Rumored to Exist
Press, Excerpts, and other mentions
Rumored to ExistPress, Excerpts, and other mentions |
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Here are the reviews from people on Amazon.com:
When I purchased this book, I was wholly unprepared. This book takes your conception of reality, twists it, bends it, and takes you for a very strange and very interesting ride. It's a fast and furious black comedy unsuitable for those with no appreciation for the absurd.
This is certainly the most bizarre book that I have read since _Catch-22_. Back then I was somewhere in Germany sitting in the driver's hatch of a main battle tank, hypnotized by the enchanting text. Now I'm sitting in the Republic of Djibouti somewhat dazed as if reading _Rumored_to_Exist_ had caused an ethereal brick to be slammed into the back of my psyche.
The twisted adventures of John Conner take unimaginable paths. Most readers would find it difficult to separate this fantasy reality from the hallucinogen-induced ramblings of an autistic author. I took all the facts presented at face value and was cursed with the feeling of anti-euphoria that aroused in me a personal feeling of complete freedom as the bottom dropped out of every roller coaster ride in this novel.
I was genuinely pleased that each of the 272 pages in this beast contained a new idea, a fresh scent, an alien aura. I could identify with John and found myself intimately acquainted with each of his friends in his convoluted life.
Before I picked it up, nothing like this book had ever entered my hands.
My life is better for reading it, but life for my colleagues has just taken a drastic turn for the worse.
This book is a complex and recursively spiraling journey through the mind of the author, refracted through the shattered lens of postmodern society. Plus it comes in handy bite-sized chunks!
The best of Konrath's books, "Rumored to Exist" is easy to pick up and read thanks to the engaging over-the-top depravity and general sensory overload of the sci-fi tinged text. And despite the fact that the "chapters," if you will, can often be less than a page long, this is a difficult book to set down, since anything can, and often does, happen, including the strangest things that you're likely to ever read.
This book is a new concept compared to Konrath's usual "fiction," in that it's a short series of seemingly related bookettes, almost like a long stream of consciousness that you can buy for cheap and read in one pass. I read this during the New York blackout, but I was in Chicago, and it hit the spot because it immersed me in another world, of a Navy dropout at the end of his rope, drinking mouthwash for alcohol and trying to think back as to what went wrong. It's like a good short story, but long enough that you feel like you got your money worth. You'll get more detail and depth about female sheep anatomy than you would in vet school. I also like how he tied it into his book Summer Rain, but also described another side of the demented Konrath world. This is great stuff and well worth the price. PS Jon, congrads on your recent win before the MA supreme court!
This is my favorite Konrath book. you can pick it up and open a page and read for a minute, and you get more out of it than if you read an entire Chuck Palahniuk book, which has very short sentences. These sentences are long and complicated and contain references to autopsy paraphrenalia and explosives and japanese monsters and obscure sexual practices. You will be amazed at the range of topics covered in "Rumored."
Clever, humorous and extraordinarily weird, "Rumored to Exist" jolts along with a supercharged cyberpunk writing style that's jam-packed with elements of tacky technology fetishism, rabid chunks of Fox TV's weeknight lineup, monster movies gone horribly awry, rewarmed and retwisted conspiracy theories, and--why not?-- horrifically ill-advised scientific research. Among other things. It's as if the Post-Modern Paul Revere from Richard Linklater's "Slacker" (the guy who drove around blasting the sidewalks with dark warnings via the monster PA system atop his car) was told to crack his knuckles and get to typing... pronto fella. And then he did. With relish.
The squeamish are advised to stay away. There are more fecal jokes here than in a ten-hour South Park marathon. The rest of you should crowd into this here tent and take your seat. The show's about to begin.
RUMORED TO EXIST (2002): Jon Konrath's latest novel is about UFO enthusiast/explosive/gun expert John Connor. I think the author got his main character's name from the TERMINATOR movies (Linda Hamilton definitely had better hair and bod in the second one). Anyway, here's an excerpt from the book: "There was something in her stare that told me uninterested. No, maybe lesbian. No, probably uninterested. Even after I drank two botttles of Nighttrain and listened to the Guns N' Roses song 'Nighttrain' a hundred times on repeat I didn't think I had a chance. Sometimes life makes you yearn for the days when the world was two minutes from a complete nuclear war and you could hope for Armageddon instead of worrying about how to live with yourself in the morning." Bascially, this book is NAKED LUNCH for the Generation X crowd or anyone, for that matter, that didn't make millions off of '80s cocaine sales and junk bonds. This book is a trip through reality without the politically correct, phony religious shit that's suppose to keep us blind. This novel is a crazy, fun and deadly meteorite through the modern world. Like the Seinfeld t.v. sitcom, this book is basically about nothing. But, hey, anything beats sitting and watching endless hours of FRIENDS with a wife who gets jealous everytime Courtney Cox wears a low-cut blouse. Oh, excuse me. I'm getting a little personal! But that's what this book does! WARNING: Rush Limbaugh fans should not read Konrath's book because it might cause you to actually think on your own. ----- --Todd Taylor, August 19, 2002.
Before it was a book, excerpts of Rumored to Exist were printed in several zines. They include:
Last updated
Monday, 12-Jun-2006
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