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Rating: 
Summary: The Seventies Were More Than Sex and Drugs.
Review: "Honeymooners" purports to be a novel about the 1970s: it depicts two hard-driving art students, Ernie Ball and Maxime Henry, as they try to out-do each other in the sex-n-drugs department. Well, that's a loser's game for them both. Sometimes this book, which reportedly was fashioned out of newspaper clippings that yellowed with age and neglect in first-time author Kinder's basement for over twenty-five years, strikes an especially responsive chord, as when Ball and Henry head out onto the famed Palo Alto Boulevard for some of the Bay Area region's famed Elderberry Wine and end up having a confab with Anne Waldman, Wendell Berry, and Floyd Salas (three "real life" writers with rich Bay Area histories). But maybe it's just me and my indomitable affection for San Francisco, the MFA program at Stanford under good old Wally Stegner, and my sense that things were as good as they've ever been then. Maybe it's just my time as an architectural intern at the Speer Office Building during the Nixon administration. But I can't reconcile this dark, and somewhat irresponsible, vision of the seventies with my own memories of those joyous times. We were helping to save the world from so many menaces, from Moscow to Mozambique, and here were a bunch of irresponsible "artists" sitting on the avenues of Palo Alto--making fun of us. It was hard to take then and now. Chuck Kinder shows some glimmerings of talent. And my wife's voice shook with emotion as she read this book to me--for I am now, yes, a BLIND architect! Robbed of my passion and my profession, I sit in darkness and am read to, by my dear forbearing wife. Her voice shook with emotion--with miscellaneously endowed chuckles, with brief chortles from deep in her esophagus, with rude exclamations using the lips. I sat in my darkness and listened as the story unfolded. In the end we quarreled, and before she issued her customary scream and fell into her customary faint, she suggested that I was an old fogey who could never understand such things. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps in that respect, too, I am blind. But I urge you to try "Honeymooners."
Rating: 
Summary: The Jerry Lee Lewis of American Letters
Review: A raunchy, raucous romp by America's King of Rockabilly writers. It's about the desperate sweetness of artistic attempt and letting the dark angel out, something seemingly necessary in certain neighborhoods of life. Contains a lot of Chuck's trademark bluesy lyrical notes and some of the funniest writing I've ever read anywhere by anybody. The scene where our two heroes are held captive in their car by a dog is by itself well worth the price of a hardback or two. So, Good Golly Miss Molly, Great Balls of Fire, there's a Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On. Take a chance on this book. It's a rare treat.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amusing Tale Full of Dysfunctional Characters
Review: Chuck Kinder's Honeymooners is an amusing tale of two writers whose lives strip away the "glamour" of the hard drinking writer a la Ernest Hemingway. Ralph and Jim are likeable losers, involved with and married to, women who barely manage to put up with them. The novel is rather unconventional and the narrative moves forward on its own pace, providing amusement all the way. If you enjoy a humorours novel that is a little different, give this one a try. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious!
Review: I was so torn while reading this book. I wanted to read it slowly, savoring each line of hilarious dialogue--but I wanted to turn the pages as quickly as I could, because I couldn't wait to find out how each character fared in the end. On the last page, I wasn't dissappointed. Chuck Kinder's characters are wonderful, and every word they say is startlingly real and hilarious. This is one of those rare books in which you honestly come to LOVE each character, root for him or her, and want to pick them up and brush them off when they're down. (Which tends to be most of the time, the but you'll have to smile just the same.)
While the novel initially struck me as very "male," Kinder's females are incredibly genuine and undeniably lovable.
This is a wonderfully smart and entertaining book.
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Summary: These characters put the FUN in dysFUNctional
Review: It took a while to finish this one but I'm glad I did. The novel focuses on the perilously decadent lives of Ralph and Alice Anne. Crafted in the dialectical tradition of the "Honeymooners" television show of old, this contemporary story extracts the dark, vile, highly addictive nature of its characters and their friends. Ralph and Jim are best friends, college professors and writers, whose lives spirals from one disaster to the next as they move through life with no rules no boundaries and a very limited future. Kinder has written a story of drug induced drunken debauchery that is both comical and loathsome at once. His writing is well paced and clear. "Honeymooners" is an overall enjoyable read that highlights the irreverent imagination (or actual life) of a talented author. This is my first read by Kinder and I'm not disappointed.
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Summary: Booze and love making
Review: Ralph is married to Alice Ann and plays on the side. Jim was first married to Judy and divorced because of his impotence. He is now married to Lindsay and plays around. Alice Ann plays around. Lindsay used to play around an awful lot before marriage. All these characters do, is drink. About once on every one of the 358 pages of this book. And, of course, they smoke pot every day. The main action plays seventeen years after all of them first got married. By now they should all be dead of various failures of internal organs. All this action is repetitive throughout the book. Furthermore, the characters change in mid stream. Lindsay, she of the one night stands, all of a sudden is the faithful wife. The book is billed as "wildly comic". That it certainly is not - unless you think it is fun to watch four people destroy themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: what has happened to the novel?
Review: The first 100 pages read like Beavis 'n Butthead do Writing. Huh. Huh huh. Then Kinder shows his stuff, not unlike the not unusual not untalentless nonpeople who spend years sustaining each other on a vague notion they call literary. And he "teaches" writing. Oy vay. Why can't he write a simple simile without using a double not for flourish? This book was just plain annoying.
That this was a New York Times notable book is clear evidence that the literary/academic complex wants to rule "art" in America. Bah.
Rating:
Summary: Rambling and Uninteresting
Review: There's no plot to this book, which would be fine if the book was populated with interesting characters. It isn't. The characters aren't likable or interesting. Getting through this book was a challenge and became purely a mechanical exercise. I'm irritated that I could have read several good books in the time it took me to wade through this one.
Rating:
Summary: Humor - a lost art in contemporary literature
Review: This is not the sort of book I usually read. The author is male. The setting and time are ones that don't generally interest me. The characters (in their real lives) were obviously larger than life. So what else was there to say? In a word -- PLENTY. This book surprised me again and again. The women, drawn as bold and savvy as can be written. The setting and time intrinsic to the story, but not dated, for I was there -- right there -- as I followed this story along. And sure, the real life people from whom the characters were based were larger than life by the time I heard about them, but this book gave me a chance to meet and feel for them in a way I never could, reading about then in non-fiction. Gave me a chance to know them in a way. To suffer, to triumph, to cheer, to take comfort.
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