Straight White Male

A volte inizi un libro aspettandoti di leggere qualcosa di divertente, che abbia una trama interessante e che ti tenga incollato al testo; sperando succeda che verso la fine ti dispiaccia stia finendo, perché sai che i bei libri fanno questo effetto.
E' successo!
Come si fa a non tifare per Kennedy Marr? Quanti maschietti vorrebbero essere come lui? Avere la sua stessa vita?
Ma chiunque, pur volendo essere come lui, non può non porsi le domande sul significato del vivere che si pone Kennedy.
Ma qui le risposte alla ricerca di un senso del vivere non arrivano compiutamente, a mio parere.
Il libro e il personaggio ricordano molto il Barney Panofsky di Richler (che delle risposte le trova), ma qui molto più disincantato e irriverente. Tanto show more sesso, tantissimo alcool, tantissime citazioni di grandissimi autori (leggere le poesie di Yeats è sublime), troppe parolacce (il troppo stanca), ma qui la vita pulsa, con tutta la sua voglia di significato.
Chapeau Mr. Niven, un gran bel libro! show less

What’s not to like about John Niven? Another absolute belter, no one does male modern misogynist hedonistic misanthropic mid-life crises like Niven. Like the last book of his I read ‘Kill Your Friends.’ I could have quite easily read this one in a day as well, if Hogmanay and a ‘festival hangover’ had not ridden in.

It is beautifully referenced to some of the great male writers, without descending into prescriptive non-fiction. I appreciate the amount of research this can take, to then use only a slither of it.

The plot and the story line move along nicely, but it is the metaphors and the cultural references that make you giggle fiendishly out loud.

I am braced for the day when I read another of his books and it is not a five show more starrer, I think a small part of me might just die. Until then I cannot recommend the two aforementioned books enough.

The writing IMP show less

E niente, quest’uomo sa scrivere. Sa tenere il ritmo e difficilmente si riesce a mollarlo o comunque a non ritagliarsi L’angolino di tempo per riprenderlo.

Alla fine, la storia non è niente di particolare o di particolarmente nuovo, però ci sono una serie di spunti di riflessione interessanti e, in un momento come questo (letture dell’isolamento del Covid) riflettere sorridendo non fa male.

Kennedy Marr is a best-selling author with three popular and critically well regarded novels in the bookstores. But he has a writer's block of five years duration going, and he's been making his living as a highly paid script doctor in Hollywood. He is, also, a completely self-absorbed hedonist, at 44 still trying to up to the image of the ne'er-do-well, womanizing, hard-drinking rebel who will not suffer fools and disdains the shallowness of the movie business actors and directors that he has to mingle with. He has already kicked away two marriages through his seemingly frantic philandering and though he's remained in touch with his daughter, now 16, but as his ex-wife says to him when he questions how his daughter has managed to show more become so grown up, "What can I tell you, Kennedy? You missed it all." The novel is meant, I guess, as a satire, a making fun of the trope of the grown-up straight white male child. But the incidents of bad, behavior and desperate drinking, expensive restaurants and sleeping around go on at too great length. Eventually we begin to get details about his regrets and his difficult childhood. The degree to which a reader will consider these to be redeeming details will vary, I suppose. There are a lot of fun literary references and the writing is breezy. I laughed aloud several times. But in the end I didn't feel there was enough weight to the story (nor was it funny enough) for the reading experience to feel especially relevant or satisfying. show less

Nice book, nice character. I feel, however, that Marr was kept too 'likeable' throughout the book in order to justify the ending (at least open enough, although I would have preferred the laces to break after all...). I would have gone on writing from his ex-wife's point of view, just for the following couple of days - enough to show how little she - or anyone else, for that matter - cared.
So in all not unlike one of the Hollywood productions that Marr himself might have 'polished'...
Great reader, that Cormack, but adds to the (too) positive impression that we have of Kennedy.

A very funny book - sort of a milder Warren Ellis with dollops of Tom Sharpe.

Möchtegern-Schriftsteller-Porn 3,5 ***