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Title: The Total View of Taftly: A Novel by Scott M. Morris, Scott Morris ISBN: 1-892514-70-2 Publisher: Hill Street Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Tries hard, but misses...
Comment: First let me start out by saying that I will be reading Scott Morris's next book, Waiting for April. I did enjoy his different use of words and his odd characterizations; they were the main reason I continued reading to the end. Morris's attempts at showing southern "kookiness" were well received and his characterizations were some of the strangest I have ever read. That said, this book started out slowly and continued on to an unsuprising finish. It wasn't exactly disappointing, but it was uninspiring. Mr. Morris shows a lot of promise; he has a great way with words and characterizaions. If he could only work on his story development, I think he'd have a winner.
Rating: 5
Summary: Kafka, Move Over!
Comment: Scott Morris makes Franz Kafka look like a bush league pinch hitter. No one I have read more accurately depicts, not only with psychological penetration but with astonishingly beautiful language, the temper of the times. Not Kafka, not Pinchon. Moreover, we have in Morris a Dostoevskian talent for discovering aesthetic salvation amidst the inner terror and confusion that is symptomatic of "modernity." Morris demonstrates that nihilism need not culminate in nihilism, but as in Ecclesiastes, there is salvation found in brutal honesty. Grace happens.
Not to be critical of the beautiful presentation by Hill Street Press, but if THE TOTAL VIEW OF TAFTLY had been published by an Upper West Side publisher, Morris would be buying his tickets for Oslo and dusting off his tux.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. You will have to suffer through the same panic as Dennis, Taftly, et al, to arrive at the same destination. So pick it up and read it!
Owen Jones Aiken, SC
Rating: 2
Summary: An amiable misfit
Comment: Since I have an appreciation for the eccentric and iconoclastic I found the book jacket description for this novel enticing. Yet both my wife and I read this and we were both underwhelmed. Her conclusion was that Morris was attempting to produce something in the spirit of "A Confederacy of Dunces". Let me assure you, however, that other than an eccentric protagonist, and the tale being situated south of the Mason Dixon line, in no other way does this story resemble O'Toole's classic.
The plot at several different points in the story seems to initially take off (albeit in slightly different directions) and then to quickly sputter and fizzle. It features the stereotypic microscopically small Southern town with the last of the local gentry representing a spent gene pool, mired in aimlessness and alcoholic escape, having an insecure self image and a somewhat pathetic obsession with an abused woman. Characteristically, he is independently wealthy (but seemingly indifferent to money), and a sort of idiot savant in manipulating investments (though, this interesting tangent, which had potential, was never fleshed out).
The story quickly, and unsatisfyingly concludes in an entirely predictable, easy, happy ending devoid of any complexity. I can usually appreciate a good book, but reading the other reviews I am stymied concerning what they saw that I missed.
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Title: Waiting for April: A Novel by Scott M. Morris ISBN: 1565123700 Publisher: Algonquin Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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