Speedboat

This strangely wonderful novel isnt for every reader as it has no real plot, no conventionally constructed characters, nothing but an oddly appealing first-person narrator with a quirky sensibility & an intelligent take on a broad range of things. It could be accused of being a messy ragbag of a book, only it's written in punchy short bursts of spare prose, clean & concise even when most off-the-wall, & weighing in at 170 pages, this is a light-heavyweight contender. It was written in the '70s, but it feels contemporary as if it were fresh out of the box. Any of you serious readers of modern prose fiction ought to check this out. Renata Adler is a whip-smart unconventional prose artist.

Sanity is a moral option. Union men are characterized as Irish and senile. The narrator works for a tabloid, self-described as a ward-heeler of emotional life. Broadway Junction has nine criss-crossing elevated tracks. The narrator worked earlier at the 42d Street Branch of the Public Library. The obituary writer thinks the narrator is an alcoholic. This idea is spread throughout the newspaper. Intelligent Americans want to do good and to know leaders active in various spheres of public life. The brownstone in which the character lives has a sort of orchestra in it caused by the record selections of the inhabitants from Bartok to Judy Collins. At the women's college the narrator attended the faculty was distinguished. There was a quality of obsession in studying. To be silent in company is a decision of great power. The narrator, by way of contrast, feels called upon to field every question. The story 'Speedboat' opens with flying. The flight students are advised they would be washouts as fighter pilots. The speedboat in the story belongs to a tycoon. There is also a large sailboat featured. A man who has not mastered the idiom calls his daughter a Jesus creep. The stories comprise a sort of poetry of manners. I particularly like the author's attention to word usage and her wit.

Why are so many astonishing novels from the 1970s out of print? (James McCourt's Mawrdrew Czgzowchwz is another.) Adler's cunning collage of seemingly unrelated vignettes -- tart apercus distilled through a youngish woman's relentless intelligence -- contrives to sum up a particular kind of brittle, urban intellectual existence. "Speedboat" is a challenge, but each piece of the puzzle is short and brilliant enough to keep you mowing through. This is the best, and most original, book Adler ever wrote (before law school tamed her imagination and killed her sense of humor).