2008-05-30 What's new? - not a lot.

Sadly this seems to me an oh-too familiar depiction of Kureishi characters, bohemiam intellectuals, disparate deadbeats, immigrant maunderings, and all else in between; throw in some sexual deviancy of the bum variety toking on an ample supply of drugs, a few philosophical qoutes, long-winded expostion that completely loses the reader in terms on interest, and one wonders what really is the point? From the slide of Gabriel's Gift it's hard to see a way back for Kureishi - this from a fan who's read it all, and will probably stop from here on in; or, perhaps, read his old stuff, it'll amount to the same either way. To write well about one's heritage, culture, set in a postmodernist melting pot, one needs more than wowee! strange characters laboriously described via a psychological A-Z of deviancy and psychosis. One needs to be able to write as well as Philip Roth or Saul Bellow; Kureishi will be the first to admit he could and never will live up to either. The question is, what he will live up to if not the same old glories regurgitated.