangerous, just a seemingly never-ending, snail paced trudge though annoyance. For some reason “Plodding” is word that comes to mind. It's not all bad, parts are quite good actually, but they a buried in the shear mass of the book.

Also, I am sure it is mostly due to the period it was written, but the characters can be ridiculously irritating at times, Perdita became extremely tiresome for me.

Adding to my disappointment, was that I was hoping for more of a post-apocalyptic story than this was, there was very little actual struggle for survival, just some people not dying while other people did.

Never have I seen a blurb on the back so accurately describe a book.

“Like an American Southern Gothic tale set against the violent beauty of Northern England, Beastings is a sparse and poetic novel about morality, motherhood and corruption.”

That about sums it up, very similar to Cormac McCarthy in style, mood, and restrained use of punctuation (think parts of The Road, Outer Dark & Child of God), but different enough to still feel original and unique and able to stand on it's own merits. It is hard to say a book is beautifully written when the mood is mostly dark, but this book would qualify as that.

What a giant disappointment of a book. After hearing the Astonishing Legends pod-cast on the Mothman, this book was the next obvious place to look to more info. What I found was a giant waste of time. The book starts and ends with Point Pleasant and the Mothman sightings, but a huge part of it is Keel's direction-less collection of anecdotes in a totally disjointed, stream of consciousness style format. Stories told and re-referenced later, with no real reason, jumping around different time periods and different topics.

While the pod-cast gave it a sense of something mysterious and scary going on, Keel makes so many weird little joking remarks that really make it hard to take the whole thing seriously. He comes across as someone who is in a bigger joke being played, but he isn't. The subject matter obviously leads to skepticism, but when it is presented in this way, it really makes it hard to take even a little seriously.

One thing that really stuck out, was that John Keel feels like John Keel is very important. I realize that all this is from his point of view, placing him in center of every story, but he comes across as smug and self-important like everyone else's experiences in the book are in a way directed at him. Again he seems like he is above on all the people who don't have a riddle figured out, he in reality, he doesn't know the answer either. This is really an interesting story with a lot going, and it is obvious that Keel did a ton of research and legwork, it is just presented here so poorly and in such a disorganized way that makes this book beyond pointless.