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#5: The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock

7/21/2012

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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




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    In 2011, I began reading a list of 100 Great Fantasy Novels. I am listing them on this page.

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    Hi!  I am Nye Joell Hardy.  
    I write science fiction and fantasy.  The science fiction makes my head happy.  The fantasy makes my heart happy.  Although I sell all these things, none are making me rich.  But I'm happy, damn it.  

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