WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
For those of you who did not enjoy James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, this one may not be for you. Big parts of it are told in a stream of consciousness style that is straight out of the deeper recesses of the author's mind. However Farmer does switch over to a more traditional style in parts of the book that are not as obscure, but are nevertheless practically swaddled in puns, double entendre and crypto-linguistics. As usual with stories of this type the reader's job is not only to relate it to his or her own experiences, but also to penetrate the extremely dense, almost poetic prose and divine the author's meaning as well. In particular this story is about a future where most people are recipients of government assistance, mostly from an N.E.A. type bureaucracy that funds artistic expression. The story is a bit dated in that Farmer seeks to shock the reader with references to government sponsored abortion, birth control, drug usage, casual sex, homosexuality, and all the other risqué topics from the 1960's, but the effect really is muted by the passage of time. This one is nevertheless full of interesting imagery, so I'm going to give you a lot to consider here...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..
WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
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