I'm too dumb to understand this kind of poetic language of fragmentary imagery and a kaleidoscopic language so although it was short and there were bits and pieces that stood out I didn't really appreciate it and can't really give a good judgement. Really interesting style though ( )

Couldn't finish this. It is imaginative and very carefully constructed, but the language is persistently old-fashioned. For example:

"Picnics swarmed those summers as fervidly as bees, though he feigned to ignore the insects unless they graced him with a sting."

Many times -- even many times on a single page -- it is unclear whether Keene is trying for a nostalgic, period-piece tone (he partly is) or whether his language is habitually high modernist and out of date (it often is). Here, "fervidly" is fusty and obtrusively poetic, and "feigned" is a stale word and an unpleasant alliteration. Or this passage:

"Ebony and Black Enterprise graced the marble coffee table, though Jet garnered everyone's initial review. Our generation possesses only a cursory sense of the world that our ancestors braved, though the burdens of history bear unmovably upon us."

At the beginning of these two sentences, it makes sense that the two magazines "grace" the table: that's old-fashioned, but it also sounds like a disaffected son's way of talking: after all, the coffee table is marble. And it might even be part of the satire that Jet "garnered" attention. But irony cannot be the reason why Keene's generation has only a "cursory" sense of history (who says "cursory" any more?), and if it's satire to say that his ancestors "braved" their world, then the point is lost in doubts about the author's voice. By the end, with the use of "upon" instead of "down on" or "onto," I lose confidence that I am reading a contemporary author.

Toward the end part of the reason for this dusty language becomes clear when Keene lists his favorite writers: "Joyce, Tagore, Faulkner, and Morrison." Tagore! Amazing!

The structure of the book, and its modernist ambitions, are clearly from early Joyce, Faulkner, and Morrison. I'll read another of his books, "Seismosis," to be sure of the difference between word choice and nostalgia. ( )