Yes, it’s the same guy. The guy from House. Veep. Black Adder. The guy who played Bertie Wooster, to Stephen Fry’s Jeeves in days of yore.
The very same horrible, terrible Hugh Laurie. I say horrible and terrible because I think it’s criminal that he can be so very good at everything he tries. I never did bother to work out whether this was meant to be a funny thriller or a thrilling funner (?) because I was too busy enjoying myself to give a crap about silly labels.
You know that little voice inside of you? The one that nags you about not being more disturbed by things polite society considers disturbing?
Strangle it before you start reading Preacher.
Funny. Violent. Sexy. And mostly, all three at the same time. Good enough to re-read multiple times. Unfortunately I have a strong bias against cinematic adaptations of books I like, so it took me about 5 seconds of watching the newly minted AMC version, before shutting off the TV.
He writes the way Mondays feel.
The dissociation borne of too many cigarettes, and not enough sleep the night before. The feeling that all this ass-kicking is happening to someone else, when deep down you know it’s happening to you.
I assume most of the tales Diaz tells in Drown, are inspired by actual events. (If not, the man’s more of a master than I thought.) So, I’m sure he’s often lauded – perhaps even patronized a little – for having survived it all to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of creative writing at MIT.
What I really admire him for, however, is not making me so awfully conscious of his accomplishing that survival. He lets context do that. Unlike the Angela’s Ashes of the world, where the pathos of the author’s situation is constantly reinforced by the author himself.