The laughter of strangersk book
I originally rated this one four stars and let it mellow in my mind before writing a review I m glad I did because it gave me time to reflect on why Laughter of Strangers is actually a five star masterpiece. The book of laughter and forgetting pdf See the first hundred pages or so are almost a traditional narrative where Sugar Willem Floures and his trainer Spencer struggle with the aging fighter archetype the stark realization that time is running out for their livelihood and in response cook up a publicity stunt where Willem admits to murdering someone in a blackout induced rage Only it didn t really happen hence the term publicity stunt. The book of laughter and forgetting book The book had me on this hook alone Then it deviated into an identity crisis or at least I thought it deviated as Floures did battle inside his mind with one version of himself after another Indeed I felt something was lost initially with this slide into existential white noise until the gravity of these words truly sunk in You can be whatever you want to be You can change whatever you want to change. Please don't be a stranger whose laugh Sugar Willem Floures is a guy you feel sorry for not in the same way that one roots for the underdog Rocky Balboa Where Rocky was a never was Willem is a guy who was on top for several decades smashing every contender and tomato can boxing slang thrown his way He had his time and he s having trouble letting go. The book of laughter and forgetting pdf Cameron Pierce was right to call this the weirdest boxing novel ever written But Michael Seidlinger managed to siphon some genuine soul from himself into this work and he should be commended for it English Not a novel written for the masses Starts as an existential boxing story and swerves into Beckettian territory midway through In fact if you ve read Beckett s The Unnamable and survived it you re most likely to love this novel like I do because it s written in an easier language and uses boxing as a way to anchor itself unlike Beckett who takes a deep dive into complete abstraction. The laughter of strangerse lyrics THE LAUGHTER OF STRANGERS is as much a novel about identity as it is about boxing It spoke to me particularly loud because I don t have any cultural or racial anchors to my identity either being a straight white man from a Catholic upbringing you know If I claim any of this as my heritage of any of this it pretty much makes me a neo nazi I ve boxed for several years and understand the troublesome relationship of identifying to something that destroys you It s very well illustrated by Michael Seidlinger. Book the laughter of strangers review I wouldn t recommend this book to everybody but it ll find its way to you if you re meant to read it English Author gives 5 stars to his own book AKA going twelve rounds with self indulgence English As an ex boxer I felt this book of 12 rounds of rumbling in the mental psychoses of WILLEM FLOURES a onetime wunderkind now aging pugilist We come to meet him as he is losing his abilities the always present worry of every boxer in the ring taking unnecessary punches losing the motivation to train In short he is fast turning into a HAS BEEN So the novel reads like a poetic Diary of his thoughts n musings Almost reads like a fight itself jabbing prose floating negative experiences like a bee Doubts n worries come against the brutality of a sport that maybe oughta be BANNED for real Butt FLOURES has survived it for decades And now has just lost an important fight to another up n comer as the book opens Signaling the End And this is a problem because its an END he is not ready for What boxer ever is Sugar Ray Robinson Leonard and Ali the list is long all who stayed one punch too long in the ring In fact Floures is named SUGAR WILLEM FLOURES in the tradition of the SWEET boxing SCIENCE of those other legendary SUGARS Because he was OH SO SWEET wit his Southpaw punches once Now his MIND MEMORY is going Or is it Hard to tell for him sometimes Floures knows one thing for sertain he doesn t wannabe LAUGHED at by an audience full of STRANGERS who show up for Blood He feels that existential crisis to his bones Yet he can t bring himself to admit it s over for him He doesn t have it any Butt what would he be without SELF PITY huh As Floures says himself I dont make sense as a Fighter This novel is also a social commentary on the sport itself how its filled wit LIES to promote peep the plan Floures and his Manager SPENCER devise to hype the rematch wit X the CHEATING BOUGHT Judges Years ago this joint may have been in the pages of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED written by GEORGE PLIMPTON or NORMAN MAILER hell or even HUNTER S THOMPSON It feels GONZO in some respects BOXING NOIR comes to mind as well Its a Raw Brutal insider look at a MAN who once WAS and is now no longer IS and the Desperation he feels as it all seems to be slipping away like a DUCKED BLOW Read this potent powerful book by MICHAEL SEIDLINGER The DECISION is in your hands English The Laughter of Strangers by Michael J Seidlinger is a boxing novel published by Lazy Facist Press. The book of laughter and forgetting author Now I will admit I ve never read Seidlinger and if you re in the same boat you re doing yourself a huge disservice The novel revolves around Willem Sugar Floures an aging boxer who loses a match that shakes him to his very core The plot follows him and his inner thoughts as he trains for the rematch Most boxing movies end at the rematch and that s about it No not this book. Please don't be a stranger whose laugh Selidlinger drags through the reader headfirst into Floures frazzled psyche and world of doubts This book is a thorough heartfelt examination of identity and what it means to us Floures steps into the ring to fight himself and solidify who he is The problem is once he becomes unsure of who he is as a person and a fighter his whole world begins to unravel. Literature fiction the laughter of strangers book The Laughter of Strangers is a harrowing account of one boxer s descent from the spotlight but also an emotional fight for identity and one of the best books of 2013 English
MICHAEL J SEIDLINGER is the Filipino American author of The Body Harvest Anybody Home and other books He has written for among others Wired Buzzfeed Thrillist Goodreads The Observer Polygon The Believer and Publishers Weekly He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult Kettle Pond Writers Conference and Sarah Lawrence You can find him at michaeljseidlinger.
Kindle The Laughter of strangers book com MICHAEL J SEIDLINGER is the Filipino American author of The Body Harvest Anybody Home and other books He has written for among others Wired Buzzfeed Thrillist Goodreads The Observer Polygon The Believer and Publishers Weekly He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult Kettle Pond Writer s Conference and Sarah Lawrence You can find him at michaeljseidlinger.
The laughter of strangers book pdf com site_link SUGAR WILLEM FLOURES That s a name I built from the ground up I wasn t the first to systematically climb the ranks beating the sugar out of everyone I had known to be inferior leaving only the sour taste of defeat my claim forever being I am the greatest I can still hear it now In the silence of this locker room blood drying on my face I can still hear those words And I was I was the greatest JAB LEFT HOOK JAB LEFT HOOK RIGHT HOOK JAB STRAIGHT TO THE BODY JAB JAB POWER SHOT STRAIGHT POWER SHOT STRAIGHT UPPERCUT And then a voice says Sugar you are no longer sweet with the science The Laughter of StrangersI ve never been a boxing fan I m not sure I ve ever even watched a boxing match in my life However I ve read enough Seidlinger to know that this was going to be anything but a normal boxing novel Not that I don t think boxing fans couldn t get into it but the base concept of a universe where boxers fight different versions of themselves in order to who is going to be the ultimate representation of themselves is certainly not what an ordinary boxing fan would expect Seidlinger is really on top of his game on this one Possibly one of his most strangest works this book is slippery magnetic and fascinating It s a bit challenging to pin down but I think you have to expect that when it s related by a character who is losing himself English A novel just as much about boxing as society media mental illness and the darkest aspects of the human psyche The narrator Willem Floures is a fighter who may be past his prime and floundering towards doomsday but the real intrigue in the novel comes in the notion that Willem Floures isn t the only Willem Floures there s impostors everywhere A larger story is at play here than just a desire to be champion remain champion or even just win another fight As the narrator loses his grip on reality the story becomes claustrophobic but the skill of the author pushes the text forward compellingly into an intriguing mix of gritty noir reality and lucid nightmare Looking forward to from the author English There is a darkness in this tantalizing novel a noir underworld or underbelly quality that is infused in the prose To be honest I was put off by the idea of a novel about boxing and then reading the first five or ten pages I was drawn in then immediately HOOKED The protagonist William Flores possibly past his prime was floundering in relatable yet also uncharted waters There is an inherent structure to the work that mimics boxing or a ring and Seidlinger brilliantly displays his knack for the echoes that drive the fractured narrative forth am I being laughed at Who is laughing at me These ghosts or demons weave the novel among the physical the metaphysical and the philosophical worlds This is not an easy topic to write about a protagonist who is losing his perspective and Seidlinger does so admirably He is an author to not only take notice but I eagerly await his next release English The Laughter of Strangers written by Michael J Seidlinger is a tough book that zips stings and burns The prose floats like a butterfly but the content stings like a bee The staccato style of the language and writing contributes to an overall unease an anxiety a desperation that permeates the entire text and can make the reader unnerved and uncomfortable at the very least More please But the narrative strategy is only the beginning It seems that Mr Seidlinger s novel takes pleasure in dancing and flirting with psychosis and madness It is the laughter that you hear It is the laughter that you fear It is the laughter that Sugar hears the laughter that Sugar fears The laughter of which we wonder if it really even exists or if it exists as the paranoia of Sugar s crushed and devastated mind The laughter is often portrayed as troubling for Sugar and the reader will find Sugar obsessing over and over again about this laughter a representation and reflection of his slipping grip on reality What causes Sugar s psychosis What causes his mental instability There are many causes He is a burnt out boxer that would explain a few things brain damage being one of them I think it s safe to make that assessment due to the intensity of the language used phrases such as beating the s out of myself or the multiple references to violence and self violence clearly something went wrong for this boxer Like things can go wrong with us at any moment You cannot expect a fairy tale with this narrator But other things contribute as well Pressure need not always be a physical pressure the pressure to always be the best can be just as crushing The pressure of having to stay at the top the pressure of the media the pressure of trying to perfect your skill and talent and to not incur the laughter of the strangers your audience people we should loathe but paradoxically look toward for some kind of nonexistent comfort I think that could drive anyone insane if they are put in that situation long enough It represents the dangers of forced self consciousness how that resembles torture in some ways no different from taking an uppercut or a blow to the stomach I would describe this novel as an experimental psychological thriller with a touch of the speculative The novel s pacing is fast like a thriller with deep immersion into the consciousness of the main character cut apart only by the narrative structure and strategy of interspersing subtitles so to speak among the actual flow of the text Aside from the structural originality of this experimental thriller the novel s structure with the subtitles also reinforces the theme of psychosis There comes a point where it almost seems as if the subtitles are an extension of Sugar himself of this I speaker but the effect is that of a split discussion it is that of schizophrenia This would make sense when thinking about the novel s obsession with the unstable self the philosophical idea that there is no stable I It is never perfectly clear whether characters like X are really real or simply represent the fragmented self of Sugar The novel pushes the philosophical unstable self the unstable I idea further however by focusing not on the instability of the I pronoun but on the names themselves such as Dynamite and all those personalities imply The way that Mr Seidlinger weaves in the various personalities or anti personalities or separate personalities is chilling and complicated at the very least It takes a certain grit to write like this It takes a certain rawness but an understanding of what it means to truly experience pain but simultaneous determination I myself am jealous of writers that can tackle something so blood and guts This book is not fine wine this is undistilled vodka capable of knocking you out in a single blow While that in no way implies that this Metamodern work isn t fine art one would do well to praise this novel not on its attention to beauty as we traditionally define it but beauty defined as a deep understanding of what pushes us over the brink what drives us over the edge The answer that Seidlinger provides is not an easy one or one that is easy to swallow It seems that society itself coupled with an uncontrollable internal drive is what pushes us into self destruction The book asks seriously the following philosophical question why is it in our nature to want to destroy ourselves to run ourselves raw and ragged before we ve even fully grasped the significance of what it is we have done or want to do Why do we in Seidlinger s words want to beat the s out of ourselves This almost seems to imply an unredeemable quality that drives the human species forward while simultaneously self destructing For people that struggle because they push themselves to their breaking point whether pushing their mind beyond human endurance or pushing their bodies beyond human endurance like Sugar this book will highly resonate The book is in a sense a rough and raw manifesto on what it means to push yourself so hard that you literally collapse and fall apart because you cannot take any Amazingly though there is a kind of freedom and liberation that comes from this type of pressure of pushing one s boundaries much the way Seidlinger s narrative strategy pushes certain expectations of the novel or the thriller that even though one of the conclusions of this book is highly troubling and disturbing the idea that humans with an intense drive eventually push themselves toward self destruction it seems to be the only way that a fully realized human can truly live This is one of the deepest existential concepts to come out of the novel It isn t just about how unstable the I self is it is about the existential push the drive the determination that exists in all of us and whether or not we allow that to liberate us or splinter us into factions of disconnected personality essentially an incomplete self In a beautiful turn of events however the novel ends with the biggest sucker punch of them all what really liberates us connection to the outside world what we all crave and the power of being appreciated for who you are but gently genuinely I will not give the ending away but it is a satisfying ending to a story that has run itself dog tired trying to please the audience Read this book if you want a good clean punch to the head If you want to understand the darkness and emptiness that is the human heart but also the passion that burns within all of us read this book It is highly original and in fact I don t know where to fit this book on the continuum of modern or even classic literature because it is uniquely its own That is of course always a good thing for an experimental novel The closest relative to this novel is probably Burgess and his novel A Clockwork Orange where both novels think seriously about violence But while Burgess s book is a scathing satire on the pointlessness of violence and our attraction to it Seidlinger s novel focuses on the untamed and metaphysical violence that exists within the violence that exists within your own soul your own mind and how that can either hurt or hinder you depending on what you choose Indeed read this book if you want to uncover the psychosis that can push you over the brink to destabilize yourself and your personalities To split you apart Read it if you want to uncover the mysteries of raw passion of brute force and how it can seduce even the toughest fighter The results are not always good but you might finish with the ability to fight the best fight of your life which can only come through sacrifice and perseverance Such a story can only come from a writer who has lived such a life of determination and passion and all the trouble that brings I imagine Mr Seidlinger would agree with this claim English This one is a knockout punch to the brain It s a novel about a boxer who fights alternative versions of himself in order to stay relevant and simultaneously an extended meditation on identity ego and the process of keeping all of things from collapsing in on themselves It s the best of Seidlinger s published novels an excercise in the intensity of a sustained voice There s an element to it almost like a Greek chorus commenting on and interpreting itself except the chorus also emerges from within Seidlinger s voice Even though it s about boxing it s kind of not about boxing at all And that s what makes it interesting English
.
