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Title: Humpty Dumpty : An Oval by Damon Knight ISBN: 0-312-86383-7 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.1 (10 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: thin line between insanity and reality
Comment: In my opinion this book was generally good. The only reason I gave it 3 stars is because the first third of the book was excrutiating to get through. After that It was an easy read though there is alot going on in the book and many charecters that although briefly mentioned play big parts in the book. It is defiantly a book you'll have to read at least twice to catch all the little details of the book. But it did well in capturing the insanity that would be reality falling apart. and I did enjoy it. It (in my opinion) would have been best to stay to the short story format Knight is popularly known for.
Rating: 5
Summary: Deceptively simple/Convincingly Complex
Comment: This is some book but it you prefer reading books that stay on the surface of the story and don't ask the reader to fill in the blanks you might miss out on some of its more cryptic features.
What is consciousness and what is reality? I've seen a lot of explanations before reading Humpty Dumpty by Damon Knight. This may be the best fictional examination of what it means to live inside the frail shells we've been given.
If you want a simple book that doesn't ask you to work for or think about the words, you'd be better off with something action-adventure, which is not to denigrate action/adventure, just to say that different books will appeal to different readers, and judging from some of the reader comments, this book obviously won't work for everyone. If you want a complex literary work, and the last novel written by one of America's masters, give Humpty Dumpty a chance.
Rating: 1
Summary: Too little humor amidst all the pointlessness
Comment: Wellington Stout, an unassuming salesman who "travels in women's undergarments", finds himself embroiled in a sequence of bizarre events in this madcap sci-fi novel by Damon Knight. The story opens as Stout wakes up in a hospital after being shot in the head in a Milanese restaurant (or was he?) having just delivered (or not) a "sensitive" parcel to an agent (of whom?) named Roger Wort. Confusion is the standard motif of this incomprehensible book, as Stout continues to undergo an endless array of hallucinatory (or are they?) experiences, from encounters with underground organizations of Dentists and Podiatrists (one of too few truly humorous touches) all the way out to alien invaders. Unfortunately, there's no attempt to wrap up all the twists and turns the story appears to take, and some may feel that the resolution offered in the book's final pages is really no resolution at all. The circumstances don't allow for anything like characterization, as people change identities right before our eyes, and no one's motivation is ever certain. By letting us see the world through Stout's eyes, Knight convincingly portrays a man who has absolutely no idea what's going on, but gives us very little reason to care. As a comedy the book falls rather distinctly short, and in the absence of any moral or philosophical direction, one wonders why this book was even written at all.
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