I pretty much agree. I think the shorter the form, the better it works for him. While “Post Office” is the first work of his that I read, I think his style suffers a bit in long form. I do like his short stories, though, so I think he can pull off prose–I’m just not a fan of the novels. The poems are the best form for him, though.
If you’re a hammer, every problem starts to look kind of like a nail.
You sound like one ex girlfriend – we were watching one of the movies about “him” (the one with the protag wearing the jockey shorts with the design of a pistol over the junk) and her last comment was “It’s sad.”
FTR his poetry consist of trifles. Factotum is the only book he wrote, IMHO. I think his cult status is probably not as alive now that the Gen-X pseudo revival is getting older, fatter, and having jobs as spreadsheet “experts,” like me. See also the passing-on of Jim Knipfel and the Tony Millionaire’s relevance.
Women is probably the best novel ever to read as a guy after a bad breakup. I remember reading Women on the Tokyo subway for the second time and almost pissing myself laughing .
Ham and Rye - talk about a fucked up childhood.
I don’t like poetry in general and don’t like Hank’s either.
Nope, don’t get the sad sack meme.
More than 10 people. And most of them were older than 25.
I’ve read and enjoyed a great deal of his writing when I was younger. I like reading interesting characters and his characters were just that. He was funny as hell, too. Humor and sad sackery don’t go together for me.
Thank you, that’s freakin awesome.