Customer Reviews

Sewer, Gas and Electric

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At the risk of expressing a monority opinion, I laughed out loud a lot of times reading this novel--one of the funniest things I've ever read. It's dense plot-wise, a la Condon, with characters reminiscent of his earlier stuff. But it's also torque-y a la Vonnegut. Somehow, Ruff "sees" people at their most primitive levels and describes them to a tee.

Situations arise that I'd love to have been able to think up myself. No wait a minute--I ~did~ while I was in college. *That's* why I liked this so much! Ah--understanding from writing reviews. I knew they were useful for something.

Istanbul!

Applause, applause...

I just finished reading Matt Ruff's "Sewer, Gas and Electric" and I wish he were here before me so I could give him a one-man standing ovation.

I picked this book up in an airport bookstore, having looked at it several times before. This time, I was caught - I could not resist the ghost of Ayn Rand in a hurricane lamp or the mutant great white nicknamed "Meisterbrau". Five hours later I was breathlessly reading the last page.

So what's good about it? The writing is funny without being condescending or slapstick. The philosophy is interesting for those of us who walked in off the streets without having bought the "Atlas Shrugged" ticket. The characters are amazingly fleshed out, and even the villains have redeeming qualities and sympathetic motives.

I loved Kite (the immortal amputee), the secret history of Disneyland and the vain attempts to kill Meisterbrau, when every knows that the best way to kill a mutant shark is to introduce it to the workings of Ayn Rand.

If you like your humor broad, your books thoughtful and your day weird, this book ought to do the trick.

Matt Ruff was obviously shaken from his eco-socialistic foundations upon reading Atlas Shrugged and decided (as so many people do) to defend his views against Ayn Rand's. He failed to do this effectively, succeeding only in pointing out the little inconsistencies and imperfections in the woman and her views. A better thinker would have met her with different arguments and I thought this was such a waste because the idea of the Rand Genie was brilliant. This is why I give the book three stars. Having said that, I must say that Ruff is an awesome writer. He has tremendous skill with words and an uncanny talent for plot imagination, especially from a comedic standpoint. [SPOILERS:] The guy's response to Meisterbrau's fin in the swimming pool and the scene where the world falls back onto Atlas' shoulders had me rolling on the floor with laughter. Worth a read just for the humor, but don't expect deep philosophical thought just because Ayn Rand's name appears on the back cover.

(Spoilers, beware!) Matt Ruff spins an almost Dickensonian texture in his futuristic views of New York, in his eccentric people, his monstrous superskyscrapers, his evil computer genius and henchmen. In fact, the book*s richness is its downfall, ideas are raised only to be lost in the byzantine plots. Two major plot lines twist around each other without quite connecting--Philo Dufresne, one of the last black men on earth, commands a pink-and-green sub, setting out to rescue the last ring-tailed lemurs on earth; and Harry Gant, who builds the mile-high buildings as well as Electric Negro servants, becomes the focus of a Disney computer*s hostile plans. The focus is ever shifting, somewhat disorienting. Odd details resonate like the elavator shafts of the monstrous buildings; plot points, such as a 181-year old woman, or a mutating shark who lives in Manhattan*s sewers, are left conviently unexplained. In truth I found the double plot confusing, even needless, despite the intriguing nature of the subs crew and mission, its non-violent terrorism. One major focus is the fact that the Black race has been wiped out by an unknown plague, but not an accidental one. This loss, of an entire people, is never fully plumbed, is offset by the creation of the Electric Negro, an android who is the perfect subservient, but proves to be far more insidious. Only the computer program the Eye of Africa gives any real sense of such a loss. The plot lines themselves wander, shift, jump, remininsce; more than once I had to backtrack to keep things straight. Worse, this book has the failing of an ambiguous ending of too many of its people. It is basically a *happy* ending, but is it wrong to ask what happened to the protagonists? In truth, the ideas could have and should have been broken up into two or even three novels; as it is, I get a glimpse of Grand amidst the Good.

Recipe: Start with parody, stir in madcap; search the surreal cupboard, add everything plus the kitchen sink; light on the spices, you don't want much depth; toss sloppily.

Result: An entertaining beach read with several tasty morsels (e.g. Abbie Hoffman trying to develop Ayn Rand's sense of humor), but you'll be hungry for some literary meat after an hour.

Although derivative of Stephenson and others who use the future to wildly satirize the present, Matt Ruff's "Gas, Sewer, Electic" is a lot of fun and a good, addictive read. The book manages to suck you into a world where random occurances that become a highly contrived (here it is not used derogatorily) plotline where shark-sightings, Earthquakes, the soul of Africa put on a computer and a green and pink polka-dotted submarine called "The Yabba-Dabba-Doo" not only are accepted, but actually make a modicum of sense. Yes, these things are funny. Yes, they're insane. But you'll laugh at them as you buy into them and find yourself enjoying the book.

This book took me awhile to finish because whenever I looked at it lying on my bedstand I'd think, "Do I care enough about this book to finish it?" After turning to other things, I'd end up picking it up again eventually, and when I was actually reading it, I enjoyed it well enough. It's clever and at times amusing. However, I didn't find the plot or the characters particularly compelling. I was confused by one of the other online reviewer's comments that this book was for Crowley and Helprin fans. I love both of those authors, and saw none of what I love about them in Ruff's book.

I totally enjoyed this homage to the wily genre of eco-thrilling, econo-dystopic futuristic sf. This book not only invoked Neal Stephenson's _Zodiac_ and _Snowcrash_, but also Terry Pratchett's entire _Discworld_ series. In addition to the loopy - and well-researched - plot, Ruff provides us with prose that dances dextrously across the page. He delights in writing well, which is almost as important as writing Big Original Thoughts.

I bought this book because of the hype on the back cover by Thomas Pynchon and Neal Stevenson. Won't make that mistake again. The plot is a contrived, boring, predictable rehash of the cyberpunk genre. The characterization wasn't even one-dimensional; characters in this novel were zero dimensional points executing brownian motion in a sea of murk. I haven't read a book with such a low level of character development since, say, I had the misfortune of reading some of L. Ron Blubbard's trashy space operas while stuck in a snowed-in airport. The closest thing to an amusing character is the disembodied Ayn Rand, though the author's self conscious debunking of her books was painfully boring, and of course it doesn't require much skill to develop the character of a well-known fruitcake such as Rand. The author seemed to be trying to pull off a "Snowcrash" in some places; there were also references to R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus" -in other places I was reminded a bit of Heinlein. There was even a "Moby Dick" reference tossed in for some reason (perhaps another tip of the hat to Snowcrash; it worked in *Snowcrash* but was horribly contrived in this book). Overall the pace of the story was choppy, the development predictable and contrived. I was briefly amused by the irony of the birthplace of the "Bad Guy" -but that wasn't worth the price of admission.

As a piece of marketing though, the book is a work of genius; it sucked me in like the mark I (and a couple of friends, as it turns out) apparently am, with intriguing reviews from respectable authors (hopefully taken out of context) and one liners that promised a snowcrash type stunt. Completely obscured the trash between the covers. My hat is off to Warner's marketing department for successfully polishing a turd.

"Neat," my mental image of a hiney.

Ruff creates a story line in which they are miscible (as cogs in a plot, not with each other.)Everyone but "a reader from Tegucicalpa, Honduras" (A sadistic irrational evil person), seems to think that this book is hilarious. Right they are. Although Ruff obviously does not understand Ayn Rand, his humorous dialogue including her is brilliant satire. SEWER, GAS, AND ELECTRIC's brilliantly intertwining plots are a great parody of Atlas Shrugged, and it is the funniest and one of the best books that I have evr read. Its fascinatingly inter-weaving plots allow for some of the most varied interprations I have ever observed of a book. Everyone seems to have taken something different away from it than most others have. From the Ruff's interpretation of the ecentricities of New Yorkers to the "shallowness of its plot", SEWER, GAS, AND ELECTRIC has something for everyone. It is probably the only book that I have read that has made me laugh out loud more than once, and is probably the only one that has caused me to do that each of the multiple times that I have read it.

-Name Irrelevant