Michael Cisco

More adventures of [b:The Divinity Student|1508685|The Divinity Student|Michael Cisco|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1184448668s/1508685.jpg|1500248] as he is dug up by resurrection detectives and reanimated (with more formaldehyde). He soon escapes the two detectives and goes on a quest to become Viktor Frankenstein and build a Golem of himself to do his bidding, as he is too decrepit now to do many things on his own. The Golem's only duty is to capture and woo a female magician as a sort of Bride of Frankenstein for the Divinity student. All sorts of symbolic and surrealist mayhem ensues and it's often difficult to distinguish nonsense from the important things to keep track of the plot. Eventually all is sort of well again.

If you don't see parts of these novels as largely comic and picaresque then you'll be missing the point. Like a surrealist [b:The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|76527|The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Laurence Sterne|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1309202864s/76527.jpg|2280279]. Cisco is going to throw a lot of real but unusual, and just plain made-up, words at you and the book requires extraordinary attention to detail by the reader or you miss a lot; the kind of book you might have to read twice just to "get it."

I didn't like it quite as well as The Divinity Student but it might be because I sort of knew what to expect and there wasn't as much wonder of discovery.… (més)

For those of you that feel a need to put this in a slot, let us call this Gothic horror surrealism. Like all good surrealism the reader is going to want to assign meaning and connection to things that are meant to be meaningless and unconnected. On the other hand there is definitely somewhat of a linear plot here. In some places it is downright funny. The body snatching scenes are derivative of the usual cliches.

What else can you say about a book where the Divinity Student is eviserated and stuffed full of paper in the first few pages? Our fearless protagonist, a word-finder by trade, has to distill the essence of twelve dead word finders to finish the catalog of lost words. He will scamper through a surrealist background while he tries to finish his mission.

This is the only book I have read that has a large dose of surrealism and actually became a page turner for me. The Centipede Press hardcover is also beautiful and the illustrations are marvelous. I have not read anything except a few short stories by Cisco but I will definitely be dipping into this the rest of this box set from time to time.… (més)