My first time reading anything by this author, I was surprised how readable and funny this book was. For some reason I had some image of beat poetry and coffeehouse drug deals – but that wasn’t it at all.
The vibe running through this book is a guy who is avoiding hard work, and a constant search for immediate gratification rather than a hard grind to success. A lot of the things in here probably wouldn’t fly in contemporary books, but as a snapshot of the past it was a great read.
I especially like his sense of humor. It was funny to read about how he treated his “career”, and when things got to be a pain in the ass he had so little invested in it that he could just walk away. Maybe this was written as a fantasy response for those caught in the rat race at the time.
So this was a pretty short book but very entertaining. I’m looking forward to trying more prose from this author.
Next I am reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
