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The Cry of the Sloth

by Sam Savage

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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2971487,682 (3.33)27
The tragicomic tale of a frustrated writer angry at the world: "Scathingly funny." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)   Living on a diet of fried Spam, vodka, sardines, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort, Andrew Whittaker is slowly being sucked into the morass of middle age. A negligent landlord, small-time literary journal editor, and aspiring novelist, he is--quite literally--authoring his own downfall. From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, this novel is a collection of everything Whittaker commits to paper over the course of four critical months.   Beginning in July, during the economic hardships of the Nixon era, we witness our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, and tormented by his ex-wife. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him. As his hold on reality weakens and his schemes grow wilder, his self-image as a placid and slow-moving sloth evolves into that of a bizarre and frantic creature driven mad by solitude . . .   "Most of the novel consists of Whittaker's hilarious rejection letters to wannabe authors. Savage works page after page of delightful variations on this theme." --The Guardian… (more)
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» See also 27 mentions

English (12)  Catalan (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (14)
Showing 1-5 of 12 (next | show all)
A little slow at the beginning but it gets much better as it goes. ( )
  grandpahobo | May 2, 2021 |
Fifth and likely final book of my Fall 2015 24-hour readathon.

Reminded me a lot of [b:Dear Committee Members|19288259|Dear Committee Members|Julie Schumacher|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432245100s/19288259.jpg|27336530]:
[bc:Dear Committee Members|19288259|Dear Committee Members|Julie Schumacher|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432245100s/19288259.jpg|27336530].
Except this was darker, bleaker, and thithuss for me, not as humorous.

But epistolary novels are usually fun, and some of these are quite clever. ( )
  BraveNewBks | Mar 10, 2016 |
The full title of this book is, The Cry of the Sloth: The Mostly Tragic Story of Andrew Whittaker being his Collected, Final and Absolutely Complete Writings. It spans a period of four months (July to October) and includes letters, notes on a novel, and shopping lists written by Andrew Whittaker during that period.

Sam Savage has demonstrated great skill in the way he leads the reader to an understanding of Andrew Whittaker’s situation and in the pace he sets and techniques he uses to demonstrate the protagonist’s mental and physical decline. Savage has taken a serious, uncomfortable topic, the personal decline of an alcoholic, depressed and delusional man, and presented it using humour and pathos in a way that lets the reader see the growing depression in the mind of the victim and demonstrates the build up of diverse pressures that combine to make the sufferer believe he is trapped and without value.

Along the way he takes a few side swipes at the literary establishment and the cadre of local would be artistic community socialites.

Whittaker’s letters are addressed to, amongst others, his tenants (he owns a number of rental properties), his recently estranged wife, his daughter, former literary friends, and to the subscribers to a small press literary magazine, called Soap, he edits and publishes. His rejection letters and submission guidelines are honest, gritty and brutal. As a former editor of a fiction magazine Whittaker’s rejection letters are the ones I would like to have written but didn’t for fear of a libel action.

In one letter to someone who submitted a manuscript of a novel he writes, “That you are not a polished writer works in your favour; it’s how Hemmingway might have written had he never gone to high school.” The magazine “Guidelines for Submission” include the sentence, “In the current acerbic climate of American letters, with unrestrained emotional outbursts on the one side (the remains of the so-called Beat movement) and amorphous piles of pseudomodernist gibberish on the other, Soap steers a middle course.”

I really enjoyed this book. It is very funny yet carries a serious message about depression. ( )
5 vote pgmcc | Jan 21, 2015 |
Six-word review: Suppose Dostoevsky entered the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

Extended review:

I enjoyed the oddity, originality, and language of Sam Savage's first novel, Firmin, and that one led me to this, which did not disappoint. Even if it didn't match the feat of novelty accomplished by its predecessor, it's still no small achievement. Imagine what might have happened if Fyodor Dostoevsky had written a morose parody of Samuel Richardson and given it the Bulwer-Lytton treatment, and you might sense something of the flavor of this unconventional composition. Savage exhibits considerable artistry in making his Andy Whittaker, like Golyadkin, sound both pathetic and absurd and yet somehow remain in command of his dignity.

What we have here is an all but unstoppable torrent of messages--notices, advertisements, shopping lists, story drafts, and, most of all, letters--written by Andy in one persona or another. Seeming to struggle perpetually with both brutal and banal foes that thwart his every hope, he pours out to virtual strangers the traumas and vicissitudes of his pitiful life. At the same time, and perversely, he congratulates himself on his knack for dealing disagreeableness to others:

"What does it mean that I have such a gift for writing unpleasant letters?...Now I write people whom I barely know, and the letters positively sparkle, especially when they give me an opportunity to be unpleasant in a snide way to people who can't do anything about it. Maybe Baudelaire was right, and the spleen really is the creative organ." (pp. 59-60)

Andy has plenty to feel unpleasant about. He's a failed writer and the editor of a failing literary journal. He's swamped with unpublishable submissions and pestered by irate rejected contributors. His tenants don't pay the rent, and so he can't pay his bills. His wife has left him. His family relations are strained. His shoes are falling apart. Nothing, in fact, seems to go right.

If Andy is ridiculous, he's also sublime, a little bit of Sisyphus, a little of Invictus, and maybe also a little of Charlie Chaplin. And P.T. Barnum.

Amazingly, no matter how many times he strikes out, Andy keeps on swinging. Yet something is happening to him. Over the four-month period of the novel, subtle changes become more pronounced. Savage lets us see what Andy cannot see for himself; or perhaps he does, intuitively, and he conceals it with bluster and misdirection. Almost kaleidoscopic at times, the mirrored and fragmented views of Andy Whittaker question whether we are more truly what we appear to ourselves or what we seem to others.

It can be no coincidence that Andy's writings make several mentions of a room with yellow wallpaper. Anyone who hasn't read the chilling short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman should look for it online (where, though tarnished by OCR scanning errors, it still delivers remarkable effects).

Here's a sample passage (from Andy's inchoate novel) that made me think of the Bulwer-Lytton contest:

"...for surely Adam's arrival had interrupted the lovers' meal, as was attested by the half-gnawed lamb chops on the table. He shook his head violently from side to side in an attempt to drag his mind from this morass, and to imagine another, better, life, one without so many commas. Even as he sat in ungainly abandon, his legs sticking out in front of him, on the floor of the dingy hotel room across the street from Stint Bros. Towing, where he most surely would be going soon, to what end and consequence he knew not, he let his imagination play with the idea of a life shared with Fern on a little chicken farm, clinging, as it were, to this desperate vision as to an inflated inner tube. He imagined sunlight streaming into a modest kitchen and fresh eggs for breakfast." (page 209)

And this:

"She pressed me to join them, but I declined on the pretext that the fish tank needed cleaning." (page 139)

Maybe it's the imp of the perverse in me, but I like this book. I can't help myself. I might even love it.

A word about the cover blurb. Usually I don't remark on misleading book jackets, but this one is egregious. It begins: "Living on a diet of cupcakes, sardines, and Southern Comfort during the economic hardships of the Nixon era..." Cupcakes and sardines appear (once each) as only two among many items on grocery lists and are never mentioned elsewhere, certainly not as sole components of Andy's diet. Southern Comfort is never mentioned at all.

The same blurb ends: "this hilarious (and cautionary) tale revels in the dreams and delusions we all nurture to survive." Hilarious? Tragicomic, maybe, and maybe we do see something of Andy in ourselves despite his exaggerated eccentricities, but I'm not inclined to laugh at him. I also don't think many of us have delusions on that scale, nor does his case illustrate how they might aid survival, never mind reveling in them. The blurb seems to have been written not only by someone who didn't read the book but by someone who read some other book entirely and confused it with this one.

As for cautionary, I suppose it's cautionary to say "Don't go mad because it might make you crazy," but I don't find that particularly useful advice.

So never mind what it says on the back. If you liked Firmin, I think you'll like this one too. ( )
5 vote Meredy | Dec 30, 2014 |
The Cry of the Sloth purports to be the complete final writings of one Andrew Whittaker, aspiring writer, ostensible founder and editer of a small literary magazine, impotent landlord, etc. His creative writing makes up a relatively small amount of the writing, but it is notable both for it's amateurish awefulness and it's way of exposing the thoughts and desires the writer clearly isn't willing to admit are his own. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Andrew Whittaker is a man whose faith in his own greatness is surpassed only by his fear that it is misplaced. He knows that there is a great writer inside of him, but in those rare moments he finds for fiction all he seems able to write is self-conscious crap. And yet, Andy is consumed by writing. Mostly letters. Letters to contributors of shitty poetry, letters to deliquent tenants, letters to contributors of good poetry, letters to his ex-wife, a series letters to a contributor of shitty poetry that also happens to be jailbait, falsely attributed letters to other magazines and papers defending and praising Andy as a man and an editor, falsely attributed letters responding to his previous falsely attributed letters, lickspitting letters to more successful acquaintances of the distant past, shrill letters to the same more successful acquaintances now dating his ex-wife...it goes on and on.

It's almost as if as Andy Whittaker, realizing he has failed at being the writer he dreamed, has given up on writing on the page and instead plunges madly ahead composing his magnum opus through the tragical comedy that used to be his life.

Edit:

And then someone asked, "Did you enjoy it?"

I did! Though my take on it is really just one way of deciphering the book. It's a bit like House of Leaves in that it doesn't give you a linear story to follow, it just dumps a bunch of documents in your lap and leaves it up to you to figure out what is going on.

What makes this particular book interesting is that despite the fact that all of the writings are the work of one man, the writings themselves, while surely biased, don't actually present a consistent character. Andy presents himself radically differently depending on the purpose and audience of his writing and, debateably, on his ability to hold it together. That's what made it so fascinating to me. He's certainly an unreliable narrator, but he's so unreliable you can't actually be sure that his being so isn't a conscious literary choice on his part. I'm probably making this far more mindbendy than necessary, but since this book is as much about what the reader brings to the page as what is on it I feel within my right. ( )
2 vote fundevogel | Apr 1, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 12 (next | show all)
The Cry of the Sloth is one of those books in which almost nothing happens: it is simply a record of a man sliding further and further down into himself. Imagine a comic version of the great Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet in epistolary form, with extra laceration. Savage, as far as one is aware, is neither heteronym nor nom de plume: it is, nonetheless, appropriate. As Whittaker's life descends further into misery, he becomes obsessed with the tree sloth, a creature with "the most pitiable cry in the whole animal kingdom", a "wiffle" which, "though not exactly loud, has extraordinary carrying power".
added by riverwillow | editThe Guardian, Ian Sansom (Oct 31, 2009)
 

» Add other authors (7 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Sam Savageprimary authorall editionscalculated
Arensman, Dirk-JanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Wat ons overkomt, overkomt ofwel iedereen ofwel alleen ons. In het eerste geval is dat banaal, in het tweede onbegrijpelijk.
Fernando Pessoa
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Beste meneer Fontini,
Voor de goede orde: de stukadoor heeft zijn factuur ingediend voor het vervangen van het plafond in de keuken.
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The tragicomic tale of a frustrated writer angry at the world: "Scathingly funny." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)   Living on a diet of fried Spam, vodka, sardines, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort, Andrew Whittaker is slowly being sucked into the morass of middle age. A negligent landlord, small-time literary journal editor, and aspiring novelist, he is--quite literally--authoring his own downfall. From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, this novel is a collection of everything Whittaker commits to paper over the course of four critical months.   Beginning in July, during the economic hardships of the Nixon era, we witness our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, and tormented by his ex-wife. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him. As his hold on reality weakens and his schemes grow wilder, his self-image as a placid and slow-moving sloth evolves into that of a bizarre and frantic creature driven mad by solitude . . .   "Most of the novel consists of Whittaker's hilarious rejection letters to wannabe authors. Savage works page after page of delightful variations on this theme." --The Guardian

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