Top of the World, Ma!

This book is sharply, flippantly written and the story, though totally bizarre, is entertaining. You'll get lost in the world of high society dinners, drugs, death, pimples, sex, excess and Jackson Pollock. I read it nearly a year ago and the crazy story and images it provokes are still with me. It's hilarious, irreverent and just plain smart. Loved it.

Michael Guinzburg's sentences make me think of Nietzche's famous quote: "Only Heine and I can write a sentence in German." He is the only English white writer I have read in the past twenty years that I know is going to be classic fin-de-millenium literature one day. Imitations will eventually arrive, but will sound trite and implausible rather than brilliantly grotesque like some pre-WWII Polish carnival fleeing from death at the border. The French are on to something in honoring him already across the seas. I wonder what else they read? This novel is a warlock-driven surreal take on Fitzgerald's work, with a touch of Manhattan and commentary on the Nazi ideology alive and dug in deep in the mind today, making it more than satire, comedy, or just a great read (all of which it is), but actual literature of concrete depth by Generation X. It is worth writing a Master's thesis about. Please be prepared if you have an easy stomach. I read it in one afternoon and then after three days of thinking about it realized how disgusting some of the metaphors and images were. So if you are not absorbed, get a paper bag and don't complain. Please continue, Mr. Guinzburg. Really nice guy, too.

This book is raw, wild, and truly classic! I pray that Michael Guinzburg developes a following in the US so we can get the English versions of his other work (currently available and very popular in France). Guinzburg somehow interweaves the history of Jackson Pollock, the fiction of Jackson Pollock and a wild rich freakshow of the cash Hampton elite. Pearls, performance art, animal testing, and everything in between is thrown at this unlikely canvas.

My God! I picked up a copy of this amazing book in France a few weeks ago and I can't wait for the original English version. This is the wildest, craziest, funniest salad of high literature, political/sociological observation, loony sex and scatalogical excess that has ever passed before my eyes. Totally gripping. Yanks you by the short hairs and doesn't let go. I laughed so hard I had to buy a three pack of new underpants. Where Ed Harris' new Oscar nomatinated (albeit anemic) film "Pollock" leaves off, "Top of the World, Ma!" kicks in and blasts off.