![]() ![]() McCann hails from Dublin, but he lives in New York and his novel is a North American pastiche, alluding to Gatsby, Leonard Cohen, Denis Johnson, Ondaatje, McCann is a great optimist, evident when he has Tom Waits on a 1974 jukebox in an Irish bar. Heavy metal has no home in NYC.Īlmost all characters are good or want to do good, despite hellish situations. Childhood prayers sound like jazz, computer keyboards sound like jazz, pages of Joyce read aloud sound like jazz, a flute sounds like jazz, the street sounds like jazz, a hooker in a neon swimsuit is even named Jazz. ![]() ![]() ![]() Let the Great World Spin often repeats the word jazz, possibly echoing Toni Morrison's New York City novelĬoming Through Slaughter. a hooker hanging herself in the prison showers, pimps beating the monk. Crucial events occur offstage and are told to the reader, e.g. Threads link the disparate characters, but there is a risk of voices just talking and talking and talking. U.S.A., the great John Dos Passos trilogy, perhaps like a fitful radio jumping stations, changing like the city itself. (I refuse to say the city is the main character I loathe that notion.) The book has many voices, perhaps like The novel keeps moving to new characters - a hooker, a judge, an artist, a subway rider - so in effect there is no main character. He marries a blonde heiress, returns to Dublin (a reverse diaspora) and makes heaps of money riding the Irish dot-com wave. Materially, the non-Christ figure brother fares better. ![]()
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