I realize I'm a little late to this discussion, but I've been following with interest several of the posts dealing with Nate Flexer's novel The Disassembled Man. A couple of you criticized the book as being outlandish and cartoonish--which was one of the things I loved about the book. Yes, some of the humor was pure gross-out, yes, some of the situations were unbelievable, but I think that was the point. I don't think that Flexer was attempting to create a Roman Noir dripping with realism. I think he was attempting to create a fast-paced pulp novel filled with absurdity and surealism. And while I did find much of the book to be very funny, I also thought it was a frightening book. Part of what was so scary to me was, in fact, the humor. The narrator is so warped, so out-of-touch with reality, that he can't help but see the universe as one big joke. And when the world becomes a joke, all hell can break loose.
Something else that occured to me. Some people still have difficulty seperating the author from the narrator. Because the narrator has a warped sense of humor, does that make the author warped as well? Referring to a negative review, one poster said "But let's face it -- judging from his writing, I don't think Flexer is overly sensitive." Unless the poster knows him personally, how would he ever know that? I would agree that the narrator is not sensitive. In fact, he's a sociopath. But Nate Flexer is not the narrator. He's the author.
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