{"id":2086,"date":"2015-03-01T22:44:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T16:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2015-03-01T22:44:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T16:44:21","slug":"review-of-reif-larsens-i-am-radar-in-the-dallas-morning-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/03\/01\/review-of-reif-larsens-i-am-radar-in-the-dallas-morning-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Reif Larsen's "I Am Radar" in the Dallas Morning News"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’ve neglected\u00a0this lonely\u00a0little\u00a0blog so often I should seriously feel guilty, but . . .\u00a0I have my reasons.\u00a0Note that I say I\u00a0should<\/em> feel guilty. But I don’t. (Well, maybe just a tad scrap of guilt is swirling around the door to the garage of my soul, like that plastic blag in\u00a0American Beauty<\/em> (1999). Why? I’ve completed the first draft of a new novel I’ve been working on for about two years, for one thing, which always ranked higher on my to-do list than blogging. A novel is (or attempts to be) an epic panorama of life, while blog posts tend to be snapshots, the digital kind. And\u00a0in addition to finishing the novel’s first draft (I expect at least another, but hope to finish it all this year), roller-skating with my daughter (first time on skates in, um, forty years?), snow-slogging through this never-ending winter, and much more, I\u00a0recently managed to read\u00a0Reif Larsen’s\u00a0epic, 644-page novel,\u00a0I Am Radar,<\/em> which I reviewed today in the Dallas Morning News,\u00a0here<\/a>. Although I stand by what I wrote for that review, interested people can know that the review’s first draft was over a thousand words, and I could easily write five thousand words on this book. It’s the kind of novel you almost want other people to read so you can argue with them about it. Yes, it’s overwritten, but many good books have their “overwritten” moments. There’s so much in the novel it’s hard to know where to begin: There’s a great deal about radio and puppets, which doesn’t seem to add up to much, but which is nonetheless fascinating. And isn’t being fascinating part of the fun of novels? I compare it to Thomas Pynchon’s V.<\/em> (1963), a book that\u00a0demands\u00a0great patience to complete (I read it while riding around Europe one summer on their many trains), but which totally deserves the attention. And no, I don’t think\u00a0I Am Radar<\/em> is in the same category as V.<\/em>, but I greatly admire its ambition.
\nThere’s something lyrically memorable about reading long, literary novels\u2014a feeling of accomplishment, of being immersed in someone else’s brain, someone else’s vision of the world, for that long (it’s that\u00a0TFW experience). I read much of\u00a0I Am Radar<\/em> over the Christmas break, at my home in Colorado, in the snows and blue light of winter.
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So I’ve neglected\u00a0this lonely\u00a0little\u00a0blog so often I should seriously feel guilty, but . . .\u00a0I have my reasons.\u00a0Note that I say I\u00a0should feel guilty. But I don’t. (Well, maybe just a tad scrap of guilt is swirling around the door … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,29],"tags":[55,95,178],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-booksfilm","category-the-west","tag-book-reviewing","tag-good-fiction","tag-the-west"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t