My 'Demonology' isn't signed, but my 'The Painted Veil' is. ( )

Some books you read and they just stick with you always. This is one of those books. It serves as a representative sample of the worst excesses of postmodernism and snobbery. Demonology is a chronicle of pretentiousness, full of words and sentences constructed to look insightful but which have little, if any, real meaning. If you're interested in the lives of pathetic, prep school twits, this is your book. Want a deeper truth? Look somewhere else. To paraphrase movie critic Roger Ebert: "I hated, hated, hated, hated this book." ( )

For the novelist, the short story form is often an outlet for momentary inspiration, development of technique, display, and burlesque. But for a writer as talented as Rick Moody, these short forms are more like gems, finely cut, delicately set, polished in the extreme. The range across these thirteen stories is breathtaking. How does the same author who writes, “Surplus Value Books,” or “Wilkie Fahnstock,” also write, “The Double Zero,” or “Demonology”? There is a feast of language, insight, acute observation, and silliness available here. Of course the “silliness” is actually in service of a larger ironic, often sadder, end. But that doesn’t stop those stories being fun (at times). And indeed a certain playfulness is present even in the saddest of these stories.

Moody has a predilection for the extended stream of consciousness monologue (sometimes in dialogic form). But he is not wedded to it, and it has the feel of technique rather than empathy. So it is in the stories where he moves away from monologue toward a nuanced close third person that life fills the darker places. Even the easy and (as far as I can tell) proper use of continental philosophical and literary critical terminology that percolates some of the stories seems light and never merely about display or cheap mockery. You’ll see connection, in style and form, to Moody’s successful novels. But I take that as a sign that there is a constant interplay between his work in the short form and that of the longer form narrative. Successfully.

Recommended. ( )

after having read The Ice Storm and Garden State many moons ago (the late 90s), I had lost track of Rick Moody. Not that he went anywhere. I even have a copy of Purple America that I have never read. But I just never found myself drawn back to him. Recently I had to read Demonology for a class and also had the chance to meet Moody at a reading. I have fallen into his post-Ice Storm work with much enthusiasm. It doesn't always work ("Hawaiian Night" is conceptually interesting but almost too dense to figure out; "Wilkie Fahnstock" seems like one of those ideas that probably shouldn't have made it to the page), but when it does, I am enthralled ("Mansion on the Hill," "Forecast from the Retail Desk," "The Carnival Tradition," "Boys," and of course "Demonology."

He's definitely not for everyone -- and I don't mean that in a "I'm smart enough to get it" way. If you can get through the misfires, the ones that hit, hit hard. ( )

Finished the book on my way home from the UK. I found most of the stories intriguing. I need to find out more about the author, I'd like to read a novel (if he published one). I noticed that there were a couple of recurring topics in the stories (car accidents while driving under the influence, alienation of family members) and I would be interested to find out what he'd do with that in a novel.