I should have liked this novel, but I didn't. It's Joycean, rowdy, raunchy, and reckless but the protagonist is not amusing. At best, he's a cad and a leech. He seemed violent and misogynistic to me. All the wit in the world can't smooth that over. I did like the Mary character (shades of Houellebecq's "heroines") but Sebastian rides roughshod over her (and everyone else).

*** "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The title hardly prepares you for this bleak novel about five lonely loners whose paths intersect. One character experiences true love, but wait until you meet his beloved...

*** you don't think of aphorisms when you think of proust, but his recherche is studded with them...yet another example of how people have an idea of an author that has nothing to do with the actual experience of reading their works (e.g. Kafka is not Kafkaesque)

*** great novella...capote has the light touch

**** great novel...he outcormacs McCarthy

** i like this guy's novels...mysterious, Kawabata-like, almost fairy tales...this one is about a writer who stops writing...satisfying, deep conclusion