This Is the Ritual Rob Doyle 9781408865378 Books
Download As PDF : This Is the Ritual Rob Doyle 9781408865378 Books
"A tremendous talent. Every page fizzes with vitality." --Kevin Barry, author of Beatlebone
A young man in a dark depression roams the vast, formless landscape of a Dublin industrial park where he meets a vagrant in the grip of a dangerous ideology. A woman fleeing a breakup finds herself taking part in an unusual sleep experiment. A man obsessed with Nietzsche clings desperately to his girlfriend's red shoes. And whatever happened to Killian Turner, Ireland's vanished literary outlaw?
Lost and isolated, the characters in these masterful stories play out their fragmented relationships in a series of European cities, always on the move; from rented room to darkened apartment, hitchhiker's roadside to Barcelona nightclub. Rob Doyle, a shape-shifting drifter, a reclusive writer, also stalks the book's pages.
Layering narratives and splicing fiction with non-fiction, This is the Ritual tells of the ecstatic, the desperate and the uncertain. Immersive, at times dreamlike, and frank in its depiction of sex, the writer's life, failed ideals, and the transience of emotions, it introduces an unmistakable new literary voice.
This Is the Ritual Rob Doyle 9781408865378 Books
This Is the Ritual is a collection of stories that might be classified as experimental. As is the tendency in experimental fiction, some of the experiments work and others don’t. This is what you get:“John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist” is a rant by John-Paul Finnegan, who explains that the Irish are afraid of literature and too stupid to read it. He defends Paltry Realism, a literary school of his own invention, in which writers eschew style or quality and produce as many never-to-be-published words as they can fit on a page each day. Paltry Realism contrasts with Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness style by presenting “a machinegun of consciousness, or a self-bludgeoning of consciousness, … a kind of insane vomiting of language.” The story (it’s really more of an existential rant than a story) is quite funny, despite the serious themes it raises, although readers who dislike foul language will want to stay far away from it. The story points to, and continues, the tradition of Irish writers having a love/hate relationship with Ireland.
In “No-Man’s Land,” a young man with mental health issues chats with an unemployed alcoholic while taking a walk through a largely abandoned industrial estate on the outskirt of Dublin. Listening to the older man, the younger man gets a glimpse of his future self.
“Exiled in the Infinite” is an essay about Killian Turner, an Irish avant garde writer who, like Beckett and Joyce, wished to be considered European rather than Irish (a comment upon Beckett and Joyce that Rob Doyle also makes in “John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist”). The essay didn’t convince me to read Turner, although he seems to have lived an interesting life.
“Paris Story” describes a writer who is jealous of the success of another writer and gives her story collection a spiteful pseudonymous review, about which he feels guilty after they marry. Apart from the bare bones in that one-sentence synopsis, the story didn’t make a lick of sense to me.
“Outposts” is a collection of half-formed thoughts, existential observations made in various locations around the world. Whether the thoughts are produced by healthy minds isn’t at all clear. In his Acknowledgements, Doyle explains that the story consists of phrases snatched from a variety of sources. Some of the story seems self-referential — the struggling artist tiring of the struggle to make art, relationships torn apart by honesty or dishonesty — and a lot of it seems to be about the fear of life, but I can’t say that this collection of well-crafted half sentences resonated with me.
“Barcelona” is the city to which Alicia moved when she escaped from a bad relationship. With just a few observations of a few months in her new life, the story develops Alicia in surprising depth.
The aging youngsters in “Mexico Drift” explore nihilism and violent sex, having adopted attitudes of “world-hating defeatism.” There is barely enough content in this story to qualify it as a character sketch of dreary characters.
The narrator of “Anus — Black Sun” discovers the meditative benefits of watching a porn clip that shows nothing but an immobile anus. I’m just not sure what to make of that.
The narrator of “On Nietzsche” wants to write a book about Nietzsche but is so intimidated by the scope of the project, and so obsessed with the fear that he will die before he completes it, that he does nothing. This leads him to develop a philosophy of his own, centered around boredom (after he abandons a line of philosophical inquiry centered around a stinking toilet). Doyle’s observation that the best literature is fundamentally boring might apply to this story. It’s dull, but it is one of the better stories in the collection.
“Three Writers” purports to be a collection of essays exploring the work of three writers, two of whom never published. Since I can find no evidence that the writers actually existed, I assume this is a work of fiction, perhaps a place for Doyle to set down ideas for books that he didn’t want to write himself.
The narrator of “The Turk” feels sexually inadequate (a common theme in these stories) in light of his competition with a Turk for a woman’s affection. I can’t say I found much value in this one.
“Final Email from P. Cranley” purports to be the reproduction of an actual email Doyle received, written in the abbreviated form that is common to text messages. The sender is in San Francisco and clearly struggling with mental health issues, including religious delusions that are exacerbated by his consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms. It is what it is, and what is isn’t terribly interesting.
“Jean Pierre-Passolet, a Reminiscence” purports to be a discussion of a writer the narrator interviewed. I think Doyle used this story to show off his own knowledge of literature and philosophy which, while impressive, does not make for compelling fiction.
There are moments of truth and clarity in these stories, but there are also moments of drudgery and insignificance. Since the former outweigh the latter, and because I like writers who take chances, I’m recommending this collection, but only for a few of the stories.
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Tags : This Is the Ritual [Rob Doyle] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b> A tremendous talent. Every page fizzes with vitality. --Kevin Barry, author of Beatlebone</i></b> A young man in a dark depression roams the vast,Rob Doyle,This Is the Ritual,Bloomsbury Publishing PLC,1408865378,FICTION Short Stories (single author)
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This Is the Ritual Rob Doyle 9781408865378 Books Reviews
The characters in these stories are unhappy, unlikeable, angry or boring. Not a good combination. I struggled to finish most of the stories.
This Is the Ritual is a collection of stories that might be classified as experimental. As is the tendency in experimental fiction, some of the experiments work and others don’t. This is what you get
“John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist” is a rant by John-Paul Finnegan, who explains that the Irish are afraid of literature and too stupid to read it. He defends Paltry Realism, a literary school of his own invention, in which writers eschew style or quality and produce as many never-to-be-published words as they can fit on a page each day. Paltry Realism contrasts with Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness style by presenting “a machinegun of consciousness, or a self-bludgeoning of consciousness, … a kind of insane vomiting of language.” The story (it’s really more of an existential rant than a story) is quite funny, despite the serious themes it raises, although readers who dislike foul language will want to stay far away from it. The story points to, and continues, the tradition of Irish writers having a love/hate relationship with Ireland.
In “No-Man’s Land,” a young man with mental health issues chats with an unemployed alcoholic while taking a walk through a largely abandoned industrial estate on the outskirt of Dublin. Listening to the older man, the younger man gets a glimpse of his future self.
“Exiled in the Infinite” is an essay about Killian Turner, an Irish avant garde writer who, like Beckett and Joyce, wished to be considered European rather than Irish (a comment upon Beckett and Joyce that Rob Doyle also makes in “John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist”). The essay didn’t convince me to read Turner, although he seems to have lived an interesting life.
“Paris Story” describes a writer who is jealous of the success of another writer and gives her story collection a spiteful pseudonymous review, about which he feels guilty after they marry. Apart from the bare bones in that one-sentence synopsis, the story didn’t make a lick of sense to me.
“Outposts” is a collection of half-formed thoughts, existential observations made in various locations around the world. Whether the thoughts are produced by healthy minds isn’t at all clear. In his Acknowledgements, Doyle explains that the story consists of phrases snatched from a variety of sources. Some of the story seems self-referential — the struggling artist tiring of the struggle to make art, relationships torn apart by honesty or dishonesty — and a lot of it seems to be about the fear of life, but I can’t say that this collection of well-crafted half sentences resonated with me.
“Barcelona” is the city to which Alicia moved when she escaped from a bad relationship. With just a few observations of a few months in her new life, the story develops Alicia in surprising depth.
The aging youngsters in “Mexico Drift” explore nihilism and violent sex, having adopted attitudes of “world-hating defeatism.” There is barely enough content in this story to qualify it as a character sketch of dreary characters.
The narrator of “Anus — Black Sun” discovers the meditative benefits of watching a porn clip that shows nothing but an immobile anus. I’m just not sure what to make of that.
The narrator of “On Nietzsche” wants to write a book about Nietzsche but is so intimidated by the scope of the project, and so obsessed with the fear that he will die before he completes it, that he does nothing. This leads him to develop a philosophy of his own, centered around boredom (after he abandons a line of philosophical inquiry centered around a stinking toilet). Doyle’s observation that the best literature is fundamentally boring might apply to this story. It’s dull, but it is one of the better stories in the collection.
“Three Writers” purports to be a collection of essays exploring the work of three writers, two of whom never published. Since I can find no evidence that the writers actually existed, I assume this is a work of fiction, perhaps a place for Doyle to set down ideas for books that he didn’t want to write himself.
The narrator of “The Turk” feels sexually inadequate (a common theme in these stories) in light of his competition with a Turk for a woman’s affection. I can’t say I found much value in this one.
“Final Email from P. Cranley” purports to be the reproduction of an actual email Doyle received, written in the abbreviated form that is common to text messages. The sender is in San Francisco and clearly struggling with mental health issues, including religious delusions that are exacerbated by his consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms. It is what it is, and what is isn’t terribly interesting.
“Jean Pierre-Passolet, a Reminiscence” purports to be a discussion of a writer the narrator interviewed. I think Doyle used this story to show off his own knowledge of literature and philosophy which, while impressive, does not make for compelling fiction.
There are moments of truth and clarity in these stories, but there are also moments of drudgery and insignificance. Since the former outweigh the latter, and because I like writers who take chances, I’m recommending this collection, but only for a few of the stories.
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