Published Graduation in 1968 found him with a BA in political science and a draft notice.“The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. Tom is able to get over his dependence on Lorna Sue. But I do believe after this book I may have to give some of his others a shot. I'll read more by him because of it. I think O'Brien wanted it that way.anyone who is friends with potentially crazy peopleI am not very discerning when it comes to my love for this book. An agreeable book but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone I liked.I picked this up on Friday intending to read 50 pages or so and I wound up reading well over half the book in one sitting. I don't see what purpose tAll of those answers breaking the fourth wall and appearing to address the reader were actually directed towards Lorna Sue. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
Other articles where Tomcat in Love is discussed: Tim O'Brien: …new turn with publication of Tomcat in Love (1999), a nuanced comic novel about the search for love, and July, July (2002), whose disillusioned characters gather for a college class reunion. A narrator you love to hate, dark humor, lots of great wordplay. It's unnerving in a way that I'm having trouble describing (just like some parts of The Lake of the Woods chilled me in some fundamental way that I still can't unpack, years after reading it). by HarperCollins Publishers I laughed and laughed at both the situations Thomas Chipperling found himself in but also just at the way O'Brien puts words together. When this goes awry, Tom plans to burn down the Zylstras' house in Owago. He had the appearance, if I may say so, of an ostrich attempting to swallow a toaster. In this book, I had a difficult time sympathizing with this character. Occasionally the narrator addresses the reader directly, referring to a broken relationship that supposedly unhinges "you" (the reader) because "your" husband ran off to Fiji with a redhead.
O'Brien always seems to dig into these nooks and crannies of the psyche that go unexplored by most authors. And then everyone got off, went their separate ways and all was quickly forgotten. From the Back Cover. The depiction of Lorna Sue, self-mutilating ex-wife, is handy, too. I think I might have been ok with this in short story form, but it was way too schlocky yuk-yuk for me at 368 pages. At the end, Tom and Donna move to a Caribbean island and live comfortably together. Strange book. He is an amazing writer. O'Brien always seems to dig into these nooks and crannies of the psyche that go unexplored by most authors.
As time went on, I started to resent him a bit, I mean, I resented the author-because i had already recommended the book to a friend. But when his serial flirting finally drives his wife into the arms of a Florida tycoon, it is more than his fragile pride can stand, and he sets off in pursuit, with vengeance on his mind...All of those answers breaking the fourth wall and appearing to address the reader were actually directed towards Lorna Sue. He is such an offensive, buffoon of a man - you can't decide whether to hate him or invite him over for a glorious day of conversation. For many of O'Brien's characters, their Vietnam experience has indelibly shaped the entire rest of their lives - in this instance, there is a wartime component to the main character's adult psychosis but it is less clear that is the primary driver.O'Brien has a go at the unreliable narrator and delivers in full Nabokovian splendor. Tomcat in Love is a novel by Tim O'Brien, about the misadventures of a womanizing linguistics Professor, Thomas H. Chippering, originally published in hardcover by Broadway Books, in 1998.
Just silly. Tim O'Brien--acclaimed for his fiction about the Vietnam War--has now taken on the battle between the sexes with astonishing results.
Obsessive about the English language, his ex-wife Lorna Sue and ogling, yet not touching young women.Tim O'Brien matriculated at Macalester College. This writing was so scatter shot that I just couldn't get my mind into it.
(I note that the unreliable narrator is always someone who reveals himself to be increasingly loathsome as the story progresses, rather than the opposite.) Some parts are actualy very funny and obsessive.
He meets Mrs. Kooshof and falls in love. Anything that involves pretentious know-it-alls, Jesus complexes, and manic revenge vacations basically has me at its very first loquacious and inverted explanation. This is what I loved-he is that skillful a writer.Thomas H. Chippering is a man of many words. This we call memory.”“Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.” In other words, you'd like him to get it and then shut upThis was a roller coaster comedy with many more downs than ups.
It's unnerving in a way that I'm having trouble describing (just like some parts of The Lake of the Woods chilled me in some fundamental way that I still can't unpack, years after reading it).