Customer Reviews
Phenomenal.
When I was ten, I read "In Just-" from Cummings' _Chansons Innocentes_. It changed the way I lived, thought and wrote from that moment onward. Since then, I've been a devout fan of Cummings' poetry... yet, until 1996, more than 15 years later, I'd never read any of his prose. Then a friend lent me _The Enormous Room_.
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^MDespite what may have been said by previous critics, this is not a book about or against war. It's not a guilty diatribe of anguish and violence. Although it takes place in a french concentration camp during WW1 where atrocities are committed daily, Cummings doesn't waste words complaining. The focus and subject of this tale is the things he learned, the people he knew, the beauty he finds recollecting his experience in that place.
^M
^M I read _The Enormous Room_ in one sitting, and when I'd finished it I read it again. Slowly. It's gorgeous, it's funny, it's intelligent, and it's so damned big-hearted that it makes me feel like a gnat. A very happy gnat. And that's about the highest compliment I think I've ever paid a book.
^M
^M 'Nuff said. Read it.
must for cummings fans, but read the poetry first
The Enormous Room (1922) is the only novel written by e.e.cummings, is autobiographical with surreal interjections,^M and relates his experiences during the latersocalled first world war. Other than the title, which happens to be THE^M BEST NOVEL TITLE IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANUNKIND (TM) and most probably the universe in general, it^M has little to do with his poetry, the bulk of which was written later. The theme of distrusting authority, and the scornful^M commentary on humanunkind's constant attempt to disspear into its own asshole (that's Vonnegut, sort of, sorry),^M both of which i most admire in his poetry, can be found in the bud here. ^M ^M
^M This book deserves a 10, but because the poetry is even better, i cdnt! It yo own fault, edward!
Great, but not a classic.
Never more relevant than today, eighty-some years removed from World War I (to end all wars, ironically), this book deals with issues that nations still have not seemed to solved: fascist governments, disregard for due process, injustice in the name of expediency and national security. That the US quarantines Japanese-Americans twenty years after its first run only embarasses us; that eighty years later we still do the same thing breaks your heart.
Mr. Cummings writes in a sort of stream-of-consciousness first person, something on the order of Romantic prose mixed with his own style that is inimitably his own. A student of Cummings might be quick to see the parallel between his earliest poems and that evolution to his modern free verse, as taking place within this novel right before one's eyes.
Enjoyable stories, and Mr. Cummings and his friend are something of snobs, something of braggards even (becoming fluent in French after two weeks is extremely hard to believe). The annoyance quickly passes (and crops up again whever he mentions how much more evolved he is than other Americans) when he paints such vivid mental images of life in the enormous room, the ennui and absurdity of being held without due process, and the veritable Ellis Island of characters populating his new world.
A reader would do well to approach this book without reading the hyperbole of its back cover or the well-meaning but misguided praqises of some reviewers. This is a great book, but not a classic. Cummings is not a master novelist, which does not dimish his effort or take anything from his creative genius. Rather, it is much like falling into the trap of thinking a master in one form can be a master in another. Enjoy the reading, and marvel at ironic relevance it holds for us today.
Fred
