- Hardcover: 448 pages
- Publisher: WW Norton (Aug 26 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0393057313
- ISBN-13: 978-0393057317
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 16.3 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 862 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,235,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
From one perspective, mail can be seen as merely the humble ebb and flow of letters, bills and advertisements. From another perspective, it is the cosmic principle of life itself: "Every datum is addressed with the name of its beloved: the pheromone finds its receptor, the dog roots out its bone, the sentence seeks the period at its end: and it is all mail." Lennon's protagonist, Mailman, aka Albert Lippincott, oscillates between this postal version of the sublime and the ridiculous. The novel unfolds from June 2, 2000, when someone on Albert's mail route, Jared Sprain, in Nestor, N.Y., commits suicide. On that night, Albert is caught by one of Jared's neighbors delivering a letter to Jared's box. The neighbor thinks there is something irregular about Albert's activities, and she is right: his dirty secret is that he reads, copies and sometimes doesn't deliver his mail. She apparently reports him, for Albert is suddenly taken in by Post Office inspectors for interrogation. After he is released pending further investigation, he skips town, heading vaguely for his retired parents' place in Florida. Lennon (The Funnies, etc.) lays out Albert's life in big blocks of introspections and reminiscences. Albert harbors a semiconscious sexual longing for his sister, Gillian, who is an actress; retains violent memories of his mother, a slutty singer, and more pathetic memories of his father, a chemist. Albert is sensitive to odors, subject to mental dissonance, angry, and feels alternately trapped and comforted by his routines. He's both Everyman and Nobody. As with one of Chuck Close's blown-up photo-realistic portraits, we feel both confronted and fascinated by Albert's sheer materiality. This is an intermittently brilliant text-with long, maddeningly tedious patches-and will surely be much noted this fall.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Albert Lippincott--Mailman--is an odd choice for an everyman character. A loner who reads the mail before delivering it, he's obsessive, depressive, and sexually confused. He struggles with the women in his life and fights with the cats they leave behind. The narrative begins with a letter delivered too late to a suicide and a woman who reports Mailman to the dreaded postal inspectors. As external events precipitate internal crisis, Mailman scrutinizes his past, searching for meaning in a world that tolerates him at best. Lennon performs a book-long balancing act, slowly letting us into this complex character's interior life. And Mailman is a complex character: Is he misunderstood or is he a liar? Is he persecuted or justly punished? Is the lump under his arm a bruise or a tumor? Did he really try to bite out a professor's eyeball? But because his neuroses are rooted in hopes and fears we all understand, this mumbling, lurching oddball, this guy we'd all walk past on the street, becomes someone we know and care about--and maybe recognize in the mirror. Lennon's fourth novel is emotionally engrossing and intellectually stimulating, full of humor, pathos, and surprises. To choose only one word: magnificent. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
So God, the story goes, made the earth. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
So God, the story goes, made the earth. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Real and Human,
By
This review is from: Mailman (Hardcover)
The plot descriptions and jacket blurbs do not do this book justice. It is human, touching, and sweet, and even while the lead character grows increasingly out of touch with himself and his life it manages to draw in the reader in an intamate fashion. Even the ending, a contrivance that could have fallen flat, maintained the tone and sentiment of the book, and felt entirely right and satisfactory.All in all a lovely, complex and hopeful book.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Better Than Grading Papers,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mailman (Hardcover)
My definition of a good movie is one during which I never wonder what time it is.My definition of a good read is pretty similar. This one had me howling late at night when I started it. I kept expecting it to hook me, to addict me, to make me sacrifice the rest of my life to get back to it. But it never did. I didn't enjoy the flashback sequences. I wanted him to get on with the present. I was interested enough to read it halfway through, but in the end, and of course I'm allowed to be selfish here, I didn't like Mr. Lippincott. It wasn't exactly that he was weird. He was unlikeable and uninteresting because of it. I should like or understand the hero, I think. And I didn't. Lennon is a good writer for sure. But I'd be mad if I paid money to read this one. And that's the truth (Edith Ann raspberry).
1.0 out of 5 stars
Juvenile and clueless,
By
This review is from: Mailman (Hardcover)
I used up three hours of my after-work free time to finish this novel tonight, and I'm thinking about sending Mr. Lennon an invoice for my efforts. Not only is the second half of this book ridiculous and completly unformed, it is unimaginative and lazy. An excerpt from one of the last pages:"Every particle, every force, every emotion; every thought, every object, every impulse, has its destination. Every datum is addressed with the name of its beloved: the pheromone finds its receptor, the dog roots out its bone.... Is that enough for you? Is this a college sophomore at work (or a precocious 8th grader)? If you have hours of free time on your hands, be my guest and wallow in the cliche-laden world of Mailman. Be amazed by the shallow depth of everyday metaphors! Reel at the implied incest! Step back in horror at ghastly parent-child confrontations (hope you don't mind a stock masturbation sequence)! And I thought Franzen's "The Corrections" was the last word in strident familial dysfunction. Lennon's "The Funnies" was a sweet, comic portrait of a dysfunctional family that at least contained a measure of entertainment value. Because of that book, I couldn't have had higher hopes for Mailman. I hate to say it about the output of any serious writer, but this is just garbage. Good for a laugh, but only if you have the time.
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