Half A Life

I was given this last Christmas by a friend I respect and admire. I know it's supposed to express the angst of the mixed raced displaced people of the world and their wandering about without a real sense of home. And I know he won a Nobel Prize. This is the second one I've read. The problem mat be that I know too much about him and he has a rotten personality and hates women which is very apparent here. It is a good read read-sort of- it sucks you in, but then you wonder why you are continuing to read, other than its short and I hate to quit a book no matter how stupid. So what? Our hero escapes his culture, goes to England to study and follows a woman to Africa and leaves her at the end of the book "to find himself" He's a twerp. It's also got some real clunky transitions and no redeeming literary style. America has a long tradition of these kind of books. Boy leaves home and little town stilted culture, goes off to big city and finds himself and succeeds or fails and will kill someone (An American Tragedy) or bite off someones' ear (McTeague), reach a rich peoples haven and be adopted (Valley of The Moon), become friends with a gangster (The Great Gatsby) or fail and spend the next ten years writing endlessly about going back to his little stilted home (Of Time and The River and on and on) - Actually, now that I think of it, this book has a lot in common with Henderson the Rain King and The Dharma Bums or Beautiful Losers and on and on- all of the above books were better written.)

Did I mention I finished this? Hell of a lot more fun read. Not as good as Orlando and The Waves and To The Lighthouse. All very English of course. But one should, don't you know. Patterson is next ( William Carlos himself) - actually, I've already finished the first book- quite good in places - quite very very obscure in others, but they thought that generation was being brilliant when you couldn't understand them- sort of like Bob Dylan lyrics.