The Traymore Rooms (eBook)

Description

A Millions.com Most Anticipated Book of 2013A Hypoallergic Fall Literary Release to Know AboutNorm Sibum is not everyones cup of tea instead of breathing air he inhales the exhaust of apocalyptic times.Books in CanadaA place: the Traymore Rooms, downtown Montreal, an old walk-up. Those who live there and drink at the nearby caf form the heart of Traymorean society. Their number includes: Eggy, red-faced, West Virginian, a veteran of Korea; Eleanor R (not Eleanor Roosevelt); Dubois, French Canadian, optimist; Moonface, waitress-cum-Latin-scholar and sexpot inexpert; and, most recently, our hero Calhoun. A draft dodger and poetical type.For a time all is life-as-usual: Calhoun argues with Eggy and Dubois, eats Eleanors cobblers, gossips of Moonface, muses on Virgil and the current President. With the arrival of a newcomer to Traymore, however, Calhouns thoughts grow fixated and dark. He comes to believe in the reality of evil. This woman breaks no laws and she inflicts no physical harmyet for the citizens of Traymore, ex-pats and philosophers all, her presence becomes a vortex that draws them closer to the America they dread.Intelligent and frighteningly absurd, with a voice as nimble as Gasss and satire that pierces like Wallaces,The Traymore Roomsis a sustained howl against libertarianism under George W. Bush.PRAISE FORThe Traymore RoomsPoet Norm Sibums 700-pager should be on the radar of all the maximalism-starved readers who landedA Naked Singularityon our Top 10 list in 2012though the book might more rightly be likened to something by William Gass or Alexander Theroux. Plot isnt Sibums thing, exactly, but his erudition (considerable), sense of character (eccentric), and mood (quietly splenetic) more than compensate. The novel concerns a group of aging friends who share haunts in downtown Montreal. They talk, fight, love, and try to make sense of a historical moment that has disappointed their youthful hopes the prose is a consistent pleasure.Garth Hallberg,The MillionsThe Traymore Rooms, a novel at once hugely ambitious and never above an off-colour crack is going after a Melvillian game: the decline and fall of the American Empire, by means of highbrow bedroom farce. The combo harkens back to big-novel romps of the authors youth, in particular John BarthsSot-Weed Factor(1960), which put Colonial America through dizzying bounces. The narrative reach alone is honourable much of it comes across with smarts and verve, and its no surprise to learn that our narrators a poet.John Domini,The Brooklyn RailSibum does know when to add a beautiful sentence the often-moving pontifications on roads not taken, lost friends and lost loves lendThe Traymore Roomsan impressive, if occasional, gravity.Time Out New YorkThe 696 pages of poet Norm Sibums debut are as good a reminder as any that the monumental novel has far from faded as a literary haymaker.HypoallergicThis is Sibums debut novel, and it isnt so much a dip of his toe into the world of fiction as a cannonball off a third-storey hotel balcony his prose is kinetic and constantly surprising I doubt Ill read anything quite so beguiling in 2013.The National PostA delightful raspberry in the face of conventional market wisdom Theres a hint of David Foster Wallaces shaggy-dog conceptualism here, and of John Barths postmodern metafiction, but rest assured, its also just plain fun.The Montreal GazetteSibum opens up his miniature universe ofThe Traymore Roomswith a mixture of kindness and criticism. The length becomes an asset as the episodes come to resemble actual, and not novelistic time Sibums antidote to middle-class sense of purpose is the meandering life, lingering on the boulevarda kind of aristocratic rebellion.The PuritanDude canwrite.Ed Turner,BibliokleptSeriously, wtf. Has 2013s most ambitious English-language novel been written by a Canadian?Scott Esposito