Not a "Summer Read" | Halls of Fame

stagger this | Halls of Fame | John D'Agata

books:


	• Halls of Fame John D'Agata Graywolf Press, 2001 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 124 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

His Own Hall of Fame

This is an abundantly ambitious book, a fun read & and a daring debut!

Not a "Summer Read"

This is an eternal read. It's "characters" will stay with you forever, probing deep into the way we construct wonders and meaning, and therefore boring deep into its readers too. My daughter brought this book home with her from school and hooked me onto to it immediately. Its story about the small experimental school in California that caters to young male outcast geniuses (a school the young author apparently attended, go figure!) is a thrill ride, written in a five page long sentence. His profile of the president of the Flat Earth Society is precious and touching, and his take on the man who takes care of the brightest light in the world (situated in Las Vegas, Nevada, of course!) is hilarious and saddening at the same time. I had some worries that this new crew of young adventure writers in nonfiction would only continue to produce works that made jokes at the expense of their subjects. Now John D'Agata comes along...

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stagger this

i've had about enough of heartbreakingly bad prose and super ironic posing from "generation x", a peculiarly american term. here's a chap with an interest in the nastier end of the bucket but not the nastier end of the pen. he's sharp, smart, charmingly good humoured about the absurdity of his subjects and just about the best practitioner of nonfiction i've read in a long while. bravo young d'agata, john!

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extraordinary

It is as if john d'agata has dived down to some remote sea cave and carried back with him only the most rare, the most beautiful, the most heartwrenching and most charming images and stories from america's silly and stupid and glorious hidden self. He shows us things like a museum guide, for he never tells or lectures but only points us in the direction of treasures to find ourselves, treasures not necessarily so rare or even so beautiful, but truly necessary, truly made his own.

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a rarity in 'nonfiction'

any writer with d'aagata's talent would turn to poetry or fiction, or maybe even screenwriting these days. it's rare to find a writer so young with already the finely honed skills of a journalist turning to this obscure form of essay writing, the 'lyric essay', in order to make art. it's risky and it pays off.

you need to sit for a long time with the book, give it space in your head to stretch. i would even recommend starting at the back of the book, and moving backward, for thats where his 'easiest' work is. however difficult the essays seem however, at every turn they pay off. my friend said he recently booked himself into the luxor hotel in las vegas just because he wanted to see this place that d'agata wrote about.

he's got a knck for combining research, witt, and empathy that makes the voice in this book something truly extra-ordinary.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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