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Cẩm nang đốt nhà các văn hào New England
Ngày mà Sam-Pulsifer-đầu-lừa-đụng-đâu-hỏng-đó phải vào tù vì lỡ tay đốt trụi nhà của nữ sĩ trứ danh Emily Dickinson và vô tình làm chết hai mạng người, hàng trăm lá thư từ khắp nước Mỹ gửi đến yêu cầu cậu “hóa vàng” cả nhà của Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne... Phát điên lên khi ai cũng cho cậu là hỏa tặc, Sam quyết tâm làm lại cuộc đời sau mười năm nhập khám. Bỗng một ngày, nhà các vị văn sĩ kia đồng loạt bốc cháy, và Sam buộc phải lần giở lại chồng thư nọ, để giải mã chúng, mong tìm ra thủ phạm đích thực.
Với lối viết khiến cười ra nước mắt và nhưng cực kỳ sâu sắc, Cẩm nang đốt nhà các văn hào New England là một hành trình giải mã cuộc đời thông qua văn chương, cùng mối quan hệ uẩn khúc đầy những chua cay mặn ngọt giữa người đọc với người viết.
Với lối viết khiến cười ra nước mắt và nhưng cực kỳ sâu sắc, Cẩm nang đốt nhà các văn hào New England là một hành trình giải mã cuộc đời thông qua văn chương, cùng mối quan hệ uẩn khúc đầy những chua cay mặn ngọt giữa người đọc với người viết.
421 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,426 reviews
December 3, 2007
I really wanted to love this book. I couldn't tell you why, but I wanted this one to be a triumph.
But, considering it took countless small bursts of very reluctant reading over the course of the entire fall to get through it, I have to classify this one as a total bust. Even more disappointing still is that I don't even have a great reason other than to say that it was just bad!
The first and foremost problem here is that the narrator is a total disaster. Sam is a convicted arsonist who, through some stroke of luck, has managed to create a decent life for himself prior to the start of the book. Before the first five pages are up, you can tell that Sam is whining, snively, spineless, and very much a bore. But, something happens, and as the book progresses and he lets his world spin out of control, it comes to the point where you realize that if you didn't care so little about his life (and the book), you'd want to punch him.
The plot is also implausible - full of stock characters whose predictable actions drive the story to an ending you definitely could expect. Everything just seemed too forced to be creative or interesting, yet not forced enough to the point where the campiness could've been entertaining in and of itself. I kept hoping that Clarke had some sort of gimmick lying in wait, ready to satisfy readers who put up with the novel - but no, nothing. Wouldn't it have spiced things up if at the very end, you had found out that this was all a dream? Or maybe a paranoid rant from the looney bin?
I am having a great deal of trouble understanding why this has managed to get so much intelligista acclaim, while being panned consistently by regular readers. Did the critics really get through the whole mess? I'll give this doozy one star, for being able to pull the wool over their eyes (and, okay, fine, because the book jacket is clever).
But, considering it took countless small bursts of very reluctant reading over the course of the entire fall to get through it, I have to classify this one as a total bust. Even more disappointing still is that I don't even have a great reason other than to say that it was just bad!
The first and foremost problem here is that the narrator is a total disaster. Sam is a convicted arsonist who, through some stroke of luck, has managed to create a decent life for himself prior to the start of the book. Before the first five pages are up, you can tell that Sam is whining, snively, spineless, and very much a bore. But, something happens, and as the book progresses and he lets his world spin out of control, it comes to the point where you realize that if you didn't care so little about his life (and the book), you'd want to punch him.
The plot is also implausible - full of stock characters whose predictable actions drive the story to an ending you definitely could expect. Everything just seemed too forced to be creative or interesting, yet not forced enough to the point where the campiness could've been entertaining in and of itself. I kept hoping that Clarke had some sort of gimmick lying in wait, ready to satisfy readers who put up with the novel - but no, nothing. Wouldn't it have spiced things up if at the very end, you had found out that this was all a dream? Or maybe a paranoid rant from the looney bin?
I am having a great deal of trouble understanding why this has managed to get so much intelligista acclaim, while being panned consistently by regular readers. Did the critics really get through the whole mess? I'll give this doozy one star, for being able to pull the wool over their eyes (and, okay, fine, because the book jacket is clever).
December 16, 2010
You know, I really considered giving up on this about sixty pages in, and I probably should have; it never got any better. It was just so un-compelling. And the main character was really unlikeable, which drives me nuts. It reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces, which I don't remember much but definitely remember hating; this had the same kind of bumbling, not-very-smart protagonist who just doesn't seem to get why bad things keep happening to him. He was so whiny and stupid and boring. Why should I go on a three-hundred-page journey with someone I can't stand?
The other thing that drove me absolutely crazy about this book was that the narrative kept doubling over on itself, like in the middle of describing some kind of action or reaction, it would start to discuss broader ideas and concepts, like "For those of us who've lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is." What? That's both convoluted and incredibly insipid. There were all these "realizations" or like comments on the human condition or something, which were uninspired and uninteresting and really just served to distract me from the uninspired and uninteresting plot. It reminded me, strangely, of one of my most favorite books ever, Daniel Handler's Adverbs , where he does a similar kind of thing, but with achingly beautiful metaphors, and with ideas that are thrilling and original and wonderful and sad. Brock Clarke is no Daniel Handler, is what I'm trying to say.
And speaking of the writing? Ugh. Here is a convolutedly stupid metaphor, which happens right after our, uh, "hero" has relieved himself after needing to pee for a long time, and someone has just told him that he doesn't have any money. Says our "hero": "I empathized: his lack of money weighed heavily on him and he needed relief from it, his poverty being to his vessel what my pee had just been to mine." Ew. Idiotic.
Here's one more quote, which combines bad writing with bad allusions with bad ideas: "I know nothing about her, not even her name, although I think about her all the time, the way you do about people and things which change your life forever –- although I doubt she thinks about me, which is the way life works, which is why I'm sure Noah couldn't ever stop thinking about his Flood, but once the water receded, I'm sure it didn't once think about him." What? Monumentally stupid. Just like this whole monumentally stupid book.
The other thing that drove me absolutely crazy about this book was that the narrative kept doubling over on itself, like in the middle of describing some kind of action or reaction, it would start to discuss broader ideas and concepts, like "For those of us who've lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is." What? That's both convoluted and incredibly insipid. There were all these "realizations" or like comments on the human condition or something, which were uninspired and uninteresting and really just served to distract me from the uninspired and uninteresting plot. It reminded me, strangely, of one of my most favorite books ever, Daniel Handler's Adverbs , where he does a similar kind of thing, but with achingly beautiful metaphors, and with ideas that are thrilling and original and wonderful and sad. Brock Clarke is no Daniel Handler, is what I'm trying to say.
And speaking of the writing? Ugh. Here is a convolutedly stupid metaphor, which happens right after our, uh, "hero" has relieved himself after needing to pee for a long time, and someone has just told him that he doesn't have any money. Says our "hero": "I empathized: his lack of money weighed heavily on him and he needed relief from it, his poverty being to his vessel what my pee had just been to mine." Ew. Idiotic.
Here's one more quote, which combines bad writing with bad allusions with bad ideas: "I know nothing about her, not even her name, although I think about her all the time, the way you do about people and things which change your life forever –- although I doubt she thinks about me, which is the way life works, which is why I'm sure Noah couldn't ever stop thinking about his Flood, but once the water receded, I'm sure it didn't once think about him." What? Monumentally stupid. Just like this whole monumentally stupid book.
August 21, 2016
1.5 stars
What an incendiary turd this was...
This seemed more the output from a sadistic creative writing class assignment, requiring Its MFA hopefuls to build a novel around a computerized random idea-generated premise, than anything Brock Clarke could've dreamed up. I absolutely loved his novel Exley, but this one, "AAGTWHINE", was much too convoluted, even for my predilection for quirky fiction.
What an incendiary turd this was...
This seemed more the output from a sadistic creative writing class assignment, requiring Its MFA hopefuls to build a novel around a computerized random idea-generated premise, than anything Brock Clarke could've dreamed up. I absolutely loved his novel Exley, but this one, "AAGTWHINE", was much too convoluted, even for my predilection for quirky fiction.
February 5, 2008
This was a great story with an interesting narrative style, ruined by yet another pinball protagonist. I'm sick of novelists annoying me with characters that bounce around while people do things around them and especially to them. Instead of acting, they choose the path of silence, the path of not doing anything. For instance, every chance the protagonist gets to make a choice--- especially an important one, he does nothing at all. The worst part is that this bullshit indecisiveness is usually put down to some characteristic trait of indecisiveness (or in this case, "bumbling").
Maybe the style these days is to write protagonists that might as well not even be there. I get that making no choice is still a choice. But that's not a new lesson; remember that old Rush song? "If you choose not to decide, you still have made choice!"
Still, there's a heartwarming message we can get from this: Even if you do nothing, and coast through your life, trying hard not to make waves, your (in)actions still have effects on the people around you. You don't have to change the world to change the world. But please, deliver us this idea in an essay, not another freakin' novel.
Maybe the style these days is to write protagonists that might as well not even be there. I get that making no choice is still a choice. But that's not a new lesson; remember that old Rush song? "If you choose not to decide, you still have made choice!"
Still, there's a heartwarming message we can get from this: Even if you do nothing, and coast through your life, trying hard not to make waves, your (in)actions still have effects on the people around you. You don't have to change the world to change the world. But please, deliver us this idea in an essay, not another freakin' novel.
September 2, 2008
This book is a really fun read without being a frivolous read. In fact, the author takes on a myriad of dark themes, but in the voice of his main character, Sam Pulsifer, has a way of making even the most atrocious goings-on seem hilariously funny. Sam is a self-confessed bumbler, habitual liar, and accidental arsonist, and yet in the hands of Brock Clarke, somehow none of that seems unusual. And believe me, that's not the half of the unusual aspects of this book and its characters. Like Irving or Vonnegut or Richard Russo at his most inventive, never once do we question the believability of any of Clarke's characters or the wacky shenanigans that occur in these pages. And that's doubly interesting, because much of the book has to do with authors and their characters, and a continual debate about which ones seem more like "real people." For me, this book was a big, raucous, crazy, poignant, shocking, lovable atrocity that you miss the second it's over.
October 16, 2008
I picked this one up because it had a lot of great reviews. That'll teach me. There have been few books that have given me less likable characters, or storyline. The initial idea is a really good one, and I really hoped for some sort of saving grace in it all, but I never once found myself rooting for the protagonist, he was merely protagonizing to read about. If ever there were a book I'd warn people against reading this would be it (or Jpod by Coupland, but don't get me started on that just yet)
I'd avoid this one iffin I were youse.
I'd avoid this one iffin I were youse.
August 29, 2007
I have to admit, I think I was expecting something completely different out of this book.
It started out well enough: Sam Pulsifer, a native of Amherst, Massachusetts, "accidentally" burned down the Emily Dickinson house when he was eighteen. He has, since then, served his time (seven years in a minimum security prision, hanging out with corrupt bond analysts), gone to college (he has a degree in packaging science... he helped invent the zip loc bag), gotten married (to a tall woman named Anne Marie who is probably too pretty for him) and had two kids (Katherine and Christian).
All is well, until one day where, through a strange chain of events, Sam is accused of cheating on his wife (which he didn't do), gets kicked out of his own house, and moves back in with his parents (of whom he didn't speak to his family... he told them his parents died in a house fire... a lie that will prove to be ironic in multiple ways later on).
And then, for no apparent reason, writers' homes around New England mysteriously begin to catch fire... and it wasn't Sam!
I guess my biggest problem with this novel is the fact that Sam is not terribly likeable. He is a self-professed bumbler, and when he bumbles it's not cute, or funny. It's frustrating.
The story had potential, and, for the most part, I enjoyed the story. But I won't be reading it again any time soon.
It started out well enough: Sam Pulsifer, a native of Amherst, Massachusetts, "accidentally" burned down the Emily Dickinson house when he was eighteen. He has, since then, served his time (seven years in a minimum security prision, hanging out with corrupt bond analysts), gone to college (he has a degree in packaging science... he helped invent the zip loc bag), gotten married (to a tall woman named Anne Marie who is probably too pretty for him) and had two kids (Katherine and Christian).
All is well, until one day where, through a strange chain of events, Sam is accused of cheating on his wife (which he didn't do), gets kicked out of his own house, and moves back in with his parents (of whom he didn't speak to his family... he told them his parents died in a house fire... a lie that will prove to be ironic in multiple ways later on).
And then, for no apparent reason, writers' homes around New England mysteriously begin to catch fire... and it wasn't Sam!
I guess my biggest problem with this novel is the fact that Sam is not terribly likeable. He is a self-professed bumbler, and when he bumbles it's not cute, or funny. It's frustrating.
The story had potential, and, for the most part, I enjoyed the story. But I won't be reading it again any time soon.
May 21, 2011
A great title, an interesting premise and a boatload of good reviews persuaded me to pick up this book for a buck at a library sale. Wow -- what a disappointment! I've never come across a character in fiction who was so annoying, unrealistic and just plain stupid. But not stupid in an entertaining sense, just stupid in an annoying f-ed up stupid sense. I don't mind authors who have characters write in the first person who have clouded judgment or who deliberately mislead you or who don't learn anything during the course of the novel. However, this guy's decisions were just totally beyond any sense of realism even for a dark comic novel. This book wasn't a bit funny, and while I again love the premise and the literary tweaks and allusions, this was just a grueling read. I made it about 160 pages in the way of diligently reading and thinking about it, and then decided to skim my way through the rest, hoping for a payoff that didn't exist or some passage that would make me slow down and enjoy the experience. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Please do yourself a favor and skip this book. Oh, and I want my dollar back!
January 3, 2011
I'd give this 3.75 stars.
On sheer nerve, the author brings us to an alternate reality where the Emily Dickinson home is no more and many other author's homes are doomed to the same fate by a suspect host of quirky individuals that fill these pages.
I'm surprised by all the negative reviews on this book. I'd like to restrain myself from sounding like a reading snob, I can't help but think they just didn't "get it."
It is full of self-depreciating humor that, true, is sometimes so painful and close to reality you may find yourself groaning in sympathy rather than popping off a chortle of two. I often found myself mentally shouting in frustration at the foolish choices that many of the characters made for love, revenge, self-aggrandizement or merely survival. It really gets your emotions involved here and leaves you wondering what you might do if you found yourself in such situations. The Writer-in-Residence at the Mark Twain house seemed to describe protagonist Sam Pulsifer best after he tells his story. You'll have to read that for yourself.
Stick with Sam. The book has some language here & there with one chapter being particularly uncomfortable, but none of it comes from Sam. Those inclusion were annoying, but the over-all book has some humble greatness to it and was a lot of fun. I've never read a book like this before.
On sheer nerve, the author brings us to an alternate reality where the Emily Dickinson home is no more and many other author's homes are doomed to the same fate by a suspect host of quirky individuals that fill these pages.
I'm surprised by all the negative reviews on this book. I'd like to restrain myself from sounding like a reading snob, I can't help but think they just didn't "get it."
It is full of self-depreciating humor that, true, is sometimes so painful and close to reality you may find yourself groaning in sympathy rather than popping off a chortle of two. I often found myself mentally shouting in frustration at the foolish choices that many of the characters made for love, revenge, self-aggrandizement or merely survival. It really gets your emotions involved here and leaves you wondering what you might do if you found yourself in such situations. The Writer-in-Residence at the Mark Twain house seemed to describe protagonist Sam Pulsifer best after he tells his story. You'll have to read that for yourself.
Stick with Sam. The book has some language here & there with one chapter being particularly uncomfortable, but none of it comes from Sam. Those inclusion were annoying, but the over-all book has some humble greatness to it and was a lot of fun. I've never read a book like this before.
May 6, 2016
Sam Pulsifer is an everyman – if you consider it ordinary to accidentally burn down Emily Dickinson’s house and go to prison. Now released, can Sam find a new life as a husband and father while trying to prove his innocence when other writers homes start going up in smoke?
Every so often, a book grabs your attention with the opening sentence and holds you all the way to the last period. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those books. Brock Clarke’s attempt at a quirky, humorous series of misfortunes simply fails to achieve the most important goal of any story – making the reader care about the story.
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England is the rambling diatribe of a hapless – in fact, clueless – self described ‘everyman’ who can’t help being railroaded for crimes he didn’t commit. Clarke foreshadows almost everything that is going to happen to Sam Pulsifer within the first 30 pages, so there is no mystery or tension to propel the reader along. There is an inevitability to everything that happens to Sam and he has no interest in even participating in his own life, blind to what is going on around him only because he has his hand over his own eyes. The entire plot is such a quagmire it prevents the story from being anything other than a bore. In addition to the entire story being uninteresting, the prose is grating. Told from Sam’s perspective, it is an annoying internal dialog where he consistently demonstrates that he is incapable of completing a full sentence without wandering off to some other topic. After about two chapters of this I was not only frustrated with reading it, I didn’t care about what happened to any of the characters, especially Sam. Listening to him tell his story I quickly understood why he didn’t have any friends and nobody wanted to talk to him about anything. Even Sam is uninterested in himself, which leaves anyone reading his story wondering why we should be interested in him either.
I’m not sure if Clarke was attempting to paint a picture of what it is like inside the mind of a hopeless victim of life. But whether it was or not, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England really missed the mark and only succeeded in making me wish I had purchased something else to read.
“Fear and love might leave a man complacent, but jealousy will always get him out of the van.”
Every so often, a book grabs your attention with the opening sentence and holds you all the way to the last period. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those books. Brock Clarke’s attempt at a quirky, humorous series of misfortunes simply fails to achieve the most important goal of any story – making the reader care about the story.
An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England is the rambling diatribe of a hapless – in fact, clueless – self described ‘everyman’ who can’t help being railroaded for crimes he didn’t commit. Clarke foreshadows almost everything that is going to happen to Sam Pulsifer within the first 30 pages, so there is no mystery or tension to propel the reader along. There is an inevitability to everything that happens to Sam and he has no interest in even participating in his own life, blind to what is going on around him only because he has his hand over his own eyes. The entire plot is such a quagmire it prevents the story from being anything other than a bore. In addition to the entire story being uninteresting, the prose is grating. Told from Sam’s perspective, it is an annoying internal dialog where he consistently demonstrates that he is incapable of completing a full sentence without wandering off to some other topic. After about two chapters of this I was not only frustrated with reading it, I didn’t care about what happened to any of the characters, especially Sam. Listening to him tell his story I quickly understood why he didn’t have any friends and nobody wanted to talk to him about anything. Even Sam is uninterested in himself, which leaves anyone reading his story wondering why we should be interested in him either.
I’m not sure if Clarke was attempting to paint a picture of what it is like inside the mind of a hopeless victim of life. But whether it was or not, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England really missed the mark and only succeeded in making me wish I had purchased something else to read.
December 29, 2014
“An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England” is the odyssey of Sam Pulsifer, a perpetual but completely accidental ne’er do well. His life story is rather convoluted, so suffice it to say that he snuck into the Emily Dickinson home one fateful night, eager to check out the veracity of several spooky stories his mother told him growing up, and unwittingly started a mighty conflagration that reduced the historic landmark to rubble and killed the amorous couple he did not know was inside. Fifteen years later, Pulsifer has gotten out of prison and started his life anew in a new town. Everything seems to be going well, until Thomas Coleman, the son of the couple he accidentally killed, shows up on his doorstep eager for revenge. And someone starts torching the homes of famous writers in New England, causing the police to investigate Pulsifer. And the life he has worked so hard to build starts coming apart at the seams.
Brock Clarke is a capable enough writer, and he certainly has a great deal of wit. The problem is that he has too much of it, and he just can’t seem to stop showing it off. He suffers from a serious case of ‘too-muchness’. Each chapter is drowning in absurd plot twists and cock-eyed reasoning that digs Pulsifer deeper and deeper into his own private hell. And it gets very painful by the halfway point of “Arsonist”. Just look at the title of this novel; it’s kind of cute and amusing, if a wee bit pretentious. Now imagine getting beaten over the head with that kind of humor for 303 pages and you have an idea of what it is to slog through this book.
It’s relentless!! The plot gets so ridiculously contrived by page fifty that you’ll have a headache from slapping your head and asking “he did WHAT?” after Pulsifer’s latest egregious misstep. Honestly, bumbling doesn't begin to describe him -- even Inspector Clouseau would think Sam Pulsifer is insane, and that says a lot. Making what by all rights could have been a light-hearted romp irritating and painful.
It’s a shame.
Brock Clarke is a capable enough writer, and he certainly has a great deal of wit. The problem is that he has too much of it, and he just can’t seem to stop showing it off. He suffers from a serious case of ‘too-muchness’. Each chapter is drowning in absurd plot twists and cock-eyed reasoning that digs Pulsifer deeper and deeper into his own private hell. And it gets very painful by the halfway point of “Arsonist”. Just look at the title of this novel; it’s kind of cute and amusing, if a wee bit pretentious. Now imagine getting beaten over the head with that kind of humor for 303 pages and you have an idea of what it is to slog through this book.
It’s relentless!! The plot gets so ridiculously contrived by page fifty that you’ll have a headache from slapping your head and asking “he did WHAT?” after Pulsifer’s latest egregious misstep. Honestly, bumbling doesn't begin to describe him -- even Inspector Clouseau would think Sam Pulsifer is insane, and that says a lot. Making what by all rights could have been a light-hearted romp irritating and painful.
It’s a shame.
November 8, 2008
Meh. I enjoyed this book, however I didn't find it "Absurdly hilarious... searingly funny" (Entertainment Weekly) or "Wildly, unpredictably funny" (New York Times). Instead I'd rate it perhaps "occasionally chuckle-worthy." Okay, it's a satire of memoir, the literary world, and many other things. I appreciated that. But I just didn't really care about Sam or any of the characters, and as a "mystery" it was pretty weak. However there were some good scenes and clever lines, so all in all I'd give it an "Okay."
February 17, 2015
Seldom do I start reading a book and think "I really like this", only to get about halfway through and find I dislike it so much I cannot finish. This was the case here. What happened for me is that the quaint soliloquies of the main character started out fascinating, then just became annoying. Without giving too much away, I'll say that I kept finding myself saying "I can't believe you're going to let that happen! You idiot!" It's not that I can't stomach a character who makes poor choices, but I started to see a pattern of "ok, exactly where is the author going with this?" I skipped ahead to sections toward the end and got some "meat" to the story (after skimming past more soliloquies) and wished the author had found a way to sum it all up a bit quicker.
Maybe I'm just too impatient? If you've read this and loved it (or even liked it), please let me know why. I'd be interested to hear from someone who got through it without equating the main character (and his parents) to schizophrenic zombies in a story going nowhere - slowly.
Maybe I'm just too impatient? If you've read this and loved it (or even liked it), please let me know why. I'd be interested to hear from someone who got through it without equating the main character (and his parents) to schizophrenic zombies in a story going nowhere - slowly.
January 23, 2009
It took me three weeks to read a book that I should have completed in three days. The fact that I forced myself to finish it is an indication of how disinterested I was in the story. The characters were unlikeable, the style rambled, and I did not find anything about it "funny" or "heartbreaking", as described on the jacket.
There is something about this style of writing that makes my eyes glaze over. The main character was so self absorbed that I skipped whole pages of navel-gazing just to get to anything that would move the plot forward. The plot jerked along to an obvious conclusion, with no sense of resolution.
Books like these are like "train wrecks" because the impending sense of doom is so overwhelming, I feel I'm a bystander waiting for the disaster to happen. As a bystander, I never feel engaged with the story or the characters.
I try not to let myself be influenced by book reviews before starting a book, but in this case, I wish I had read the Goodreads reviews first!
There is something about this style of writing that makes my eyes glaze over. The main character was so self absorbed that I skipped whole pages of navel-gazing just to get to anything that would move the plot forward. The plot jerked along to an obvious conclusion, with no sense of resolution.
Books like these are like "train wrecks" because the impending sense of doom is so overwhelming, I feel I'm a bystander waiting for the disaster to happen. As a bystander, I never feel engaged with the story or the characters.
I try not to let myself be influenced by book reviews before starting a book, but in this case, I wish I had read the Goodreads reviews first!
May 31, 2008
This is a Weenie book, similar in the navel-gazing tone to the works of Sedaris, Burroughs and the Grand Schnitzel Eggers.
Unlike those writers, Clarke writes in a traditional style - past tense - and with some sort of plot.
So when the Weenie moments occur, and the narrator goes off on his weird life, it fits into a dramatic scheme. It's not the typical Weenie bleats.
Hey, I like that. The Weenies are now, officially, "The Bleat Generation."
Unlike those writers, Clarke writes in a traditional style - past tense - and with some sort of plot.
So when the Weenie moments occur, and the narrator goes off on his weird life, it fits into a dramatic scheme. It's not the typical Weenie bleats.
Hey, I like that. The Weenies are now, officially, "The Bleat Generation."
December 4, 2013
Some people have no sense of humor when it comes to great literature. Or arson.
A few months ago, book section editors around the country received a letter on quaint stationery from Beatrice Hutchins. She wanted someone to burn down Edith Wharton's house. Naturally, the good people who care for The Mount, Wharton's stately mansion in Lenox, Mass., contacted the police. But it turned out to be a publicity stunt by Algonquin Books, a small publisher in Chapel Hill, N.C., trying to ignite some interest in Brock Clarke's upcoming novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. The publisher issued a sort-of apology, claiming that the letter was "clearly fictitious and written in an over-the-top, playful manner." Clearly, book publishers don't get the psychotic mail that newspapers do.
But all is forgiven now. The publicity campaign may have fizzled, but Clarke's novel sizzles. This straight-faced, postmodern comedy scorches all things literary, from those moldy author museums to the excruciating question-and-answer sessions that follow public readings. There are no survivors here: women's book clubs, literary critics, Harry Potter fans, bookstores, English professors, memoir writers, librarians, Jane Smiley, even the author himself -- they're all singed under Clarke's crisp wit. He's published a few novels before this one and garnered some attention for his short stories, but An Arsonist's Guide suggests that Clarke is a dangerous man, though not in the way the Lenox police feared: Don't shelve his book with other novels. Keep it away from fumes of pretension.
The story opens with this startling confession: "I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts." But, as you may have heard, "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," and so Sam spills out his sad tale, determined to explain himself and save the people he loves. In fact, his strange, tortured sense of love and a penchant for tragedy usually keep this absurd tale from spinning into mere silliness.
When Sam was 18 years old, he snuck into the Shrine of Amherst after hours for a smoke and accidentally incinerated it along with two docents who were upstairs making whoopee on the poet's virginal bed. As you can imagine, Sam's parents took this hard. His father was an editor at a small university press, and his mother was an English teacher. "Beautiful words really mattered to them," Sam writes. "You could always count on a good poem to make them cry or sigh meaningfully." And the town reacted badly, too: graffiti, ugly slurs, "some picketing by the local arts council." And there were the letters, although, as Sam admits, "There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail -- the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions." What really unnerves him are the "other letters," scores of them from across the country: "They were all from people who lived near the homes of writers and who wanted me to burn those houses down."
The story opens when Sam has emerged from 10 years in prison, determined to leave behind his life as a "bumbler" and an arsonist and a murderer and a desecrator of literary history. He marries a nice woman who doesn't know anything about his past and settles down in a new, shiny suburb. But this pleasant life is soon swept away when he's confronted by the grown and angry son of the docents who died in the Emily Dickinson fire. He blows Sam's cover and sends him scurrying back to his parents, which leads to even greater calamity. "I'd forgotten my literature," Sam confesses, "forgotten that you can't go home again." His parents have mutated into wrecks he can barely recognize. Are they still working? Are they still married? Are they still sane? And then there's an even more pressing crisis: Someone has started burning down the homes of famous New England writers. And all the evidence points to him.
Racing against the arsonist, poor Sam throws himself into these mysteries, wondering all along, "If a good story leads you to do bad things, can it be a good story after all?" He confronts some of the 137 screwed-up letter writers who begged him to burn down those famous writers' houses a decade ago. Like everyone else in this novel, they seem to exist in a surreal world just two steps away from ours. The whole thing is written in an innocent, deadpan voice, packed full of Sam's bittersweet observations and fueled by Clarke's satire.
Yes, there are slow moments, too many rhetorical questions about what's happening, and far too many Nuggets of Wisdom. ("Sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them.") Sam's muted despair is heartbreaking, but too often this pose of wise naif sounds forced and self-conscious: Holden Caulfield with a match. And despite the usual liveliness of Clarke's humor, some of his satire is stale: We've already heard that suburbanites are obsessed with conformity and lawn care; we've already noticed that the mugs at the Barnes & Noble caf? are really big. A recurring gag about convicted financial analysts who write inspirational memoirs is beaten into the ground. And then beaten some more.
But none of these flaws can extinguish the book's brilliance. For the most part, An Arsonist's Guide is a mixture of Mark Twain and Jasper Fforde, which is, admittedly, just the kind of inane PR blather that Clarke skewers in these pages. It should have been published with a full set of footnotes, except that every one of them might have led to a lawsuit -- or at least a death threat. You'll have your own favorite scene, but mine is the spot-on description of a bitter, alcoholic writer-in-residence at the Robert Frost House reading from a story that is "more or less an unadorned grocery list of the things the old man hated."
The strangest aspect of An Arsonist's Guide, though, is that Clarke's weird attack on literature ends up celebrating it somehow. Even after he's laid waste to so much of our literary culture, he concedes the enduring, frustrating power of stories. The fury that drives this assorted collection of misfits to fantasize about torching writers' homes stems from a desperate sense of their own inadequacy. They're all struggling not to lose their identities, not to be overwhelmed by the characters and the emotions that confront them in books. They don't want to keep reading, but they can't help it. Literature, Clarke suggests in this witty lament, is somehow the pain and salve of our lives. We're drawn to stories like a moth to you know what.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
A few months ago, book section editors around the country received a letter on quaint stationery from Beatrice Hutchins. She wanted someone to burn down Edith Wharton's house. Naturally, the good people who care for The Mount, Wharton's stately mansion in Lenox, Mass., contacted the police. But it turned out to be a publicity stunt by Algonquin Books, a small publisher in Chapel Hill, N.C., trying to ignite some interest in Brock Clarke's upcoming novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. The publisher issued a sort-of apology, claiming that the letter was "clearly fictitious and written in an over-the-top, playful manner." Clearly, book publishers don't get the psychotic mail that newspapers do.
But all is forgiven now. The publicity campaign may have fizzled, but Clarke's novel sizzles. This straight-faced, postmodern comedy scorches all things literary, from those moldy author museums to the excruciating question-and-answer sessions that follow public readings. There are no survivors here: women's book clubs, literary critics, Harry Potter fans, bookstores, English professors, memoir writers, librarians, Jane Smiley, even the author himself -- they're all singed under Clarke's crisp wit. He's published a few novels before this one and garnered some attention for his short stories, but An Arsonist's Guide suggests that Clarke is a dangerous man, though not in the way the Lenox police feared: Don't shelve his book with other novels. Keep it away from fumes of pretension.
The story opens with this startling confession: "I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts." But, as you may have heard, "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," and so Sam spills out his sad tale, determined to explain himself and save the people he loves. In fact, his strange, tortured sense of love and a penchant for tragedy usually keep this absurd tale from spinning into mere silliness.
When Sam was 18 years old, he snuck into the Shrine of Amherst after hours for a smoke and accidentally incinerated it along with two docents who were upstairs making whoopee on the poet's virginal bed. As you can imagine, Sam's parents took this hard. His father was an editor at a small university press, and his mother was an English teacher. "Beautiful words really mattered to them," Sam writes. "You could always count on a good poem to make them cry or sigh meaningfully." And the town reacted badly, too: graffiti, ugly slurs, "some picketing by the local arts council." And there were the letters, although, as Sam admits, "There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail -- the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions." What really unnerves him are the "other letters," scores of them from across the country: "They were all from people who lived near the homes of writers and who wanted me to burn those houses down."
The story opens when Sam has emerged from 10 years in prison, determined to leave behind his life as a "bumbler" and an arsonist and a murderer and a desecrator of literary history. He marries a nice woman who doesn't know anything about his past and settles down in a new, shiny suburb. But this pleasant life is soon swept away when he's confronted by the grown and angry son of the docents who died in the Emily Dickinson fire. He blows Sam's cover and sends him scurrying back to his parents, which leads to even greater calamity. "I'd forgotten my literature," Sam confesses, "forgotten that you can't go home again." His parents have mutated into wrecks he can barely recognize. Are they still working? Are they still married? Are they still sane? And then there's an even more pressing crisis: Someone has started burning down the homes of famous New England writers. And all the evidence points to him.
Racing against the arsonist, poor Sam throws himself into these mysteries, wondering all along, "If a good story leads you to do bad things, can it be a good story after all?" He confronts some of the 137 screwed-up letter writers who begged him to burn down those famous writers' houses a decade ago. Like everyone else in this novel, they seem to exist in a surreal world just two steps away from ours. The whole thing is written in an innocent, deadpan voice, packed full of Sam's bittersweet observations and fueled by Clarke's satire.
Yes, there are slow moments, too many rhetorical questions about what's happening, and far too many Nuggets of Wisdom. ("Sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them.") Sam's muted despair is heartbreaking, but too often this pose of wise naif sounds forced and self-conscious: Holden Caulfield with a match. And despite the usual liveliness of Clarke's humor, some of his satire is stale: We've already heard that suburbanites are obsessed with conformity and lawn care; we've already noticed that the mugs at the Barnes & Noble caf? are really big. A recurring gag about convicted financial analysts who write inspirational memoirs is beaten into the ground. And then beaten some more.
But none of these flaws can extinguish the book's brilliance. For the most part, An Arsonist's Guide is a mixture of Mark Twain and Jasper Fforde, which is, admittedly, just the kind of inane PR blather that Clarke skewers in these pages. It should have been published with a full set of footnotes, except that every one of them might have led to a lawsuit -- or at least a death threat. You'll have your own favorite scene, but mine is the spot-on description of a bitter, alcoholic writer-in-residence at the Robert Frost House reading from a story that is "more or less an unadorned grocery list of the things the old man hated."
The strangest aspect of An Arsonist's Guide, though, is that Clarke's weird attack on literature ends up celebrating it somehow. Even after he's laid waste to so much of our literary culture, he concedes the enduring, frustrating power of stories. The fury that drives this assorted collection of misfits to fantasize about torching writers' homes stems from a desperate sense of their own inadequacy. They're all struggling not to lose their identities, not to be overwhelmed by the characters and the emotions that confront them in books. They don't want to keep reading, but they can't help it. Literature, Clarke suggests in this witty lament, is somehow the pain and salve of our lives. We're drawn to stories like a moth to you know what.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
September 16, 2024
Listened on 2x speed because this kind of ‘humorous’ writing style gets old after a couple chapters. Mostly just made me want to visit a bunch of writers’ homes in New England lol
November 2, 2024
Finished my first book since starting grad school - only took me several months 😭 it was good, think I like happiest people in the world best still!
November 28, 2008
Life lesson learned about myself while reading An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke: I prefer my slapstick humor visually served up by Leslie Nielsen, as opposed to in book form, like this.
Sam Pulcifer accidentally burns down Emily Dickinson's house and inadvertently kills a mid-coital married couple that was hip-locked in a bedroom. He does time in prison with memoir-writing white-collar criminals, and afterward goes off to college, meets and marries his wife. Pops out a few kids and sets up shop in a suburb where shirtless lawn mowing is a social infraction. And then one day, the son of the people who died in the fire begins causing havoc in Sam's life. Everything else follows suit; Sam develops a taste for Knickerbocker beer.
The reading process for this book, and say a similar style of book like "I Love You Beth Cooper," sent me through these stages:
1. "When he saw me, my father made a kind of wounded-animal noise that I took to mean one-third surprise, one-third welcome home, one-third please don't look at me, I'm hideous. ... " Ohmygosh. This is the funniest book I've ever read in my life!
2. More than halfway through the book, Sam is watching his mother in the window of a building where a book group of adults dressed like wizards and witches are filing out into the night. " ... and then commenced to talk about the fog and how it was a very English fog, and then there was a long sincere discussion about about how very magical fog was and how they'd be sure to wake their kids when they got home to show them the fog and then find a passage in the book featuring fog ..." To my way of thinking, this remains pure comic gold, this social satire, this bookie social satire. Good geeky fun.
3. And then Part 4 splats. Instead of a few tiresome and absurd hiccups in the plot and an occasional twinge of annoyance at Sam's run-on, free association voice, everything is derailed. New characters are introduced. Old characters suddenly have knowledge of things that Sam didn't know they knew, and Sam makes out with a random woman.
Not only did I struggle to follow what was happening, but I struggled to care to follow what was happening.
4. Pure exhaustion.
What a buzz kill. If only this book had carried the momentum of the first three parts into the finale. Brock Clarke obviously has a strong grasp of voice -- maybe even too strong -- and he is quite funny. But the madcap and the loco clarinet sounds that would certainly accompany the antics in the movie version made me dizzy.
Sam Pulcifer accidentally burns down Emily Dickinson's house and inadvertently kills a mid-coital married couple that was hip-locked in a bedroom. He does time in prison with memoir-writing white-collar criminals, and afterward goes off to college, meets and marries his wife. Pops out a few kids and sets up shop in a suburb where shirtless lawn mowing is a social infraction. And then one day, the son of the people who died in the fire begins causing havoc in Sam's life. Everything else follows suit; Sam develops a taste for Knickerbocker beer.
The reading process for this book, and say a similar style of book like "I Love You Beth Cooper," sent me through these stages:
1. "When he saw me, my father made a kind of wounded-animal noise that I took to mean one-third surprise, one-third welcome home, one-third please don't look at me, I'm hideous. ... " Ohmygosh. This is the funniest book I've ever read in my life!
2. More than halfway through the book, Sam is watching his mother in the window of a building where a book group of adults dressed like wizards and witches are filing out into the night. " ... and then commenced to talk about the fog and how it was a very English fog, and then there was a long sincere discussion about about how very magical fog was and how they'd be sure to wake their kids when they got home to show them the fog and then find a passage in the book featuring fog ..." To my way of thinking, this remains pure comic gold, this social satire, this bookie social satire. Good geeky fun.
3. And then Part 4 splats. Instead of a few tiresome and absurd hiccups in the plot and an occasional twinge of annoyance at Sam's run-on, free association voice, everything is derailed. New characters are introduced. Old characters suddenly have knowledge of things that Sam didn't know they knew, and Sam makes out with a random woman.
Not only did I struggle to follow what was happening, but I struggled to care to follow what was happening.
4. Pure exhaustion.
What a buzz kill. If only this book had carried the momentum of the first three parts into the finale. Brock Clarke obviously has a strong grasp of voice -- maybe even too strong -- and he is quite funny. But the madcap and the loco clarinet sounds that would certainly accompany the antics in the movie version made me dizzy.
May 17, 2011
Blech...This book...wasn't what I thought/wanted/expected/hoped it would be. What was I expecting? Good question. That's like someone saying, "That's not what I thought you were going to say." And then when asked what he THOUGHT the other person would say, that same person responds, "I don't even remember anymore." Does that make sense? ( Should I delete that part of this review? Oh man. Am I coherent at ALL?)
I wouldn't say this is a horrible book, but I do think that your enjoyment rests solely on your opinion of the narrator. If you thought Holden Caulfield was a rambler, wait until you meet Sam. Whew. He can't stay on topic for more than a few moments, and he has zero self-awareness. I can see how some people would enjoy questioning his reliability as a narrator and piecing together the truth of his world; I did not. I didn't like him much and didn't sympathize with his mistakes. Yes, I felt badly for him, but does that didn't mean that I truly cared about his plight.
Wouldn't recommend it, but I can also safely say that I've read far worse.
I wouldn't say this is a horrible book, but I do think that your enjoyment rests solely on your opinion of the narrator. If you thought Holden Caulfield was a rambler, wait until you meet Sam. Whew. He can't stay on topic for more than a few moments, and he has zero self-awareness. I can see how some people would enjoy questioning his reliability as a narrator and piecing together the truth of his world; I did not. I didn't like him much and didn't sympathize with his mistakes. Yes, I felt badly for him, but does that didn't mean that I truly cared about his plight.
Wouldn't recommend it, but I can also safely say that I've read far worse.
November 25, 2008
The inside back cover compares this book to Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, and The World According to Garp . This does not match my experience- really, as far as I'm concerned, the only way these books are the same is that they all consist of pages filled with printed English words, bound on a side, and suitable for carrying with you.
An Arsonist's Guide isn't funny, isn't biting, isn't heart-breaking, or even all that interesting. It's pretty sad when someone's self-immolation doesn't provoke a sniff or a tear.
Not a terrible book, but barely interesting enough to finish reading.
An Arsonist's Guide isn't funny, isn't biting, isn't heart-breaking, or even all that interesting. It's pretty sad when someone's self-immolation doesn't provoke a sniff or a tear.
Not a terrible book, but barely interesting enough to finish reading.
April 22, 2017
Lúc đọc cuốn này mình mải mê cứ thôi thêm chương nữa, rồi hết cuốn lúc nào không hay. Quan trọng là hôm đó có hẹn mà mải đọc quên mất giờ hẹn luôn, đọc xong thì trễ mất tiêu, may là chưa bị giận, haha.
Bài của mình về cuốn này trên trang Đọc Sách: https://docsach.org/2017/04/18/cam-na...
Bài của mình về cuốn này trên trang Đọc Sách: https://docsach.org/2017/04/18/cam-na...
December 8, 2009
Whimsy, satire, and black comedy. Those are three tough genres to pull off, especially when you try to do them all at once, as Brock Clarke does in his new novel. And Mr. Clarke has dared us not to read his book by giving it one of the most intriguing titles to be seen on shelves this fall: “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.”
This is the odd odyssey of Sam Pulsifer, who went to jail at age 18 for burning down the Emily Dickinson house in Amherst, Mass., unwittingly killing the man and woman copulating in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Sam has done his time and gone straight – or as straight as anyone in this irrepressibly loopy tale. But now, 20 years after the conflagration, his past has found him out. Someone has tried to burn down the homes of Edward Bellamy and Mark Twain, and Sam, afraid he’ll get the blame, needs to find out who.
He has no lack of suspects. Although he was reviled for torching the Dickinson house – “in the Massachusetts Mt. Rushmore of big, gruesome tragedy, there are the Kennedys, and Lizzie Borden and her ax, and the burning witches at Salem, and then there’s me” – Sam also gained fans. In his parents’ home is a box full of letters from people asking him, for a variety of personal reasons, to burn down the writers’ houses in their neighborhoods. But the new arsonist might also be the son of the couple who died in the Dickinson conflagration, out to frame Sam. Or it might even be Sam’s own mother.
So “An Arsonist’s Guide” is partly a detective story, but don’t bother reading it to see whodunit. For after the many Immelmann turns of its plot, the novel winds up in as much of a muddle as when it started. What Mr. Clarke’s novel is really about is books and the people who read and write them. It’s full of literary in-jokes, including references to the James Frey faux-memoir scandal, Jane Smiley’s insistence that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a better book than “Huckleberry Finn,” and a self-referential bit in which Sam, in a bookstore, picks up a copy of “The Ordinary White Boy,” Mr. Clarke’s first novel.
Mr. Clarke finds just the right voice for Sam, who narrates, and he studs the narrative with juicy aphorisms. On the suburban life of minivans and malls, for example, he observes, “This is how it is these days: you can live in a place without having to actually have a life there.” There are even aphorisms about aphorisms: “For those of us who’ve lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is.”
But as that quote may hint, there’s a little too much postmodern knowingness about “An Arsonist’s Guide,” a little too much wit without quite enough heart. The premise is intriguing, but the outlandishness of the way it’s worked out, and the absence of any character other than Sam with enough substance to latch on to, allows Mr. Clarke’s novel to meander too often and too far away from cleverness into tedium.
This is the odd odyssey of Sam Pulsifer, who went to jail at age 18 for burning down the Emily Dickinson house in Amherst, Mass., unwittingly killing the man and woman copulating in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Sam has done his time and gone straight – or as straight as anyone in this irrepressibly loopy tale. But now, 20 years after the conflagration, his past has found him out. Someone has tried to burn down the homes of Edward Bellamy and Mark Twain, and Sam, afraid he’ll get the blame, needs to find out who.
He has no lack of suspects. Although he was reviled for torching the Dickinson house – “in the Massachusetts Mt. Rushmore of big, gruesome tragedy, there are the Kennedys, and Lizzie Borden and her ax, and the burning witches at Salem, and then there’s me” – Sam also gained fans. In his parents’ home is a box full of letters from people asking him, for a variety of personal reasons, to burn down the writers’ houses in their neighborhoods. But the new arsonist might also be the son of the couple who died in the Dickinson conflagration, out to frame Sam. Or it might even be Sam’s own mother.
So “An Arsonist’s Guide” is partly a detective story, but don’t bother reading it to see whodunit. For after the many Immelmann turns of its plot, the novel winds up in as much of a muddle as when it started. What Mr. Clarke’s novel is really about is books and the people who read and write them. It’s full of literary in-jokes, including references to the James Frey faux-memoir scandal, Jane Smiley’s insistence that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a better book than “Huckleberry Finn,” and a self-referential bit in which Sam, in a bookstore, picks up a copy of “The Ordinary White Boy,” Mr. Clarke’s first novel.
Mr. Clarke finds just the right voice for Sam, who narrates, and he studs the narrative with juicy aphorisms. On the suburban life of minivans and malls, for example, he observes, “This is how it is these days: you can live in a place without having to actually have a life there.” There are even aphorisms about aphorisms: “For those of us who’ve lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is.”
But as that quote may hint, there’s a little too much postmodern knowingness about “An Arsonist’s Guide,” a little too much wit without quite enough heart. The premise is intriguing, but the outlandishness of the way it’s worked out, and the absence of any character other than Sam with enough substance to latch on to, allows Mr. Clarke’s novel to meander too often and too far away from cleverness into tedium.
September 11, 2024
The title of this book caught my attention, which was good enough for it to find a home in my collection. It’s actually a nifty premise…what if there were people who were so sick of the constant reminders of the greatness of the famous New England writers (Emily Dickinson, Edward Bellamy, Robert Frost, etc.), that they decide to torch the various historical homes associated with those authors? Not your average plot. Not your average characters.
The book’s anti-hero is Sam Pulsifer, an average guy living in New England. He designs products for the plastic wear industry, but he’s no tech demon. When he was younger, he accidentally burnt down the Emily Dickinson home while the house’s two gatekeepers were inside. He was sent to prison but has been released after serving his time and has gone on to marriage and children, without his wife and children knowing anything about his past crime. He is a bit of a doofus, always stumbling into one incident after another, as he is unable to get out of his own way. He has gone the American Way, living in Camelot, a suburb full of those bright, obnoxious know-it-alls who strive to keep HOA rules in effect while throwing Birkenstocks (instead of rocks) through windows.
As the book goes on, more historical homes go up in flames and The Bumbler is the prime suspect. Everything he thinks he knows about his aging parents and his childhood home gets turned upside down and the reader is taken along for the tipsy-turvy ride. The tone of the book is comedy but there is a sense of pathos around him and everyone else, it seems, in New England. His father keeps a box of fan letters written to Sam, from locals who have made requests to have other writers’ homes torched so they can rectify old wrongs. Sam knows he is innocent, but he doesn’t have the energy to get off the tortuous path that is taking him further away from the life he had with his wife and kids. Does he really want that Camelot-laden life or is he really searching for something else?
At times, this book was hard to follow, as there are many characters who pop up and pop back out along the way. It became clear it is really a look at the way the suburbs have corrupted the New England soul that existed in the nineteenth century. People no longer care about ponds and poetry, just money, fame, and booze. It is hilarious at times, which is when I really enjoyed the read, but then it will spend too much time lamenting Sam’s offbeat rantings. By the time I finished, I wasn’t sure what to really make of it all, but it was unique. Three stars evens it out, I think.
Book Season = Autumn (it’s New England)
The book’s anti-hero is Sam Pulsifer, an average guy living in New England. He designs products for the plastic wear industry, but he’s no tech demon. When he was younger, he accidentally burnt down the Emily Dickinson home while the house’s two gatekeepers were inside. He was sent to prison but has been released after serving his time and has gone on to marriage and children, without his wife and children knowing anything about his past crime. He is a bit of a doofus, always stumbling into one incident after another, as he is unable to get out of his own way. He has gone the American Way, living in Camelot, a suburb full of those bright, obnoxious know-it-alls who strive to keep HOA rules in effect while throwing Birkenstocks (instead of rocks) through windows.
As the book goes on, more historical homes go up in flames and The Bumbler is the prime suspect. Everything he thinks he knows about his aging parents and his childhood home gets turned upside down and the reader is taken along for the tipsy-turvy ride. The tone of the book is comedy but there is a sense of pathos around him and everyone else, it seems, in New England. His father keeps a box of fan letters written to Sam, from locals who have made requests to have other writers’ homes torched so they can rectify old wrongs. Sam knows he is innocent, but he doesn’t have the energy to get off the tortuous path that is taking him further away from the life he had with his wife and kids. Does he really want that Camelot-laden life or is he really searching for something else?
At times, this book was hard to follow, as there are many characters who pop up and pop back out along the way. It became clear it is really a look at the way the suburbs have corrupted the New England soul that existed in the nineteenth century. People no longer care about ponds and poetry, just money, fame, and booze. It is hilarious at times, which is when I really enjoyed the read, but then it will spend too much time lamenting Sam’s offbeat rantings. By the time I finished, I wasn’t sure what to really make of it all, but it was unique. Three stars evens it out, I think.
Book Season = Autumn (it’s New England)
August 24, 2017
Nếu có thời gian để bày đặt thì mình sẽ chụp cuốn sách này bên một ngọn lửa. Cảm giác khi đọc nó có lẽ giống với lúc uống trà – vị ngon sẽ đọng lại miệng khi đã nuốt hết ngụm nước mà ta tưởng là đắng ngắt.
Mình đọc trong ba ngày. Trưa nay, khi đã đi hết nửa chặng đường, mình không ngừng tự hỏi: “Ta đang làm cái quái gì thế nhỉ? Nhạt nhẽo! Thậm nhạt nhẽo! Có lẽ nên bỏ ngang nó? Nhưng mình đã tốn tiền cho nó cơ mà?!”.
Và giờ, khi khép lại những trang cuối, mình thấy may là đã cố đọc hết – bởi nó thực sự không tệ.
Thoạt tiên, mình khó chịu với nó, hay nói chính xác hơn là khó chịu với nhân vật chính – vì mình vốn không chịu nổi những kẻ đầu lừa. Và vì mình là đứa ghét nói dối nên càng khó mà chịu nổi một tên đầu lừa ưa dối trá. Đọc một cuốn sách kể ở ngôi thứ nhất – “Tôi” – mà cái thằng “tôi” vừa ngu vừa dối thì bạn biết nó khó chịu thế nào rồi đấy. (Không thể đếm được bao lần mình muốn quăng cuốn sách xuống và muốn kiếm thằng “Tôi” trong cuốn sách để mà chửi nó là “cái ***!” – bạn sẽ biết *** là gì nếu đọc sách).
Cuốn tiểu thuyết là lời tự sự của Sam - một kẻ lỡ tay phóng hỏa giết người. Vào tù, ra tội. Sam bỏ quê hương ra đi để làm lại cuộc đời. Hắn đã làm lại thật: một cuộc đời mới với cô vợ tuyệt vời và hai nhóc tì được nghe kể rằng ông bà nội của chúng đã chết trong một đám cháy – một cách để quá khứ không bao giờ bị hỏi tới. Cho tới ngày quá khứ tìm đến và gửi hóa đơn của nó cho Sam.
Sam sẽ làm bạn ghét điên người nhưng không hiểu vì sao đến cuối câu chuyện thì trong bạn lại dấy lên lòng thương cảm dành cho hắn. Cuộc đời Sam và những con người quanh hắn gắn kết với nhau bởi những câu chuy��n bịa đặt – như cái cách chúng ta vẫn nói dối chính mình và mọi người để chạy trốn khỏi những gì mang tên sự thật. Tất cả không kết thúc có hậu theo cách người ta thường kỳ vọng về một cái kết có hậu, nhưng kết thúc hợp lý theo cách rất riêng. Đây là câu chuyện sâu sắc về tâm lý con người, nhiều góc nhìn lạ và thú vị nên hẳn nhiên mình sẽ có lúc đọc lại nó.
P/s: Mình đồ rằng bản gốc sẽ thú vị hơn so với bản dịch. (Dịch giả chuyển ngữ tốt, ngôn từ rất đẹp, giữ được vẻ đẹp và nét lãng mạn của cuốn sách nhưng những đoạn hài hước chưa đủ làm mình bật cười).
Mình đọc trong ba ngày. Trưa nay, khi đã đi hết nửa chặng đường, mình không ngừng tự hỏi: “Ta đang làm cái quái gì thế nhỉ? Nhạt nhẽo! Thậm nhạt nhẽo! Có lẽ nên bỏ ngang nó? Nhưng mình đã tốn tiền cho nó cơ mà?!”.
Và giờ, khi khép lại những trang cuối, mình thấy may là đã cố đọc hết – bởi nó thực sự không tệ.
Thoạt tiên, mình khó chịu với nó, hay nói chính xác hơn là khó chịu với nhân vật chính – vì mình vốn không chịu nổi những kẻ đầu lừa. Và vì mình là đứa ghét nói dối nên càng khó mà chịu nổi một tên đầu lừa ưa dối trá. Đọc một cuốn sách kể ở ngôi thứ nhất – “Tôi” – mà cái thằng “tôi” vừa ngu vừa dối thì bạn biết nó khó chịu thế nào rồi đấy. (Không thể đếm được bao lần mình muốn quăng cuốn sách xuống và muốn kiếm thằng “Tôi” trong cuốn sách để mà chửi nó là “cái ***!” – bạn sẽ biết *** là gì nếu đọc sách).
Cuốn tiểu thuyết là lời tự sự của Sam - một kẻ lỡ tay phóng hỏa giết người. Vào tù, ra tội. Sam bỏ quê hương ra đi để làm lại cuộc đời. Hắn đã làm lại thật: một cuộc đời mới với cô vợ tuyệt vời và hai nhóc tì được nghe kể rằng ông bà nội của chúng đã chết trong một đám cháy – một cách để quá khứ không bao giờ bị hỏi tới. Cho tới ngày quá khứ tìm đến và gửi hóa đơn của nó cho Sam.
Sam sẽ làm bạn ghét điên người nhưng không hiểu vì sao đến cuối câu chuyện thì trong bạn lại dấy lên lòng thương cảm dành cho hắn. Cuộc đời Sam và những con người quanh hắn gắn kết với nhau bởi những câu chuy��n bịa đặt – như cái cách chúng ta vẫn nói dối chính mình và mọi người để chạy trốn khỏi những gì mang tên sự thật. Tất cả không kết thúc có hậu theo cách người ta thường kỳ vọng về một cái kết có hậu, nhưng kết thúc hợp lý theo cách rất riêng. Đây là câu chuyện sâu sắc về tâm lý con người, nhiều góc nhìn lạ và thú vị nên hẳn nhiên mình sẽ có lúc đọc lại nó.
P/s: Mình đồ rằng bản gốc sẽ thú vị hơn so với bản dịch. (Dịch giả chuyển ngữ tốt, ngôn từ rất đẹp, giữ được vẻ đẹp và nét lãng mạn của cuốn sách nhưng những đoạn hài hước chưa đủ làm mình bật cười).
April 25, 2010
“I wish I’d paid more attention to Anne Marie back then, but I didn’t. Oh, why didn’t I? Why don’t we listen to the people we love? Is it because we only have so much listening in us, and so many very important things to tell ourselves?” Sam Pulsifer, the narrator and protagonist of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, poses this question to himself early in the novel. This pondering points to two key themes: the human need to narrate and our fascination with ourselves. As a teenager, Sam accidentally set fire to Emily Dickinson’s house, thereby killing two people. Years later, after Sam has served ten years in a minimum security prison, gone to college, married, and established himself in the field of package design, writers’ homes again begin to combust, and Sam sets out to find out who is making it happen. The novel is largely concerned with families, especially the dysfunctional family-of-origin of which Sam is a part. It’s also about literature: why we read it, whether it influences us. The prose is hilarious and the metaphors are often surprising and effective; it’s also thought-provoking in its examination of literature from an outsider perspective. But we are so closely confined to Sam’s head that the other characters don’t have a chance to live upon the page; even the scenes seem to have been told, rather than shown. And Sam is so static for so long, and repeats his failures so faithfully, that the book begins to feel repetitive, as do the many questions he poses to himself throughout. By the time he asks himself: “…would anyone want to read a true story that made you start crying and never stop? Would you want to read such a story? Would you read it because it was true, or because it made you cry? Or would it make you cry because you thought it was true?” I’ve pretty much quit caring about the answers.
April 11, 2009
I'm normally a great believer in the first-sentence test, and I bought a copy of this book based almost exclusively on its doozy of a first sentence ("I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, and who in the process killed two people, for which I spent ten years in prison and, as letters from scholars of American literature tell me , for which I will continue to pay a high price long into the not-so-sweet hereafter"). Alas, the rest of the book doesn't measure of to the cleverness of the first sentence. Or, rather, it tends to revisit with shocking regularity exact replicas of the first sentence's cleverness.
And, too, based on the blurbs on the cover ("funny," "a deadpan satire of all things literary," "absurdly hilarious...searingly funny"), I expected the book to be, well, funny. And it had its funny moments (such as the scholars of American literature in sentence #1), but, on the whole, I'd tend to categorize the novel more as "darkly disturbing," "heart-breaking," and "absurdly depressing...searingly aching." There might be some cleverly written wit and satire along the way, but the destination that the novel inevitably progresses to is that of the high cost of living and loving. All of which is to say that writers of blurbs should read the books they review and not lead those of us in Barnes & Noble to think we're getting something that we're not.
And, too, based on the blurbs on the cover ("funny," "a deadpan satire of all things literary," "absurdly hilarious...searingly funny"), I expected the book to be, well, funny. And it had its funny moments (such as the scholars of American literature in sentence #1), but, on the whole, I'd tend to categorize the novel more as "darkly disturbing," "heart-breaking," and "absurdly depressing...searingly aching." There might be some cleverly written wit and satire along the way, but the destination that the novel inevitably progresses to is that of the high cost of living and loving. All of which is to say that writers of blurbs should read the books they review and not lead those of us in Barnes & Noble to think we're getting something that we're not.
September 1, 2024
DNF at page 70/Part 2. I bought this for the cover and title which is fantastic. That’s about it though- I was annoyed at the shell of a man the main character is and realized I didn’t care about how the book played out. It was funny at times but it was riddled with extraneous information that’s all over the place (maybe footnotes would have been better). Also, I personally prefer books that get to the point and are concise. I thought about reading more but I plainly didn’t want to.
October 24, 2021
If ever there was an argument for book burning, this is it.
April 27, 2024
Honestly, I'm not even sure what to think about this book. It is very interesting, but I felt like it took forever to read. And I'm in a really bad reading slump because of "Lady Clementine" and don't even want to read lately. My next book has to be something really good to make up for this. LOL. Anyways, so this book is about a guy, Sam, who burns down Emily Dickinson's house when he was around 18 years old. Two people died in the fire. He gets out of prison, and the son of the couple that died has now come into Sam's life to basically reek revenge on him. Spoiler - a person actually lights themself on fire in this book (starting at their head) and it was so disturbing to me because a few weeks ago that man lit himself on fire and CNN was live when it happened. ugh.
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