This was a curious book. First, it’s The Matter of Christ – the story of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Secondly, I didn’t like it at first: it seemed to be trying too hard to be funny in a nonsensical way a la Thomas Pinchon, or the wayward innkeeper of Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man. But the story grew on me because that main character, Andrew, has a flow of consciousness that imitates actual life quite well. After all, we don’t think in clear plots, and neither does this character – he came to the same realization I had only a few weeks ago: the devil is in the details, and in this book, literally. This did get a little old in places – especially the Deus Ex Machina pigs, parrots, and cats – but I think I am now fond of this book.
And I did not realize the lesson of this book until I just now wrote the paragraph above: It is terribly clever to have a basic idea about reality driving your story, but doing an interpretation of it, not an explanation of it.
The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock
And I did not realize the lesson of this book until I just now wrote the paragraph above: It is terribly clever to have a basic idea about reality driving your story, but doing an interpretation of it, not an explanation of it.
The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock
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