A German Picturesque

I first read this book in a grad class a few years back. Half the class thought it was genius and the other half didnt know what to say. Rereading it now i still think there's nothing quite like this book. Its so sharpwitted and precise that it makes everything else out there look weak and beside the point. It's Brilliant for sure but also brilliant because it moves you in ways you haven't been moved before even if youre not quite show what it all means, it's brave and heroic because it never compromises or panders. They'll be reading this long after the fashions pass by.

Yes, the book is too difficult to read for most people who like to understand what they are reading. However, for the discerning reader, this book offers a challenge that simply taxes one violently, leaving you with a profound sense of justice that you have been thoroughly written upon. A brilliant first work; and edited by the great Gordon Lish who always goes for this kind of writing. Hard, and not easy.

While hardly a masterpiece, this book is much better than the other reviewers here would have it - anybody who quotes Stephen King against this sort of book is applying the wrong kind of standards. Oblique, fractured: yes, but many of the stories find their own clipped rhythm, throwing out memorable sentence shards and effective little groups of images. But it's not for people who seek out vaguely pretentious 'literature' in order to ridicule it (don't they have better things to do? - you know, if you don't like a book, you don't have to keep reading, just drop it and go on to something else). I read it by the Lake in Central Park; maybe my image of the book is made rosier by the wonderful blue day we were having, but maybe not. Good. Three and a half points (rounded up to four to raise the average).

A German Picturesque is writing pleased with itself, but empty and foolish. People will have to have a lot of indulgence and a lot of time to see this effort as other than foolish. What audience the author finds deserves its fate. Sentences written with a dead ear, no interest in anything but the grotesque effect of disjointed narrative,about who knows what or nothing at all. Amazing the things that get published these days.