Kluge's New Novel Reviewed in NYTIMES Today!
I wouldn't call Janet Maslin "tough." She often gives raves to schlock. But I'll bet she's right about this one,…
The very tough New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin gives a rave review of P.F. Kluge’s new novel, The Master Blaster, in Monday, March 26, 2012 edition, calling Kluge’s novel, “stingingly funny.”
She goes onto write: “Mr. Kluge, who went to Saipan as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1967 and has made repeated visits ever since, makes a fine alter ego out of the Master Blaster. Both the writer and his trouble-making character are seasoned ironists, expert connoisseurs of corruption.”
Kluge peoples his novel with a great cast of characters who all arrive on the same plane and make a bet about who will stay longest: George Griffin, a travel writer, “George is the best kind of hack: a smart one…” Stephanie Warner, an academic recruited for a college on Saipan. “(What does it say about this college, she wonders, that its only advance meeting with her was conducted at the food court in a mall in Honolulu?)” Then there is the stand-in for Jack Abramoff, “whose sticky fingers also reached as far as Saipan.” Finally “last and least, status-wise, is Khan, a laborer from Bangladesh who will wind up in virtual slavery.”
Maslin sums her lengthy review with, “This is not a young man’s book; it’s the work of a writer who has seen the world, literally and figuratively, for a long time.”
True enough. The book is out this month from The Overlook Press.
I wouldn’t call Janet Maslin “tough.” She often gives raves to schlock. But I’ll bet she’s right about this one, It sounds like a book I’d like to have written if I were a lot smarter, more ambitious, talented, etc. I’m eager to read it.