Diddle is a series of absurd, impossible, but faintly connected stories about immigrants living in the USA that will serve to deconstruct the "American Dream" mythos. Somehow each story typifies the experience of life for outsiders in the US, coupled with the impossibility of absolute acculturation. The book comprises a dozen short stories, each generated out of a line from the old nursery rhyme, laced with double entendres, multiple meanings and overlaps. These tales, written by a poet with a rich touch of language, question the very notion of identity and belonging, instead presenting the amalgamated state that most people are forced to live in.
Diddle
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Product Description
About the Author
Born in Edgbaston and raised in Clapham and Bolton, Daniel Staniforth is a writer, composer and teacher. His music recordings include works by Alchymical Muse, Luna Trick and Rebsie Fairholm, with whom he works regularly. Daniel writes poetry, fiction and literary analysis.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"Diddle" has a delightful, enviable concept: the jolly rhythms and absurd imagery of the innocent nursery rhyme linking modern American experiences that seem to be simple, but which are fraught with undercurrents. Things going on beneath the flow of other things.
There's a sharpness, a pleasing kind of uneasiness in all the stories, that I couldn't quite put my finger on. If I knew anything about music I might have looked for a few similes there, but I don't. Then I think I got it.
I found myself able to identify with many of the characters in these gem-like stories. They took me personally back to the time(s) I lived in America and knew that I never quite fitted in, no matter how hard I tried. There I was among the kindest, friendliest people in the world, yet I still didn't feel at ease. Dunno why, but it brought me a kind of sadness and loneliness, no matter how many friends I made.
I saw similar in many immigrants over there, who bumptiously told everyone how marvellously they had adapted, yet seemed to have an underlying a kind of world-weariness which became a cover for all sorts of agonies.
This is a fine little book, which works on many levels, and says many different things about immigrants and outsiders of all kinds.
I'm off to read it again. It's dead good.
There's a sharpness, a pleasing kind of uneasiness in all the stories, that I couldn't quite put my finger on. If I knew anything about music I might have looked for a few similes there, but I don't. Then I think I got it.
I found myself able to identify with many of the characters in these gem-like stories. They took me personally back to the time(s) I lived in America and knew that I never quite fitted in, no matter how hard I tried. There I was among the kindest, friendliest people in the world, yet I still didn't feel at ease. Dunno why, but it brought me a kind of sadness and loneliness, no matter how many friends I made.
I saw similar in many immigrants over there, who bumptiously told everyone how marvellously they had adapted, yet seemed to have an underlying a kind of world-weariness which became a cover for all sorts of agonies.
This is a fine little book, which works on many levels, and says many different things about immigrants and outsiders of all kinds.
I'm off to read it again. It's dead good.
Format:Paperback
Daniel Staniforth's Diddle is a string of tales drawing their essence - though only in the most abstract and inspirational sense - from the well-known nursery rhyme about the cat and the fiddle. Although it's only a short little book, it carries its weight in its sympathetic unfolding of human lives layered over a culture they cannot ultimately connect with. Written with generous measures of humour and sorrow, it introduces a parade of characters trying to make their way in the USA against the realities of cultural disparity, striving to build their personal castles from crumbled American dreams. As an Englishman who has spent many years living in the US, Daniel handles the displaced and the disconnected with an especially poignant sensitivity and understanding. Better known as a poet than a novelist, you never know quite what to expect when a poet turns to fiction. If this volume is anything to go by it looks like it might turn out to be his forté, as he has produced a sparkling, tantalising and hugely entertaining read.
What makes this series of loosely connected stories work so well is that it functions on so many levels simultaneously, being a light-hearted fun-poker of a book layered up like a multi-tiered wedding cake with different strata of meaning, symbolism, resonance and double entendre - sometimes presented with a flourish, sometimes with all the subtlety and shade of a cryptic puzzle. It's the kind of book you can re-read many times and spot new revelations and hidden subtleties each time.
What makes this series of loosely connected stories work so well is that it functions on so many levels simultaneously, being a light-hearted fun-poker of a book layered up like a multi-tiered wedding cake with different strata of meaning, symbolism, resonance and double entendre - sometimes presented with a flourish, sometimes with all the subtlety and shade of a cryptic puzzle. It's the kind of book you can re-read many times and spot new revelations and hidden subtleties each time.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seriously clever
5 Aug 2011
By Angela Webster
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I've read the author's work in the past, so I expected excellent wordplay and I got it. I've always avoided short stories in general because authors seem to use the format to depress or horrify the reader with the hopelessness of the human condition so I was a bit uncertain before starting this book but I'm glad I didn't let my misgivings stop me. It's extremely difficult to write something that's serious and worthy of thought while being funny at the same time but he's done it. Humorists in general seem to get silly for cheap laughs, but the laughs here are not cheap nor silly; they are real and extremely clever. Don't undervalue cleverness because it's something we should encourage in authors. I'll just add that I raced through this little volume and now I want more.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Diddle Hey Hey
30 July 2011
By Martha
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
A very old nursery rhyme (16th century England maybe) strings these 11 stories together, looping them back to an English home country - on a very long and elastic tether. Did I say funny? The stories are terrible. Grotesque. Tragic. Weird. Unsettling. Full of rifts and panic. And hilarious. And very very American. Each different tale could be located in no other nation.
But -like the rhyme's fragments that function as titles- the language too yanks a reader back. No American would use language like this - plunging out of the on-going rush of an unfolding tale like Judy's clown punch.
Only a poet who lives several lives can get us readers to hear and see this way. Take the trip with him.
--Martha King
But -like the rhyme's fragments that function as titles- the language too yanks a reader back. No American would use language like this - plunging out of the on-going rush of an unfolding tale like Judy's clown punch.
Only a poet who lives several lives can get us readers to hear and see this way. Take the trip with him.
--Martha King
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