Book Review - 334 : A Novel by Thomas M. Disch
Category Book Reviews
I don't remember where I saw it, but I caught a reference to this book, 334 : A Novel by Thomas M. Disch. It sounded interesting... A futuristic look at life in this particular government-controlled housing unit. After finishing it, all I can say is "why?"...
The book is a series of vignettes that follow a group of people who live in this government housing complex. It's sometime around 2020 to 2025, and the stories jump back and forth over that timeframe. The best I can do is describe this as "reality novel-reading" (as opposed to reality television), and I don't like either, I guess. The stories were pointless, the writing attempted to be philosophical and deep (and it was totally wasted on me), and I never really got caught up in any of the characters or in what was going on. It sort of reminded me of the movie Pulp Fiction in the way that the timeline of events was completely out of sequence with what you were seeing. The end of the movie is the start of the movie from a different angle... That sort of strange stuff.
Perhaps I'm just not "sophisticated" enough for this book, but in my opinion it was a waste of time and paper... The only thing it had going for it was that it was fairly short...
I don't remember where I saw it, but I caught a reference to this book, 334 : A Novel by Thomas M. Disch. It sounded interesting... A futuristic look at life in this particular government-controlled housing unit. After finishing it, all I can say is "why?"...
The book is a series of vignettes that follow a group of people who live in this government housing complex. It's sometime around 2020 to 2025, and the stories jump back and forth over that timeframe. The best I can do is describe this as "reality novel-reading" (as opposed to reality television), and I don't like either, I guess. The stories were pointless, the writing attempted to be philosophical and deep (and it was totally wasted on me), and I never really got caught up in any of the characters or in what was going on. It sort of reminded me of the movie Pulp Fiction in the way that the timeline of events was completely out of sequence with what you were seeing. The end of the movie is the start of the movie from a different angle... That sort of strange stuff.
Perhaps I'm just not "sophisticated" enough for this book, but in my opinion it was a waste of time and paper... The only thing it had going for it was that it was fairly short...
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Posted by Duffbert At 07:49:41 On 27/05/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Ben Langhinrichs At 19:34:59 On 26/05/2006 | - Website - |