Customer Reviews (2)

recommended by John Gardner
In Gardner's The Art of Fiction he sites two examples of the rare and difficult "lyrical" format:Finnegan's Wake, of course, and The Beetle Leg.Not an easy read, but not so challenging as, say, William Gaddis, a contemporary of Hawkes.(Both authors could be described as genius.)

Beetle Leg has a very dreamy quality, along with a definite rhythm within the fragments of non-linear plot.It's like sudden moments of clarity flashing within a sleepy haze of resonating detail.And within that detail is an authenticity and intimacy that is both compelling and haunting

Really a stunning piece of work.

Nobody writes like this anymore
This is a surrealistic western, basically, with language so odd, crisp, and surprising that every page has to be savored.Hawkes is a tremendously perceptive writer, whether he's dealing with the violent or the mundane.Readers should give this and THE BLOOD ORANGES a chance.His voice is strange, and takes time to grow on you; but once it does, his books begin to seem like a mixture of poetry and noir. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A good book for those still interested in such things...
John Hawkes decides to call this book "The Lime Twig" thereby putting off a great number of people who can't imagine any book with such a title worth their time. "The Lime Twig"?! Well, the book doesn't have anything directly to do with limes except that lots of stuff you wouldn't think would smell like limes do to many of the characters in the novel. What does a lime smell like, anyway?Does it even have a smell. I can sort of call up the smell of the lime's brighter cousin, the lemon, in my mind's nose. Can you call a lemon the lime's cousin? Yes or no, it makes no difference to any of the sentences preceding this one. Or, for that matter, any of those which follow.

Sort of like Robbe-Grillet, Hawkes attempts to splice the experimental (for want of a better word), avant garde (for want of another better word), literary (for want of a word that actually means something) novel into the pulp fiction genre, in this case, the crime thriller. This high-brow/mid-brow hybrid, which Hawkes has called the "The Lime Twig," for reasons not made very clear above, is a deconstruction and reconstruction from the inside-out on what is a crime genre staple: the fixed horse-race.

What Hawkes does is to take this rather time-worn tale out of the familiar realm of justice avenged and into a multi-perspectived world of relativity, where any character's story-viewpoint-life at virtually any time can end violently, even as the story (like the world outside our own lives) as a whole goes on without them, inexorably it seems, to its tragic conclusion.The jump-cuts that Hawkes makes from character to character, from scene to scene, the way he slows down fictional time almost to a crawl, and speeds it up like a rollercoaster just over the hump and screaming down the rails, his cool objective handling of his characters...all make "The Lime Twig" literature, rather than genre crime fiction, and therefore excuse him from the straightforward narrative that readers of genre fiction would expect.

A movie equivalent of "The Lime Twig" might be Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." I don't know why that occurred to me, but it may be of some help. It may not be. What is "relevant" is, after all, almost by definition relative; well, at least the two words sure look the same.

They say that John Hawkes was never a very popular author when alive; and I don't think that's changed a whole lot now that he's dead, except he probably doesn't care that much. Surely titling his novels such things as "The Lime Twig" isn't going to help either. But this is hardly my problem; it's not even John Hawke's problem.

Anyway, that's it; that's my review of Jown Hawkes's "The Lime Twig." I wash my hands of the matter.

An experience well worth the effort
Each week on a Monday I go to the library and read plots. This is a way that I get ideas for my own writing. One day I ran across one of the most interesting and imaginative plots I had ever seen and of course I had to get the book. John Hawkes, a Gothic novelist, must be the least read novelist of substantial merit that I know. His story is quite like the consciousness we live but which is not often recorded in books - untidy, half-focused, disarrayed and incoherent. And yet, and yet, he keeps our interest because his story is real. And so Sidney Slyter says go read The Lime Twig and see if you don't agree that it is one of the most perfect novels of our time.

Oddly surrealist little mystery.
John Hawkes, The Lime Twig (New Directions, 1960)

A friend of mine once said of the film Eraserhead that it was as close as cinema came to capturing a nightmare onscreen. (I disagree, but the parallel is useful.) The Lime Twig, in that sense, is the rough literary equivalent of Eraserhead; it's a Dick Francis novel edited by Jean-Paul Sartre with finishing touches added by Aime Cesaire. The whole contains a marked nightmarish quality; for once, I was actually grateful for the blurb writer at New Directions explaining some of the basics to me as I went along.

The story revolves around one of the oldest plots in horse racing; a team of small-time crooks buy an old racehorse to enter in a stakes race, the Golden Bowl at Aldington Race Course (being a Neanderthal American, I've no idea whether there actually is an Aldington Race Course in England). The horse in question won the race a number of time previously, but in the days before lifetime past performances, few bettors had memories stretching back five and six years. The crooks alone are enough to make the nameless rabble in Reservoir Dogs look like competent professionals, but things get worse when a big-time operation decides it wants in on the deal. (This is the part where the blurb on the back saved me; I figured out that others were getting in on the action, but they seem just as disorganized as the first lot, only more savage about it.)

Everything is presented as a kind of pointillist painting; pieces float in and out, some disappearing altogether, some being tied up at the end. Hawkes relies on the reader perhaps more than any other mystery writer here to fill in some blanks. This is in no way a bad thing; when has an author been criticized for OVERestimating the intelligence of his audience? However, readers of more mainstream mystery novelists may feel as if pieces are still missing by the end. (Jessica Fletcher Mr. Hawkes is not. There are no neat pages of explanation at the end.) A couple of re-reads of the most relevant passages will suffice to tie things up, and unlike most mystery authors, Hawkes does very little in the way of stopping the reader from recognizing the major foreshadowing or clue-dropping as it happens. And yes, despite all that, the book still reads as if the reader has taken a rather large dose of laudanum before sitting down.

As with most New Directions books, there is a core of critics who feel John Hawkes is the best thing for the mystery genre since, and perhaps before, sliced bread. This may well be the case. There's no denying the effectiveness of Hawkes' literary style and his ability to keep the reader turning pages despite it. However, it's one of those cases where it almost seems too much of a good thing. To draw another film parallel, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who holds much the same core-of-critics role in film as Hawkes does in letters, created a few masterpieces of exactly this sort. His most famous film, El Topo, just goes way over the edge, and its style eclipses its substance too far. I got that feeling more than once while reading The Lime Twig, and while I'd certainly recommend it for fans of the ubiquitous British Horse Racing Mystery™, it should probably come with a "warning: literary writing ahead" sticker. *** ½ ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Still Life with Gauze . . .
This novel is first rate.Written in a prose-poetry rhythym sans the boundaries of harsh realities, the dream is contained barely in the covers.Causes the re-examination of theage-old dream or reality questions;photographs of the subconcious.Remarkably danceable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Beauty as denial
Beauty becomes denial in this aesthetically rendered tale of a life brought to ruin by a galloping sexuality.The narrator's gorgeous account creates an irreality that both disturbs and compells.

The books dissonances are reminiscent of Nabokov's Lolita and Gide's The Egoist. If you like stylistic fiction, this book is for you.

Brilliant, but...
This is a complicated and mysterious book by a writer with an amazing command of his prose.The tragic story is doled out in tiny slivers along with a vivid description of the imagined Mediteraenan location where the events unfold.The narrator is a self-proclaimed "love singer" who is desperately proud of his marriage and of the many, many women he has loved during his marriage.It's hard at least for this reader to be sure how ironically we are to view the protagonists advocacy of totally free love.The narrator clearly blames the stories tragic outcome on the small-mindedness of his rival in love--I at least am left wondering whether the author means us to blame the victim or the protagonist.The story can be oppressive at times with its pervasive melancholy--but it certainly makes you think.Hawkes is a terrific writer and this is a challenging, difficult and definitely uncomfortable work of genius.

A Blazing Imagination
John Hawkes has created some of the most beautiful prose ever penned; the word surface in this book is as memorable and enjoyable as any I've read, at turns surprising, sensual, poetic, and often all of this and more. As an extended flight of the imagination 'The Blood Oranges' explores regions of desire, fidelity, and repression that many have gestured towards or illuminated in passing, but that few have mapped extensively. For me, it stands as tremendously courageous writing, and writing elevated by a pervasive and exciting humour. It's very funny, in the way that Beckett's or Kafka's prose can be - and Hawkes' deserves to be considered as a writer of their stature. I only wish I'd been exposed to his writing sooner. He's a genius.

Brilliantly lyrically sardonic
Hawkes' sensuality at its most accessible, a work whose difficultly may be off-putting to some readers, but whose rewards run deep. Sex and death repose in contented embrace from beginning to end; from fetid canals tocrab-strewn plates.

Lyrical
I found this book lyrical and somewhat surreal.It evoked memories of John Barth's End of the Road.The book was original, uninhibited, and rather melancholy.It presented an image of the idle rich who arehedonistic yet emotional.Jealousy plays a half-veiled and sinister role. I highly recommend this book to lovers of poetic prose (a la Barth or ToniMorrison). ... Read more

Product Description
"John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should be more widely read."—Saul BellowSkipper, an ex-World War II naval Lieutenant and the narrator of Second Skin, interweaves past and present—what he refers to as his "naked history"—in a series of episodes that tell the story of a volatile life marked by pitiful losses, as well as a more elusive, overwhelming, joy. The past: the suicides of his father, wife and daughter, the murder of his son-in-law, a brutal rape, and subsequent mutiny at sea. The present: caring for his granddaughter on a "northern" island where he works as an artificial inseminator of cows, and attempts to reclaim the innocence with which he faced the tragedies of his earlier life. Combining unflinching descriptions of suffering with his sense of beauty, Hawkes is a master of nimble and sensuous prose who makes the awful and mundane fantastic, and occasionally makes the fantastic surreal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A difficult but beautiful read
As with most things in life I know entirely rely on Amazon to tell me what I like, and what I will read next.Once again I was not let down.

This was a book I had to put down and come back to many times. It is written almost like poetry the pours from that saddest places inevery person's spirit.John Hawkes is a brilliant and deep writer.My only complaint is that he isn't necessarily captivating.I struggled in the beginning to find my footing in the endless lamenting.Eventually I was tempted to shelf the book indefinitely but one day I found myself woven into the tapestry of this world, and desiring to know more.

I recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind "working for it" (if you know what i mean).

More than skin deep
Second Skin is a lyrical, difficult but ultimately rewarding novel.It focuses on Skipper, the narrator, who simply tries to survive a series of life tragedies ranging from being the victim of a mutiny to losing his wifeand daughter to suicide.

To say these things is not to give away theplot.Because Skipper does not tell his story in a linear fashion, we knowwhat will happen from the beginning.The pleasure is in listening to thenarrative voice tell his "naked history" (as Skipper callsit).

John Hawkes is an under-appreciated writer and a brilliant prosestylists.For anyone who loves to read beautiful sentences, this book ishighly recommended. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Highly recommended, especially for public and college library collections
Published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Milton's birth, John Milton: A Hero of Our Time is a thoughtful biography of poet, polemicist, public servant, and legendary author John Milton, perhaps best known for his classic "Paradise Lost". A man driven by his conscience and his understanding of logic, Milton stood firm in his beliefs during a time of tremendous religious and political turmoil in England. From Milton's participation in the English civil war to his ideas about capitalism, love, and marriage that were surprisingly ahead of their time, to his views on political violence and religious terrorism, John Milton: A Hero of Our Time encapsulates the greatness of a visionary thinker and the morals of a humanitarian. Highly recommended, especially for public and college library collections.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Like Di Lillo, Pynchon, Auster, Hannah, Boyle, Coover--One of the Greatest
Three of the reviewers simply don't know what they're talking about. If they were writing about art, they'd probably say that Picasso can't draw.

well-written incoherence
"The Cannibal" is an engaging, flowing novel that is also completely flat (in character and description) and jumpy, with no emotional involvement and even less dialogue (if that's a gesture of defiance toward literary convention, it certainly doesn't work).Is it possible for a book to be completely incoherent and confusing during and after reading, but still keep your finger on the next page?Apparently so, as this is certainly not the worst book I've read.It's unmemorable, sure, but John Hawkes at least exhibits a style that's free of the outright pretension that befalls authors like Pynchon and DeLillo.Interpret it how you may: "The Cannibal" is a book about nothing (maybe incoherence and WWII), but it is well-written, therefore it avoids a one-star rating.

spare the trees
Hawkes has gained a strange and slobbering coterie within and beyond the academy: hopefully NOT on the basis of this amateurish novel. The characterization is awkwardly composed and just stinks of falsity (attempts at "literariness", rather than life), the diction is mannered, the symbolist gestures obvious and unappealing...well, you get the idea. Read Tin Drum if you're set on postwar Germany: a masterful alternative, light years beyond Mr John Hawkes, Man of Letters.

Pretentious crap
John "Look At Me, I'm Writing!" Hawkes' tries his best to be "literary." The previous reviewer calls this book difficult. It's difficult because it's unreadable. Hawkes has no idea what he's doing, so he just makes everything as obscure as he possibly can in hopes it will impress somebody. The emperor has no clothes. Don't bother with this pointless tripe.

Underestimated Genius
John Hawkes is a master of allusion and sordid subtleties.In *The Cannibal*, Hawkes' apocalyptic vision of post-war Germany attacks the reader in the form of an ever-deepening chill.Readers of Gunter Grass's*The Tin Drum* will find an interesting parallel here in Hawkes' sterileworld. This man is one of the greatest, most difficult writers of thetwentieth century.I also highly recommend *The Lime Twig.* ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Grotesque and unpleasant
Hawkes' novel about a man whose obsession with women seems trapped in pre-adolescent ignorance is dark, disgusting and tedious. It is prettily written by an author with a good grasp of language, but it is a story that entirely fails to engage. There are no characters with whom to identify, no plot that draws one in, no sympathetic emotions aroused. Were it not a very small volume, and were Hawkes' reputation not highly touted, I would have quit the book early. But I slogged on and can only blame myself for the waste of time.

I hasten to add that as a writer and reader I have no problem with exploration of sexuality, with dysfunction, with examination of obsession or with dark and difficult subjects. I don't expect every novel to be full of sweetness and light and I don't shy away from difficult subjects or profundity. But this book is ugliness dressed pretentiously as art, and it doesn't simply fail the smell test, it really stinks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

this book stinks
Woe to the world: looks like postmodernism is here to stay.Travesty is just a transcript of a driver talking to his passengers before crashing the car in an "arranged accident."Along the way, he pontificates about love and betrayal, a collection of cliches and bad epigrams.Nothing really happens in this book, just this guy rambling on and on.I'm glad this book is out of print: it will save the world a lot of time.If for some reason you like this book, you might also like Donald Antrim's A Hundred Brothers.

Danger
Wonderfully written, brutal, crisp, not shrinking from cruelty,perversion, tender twists of psyche.An awful delight - read if notfragile.

The Nightmare of the Dream
"We are travelling as if inside a clock the shape of a bullet, seated as if stationary among tight springs and brilliant gems. And we have a full tank of gas, and tires half a month old. Do not ask me to slow down. It isimpossible." -JH
Hawkes book is a brilliant, chilling, andhypnotic look into the urgency of life itself. In creating a situation ofimminent death he deftly manuevers the reader into an assessment of our ownreasons for living. A truly beautiful narrative, and probably the mosteasily accessible of Hawkes works.

A brilliant anomaly in American fiction
This slim novel covers some of the same ground as J.G. Ballard's "Crash," but focuses less on the medical/scientific/technological aspects of auto accident deaths and more on the psychological depths of aman who plans to take his friend and daughter to their deaths in a carwreck. Although an American writer, Hawkes's prose often reads like anEnglish translation of a French writer, such as Camus. (Hawkes found muchgreater fame in France than he ever did in the United States.)"Travesty," which is told from the point of view of a single,unstable narrator, is a brilliant exploration of sex, death, duality, andincestuous desire.

Intriguing and wonderful!
Travesty is a must read!The dialogue and thoughts of a "mad man" as he drives himself, his daughter and his daughter's/wife's lover to their deaths at top speeds in a car...fascinating!Once you startreading it, you cannot put the book down because of its fast pacedmomentum.Erotica, madness, and machinery all blended into one!If youliked the movie Crash, this is much much better. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Decent but not great
It appears the author Simon Hawke doesn't completely understand the Predator's code of honor although he has a decent grasp of it.

Hawke should know that the killing of defenseless prey, pregnant women and children is considered dishonorable by the Predator and his people yet he doesn't associate the predators with honor.

Better than expected
After reading the Predator "film tie-in" I was not expecting much from this book. Suprisingly,tasty tidbits are revealed about the Predators as certain events are portrayed from the Predator's perspective. Reference is also made to the Predators coming to Earth from the dawn of history to conduct their "Big Game". This book also in no way contradicts what we read in the AVP novels. What a pity Simon could not have written the Predator novelisation as well. ... Read more

Product Description

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

For over forty years, John Hawkes created fictions remarkable for their stylistic beauty and narrative experimentation. His writing has been praised for its visionary engagement with memory and anxiety, violence and eroticism, desire and imagination. Yet there have been few critical studies of the work of this major contemporary author. Rita Ferrari's Innocence, Power, and the Novels of John Hawkes is an unprecedented exploration of Hawkes's sixteen novels and novellas.

As Ferrari discusses the subtle transformations that have occurred in each succeeding work of fiction, she traces Hawkes's experimentation with voice and perspective, his interrogation of authority and representation, and his exploration of language, gender, and identity. Her close readings offer fruitful and original analysis of the central and compelling paradoxes in Hawkes's fiction: how language both makes and unmakes the self, how this act of the imagination is at the same time affirming and deadly, and how, expressly, the act of authoring is both innocent and powerful.

Product Description
Thirteen-year-old narrator Dervla O'Shannon describes growing up in a foundling home, her courtship by an old soldier and her outrageous letters about it, Corporal Stack's shocking injury, and her captivity (with the elderly Stack) at a ruined Anglo-Irish estate. 10,000 first printing." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An interesting read--Yes. Quality Hawkes--Questionable.
Those who know and value the John Hawkes of old (Second Skin, Travesty, Blood Oranges) may be disappointed with Irish Eye. Hawkes, who once said, "The true enemies of the novel are plot, characters, and setting," has forsaken his prior belief with the publishing of Irish Eye. The book itself is a mildy interesting text best representative of a nightmarish fairytale, as it surrounds readers with a unique view of Ireland and tracks the journey to maturity of young Dervla as she strives to find love and her place in the world. Along the way Hawkes treats readers to various interesting characters, of which Teddy seems the only character to represent the Hawkes of old--tortured, confined, and just angry at the world he refuses to give in and comprise. And so Dervla, our wide-eyed and innocent narrator, follows him all the way. Though some may claim Irish Eye to be a nice introduction to John Hawkes, don't let this fool you...these comments are made simply because this book is "easier" to read. Yes, some of Hawkes major themes are present (disorder and obscurity), but the constriction of characters and reactions/truths that arise from this are largely absent. If you're looking for an actual quality introduction to John Hawkes I would suggest Travesty or possibly Second Skin (with Second Skin being the more difficult read of the two). Overall, a major joy of Hawkes is deciphering that which he writes in order to truly understand the human condition and his fragmented, often disorganized novels challenge readers to not only reread numerous passages but ultimately come to their own conclusion of what the text tells them about life. And with this focus in mind, Irish Eye ultimately comes up short. All authors have a glitch in their library of writings and this seems to be Hawkes. An interesting read--yes. Quality Hawkes--no.

beautiful, haunting novel
This is a moving, sad book full of the feel of Ireland and adolesecntyearning and the smell of peat moss. Lovely! Not Hawkes' best but lovelynever the less a great read ... Read more