Deja Vu

By Richard Kendrick

Fiction. Alden Homer and Blake Whitman are traveling their own paths, which seem to cross more frequently than usual for two dissimilar guys on the road in Asia. Their thoughts and experiences are... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0975571605
• ISBN13: 9780975571606
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Vagabond Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Déja Vu:

A rare book that combines modernist formal experimentation with excellent post-modernist content and prose; this novel that is as much about form as it is about plot.. Part bildungsroman part travelogue, both funny and serious, a blend of facts fictions and dreams; it consists of 76 (or maybe 77) chronologically and stylistically disconnected chapters that can be read in any order. The author suggests a series of reading trajectories with 5 possible continuations after each chapter. Some will quickly loop you back to where you've already been and others carry you through a large portion of the book. Innovative but not extremely so, the book risks comparison with novels like Cortázar's Hopscotch and Perec's Life: a User's Manual (I generally don't like to use the word 'risk' in art criticism, but I think it's appropriate here) and I think it stands up very well. Saying that I actually preferred this to either of them would sound pretentious; but I'll go so far as to say that the content of this novel is more to my liking than that of the others. Although I didn't travel in my youth, my life fits more into the introspective speculative mode of this book. The traditional prose is easy to read and should please a broad range of readers. I'll assume that anyone who primarily reads romances or historical novels hasn't gotten this far in this review so I can safely recommend it. It's definitely worth a look.

A web of life...

Deja Vu is full of lyrical descriptions of far off lands yet hits home with absolute poignance; it presents the world in a prism of adventure and experimentation, so much so that it reminds one of the enduring spirit of American literature. Kendrick revives Melville, Twain, and Kerouac in a voice that openly rejects the conventions of today, even as it demands fresh perspective. The book is essentially a search for truth, its form is unique and inventive, based upon the cyclical nature of time, subjectivity and the concept of fulfillment. I recommend it to everyone tired of the monotony of an everyday performance without avail, to you who lust for travel!