Fredy Neptune

Rating:
Summary: More praise for FREDY NEPTUNE
Review: "Australia's best-known poet has surpassed himself: this entertaining, sprawling, serious novel-in-verse is the best thing Murray has ever written. His expansive colloquial free verse and eight-line stanzas-sometimes chewily irregular, sometimes conversationally fluent-hide their verbal subtleties in order to hook readers on character and plot . . . Fredy Neptune overflows with story: the roller-coaster stanzas stay clear and memorable." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Rating:
Summary: amusing, amazing, definitely worth it
Review: i would be less than honest if i said i was not daunted by the prospect of reading a novel in verse. many were the times when i had to reread passages to catch the drift. there was a considerable amount of aussie argot that needed getting used to. but i remember struggling at first with homer and the odessey( there is a striking resemblance to this ancient work in terms of this book's morality) and figured it was worth doing. the mother in law will teach you forbearance, laura is steadfast and truly honest. saving the best for last, the last book and indeed the last pages are a true climax to what you hoped would be the great end to this novel. have a go!!

Rating:
Summary: Even more praise for Fredy Neptune
Review: Les Murray's name rolls off the lips with the likes of Homer, Milton, Ariosto, Brodsky, Walcott, Heaney, and even Spielberg. --The Village Voice

Les Murray writes writes with a verse free enough not to lull you into seasickness yet strong enough to grip you in its irony meter like the claw of an Ancient mariner and lead you at a pace somewhere between the calypso of Derek Walcott's "Omeros" and the foxtrot of Vikram Seth's "Golden Gate." ... A ripping good yarn. --Jonathan Levi, The LA Times Book Review

It is brilliant, it is awful ... Literature is an ax wielded against the frozen sea within us, Kafka wrote. Mr. Murray's ax is barbarous, but something has just cracked inside me. --Richard Eder, The New York Times

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Murray is one of the finest writers of English prose in existance and by far the best poet Australia has ever produced.

His works deserve to be read by a wider audience. He particularly developes themes with an antipodean perspective much suited to the trans-national nature of world communication.

A major work!

Rating:
Summary: the man with blank senses
Review: This is an odd book; even down to its dimensions.
It's taller than average...a good thing if you plan to travel with it. I dunno, some things just carry easier.

As for the content, all I can say is it sometimes carries the same tune as Bukowski in his rare "sensitive" moments, when the ugly monster disappears and is replaced by something far more palatable. I bought the book at a bookstore blowout, when all that was left were Road Atlas's, How To books and posters of various 'has beens' and 'what-nots'.

There it was, completely ignored on the shelf, and probably because as the title suggests, it's completely in verse.
It's not in rhyming verse though, which is a plus for those of us who are annoyed by musicals and slant rhymes.

One bit of irony is that while the book is about a man who has lost his ability to "feel", both literally and figuratively in some cases, it is extremely sensuous and is able to condense into one verse what a regular novel would take pages to resolve.

The book is dark, gritty and you can smell the stink of the various docks and ship holds and whores our hero meets on his travels.

Hell, I'm raving about it and I haven't even finished it yet. I take it with me while I'm sucking down coffee, and there are various markings and underlinings and cheap tea stains all over it; I suspect that I will destroy this book before I reach the final page, which is fine, because I really don't want it to end, which sounds rather childish, even sophomoric.

Whatever.

I'll be searching for more of Murray's work. I would give you a verse but it wouldn't do the whole any justice whatsover.
It sings like "The Man Without Qualities", and in fact has alot in common with that book. They just "feel" the same. I know, Bukowski, Musil? There's more, but I don't want to risk anymore comparisons.

Email me if you have nothing better to do with your time, and think you want to wrestle with idiots.

Jose[f] Olivo

Rating:
Summary: the man with blank senses
Review: This is an odd book; even down to its dimensions.
It's taller than average...a good thing if you plan to travel with it. I dunno, some things just carry easier.

As for the content, all I can say is it sometimes carries the same tune as Bukowski in his rare "sensitive" moments, when the ugly monster disappears and is replaced by something far more palatable. I bought the book at a bookstore blowout, when all that was left were Road Atlas's, How To books and posters of various 'has beens' and 'what-nots'.

There it was, completely ignored on the shelf, and probably because as the title suggests, it's completely in verse.
It's not in rhyming verse though, which is a plus for those of us who are annoyed by musicals and slant rhymes.

One bit of irony is that while the book is about a man who has lost his ability to "feel", both literally and figuratively in some cases, it is extremely sensuous and is able to condense into one verse what a regular novel would take pages to resolve.

The book is dark, gritty and you can smell the stink of the various docks and ship holds and whores our hero meets on his travels.

Hell, I'm raving about it and I haven't even finished it yet. I take it with me while I'm sucking down coffee, and there are various markings and underlinings and cheap tea stains all over it; I suspect that I will destroy this book before I reach the final page, which is fine, because I really don't want it to end, which sounds rather childish, even sophomoric.

Whatever.

I'll be searching for more of Murray's work. I would give you a verse but it wouldn't do the whole any justice whatsover.
It sings like "The Man Without Qualities", and in fact has alot in common with that book. They just "feel" the same. I know, Bukowski, Musil? There's more, but I don't want to risk anymore comparisons.

Email me if you have nothing better to do with your time, and think you want to wrestle with idiots.

Jose[f] Olivo

Rating:
Summary: Spare a thought for salt of the earth.
Review: This work, in its delicacy, unfolds me

Rating:
Summary: Odyssean Myth for the Twentieth Century
Review: `Fredy Neptune' is a rare thing. It is one of the great democratic novels of the twentieth century, paralleling `Ulysses' in its sense of the ordinary and reverence for the everyday. And like Joyce's masterpiece, it is Homeric in its sense of suffering, exile and homecoming. Yet the homecoming, in `Fredy Neptune', is more psychological and existential than geographical.

The main character, a German Australian sailor witnesses the murder of a group of Armenian women during the Turkish genocide of 1915. He suffers profound moral shock and loses all sense of feeling, both bodily and psychologically. After rescuing a Jewish man and a handicapped boy from Hitler's racial hygiene program, Fredy stumbles across an idea that will heal his fragmented condition; he must `forgive the victim'. Why? This is Murray's response to current ethical imperatives. He can only heal himself, can only return from the traumatic seas of psychic dissociation, if he comes to terms with the voice of conscience. Fredy forgives the victims of history, who include Jews, women and Aborigines, for they linger like a moral irritant in his mind. Once he has forgiven them he begins to `pray with a whole heart' and the process of re-integration with his body begins.

Readers interested in Murray's other poetry will find 'Fredy Neptune' is resonant with his collection of autobiographical poetry `Killing the Black Dog', which also contains a revealing essay by the author. The parallels between `Fredy Neptune' and Murray's personal history are illuminating. `Fredy Neptune' is arguably one of the major works of 20c poetry.