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willbeurdaddy -> RE: Reading suggestions for my failed vacation... (12/20/2011 12:08:40 PM)
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"Zone One" Colson Whitehead
There will be grumbling from self-appointed aficionados of the undead (Sir, I think the author will find that zombies actually . . .) and we’ll have to listen for another season or two to critics batting around the notion that genre-slumming is a recent trend, but none of that will hurt “Zone One,” which is a cool, thoughtful and, for all its ludic violence, strangely tender novel, a celebration of modernity and a pre-emptive wake for its demise. If this is the intellectual and the porn star, they look pretty good together. For my money, they have a long and happy life ahead of them.
Whitehead is a very clever and sardonic writer. His assignment at the World Series of Poker has all the wit of HST's assignment at the Mint 400 in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", without the drugs (2011 isnt 1971, after all).
Of course if you havent read Fear and Loathing in a while (or ever) its a must (re-) read. No one has captured the end and ultimate failure of the 60s so clearly and concisely:
"And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back"
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