OLT

Kenneth Gangemi has done something quite brilliant with this book. So brilliant, I'm not even sure what I just read. The narrator moves around a city, but the reader only moves around inside the narrator's head. Themes emerge and feelings emerge--for the reader, though, not the narrator. The narrator doesn't seem to feel much of anything. We don't need to be told how the narrator feels because we can feel it for him. We are him for 55 pages. Demands to be read again.UPDATE: Read it again on Christmas day. Damn. Damn good. Have to get my hands on more Gangemi. "The Volcanoes from Puebla" is probably next.

Olt is a 60s classic of the same caliber as Trout Fishing in America, Slaughterhouse-Five and The Crying of Lot 49. It is witty, sensual, caleidoscopic, melancholy and absolutely delightful. Nuf sed.