 |
| Could this be Molly? |
The Village Voice reviews the new book on the debate between Harry
Houdini and Sir Arthur Connon Doyle over the existence of an
after-life. Harry Houdini: The Man From Beyond
Gabriel Brownstein’s new book will hit the stores next week but the review gives us watery chops.
We think it is fiction but based a little on real-life: sort of like cable news.
The novel tells the story of “one of the most publicized intellectual
debates of the time. The two argued over the skills of a medium named
Margery by staging seances and bickering over “real-life” photos of
fairies.”
The story is told through “eyes of a young, breathless
reporter named Molly. She follows the two men wherever they go with the
hope that she’ll eventually escape her usual beat: writing about
lipstick.”
We think Molly’s character was written with the intention of making
a perfect movie role for some young actress. She “exudes the
confidence of a sultry movie
star?she’s glamorous, pissed off, and usually smoking. Both Conan Doyle
and Houdini confide in her, revealing details about Margery, the famous
psychic, who oozes goo from her naked body while screaming in the
voices of dead people.”
Apparently the book is evenly-balanced in its description of the debate between the two public figures.
Conan Doyle, like his most famous literary character, works like a
detective; hoping to “get to the bottom of the mystery.”
The reviewer particularly enjoys the scenes of Conan Doyle’s interaction wth the spirit world.
“These scenes of spiritual contact are slow and
poetic, with many floating tables and blobs of slime. In careful prose,
Brownstein evenly portrays both the beauty of these bizarre “miracles,”
as Conan Doyle calls them, and the intellectual desperation it takes to
believe that they’re real.”
Will get you a full-review when it comes out. But mark our
words, this was written for some Hollywood film treatment.
Link: village voice > books > Gabriel Brownstein’s The Man From Beyond by Rachel Aviv.
|
| Could this be Molly? |
The Village Voice reviews the new book on the debate between Harry
Houdini and Sir Arthur Connon Doyle over the existence of an
after-life. Harry Houdini: The Man From Beyond
Gabriel Brownstein’s new book will hit the stores next week but the review gives us watery chops.
We think it is fiction but based a little on real-life: sort of like cable news.
The novel tells the story of “one of the most publicized intellectual
debates of the time. The two argued over the skills of a medium named
Margery by staging seances and bickering over “real-life” photos of
fairies.”
The story is told through “eyes of a young, breathless
reporter named Molly. She follows the two men wherever they go with the
hope that she’ll eventually escape her usual beat: writing about
lipstick.”
We think Molly’s character was written with the intention of making
a perfect movie role for some young actress. She “exudes the
confidence of a sultry movie
star?she’s glamorous, pissed off, and usually smoking. Both Conan Doyle
and Houdini confide in her, revealing details about Margery, the famous
psychic, who oozes goo from her naked body while screaming in the
voices of dead people.”
Apparently the book is evenly-balanced in its description of the debate between the two public figures.
Conan Doyle, like his most famous literary character, works like a
detective; hoping to “get to the bottom of the mystery.”
The reviewer particularly enjoys the scenes of Conan Doyle’s interaction wth the spirit world.
“These scenes of spiritual contact are slow and
poetic, with many floating tables and blobs of slime. In careful prose,
Brownstein evenly portrays both the beauty of these bizarre “miracles,”
as Conan Doyle calls them, and the intellectual desperation it takes to
believe that they’re real.”
Will get you a full-review when it comes out. But mark our
words, this was written for some Hollywood film treatment.
Link: village voice > books > Gabriel Brownstein’s The Man From Beyond by Rachel Aviv.
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