Lucky Wander Boy

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Original
Review: Saying this book is just about video games is like saying Moby Dick is just about whaling. Video games are just the medium that Weiss uses to explore his protagonist's search for meaning. The results are fascinating, original and pretty funny to say the least. Like other reviewers have said, as long as you know the basics about the classics such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong you don't need to be a video game guru to understand what Weiss is selling. I'd recommend this book pretty highly to anyone who likes to read original, thought-provoking novels.

BTW, for those of you that are interested in this sort of thing, the narrative flow reminds me quite a bit of Paul Auster's "City of Glass" or Samuel Beckett's "Murphy" - chaotic and random, but in a good way that keeps the reader off-balance. I know some people have problems with this style, but I personally enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Lucky Reader Girl
Review: The best novel I've read in a long time, Lucky Wander Boy is both a meditation on a cultural phenomenon (video games) and a metaphysical mystery. Gaming is a bigger industry than Hollywood, but few writers (Martin Amis is a notable exception) have bothered to examine this world of obsessive geeks and Japanese geniuses. Weiss writes with a true passion and understanding for the classic games, the boxy arcade wonders that ruled (or maybe ruined) my childhood. More importantly, he creates a protagonist, Adam Pennyman, who will survive in readers' minds long after the final page is turned.

Rating:
Summary: A little left field for my taste, but interesting
Review: There's a real emptiness to this book, no different from some of the Atari 2600 games described within. The video game exposes were fascinating, though, and the story entertains for awhile. Unfortunately, the main character lacks the basic redeeming qualities that make readers care about him. In the end, you almost want the guy to fail because of his shallow outlook and slacker-like qualities that he should have outgrown as he approaches thirty. And the abstract, readers-pick-your-own ending left a lot to be desired as well, at least in my opinion. "Lucky Wander Boy" is extremely unique, but the characters have a fly-by-night feel that leaves the story hollow.

Rating:
Summary: Takn' me back...
Review: This book really did it for me. Every once in a while, a book comes a long that gives you back a version of your own life, but stretched and twisted in a way that tells you things about yourself that you never noticed before, and that's what Lucky Wnader Boy did for me. The thing is, I haven't played videogames for years, but that didn't matter. Lucky Wander Boy did it for me, both as a quest story, a messed-up love story, and an argument for why those games were way more important that I ever imagined!

Rating:
Summary: Riffing on the Meaning of Life--Gen X Style
Review: This occasionally clever debut is yet another riff on familiar material: Gen-X angst, the go-go years of the dot.economy, and the Search For Meaning-with the hook of "classic" arcade games to give it a little zest. The protagonist is Adam Pennyman, a cynically intelligent, average looking, slackeresque, 20-something guy, who we first meet in Poland, where he works for an American video production company. A coworker there introduces him to the MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) program, which allows him to rediscover and play all the classic video games of his youth for free. Soon thereafter, he returns from Poland with a stunning girlfriend and sets up in LA as a lowly copywriter for a production company touting their synergies as a lure for venture capital money.

As he settles into this vapid job, Pennyman's obsession with the arcade games of his youth grows, leading him to start writing a book called "The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments". Sections from it are the most entertaining portions of the book, as Weiss skillfully creates psuedo-intellectual analyses and decodings of "meaning" hidden in these old games. Pennyman's entries show that he views these old games, such as Pac-Man and Frogger, as emblematic of a purer, more innocent time. While the classic games represented an abstract philosophical world, contemporary video games strive for realism, leaving nothing to the imagination. All of this is emblematic to Pennyman of the ugliness of the cultural landscape at the end of the millennium.

For the first half of the book, Pennyman is a reasonably sympathetic schmuck. But over time, his tendency to whine and rail against authority, combined with laziness, selfishness, judging, and dogmatism grows increasingly unpleasant. Paralleling this, his obsession starts focusing more and more on an obscure game called Lucky Wander Boy, which he played briefly as a youth before it disappeared. The descriptions of the game are awfully fascinating, as it features an incredibly simple first level, an incredibly surreal second level with seemingly no purpose or end, and a third level which no one ever seems to have reached. It quickly becomes apparent that the novel is more or less structured as the game is, growing more and more abstract, and in part/level three, the ending presents itself in four iterations, all named "Replay". On the whole, the book is more entertaining for style than substance. Weiss's writing is sharp and snappy, but he doesn't have a whole lot new to say about disaffected obsessives, and dotcom's have already been satirized to death much more effectively than here. The video game hook is the one thing it's got going for it, but honestly, unless you also grew up in arcades and trying to master the Intellevision disc controllers, it's unlikely to resonate very deeply at all.

Rating:
Summary: Riffing on the Meaning of Life--Gen X Style
Review: This occasionally clever debut is yet another riff on familiar material: Gen-X angst, the go-go years of the dot.economy, and the Search For Meaning-with the hook of "classic" arcade games to give it a little zest. The protagonist is Adam Pennyman, a cynically intelligent, average looking, slackeresque, 20-something guy, who we first meet in Poland, where he works for an American video production company. A coworker there introduces him to the MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) program, which allows him to rediscover and play all the classic video games of his youth for free. Soon thereafter, he returns from Poland with a stunning girlfriend and sets up in LA as a lowly copywriter for a production company touting their synergies as a lure for venture capital money.

As he settles into this vapid job, Pennyman's obsession with the arcade games of his youth grows, leading him to start writing a book called "The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments". Sections from it are the most entertaining portions of the book, as Weiss skillfully creates psuedo-intellectual analyses and decodings of "meaning" hidden in these old games. Pennyman's entries show that he views these old games, such as Pac-Man and Frogger, as emblematic of a purer, more innocent time. While the classic games represented an abstract philosophical world, contemporary video games strive for realism, leaving nothing to the imagination. All of this is emblematic to Pennyman of the ugliness of the cultural landscape at the end of the millennium.

For the first half of the book, Pennyman is a reasonably sympathetic schmuck. But over time, his tendency to whine and rail against authority, combined with laziness, selfishness, judging, and dogmatism grows increasingly unpleasant. Paralleling this, his obsession starts focusing more and more on an obscure game called Lucky Wander Boy, which he played briefly as a youth before it disappeared. The descriptions of the game are awfully fascinating, as it features an incredibly simple first level, an incredibly surreal second level with seemingly no purpose or end, and a third level which no one ever seems to have reached. It quickly becomes apparent that the novel is more or less structured as the game is, growing more and more abstract, and in part/level three, the ending presents itself in four iterations, all named "Replay". On the whole, the book is more entertaining for style than substance. Weiss's writing is sharp and snappy, but he doesn't have a whole lot new to say about disaffected obsessives, and dotcom's have already been satirized to death much more effectively than here. The video game hook is the one thing it's got going for it, but honestly, unless you also grew up in arcades and trying to master the Intellevision disc controllers, it's unlikely to resonate very deeply at all.

Rating:
Summary: A Triumph!!!!!!!!
Review: This perfectly paced novel starts out appealing to a small segment of the population - 30-something men who obsessed over video games in their youth. It immediately and exponentially expands its breadth to cover a wide range of subjects - Darwinian hierarchy, gender relations, popular culture, entertainment, hot chicks -- in a way that will appeal to almost any thoughtful reader today. Insightful but not preachy, intellectual and literary, but not pedantic, uproarious, but highly self-aware of the insanity of one man's destructive video game obsession, this page-turner reads like a wafer-thin piece of chocolate that leaves you sated nonetheless. I remember beating the heck out of woebegone nerds like Adam Pennyman in my long-lost youth. Now I can't get enough of them.

Rating:
Summary: put down the joystick!
Review: This was a very good and very funny book about a man's obsession with a weird fictional video game. I read it in one sitting and the ending was great.

Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly entertaining!!!
Review: Thoroughly entertaining, laugh out loud funny, one of my favorite fiction reads in years! BD Weiss has woven together a refreshingly raw, fast paced, comic exploration of Hollywood pretense, video game geekdom, sex, venture capital, and more, all as we follow Pennyman in his struggles to determine his own raison de vivre.

Rating:
Summary: A Fresh New Voice
Review: Though I waxed nostalgic about my video gaming youth throughout Lucky Wander Boy, D.B. Weiss's story easily transcends the gaming culture and is certain to resonate with a wide audience. Weiss's brilliant style and narrative pace enable him to synthesize volumes of video game research with an intelligent, humorous and well crafted story. D.B. Weiss is extremely funny and you are certain to laugh out loud at his irreverent and often twisted sense of humor. Enjoy.