forgive the lack of links, i'm posting from the library where i can only have one window open at a time, and the internet is slower than a slug in molasses. ugh
i'm a longtime christopher moore fan, but his last few books have caused my faith in him to falter. fool, moore's interpretation of shakespeare's king lear, follows in the unfortunate recent tradition of mediocre books. you suck and a dirty job were
sort of funny, i guess. fool isn't as funny as them. it's not that moore isn't trying. he is obviously trying very, very hard. he just seems to have lost the spark
that made coyote blue, fluke and lamb three of my favourite books, both in terms
of hilarity and interesting treatment of an interesting subject.
when writing fool christopher mooreseems to have reverted to his 13 year old self. in a random sampling of 5 pages (16, 63, 98, 150, 199) i found:
sexual/ bodily function jokes/ mentions: 13
religion jokes: 2
other jokes (mostly monty python-type humour) : 4
3/4 of these were jokes were in the first two pages. even the author, it seems, got tired of the juvenile humour.
shakespeare's king lear is complicated enough without a bunch of 'funny' extra scenes and scenarios added in. the book is a confusing mishmash of historical periods, shakespeare quotes, (from his collected works, not just lear) comedic embellishments and added plot twists for the sake of added plot twists.
while reading fool i probably chuckled aloud five or six times, a pitifully small amount considering the book is 311 pages long. i had been hoping that this would be the book where christopher moore shook off his current slump and resumed his former brilliance, but alas, no. please try again, mr. moore.
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what kind of library computer olny lets you have one window open at a time? that blows monkey chunks.
ReplyDeleteHello again, but you've sparked my interest. I'm a huge Moore fan. Agreed, Fool was not one of Chris' better books, but you have give it a little more credit than you are. There are themes and parrallels...
ReplyDeleteAlso, You Suck was hilarious the second time through (Abby grated on me the first time, then I reread the parts where she tells the cops off) and A Dirty Job was brillant.