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Fr. 27.90
Norm Sibum
The Traymore Rooms - A Novel in Five Parts
English · Paperback / Softback
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Description
Like Gaddis locked in a Montreal walk-up. Five squalid ex-pats, existentially wounded by Bush-era villainy, find themselves neighbors to Evil.
List of contents
Part One: The Traymore Rooms
Book I - Against Chronology
Book II - Follies Ho!
Book III - The Good Ship Lollipop
Book IV - A Proper Narrative
Book V - Returning Prodigal
Part Two: Echo's Gone
Book I - Phrygian Mode
Book II - Piano, Accordion and Oud
Book III - In Continuation, a Proper Narrative
Book IV - Sex on the Beach
Book V - Whirligigs
Book VI - A Note on Progress
Part Three: Consecrated Souls
Book I - What's a Good Woman?
Book II - In Continuation
Book III - Iron Skies and Potted Flowers
Book IV - 'It Would've Rhymed But It Was a Dry Summer'
Book V - Scéance
Book VI - De Incendio Urbis
Book VII - The Rain in Spain
Part Four: Grandeur
Book I - Pavilions of Gold
Book II - In Continuation
Book III - Mixing Bowls
Book IV - A Proper Narrative, Continued
Book V - A Ward of the Traymore
Book VI - Buffoonery and Cowardice
Book VII - Spolia Opima
Part Five: Moonface Returns
Book I - The Page Turned
Book II - Delicate Pops
Book III - A Dying World
Book IV - Short of Copy
Book V - False Carnations
Book VI - Theological Freelancing
Book VII - With a Song and a Prayer
Eggy's Coda
About the author
Norm Sibum has been writing and publishing poetry for over thirty years. Born in Oberammergau in 1947, he grew up in Germany, Alaska, Utah, and Washington before moving to Vancouver in 1968. He has published several volumes of poetry in Canada and England. A joint U.S.-Canadian citizen, Sibum currently lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. The Traymore Rooms is his first novel.
Summary
Like Gaddis locked in a Montreal walk-up. Five squalid ex-pats, existentially wounded by Bush-era villainy, find themselves neighbors to Evil.
Foreword
Additional text
"Poet Norm Sibum’s 700-pager should be on the radar of all the maximalism-starved readers who landed A Naked Singularity on our Top 10 list in 2012—though the book might more rightly be likened to something by William Gass or Alexander Theroux. Plot isn’t Sibum’s 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 Millions
"The 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 author’s youth, in particular John Barth’s Sot-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 it’s no surprise to learn that our narrator’s a poet."—John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail
"Sibum does know when to add a beautiful sentence … the often-moving pontifications on roads not taken, lost friends and lost loves lend The Traymore Rooms an impressive, if occasional, gravity.”—Time Out New York
"The 696 pages of poet Norm Sibum’s debut are as good a reminder as any that the monumental novel has far from faded as a literary haymaker."—Hypoallergic
"This is Sibum’s debut novel, and it isn’t 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 I’ll read anything quite so beguiling in 2013."—The National Post
"A delightful raspberry in the face of conventional market wisdom … There’s a hint of David Foster Wallace’s shaggy-dog conceptualism here, and of John Barth’s postmodern metafiction, but rest assured, it’s also just plain fun.”—The Montreal Gazette
"Sibum opens up his miniature universe of The Traymore Rooms with a mixture of kindness and criticism. The length becomes an asset as the episodes come to resemble actual, and not novelistic time … Sibum’s antidote to middle-class sense of purpose is the meandering life, lingering on the boulevard—a kind of aristocratic rebellion.”—The Puritan
"Dude can write."—Ed Turner, Biblioklept
"Seriously, wtf. Has 2013's most ambitious English-language novel been written by a Canadian?"—Scott Esposito
"The 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 author’s youth, in particular John Barth’s Sot-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 it’s no surprise to learn that our narrator’s a poet."—John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail
"Sibum does know when to add a beautiful sentence … the often-moving pontifications on roads not taken, lost friends and lost loves lend The Traymore Rooms an impressive, if occasional, gravity.”—Time Out New York
"The 696 pages of poet Norm Sibum’s debut are as good a reminder as any that the monumental novel has far from faded as a literary haymaker."—Hypoallergic
"This is Sibum’s debut novel, and it isn’t 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 I’ll read anything quite so beguiling in 2013."—The National Post
"A delightful raspberry in the face of conventional market wisdom … There’s a hint of David Foster Wallace’s shaggy-dog conceptualism here, and of John Barth’s postmodern metafiction, but rest assured, it’s also just plain fun.”—The Montreal Gazette
"Sibum opens up his miniature universe of The Traymore Rooms with a mixture of kindness and criticism. The length becomes an asset as the episodes come to resemble actual, and not novelistic time … Sibum’s antidote to middle-class sense of purpose is the meandering life, lingering on the boulevard—a kind of aristocratic rebellion.”—The Puritan
"Dude can write."—Ed Turner, Biblioklept
"Seriously, wtf. Has 2013's most ambitious English-language novel been written by a Canadian?"—Scott Esposito
Product details
| Authors | Norm Sibum |
| Publisher | Ingram Publishers Services |
| Languages | English |
| Product format | Paperback / Softback |
| Released | 01.10.2013 |
| EAN | 9781927428221 |
| ISBN | 978-1-927428-22-1 |
| No. of pages | 696 |
| Subjects |
Fiction
> Narrative literature
FICTION / Political, FICTION / Satire, FICTION / Urban |
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