Search - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

In An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New Englan, the quirkiest title for a book since Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Brock Clarke lights up the page with the chronicle of a man who, as a teenager, accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts, killing two people. ("It's probably enough to say that in the Massachusetts Mt. Rushmore of big gruesome tragedy, there are the Kennedys, and Lizzie Borden and her ax, and the burning witches at Salem, and then there's me.") After serving ten years in prison for the crime, Sam Pulsifer moves on with his life, but the emergence of a copycat who's turning New England's literary landmarks to ash puts Sam back in the spotlight and on a quest for the truth. Comparisons to The World According to Garp and A Confederacy of Dunces may be bold, but this heartfelt, funny, and highly entertaining tale promises to be Brock Clarke's breakout book for certain.

I could not find this book humorous or entertaining. It was an inresting story but the manner in which it was written was very confusing and it rambled. I am not usually intersted in book of this nature, so my review could be based more on that than the book itself. Certainly an interesting topic with a rather good ending but alot of incoherent language in between.

I emerged at the end of this strange, confusing, narrative sad and frustrated about "the human condition". I really enjoyed the frequent personification of, say, weather elements or other inanimate objects that gave the sense that everything has emotions or feelings. This tool was used throughout the novel by Clarke in a most effective and humorous way to convey's Sam's perceptions about his experiences. This bazaar tale of one man's profound ability (or disability) to always make the wrong choices in any given situation clarifies that we really do create our own life and circumstances. By the end of the book and after reading the Q & A and discussion sections of the book, I felt that Brock Clarke was poking fun at me for even finishing the book. Of course, the other joke on the reader is, if one reads to the conclusion, is the hope that one holds that the ending will be a good one and not the sad, twisted, disappointing, dishonest ending that is finally reached. I really liked Sam Pulsifer in the way on likes the runt of a litter and really hoped for better for him. That he ended up in worse shape at the end than the beginning without learning much along the way was frustrating. One hopes is that he is simply a harmless oaf who hurt no one but himself. The irony is that in his career, he "invented" many of the items of plastic junk that will possibly be the eventual downfall of our earth's environment and humankind itself. So it seems, he wasn't so much of a harmless oaf after all, but a very lethal one, by "accident". Kind of like the human race itself.

Moderately interesting, mildly amusing, occasionally very witty, and sometimes profound. A decent read, if somewhat forgettable.