alex wants to read Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700

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And walking out of the little church he felt confirmed in not only the worth of his whispered prayer but in the realization, as well, that Christ had become man and not some bell-shaped Corinthian column with volutes for veins and a mandala of stone foliage for a heart. - pp 158

This beautiful sentence comes early in the novel, and seems curiously at variance with the rest of its content. Does our hero Darconville really make good use of this insight? Other reviews here have noted the extreme misanthropy and misogyny that courses through these pages. The other most notable feature of the book is of course Theroux's defiantly baroque style. These two qualities, arguably, are related, as language becomes a means to escape or heap ridicule on the world.

Style is everything. The plot is threadbare and other than Draconville and Crucifer, characters do not really exist except as pretexts for rhetorical savagery. It may be telling that the title refers to an animal. At least a cat has the advantage of not being a human being.

I like to think I'm a humanist, so all this was not particularly my cup of tea. And yet the writing - my god, at its best Theroux's prose gives off such a heady rush of freedom, this sense of the infinite possibility of words. I wouldn't want to be so small-minded in my humanism as to reject those who don't accept it. Being human can take many strange and wonderful forms. This novel embodies one of the furthermost possibilities of our condition.
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"HOUSEKEEPING 2025:

Toni Morrison was so good for so long at what she did, be it her editorial and curatorial work or as an author, that any falling off toward the end of her esteemed career seems more damning than it actually is. It is so rare to have a simply 'better than average' work from her that a) it fails to grant her the inborn right to the basic respect of her being human; and b) risks the reviewer seeming like a fawning, uncritical fanboy. The fact remains that she was THAT good for that long, and the few late works that betray a decline are, at worst, evidence that even god's are fallible. Big fucking deal; I peaked at 15, 17 max, and have been in a long descent for over 30-years. You're reading this: what does that say about YOU, hmmm?"