Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A Case of Curiosities, by Allen Kurzweil
If Kurzweil writes more, I'll eagerly read it, that's a promise. This was the second novel by him that I picked up and I enjoyed it just as much as The Grand Complication. The book tells the story of Claude Page, a talented young man born to a healing woman in the French countryside in the 18th century.
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I'm somewhat surprised by the fact that "A Case" has gotten such wide acclaim. I found the character development to be rather shallow, abstract, and the circumstances wholly unbelievable. Mind you, if some of the circumstances were outrageous, bizarre, fetishistic, arcane, and transgressional (like fin-de-siecle or decadent literature), it would have been more of a success. Instead, "A Case" turns out to be a tepid story with no real insight into either science, sex, or history, three of the main themes this book purports to embody. I found the pace to be intolerably slow, the plot to be frustratingly predictable (what surprises?), and the style to be highly affected (or rather, pedantic as opposed to affected, which may have fitted considering the historical context of the book). One almost gets the sense that Kurzweil (as author) is the embodiment of the plodding and pedantic character Livre, writing a book about bawdy, raucous, stinking, alchemical, pornographic, subversive, enlightened Parisian life, a book which is none of these things at all. In fact, at one point in the book, there is some discussion as to the meaning of the word "kurzweil" -- what a sloppy, blatant, ego stroking this must be... something Livre would most certainly have written. This book, describing a period in history of unprecedented enlightenment and social unrest, appears to be a visceral animated piece of fiction, but upon close reading, is nothing more than a loosely stuffed, sterile, taxidermic specimen. So I must ask: Why do people praise this book as a work of genius?
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