Nine Kinds of Naked
by Tony Vigorito
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tony VigoritoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-06
ISBN: 015603123X
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Nine Kinds of Naked
Book Review: A promising writer delivers a decent read
Summary: 4 Stars
Neal Pollack, Bill Fitzhugh and Christopher Moore, among some of my favorite authors, praise this book on the covers of Tony Vigorito's second novel. Mr. Vigorito thanks them in his Acknowledgments along with other masters of contemporary humorous fiction: Chris Genoa and Tom Robbins. Unfortunately, I don't feel that Vigorito's writing belongs in the same company as the venerable authors he admires.
Alas, despite some truly great starts and early chapters I felt this book fizzled toward the end. Just like Elizabeth, the female lead in this wandering story, I tired of Diablo's incessant talking and philosophizing. I actually loved the subject matter of his extemporaneous gabbing, and I think the philosophy he preached was well thought out and deserving of our rapt attention, but I started to feel like I was trapped in a community college philosophy elective where I kept looking at the clock waiting for the class to end as our instructor riffed on his own word jazz without any clue that we had heard all this before; many times before, actually, in the other long lectures he had previously subjected us to. But it was only interesting the first time, and certainly not the fourth and fifth and etc.
Tony has a very strong grasp of the English language and he isn't afraid to display this skill. Or maybe he reads his thesaurus while he takes the bus to work? Keep a dictionary handy for some truly esoteric vocabulary sprinkled liberally throughout the novel. I think Tony's penchant for verbal gymnastics will wane as his writing matures, but he is currently trapped in his own intelligence and, like a teenager, the desire to show off will decrease when he begins to realize very few people care; and that making his readers open a dictionary to discover the specific nuance he is trying to convey loses it's appeal after about the 20th time. I say this as a devout sesquipedalian who was flummoxed many times by his word choices. Nota bene: I didn't use a thesaurus to write this review.
Also, Dude! learn to hold back on the alliteration. It was awesome the first ten times or so, but annoying every other time afterward. We understand you're a great writer, so just write, don't shower us with the detritus of your fizzled verbal pyrotechnics. OK, pardon the obvious hypocrisy here, but it takes one to know one, right?
All in all this was a great effort, and I laughed really hard at times. I even wrote down a few quotes to remember for the future. But I just got all caught up in the protagonist's soliloquies and this detracted from the plot of a truly wonderful novel. If you've ever read Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge, one of the funniest novels ever, you might remember the philosophical musings of the Reverend Double-Gone Johnson. Not Fade Away would have been much better without him. I say the same for the breadth of Diablo's chatter.
If you're looking for an uplifting novel with some great commentary on how we might live better lives by giving in to the "now" and the "present," without slogging through a philosophically dry tome that makes no attempt to cater to the pedestrian intellectual curiosities of the hoi-polloi, this book might appeal to you. But if you're looking for a novel reminiscent of Moore, Fitzhugh, Pollack or Robbins, skip this one and wait for Tony to mature a bit. Once he tones down his writing and makes it more approachable I predict we will see tighter prose, a more engaging plot and better efforts from a very talented writer who is still finding his voice.
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