Title: Did D'Agata ask all his friends to put reviews online?
Review: Did I read the same book?This is pretentious and trivial writing. Nothing in it is fresh or new. Oh. A list of all the things in one Hall of Fame. How clever. Just a list. And, wow, he tells us how many degrees it was every day when he was somewhere that was hot. How original! I spent most of the time reading the book wondering what the point was. Alternately disorienting, self congratulatory, and often simply repetitive, I found this book to be hinding behind the label "experimental non-fiction." Any criticism of it--like this review--gets dismissed as being a bad sport or not being clever enough to understand the mastery of the experimental writer. Form is hard; doing anything you want is easy. The only people who will like this book are fellow experimental writers, D'Agata's family and friends, and the entire circle of elite who think that everyone else is too dumb to get what this book is "about." Whatever.
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