Famous Builder

Rating:
Summary: Wildly Fresh
Review: I love this book. Paul Lisicky's exploration of his youthful obsessions is sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, sometimes both at the same time. It's as animated as anything I've read in years. If you're at all interested in innovations in creative nonfiction, this book is for you. Every sentence sparkles on the page. It deserves to be sung.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Social Vision
Review: Paul Lisicky expects a lot of his readers. He goes after his themes in subtle, crafty ways. Famous Builder doesn't wear its intellect on its sleeves as does the cool-boy, smarter-than-thou postmodernism of Franzen, Moody, Marcus, and Wallace, though its social vision is no less substantial, in spite of its frequently comic voice. Here is an America in which the promise of self-creation co-exists with the bewildering temptation to do yourself in. It's about what it's like to succeed in all the culturally approved ways and feel like an imposter at the same time. Famous Builder couldn't take place anywhere but in the U.S., a culture where the lines of status and class are constantly being revised, where no one is sure of who or what they are, and the newly minted live with the anxiety of losing it all. Of being "found out." Of ending up right back where they started. Or, worse, with less. "Who are you," asks the narrator, "if you've recreated yourself?" I haven't read such a deft book in ages. Somehow Paul Lisicky manages to dramatize these ideas with stunningly precise language, sympathetic characters, emotional depth, and an unrelenting drive toward clarity and generosity. This is a major leap after Lawnboy. I'm certain that Paul Lisicky is well on his way toward an exceptional future as a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: Sweet. Irreverent. Warm. A little crazed. And still these adjectives don't do justice to the accomplishment of this lovely book.

Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary!
Review: The most subversive thing that Famous Builder does is to retell family history from a queer perspective. Thus, the young narrator's painstaking journey toward an adult queer life is implicitly compared and connected to the father's movement up the social ladder. From Paul Lisicky's point of view, both are quintessentially American acts. How refreshing to read a book in which gay identity is not THE subject of the story but one of its narratives. Every reader will find an aspect of her story mirrored here, regardless of her background. I've come back to it again and again, always with something new to ponder.