Word: speedboat
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RENATA ADLER'S SPEEDBOAT is less a novel in the conventional sense than a series of journalistic sketches of contemporary life. The anecdotes and scraps of dialogue that make up the book are loosely linked by the device of a first-person narrator, but the storyteller offers so little commentary on her material that we develop only a vague awareness of her personality. The narrator's carefully maintained neutrality works largely to good effect in Speedboat. It saves the book from let-me-tell-you-what-it's-all-about pretentiousness. Adler presents a catalogue of images and events...
...narrative of Speedboat jumps around both in time and space as Jennifer Fain, a journalist, relates a series of stories about her past, her friends, her assignments, things she has read or seen. The vignettes, few more than a paragraph long, are juxtaposed with apparent disregard for the way we supposedly perceive reality. However, the jaggedness of the narrative is happily suited to the subject matter of Speedboat, life with "the jet, the telephone, the boat, the train, the television. Dislocations." The reader learns about the characters and events of the book the way Jennifer learns about them: through...
...meanwhile, emissaries of Qabus bin Said, 35, Sultan of Oman, were content merely to rent space on a 747. Of course, the plane was needed to haul off some of the Sultan's own purchases, including six custom-made Cadillac Sevilles, one Porsche, a 25-ft. ocean-going speedboat with trailer, and a Chevy truck. The merchandise seemed practical enough...
...teach H.B.A., or Hours by Appointment; that is, never." Students are awarded "Prior Life Experience" credits for such things as raking famous people's lawns. This may look like slapstick. But it sounds, to anyone who has brushed against academe, horribly true. Paragraph by paragraph, vignette by vignette, Speedboat hilariously builds an unsettling case: truth is slapstick. No wonder attentive, sensitive people begin to go weird: "A 'self-addressed envelope,' if you are inclined to brood, raises deep questions of identity...
...more common in philosophy than in fiction, and Adler's stories are more successful as illustrated lectures than as riveting narrative. It should be added that Adler is almost always a riveting lecturer. Like the legendary basilisk, she can look at a subject and turn it to stone. Speedboat is a cascade of smooth and shiny pebbles...