Julian Rios

A wild linguistic ride. Reminiscent of Joyce with inventive puns and other wordplay overwhelming a story of a modern Don Juan in London. Really there's not much story and with the footnotes and other distractions, that's just fine. It's a book that is more about the path than the destination. Enjoy it for its surface and its fantastic picture of London.

Julian Rios's newly translated 'The house of Ulysses' is a novel about a novel. The targeted novel being James Joyce's landmark 20th century fictional masterpiece Ulysses. Rios's book is almost as clever as the original--with fictitious critics arguing over the movement of Joyce's book as they go from chapter to chapter--laying down insight after insight into how Joyce developed his work from Homer's Odyssey and other pertinent details about other sources Joyce used and of course how Joyce's show more native city of Dublin Ireland juxtaposes from Homer's odyssey into one day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. This is a fun and very witty joy to read especially if you're a Joyce fan. And if you are you shouldn't pass this up. show less

He could almost put him back in a cage. Iron cage in which he showed his golden age. There he learned to kneel, prostrate himself, lowdown Ez! his vanity on the ground, and to put himself on a level with the heavens.

This was an insomniac endeavor, a wakeful Wake where I could not slumber, only mumble and reread. The trick I read from others is to dash through once, revel in the rhythm and once finished -- go back and reread with the corresponding exegetical exercise: recto/verso, presto! I show more do hope to find normative sleep tonight, this was worth the earlier privation. Ríos unleashesa his usual nocturnal quest through London as a trio of literary comrades catch word that Ezra Pound has just died in Venice. What results is often maddening but a wonder to embrace. The pulse of Poundean puns persists, fortified by frequent googles, if not gurgles. I can say I gasped, if not grasped, the elusive essence on display: his play (Rios is not a dull boy). show less

Like him or not there is no denying that Rios is one of the cleverest contemporary fiction writers around--there is a bit of James Joyce in him and a bit of Oulipo. Monstruary focuses around a painter with a very decided gothic bent--Victor Mons--who continually envisions works of art out of the most ordinary and extraordinary events/persons both from his past and his present--equally from the worlds of literature, art, the cinema and the brothel--and more often than not turning his show more creations into ghoulish phantasms. Rios presents this work full of double entendres and puns and the occasional word stretching--he is without a doubt (or at least I don't doubt it) a literary stylist first and foremost and always seems effortlessly to keep the mood light and humorous even when he's delving into the darker corners of human fear and desire. A very smart and entertaining book. show less