- Paperback: 276 pages
- Publisher: Capricorn Publishing (29 Nov 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0975397044
- ISBN-13: 978-0975397046
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,461,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll feel angry, ecstatic, scared, sad. enlightened. You will feel the disturbingly-awesome, terrible glory of. life. There is nothing more fascinating than a desperate, yearning, misanthropic. humanist. For when he's done with you in the purgatory of Pleasant Hell you'll feel braver, wiser more alive and cleaner than you've ever been. None of which, of course, he intended. Just make sure you ask him not to take his shoes off.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Whom the gods would destroy,
By Martin Hayes (Preston, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pleasant Hell (Paperback)
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make promising." John Dolan has been a failure in life, but it might have turned out differently. He was born with buckets of raw talent, but talent must mature or it grows cloudy and turns sour. Dolan had all the disadvantages to be a literary success, as this memoir shows, so what went wrong?
He didn't grow up. He didn't master his ego and his rage. He failed to master the language. This is why Pleasant Hell is so uneven: Dolan lets words run away from him: soulless neologisms and clanking Latinate phrases land with a bump in amongst plainspoken English, and are expected to talk nicely; they don't. He allows literary allusions and the other paraphernalia of the woefully overeducated to intrude on the narrative. Worse, he gets the allusions wrong. Example: In describing someone sweeping a yard, with a broom (what else?), on a Saturday evening, Dolan writes: 'It was beyond stupid, beyond improbable. It was downright mythical--that Greek guy, begins with an "A", the one with the stables.' Does he mean Augeias? The point of the story, which is a legend, not a myth, is that Augeias was remiss in his stable duties. Not even Heracles had to labour quite so hard as Dolan's leaden prose. Occasionally, very occasionally, Dolan's trademark misanthropy and wit surface, and the poet in him rises from the dead. But not nearly often enough to prevent my toes curling in embarrassment.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A book for Exile readers, otherwise not much point.,
By
This review is from: Pleasant Hell (Paperback)
I bought this book because I like the work that John Dolan and others have done at The Exile. Given John's background this was never going to be a majorly hyped blockbuster and I did notice before buying that all the testimonials came from people associated with The Exile, not that a testimonial from Eduard Linomov should be taken lightly.I'm not sure that I learnt much about John from this description of his late teenage and college years. Portraying himself as a socially inept unwashed nerd with supurating feet doesn't seem to match the person who had enough conviction or perhaps hatred to find his living outside his homeland. Apart from his inability to find love and sex in California, in and around the City of Brotherly Love is enough to inflict lifelong complexes on anyone, but it really doesn't explain much. We get some glimpses of infatuation with causes, support for the IRA, sympathy with the SLA. Only occasionally do we get a glimpse of the knowledge accumulated and the intelligence of the young nerd, but the narrative then seems to deliberately wander away from that, preferring us to see the uncouth lout that is most teenage boys. In the end, this book is not about John Dolan, but does highlight some of the attributes that he is. Dolan's writings peel back the veneer, the myths, the romanticism of a subject and he presents material in a raw and often unpalletable manner to those with sensitivities. In this respect, Dolan is true to himself in stripping away the romanticism of growing up in 1970's California and leaving us grovelling in the dirt and poverty of the real people. Overall I like the writing style, but will probably have to read it again to discern much of the humour. Three stars for style, but no extra for content.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (23 customer reviews) 23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hellishly Pleasant,
By Tim Roessler, book lover - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pleasant Hell (Paperback)
The howls and shrieks of the negative reviews offer the most positive reasons for reading Dr. Dolan's novel, but they left out many of its other fine qualities. Above all, Pleasant Hell courageously and painfully honest. It's one of the first, true books I've read about my generation and about what it was like to grow up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is also beautifully written, as if Nabokov and Céline's literary DNA got spliced. It's often quite funny. And, unlike nearly other literary project, it reveals an amazing lack of vanity, right down to the author's jacket photo. In fact, Dr. Dolan is my new hero, our very own suburban Solzhenitsyn. Buy it. Read it. Make your friends buy it, too. This is a book that can't have too many readers.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The California loser as Cúchulainn,
By John Gorenfeld "John Gorenfeld" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pleasant Hell (Paperback)
Be warned: Wound a nerd and you create a monster. Poet Dolan's glorious meditation on the inner life of the outcast manages to make misanthropy feel fresh. No compromises or happy lessons here -- just dreams of Tolkien elf girls lost to a world whose pain is recorded in the stigmata of moldy karate uniforms, runny foot scabs and dog bites. An unconscionable perspective on the value of human life. I loved it.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Staggering,
By Billy Willy "Johnny" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Pleasant Hell (Paperback)
I inhaled Dolan's book in a single sitting, barring a few interruptions. While each individual page could theoretically be rationalized by the sympathetic humanist, the cumulative impact is amazing, nauseating. Dolan animates cowardly failure and youthful ignorance with no net at all. The freefall of tedium may remind one of personal history--if not, check your contempt and incomprehension at the door. Personally, the viscous bile of my life stuck in my throat, leaving me riveted, terrified and angry.
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