Maynard and Jennica
by Rudolph Delson
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 335)
Read in November, 2007
I'm glad I got past the promotional blurbs, which to me undersell this book. "Funny" and "moving" and "human"? Maynard would have something to say about that last one (what else could it be? Feline? Avian? Prawn?), and all three are suspect from a critical perspective (moving = "I felt something!" Do reviewers really have no idea how therapied this makes them sound?), not to mention practically equivalent in our debased critical vocabulary (ever sinc...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
probably people like me
(from my blog, b/c I am lazy)
I don't remember how I heard about Maynard & Jennica, by Rudolph Delson. Doesn't really matter - it ended up on my list so I requested it from the library. It's billed as a love story, with a lot of minor characters. In this it is perhaps like Beginner's Greek. But this is missing a lot of the sweet. You're not rooting against these lovers, but I'm not convinced that you like them very much.
I'm having trouble knowing what to say about the book, and perhaps ...more
I don't remember how I heard about Maynard & Jennica, by Rudolph Delson. Doesn't really matter - it ended up on my list so I requested it from the library. It's billed as a love story, with a lot of minor characters. In this it is perhaps like Beginner's Greek. But this is missing a lot of the sweet. You're not rooting against these lovers, but I'm not convinced that you like them very much.
I'm having trouble knowing what to say about the book, and perhaps ...more
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Read in April, 2008
Sometimes it seems like the whole point of reading a book is a single sentence. Maybe it wasn’t even meant that way by the writer, but it strikes something personal in the reader, some memory, some feeling, some wish. I guess that is what the Secret Life of Reading is all about. Here, it was one tiny passage about the darkness inside a house at the coming of dusk-- “It is a melancholy time: all you need do is switch on one lamp and the inside and the outside will separate, held apart by the ...more
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Read in November, 2007
I picked up this book based on a rave review in the NY Times book review a couple Sundays ago -- it's a quirky and sweet story told from about 40 different characters' points of view, Maynard and Jennica being the threads holding the cast together. Each interview begins with a short description of the person (or thing) giving an account of the part of the story in question (e.g., "James Cleveland, age twelve, describes what Maynard looked like under the air-conditioning vent on the uptown N...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Fidgety Northern Californians who live in Brooklyn and miss California.
Got this galley in March and read the first chapter. Wasn't so sure about it; the voice of Jennica...mildly annoying. Finally though, I gave it another shot seven months later.
Once I got used to everybody's tangental rantings and ramblings, I became just a little bit fond of this book. It became my neurotic, gregarious, emotionally retarded old friend--a little flawed but quite clever and amusing in it's wistfulness.
Anyhow, Northern/Central Cali's will appreciate terms such as "...more
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Read in October, 2007
This is the second book written by a briliant writer right around my age in a row that I adored. I need to start reading only novels penned by writers who are over forty. These young guys are making me jealous.
Maynard & Jennica is the story of the relationship that transpires between avante-garde filmmaker Maynard Gogarty and extremely Jewish Jennica Green. He sees her on the subway, gains a crush on her. She sees his film, gains a crush on him. A relationship begins. Eventually, ...more
Maynard & Jennica is the story of the relationship that transpires between avante-garde filmmaker Maynard Gogarty and extremely Jewish Jennica Green. He sees her on the subway, gains a crush on her. She sees his film, gains a crush on him. A relationship begins. Eventually, ...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone with a heart and a wry sense of humor
Rudolph Delson’s story of two New Yorkers falling in love is narrated by a large cast, including, briefly, cicadas and an emergency brake on the No. 6 uptown train. Overlapping, competing, explaining, the voices have distinctive verbal tics. Maynard’s mother, Joan Tate, often falls back on “Well. I am his mother.” Ana Kaganova, a Russian-German-Israeli scam artist, uses “weiß’ du?” as a catch-all absolution for her tricks. Hilarious hip-hop artist Puppy Jones calls himself “our ...more
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Read in November, 2007
Maynard and Jennica was a surprisingly realistic love story told in the form of an oral history. Odd. But great. Every scene is a little story told by a wide range of characters from crickets outside of a house to Jennica or Maynard themselves. The beauty of this book is the stylized manor that each character speaks in. You feel like you're hearing an intelligent, but often inelegant recount of a story by someone you actually know. The humor is familiar, like your friend is cracking a joke. The ...more
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Read in March, 2008
A romantic comedy about neurotic Manhattanites that is also a first novel can very easily go horribly wrong. This did not. It definitely took some getting into, however. The title characters never become entirely likeable people, but I definitely have friends who sometimes act like them. Not to mention that I have friends who would definitely say that I sometimes act like them. The supporting cast is very charismatic, fortunately. And I love books with multiple narrators.
Definitely picked i...more
Definitely picked i...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
Every single solitary reader of 21st century fiction.
This goes down as my pleasant surprise of 2008 thus far. So, it's not the first (nor will it be the last) novel in which the events of 9/11 play a center role. However, I was particularly fond of the author's ability to filter the experience through each narrator's agenda. Maynard is a favorite, though I hate myself for picturing a young Johnny Depp in the movie role (think Benny & Joon). I tolerated his post-9/11 ranting and knew (though I normally dislike this type of revelation) that it w...more
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This novel is about two abundantly clever and odd people finding their clever and odd way toward each other. They're very young, and Maynard, in particular, is so quirky that you instantly recognize him as a type; whether this is good or bad depends on whether you like that type. I did, so I liked seeing himself wander in and out of trouble.
I didn't like a subplot about a rap artist whose artistic life bisects with Maynard's. I felt one way about this guy, and in the end I felt a bit betrayed...more
I didn't like a subplot about a rap artist whose artistic life bisects with Maynard's. I felt one way about this guy, and in the end I felt a bit betrayed...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Jennifer by:
Entertainment Weeklyrecommends it for: Quirkyalones
This is a quirky love story set in New York around the time of September 11th and narrated by a cast of thousands (well, more like 30). This cast includes the two title character but friends, family members, and a number of random New Yorkers also weigh in as the relationship between Maynard and Jennica develops. If you hate things that border on twee, this is not the book for you but I enjoyed the eccentricities of all involved in the story including the structure of the story itself.
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
Friends and family of the author. Maybe undiscriminating friends and family.
Only my current interest in fiction about 9/11 kept me reading 'til the final page. And the only thing I liked about the book was the acknowledgments, which were funny and clever.
The book, however, was "funny" and "clever," a mock-oral history where every character speaks in the same voice, except for a couple of tin-eared attempts to include "black" voices. On the plus side, Delson mocks the gravitas of "tragedy" assumed by so many post-9/11, but...more
The book, however, was "funny" and "clever," a mock-oral history where every character speaks in the same voice, except for a couple of tin-eared attempts to include "black" voices. On the plus side, Delson mocks the gravitas of "tragedy" assumed by so many post-9/11, but...more
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This.....was a very strange book. I'm still not sure I liked it at all. I felt obligated to finish it, after getting so far into it. It's basically a series of first person monologues stringing together the story of one couple, the aforementioned title couple Maynard and Jennica. But it switches back and forth between news clippings and narrators like inanimate objects, dead people, main characters and minor characters.
Altogether strange but some people like that sort of thing. I personally...more
Altogether strange but some people like that sort of thing. I personally...more
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Read in April, 2008
Just got this book from the New Shelf section of the Berkeley Public Library. It got good reviews in maybe New York Magazine, so I was excited to spot it, and it is very New Yorky and it doesn't suck - it is a little about Royal Tennebaums type people, or, in the Bay Area, what they might call "People of Privelige" or "Coming from a place of Privalege" but not all of the characters are, and besides what kind of way is that to review a book. I have been in the Bay Area too lon...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
People who want to escape for a while
This book was interesting because it was told from so many different points of view. It's fun because we're so used to only understanding our own point of view that it's hard to put ourselves in others shoes. Overall, though, there was nothing too deep about the book. The character's seemed to just recount each scene almost as if they are a bit detached from it. Also, the characters seem a little unrealistic. They appear more self-centered than any person I know and have more quirky flaws t...more
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Read in January, 2008
An unplanned read. I picked this up based purely on the cover and the author's photo on the backflap -- a random and uncharacteristically shallow choice for me -- but I wasn't disappointed.
The first deliberately "post-9/11 literature" that I've read; I found it pleasantly quirky enough [although sometimes too self-consciously so:] to handle the topic without becoming cheesy.
Okay, the truth? I am an odd hybrid of the protagonists, and it was highly gratifying to read my thought...more
The first deliberately "post-9/11 literature" that I've read; I found it pleasantly quirky enough [although sometimes too self-consciously so:] to handle the topic without becoming cheesy.
Okay, the truth? I am an odd hybrid of the protagonists, and it was highly gratifying to read my thought...more
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Read in May, 2008
saw in variety or some such daily that my boss gets that this was being made into a movie, so figured i would read it before the hubbub started.
there's a certain type of new yorker that i like least. it's hard to articulate just what this type is, until you are presented with it. sadly, the two main characters are typical of said type. also, i really hate it when the author is too in love with the female protagonist. jennica is OKAY. she is like a million other girls i know. she is not wort...more
there's a certain type of new yorker that i like least. it's hard to articulate just what this type is, until you are presented with it. sadly, the two main characters are typical of said type. also, i really hate it when the author is too in love with the female protagonist. jennica is OKAY. she is like a million other girls i know. she is not wort...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Devika, for sure
Funny, inventive, excellent plot structure without being purely plot-driven. Good dialogue. Excellent organizational structure. Themes: Love, character sketches, popular culture pre and post 9/11.
There were moments when the governing, organizational structure became tiresome, but only because I wanted the story to get back to advancing the plot of the central characters. I am irked when I think an author priveleges subplot characters a little too much, esp. toward the end of a narrative.
...more
There were moments when the governing, organizational structure became tiresome, but only because I wanted the story to get back to advancing the plot of the central characters. I am irked when I think an author priveleges subplot characters a little too much, esp. toward the end of a narrative.
...more
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