Mailman 
Описание на продукта: - A very revealing sequence occurs about 160 or so pages into J Robert Lennon s magnificent fourth novel, Mailman. Albert Lippincott, the eponymous, anal, postal worker, finds himself regularly tasked with delivering mail to Maurice Renault, his old physics tutor. As often as not, Renault, who is by then a celebrity egghead, met Mailman at the front door, always friendly but in three years he never seemed to recognise him.
Not recalling an old student is, arguably, fairly understandable but in Lippincott s case it s surprising, he once attempted to bite (yes, bite) Renault s eyes out in a lecture theatre. It s the kind of incident, even with the passing of a number of years, which would make a face a little difficult to forget. And yet clad in his uniform, Lippincott is all but invisible. As far as Renault, or anyone else in Nester, New York, is concerned he s just the Mailman, a point Lennon enunciates, beautifully, by addressing him simply as Mailman throughout the book. Those who rely on him for their post are blissfully ignorant of his troubled history: the breakdown at university, the failed marriage and romantic affairs, his latently incestuous relationship with Gillian, his sister, the addiction to pornography and the downright, peculiar circumstances that led to him being (erroneously, as it happens) accused of exposing himself in a public library. He, on the other hand, knows everything about their lives because he habitually, steals and reads their correspondence. Lippincott is, as the brief catalogue of his woes and predilections above hints, not especially likeable--Postman Pat he certainly isn t. He does have a cat (four in total, actually). None of them, however, are black and white and one he abandons on waste ground miles from home, he later holds a fraudulent funeral to put an inquisitive girlfriend off the scent. His caustic, self-pitying ruminations on failure, love, his parents and small town American life, all bumper-stickered Volvos and glad-handing mayors, never quite hit the venomous existentialism of, say, Frederick Exley in A Fan s Notes, but there s a strain of good old-fashioned male alienation to his world view. Lennon joins Pynchon and Bukowski, in delivering a truly affecting, bleakly comic epic from the protean travails of a pitifully screwed up letter carrier. --Travis Elborough
Оценки на клиенти: - Early Review. Having only read the first 100 pages or so, I am really enjoying this Albert Lippincott seems a thoroughly unhinged fellow (how could you like somone who reads other peoples mail) but at the same time you find yourself strangely rooting for him. Its really well written though a little challenging for the occasional reader as Lennon never resorts to a simplistic narrative always providing you with the bigger picture.
Will update on completion. - A rich comedy which goes far beyond humour. I had never heard of J Robert Lennon when I came across this book, but it looked interesting so I decided to try it. I immediately found myself drawn into the unfolding story of Mailman, and American postal carrier, living in a small town in America, and found the book so compelling I finished its 480 pages in 3 days, and that was with struggling to slow down the pace towards the end so the book would last a little longer.
Mailman has had a sad history of difficult relationships in both family and romance, and he has come to terms with life by adopting a stoical attitude to the sad events which come his way, and also by borrowing a quantity of letters every day, taking them back to his room and photocopying them, then delivering them the next day. In this way he has learned much about his fellow townsfolk and his mail-round becomes for him a soap opera of family crises, failing love affairs and financial problems. In between delivering mail, Mailman occupies himself by going to the library, the cinema and the coffee shop, a hum drum routing which keeps him busy until almost inevitably things start to go terribly wrong. The skill of this book is that the reader gets drawn into Mailman s quirky world-view and his reflections on events in his past. Some of these events are hilariously funny, while others are painfully sad, leaving the reader with a great deal of sympathy for this very strange individual. But Lennon has not just written an ordinary novel here. By following the course of Mailman s life we learn much about the authors view of the human condition, and much of his narrative resonates with our own lives, for we too have met the sort of people who come into Mailman s life, and we too have had cringingly embarrassing incidents happen to us, and have suffered disappointments of the same order as Lennon s Mailman. What makes this book really special however is the last 100 pages. The problem with reviewing a book is that it is necessary to avoid spoiling it for other readers. However, the end of this book defines the whole, and in the last couple of chapters we find a story which explains to much about what happens to Mailman and about the forgiveness and acceptance that comes the way of even this difficult and awkward character. Lennon ends his novel by demonstrating that there is hope for us, if there is hope for Mailman. A hugely heart-warming novel with much humour and drama along the way. - First Class. In Mailman, J. Robert Lennon (I m guessing his first name is John, and he just doesn t want to spend the rest of his life having the conversation) has produced one of the most vigorous and richly detailed novels I ve read in ages. It is told in the third person, exclusively from the point of view of Albert Lippincott, the 57-year-old mailman of the title: indeed, he is only ever referred to as Mailman in the text, even when he has quit his job, even when he is a child in flashback, the better I suppose to underline his anonymity and mealy existence. And of flashbacks there are plenty, otherwise how would Lennon fill 500 pages in describing a week or two of Mailman s life in June 2000 (that s what they say, the year 2000, dignifying the digits with an article, as if the year is a killer, a tyrant, as in The Impaler, or The Terrible )?
But in fact he is never in any danger of losing us. Partly this is because even the surface activity of this low-key life is in fact pretty engrossing - a quasi-incestuous relationship with his sister, an ominous lump under his arm which leads to a dependency on painkillers, a history of trouble with authority including an unremembered attempt to bite the eyes of his college professor, and a long-established practice of keeping aside certain items of mail to read them and attempt to reseal them before delivering to their rightful recipients, which means he knows all the people on his route better than they know Mailman the mailman: How many unplanned pregnancies, for example, have to befall Jodie M. Steiner of 325 Creekedge Lane before she stops sleeping with her parents seventy-year-old neighbour (Thomas Effening of 327 Creekedge, professor emeritus of sociology and boinker of several other neighbourhood nymphets of the past -a reliably interesting letter-writer, to be sure)? For how many years is Mark Poll of 830 North Sage Avenue, Apartment 5A, going to get drunk and vandalize cars in the middle of the night before he finds some other way to deny life s emptiness? And partly it is because Lennon s prose is so full of investment in detail and lively imagination - literally not a page goes by without something to delight in (Winter is only a verb if you re rich / Travel was its own country, the plane ticket that country s passport, its race the race of pale, haggard people dragging bags down gray-tiled hallways) - that, pound for pound, I can t remember the last time I read a less boring book. At the same time Mailman is undeniably bleak: the women who deign to sleep with Mailman (four in all, in his fifty-seven years) do so because they are as bored and lonely and unsure as he is, the authority figures, employers and teachers, who punish him do so through a petty-minded weakness and cruelty that reflects his own. His feelings about the burgeoning growth that marks the general decline in his health are so richly depicted that I literally found myself closing the book at one point and feeling under my own arm to make sure there was nothing there. And it is all as rich. And there are no happy surprises. But they are not required when the cast of characters, from Graham the neurotic coffee shop owner to Mailman s sarcastic mother, are so entertaining, nor when you have passages of prose like this, when Mailman s representative status is spelled out cleanly: It is the occupation of all existence, to ferry things from place to place, for the universe is filled with matter, and if it stays where it is, it is dead, and if it moves, it is alive. And since life exists, and since the aim of life is to continue living, and since the essence of living is to move, then movement is done. It is all - isn t it? - mail. Every particle, every force, every emotion, every thought, every object, every impulse, has its destination. Every datum is addressed with the name of its beloved: the pheromone finds its receptor, the dog roots out its bone, the sentence seeks the period at its end: and it is all mail. So in case I haven t made it clear: this, I think, is a very good book. It proves, if not that the unexamined life is worth living, at least that the accumulation of evidence is enough, if that s all we get. In every conceivable sense, Mailman delivers. - A journey into the soul and heart of a troubled man.. This is a smart, profound and sophisticated piece of work. Funny, and heartbreaking this book is just so ambitious in scope and range. But I’m stopping short of giving it five stars because I felt that parts of the story were a little overly developed, and in general, the novel was a little long. Still though, Mailman is a wonderful read, and in many ways is an absolutely powerful indictment of heartless tragedies that can exist in modern life and society.
Albert Lippincott, or the Mailman as he calls himself, is such a complex modern “ant-hero” – trundling along in his dead-end job as a Mailman with the U.S. Postal Service, while surreptitiously reading customers mail on the sly, and also recounting in a kind of vast mindscape, the loves, dramas and tragedies of his life. There are some marvelous moments in this novel, particularly when Albert recounts his childhood: his strange, sexually ambiguous relationship with his sister Gillian, his efforts to trap and defeat his high school English teacher Jim Gorman, and his failed, obscenely misguided trip to Kazakhstan with the Peace Corps, which will have you roaring with laughter. Robert Lennon has complete control of his narrative, and using succinct precise language explores, not only Albert’s inner thoughts with his cynical and sardonic observations about life and the world around him, but also explores, with an understated beauty, the quirkiness and eccentricities of small-town American life. The reader is constantly “blasted” with an almost stream of consciousness storyline, as Albert, betrayed, disappointed, and unrequited, fills his head with equations, images, sounds and sensations as if some extra dimensional vessel has flowed into him and he is the vessel. At the end of the novel he looks back with regret - he was a lousy student, a duplicitous mailman, and a rotten husband: demanding, ungrateful, and uncooperative – and he has such a sense of melancholy and disappointment towards all of this. The chaos of Mailman’s existence mirrors the chaos of the universe, the universe, like Mailman’s sad abortive life isn’t orderly at all, “it was a god-awful mess that nobody could sort out.” Mailman is one of the most insightful, challenging and ambitious books of the year and certainly deserves a lot of attention. Michael
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Mailman (ID: 1862076731)
