Not all that long ago Chuck Kinder was a close friend of Raymond Carver's. Carver had a mistress in Missoula, Montana. Kinder married her. Eventually Kinder and Diane Cecily became friends with Carver and his wife, Maryann. The Honeymooners is the story of that friendship, here told as Ralph Crawford and Alice Ann, Jim Stark and Lindsay.The reader can look into the intricately detailed Carol Sklenicka biography of Carver to see the facts of their friendship. We know Carver was alcoholic. We know he had problems with drugs. We know for most of his writing career he and his family lived without money, always on the desperate, teetering edge of losing what little they owned to bad debt, always driving whatever rattling heap they could keep going as long as it would roll. All that's here. Mostly the hilarious novel is made up of frantic conversations between these 2 couples and the wacky situations they find themselves in as they drink and smoke too much. They're constantly skating on the emotional and financial margins of their lives. Kinder doesn't dispute the novel's about himself and Carver and their wives. He says the stories aren't consistently factual but "emotionally they are true." Many of the real events making up the Carver-Kinder mythology are portrayed in The Honeymooners.One of the delightful things about the novel is the language. It's a kind of good ole boy patois brilliantly capturing the pervasive lust and the desperate dependence on booze. But always, because these men are writers, one the brilliant Carver, and part of the flourishing literary scene in the Bay Area, you know the salty dog language underlies considerable learning.Ralph and Jim are kind of like latter-day beatniks. What Kinder has done is give us a novel in the bohemian tradition of Kerouac and Cassady. The 2 friends compete as writers and lovers of the same woman but in the end the novel's about the friendship they have for each other. The portrait is dark but honest and is in the end a tribute to Carver.
Tutti i cliché della letteratura (comica?) americana contemporanea insieme, in un mix molto più noioso e prevedibile di quanto sembrava. Aspiranti scrittori e falliti di professione, coppie allo sfascio, generose porzioni di sesso e intrallazzi vari, gente pazza, bar, viaggi... per favore, Kinder, vorresti raccontarmene qualcuna che non so? Se questo è il risultato di decenni di lavoro, tanto valeva che restasse nel fondo di un cassetto. E cosa importa se i personaggi sono ispirati a gente reale, se vengono nominati scrittori reali e se l'autore ha le mani in pasta un po' dappertutto, se poi il risultato è così carente e maledettamente noioso?
Do You like book Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale (2002)?
Kinder's writing reminds me of Bukowski, it's affectedly sloppy and semi-autobiographical. My opinion? Just not that crazy about it. They say the manuscript for this novel was, at one point, over a thousand pages long. But even in it's final incarnation the story is long and meandering, at times seeming more like self-aggrandizing (even in the awful moments, there seems to be some sort of pride in the scumbaggery and insanity) reminiscences one-after-another than one coherent story. Also, if Kinder had cut out half of the "old Running Dog Ralph"s and "old Jim"s, then the novel could have been shorter still!But of course, Kinder is mythologized in the Pitt writing canon, up there along with Chabon, from the "glory days" of the Pitt fiction department. So I had to read it. I read Chabon's Wonder Boys (Professor Tripp is sort of based off of Kinder), and I read Carver (Honeymooner's Ralph), and now I've read the great Kinder himself.And the impression I came away with? Just "ok".But hey, to each her own, right?
—Kate
An incredible mix of a book. Really captures a time period and a group of lives stunningly well, not to mention the elusiveness of love (especially when you're juiced to the gills). Occasionally is downright sleazy, but that adds to the feeling of intimacy with these characters who are huge-hearted but way out of control. Also is an up close and brutal look at the mythic hard drinking hard loving famous author archetype. Makes me want to re-read all of Raymond Carver's stories. Thanks for the tip on this one, Senor Kimball!
—Rupert
A book like Honeymooners takes a lifetime to write. It is one man's love story to another. That is not an easy thing to pull off. Pardon the pun. This is the novel Professor Tripp is working on in Chabon's Wonderboys. The very real Kinder is Chabon's "fictional" Professor Tripp, but to quote Kinder, ". . . Michael Douglas is not nearly cute enough to play Grady Tripp." Between the pages of Honeymooners, Kinder's words move at 24 frames per second. Several reviewers of Honeymooners mentioned their reading of Kinder's work makes them want to revisit Carver's work. Why not revisit or visit Kinder's considerable body of work? It is all available. http://www.mobylives.com/Kinder_inter...
—Ed La Salle
