Fisher's Hornpipe

by Todd McEwen

[jamiereadthis]

Ha-ha, the crazy coincidence of reading this one right on top of Dubin’s Lives. Even with the bleak northeast, Walden and Thoreau in common, I’m scared to even lay the two books side-by-side, like they could somehow come alive and beat the crap out of each other.

I haven’t read a book this zany and insane since Heller left Pianosa— not that it’s the same perfectly orchestrated riotous insanity as Catch-22, but I loved it and how could you not, the disaffected overanxious and all too sincere Fisher unwittingly (and then also willfully) stirring up riots from the flapping bloody bandage on his head?

My soft spot intact, apparently, for an ill-fated, certifiable antihero with questionably massive head trauma and a doomed violin.

(By the way, I stumbled across this book trying to dig up McEwen’s essay, “Cary Grant’s Suit,” an old favorite essay from an old lost copy of Granta. Not a fitting trade, but a fair and enjoyable one.)