The Ghost Town

I give up. I started reading Robert Coover’s Ghost Townand stopped after 50 pages. It’s a post-modern book with lots of dialect. It’s about a nameless sumbitch who rides or imagines he rides into a ghost town. It’s artful and packed full of surreal elements. I just wasn’t in the mood for this multi-layered demonstration of literary talent.

I did enjoy Coover’s Briar Rose a few years back. Westerns aren’t my thing at least this one wasn’t. Coover is innovative, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a story right now. Or else there’s something else that’s missing. I bet I could read Italo Calvino. Something like If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler again or something of his I ha-ven’t yet read. Calvino has more heart; there’s more to connect with rather than just to marvel at with him.

So at page 50 I decided to put it aside. I can read it some other time. Or not.