A Short Film About Disappointment, Joshua Mattson
A Short Film About Disappointment, Joshua Mattson
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A Short Film About Disappointment

Author: Joshua Mattson

Narrator: Ari Fliakos

Unabridged: 6 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 08/07/2018


Synopsis

An ingenious novel about art and revenge, insisting on your dreams and hitting on your doctor, told in the form of 80 movie reviews

In near-future America, film critic Noah Body uploads his reviews to a content aggregator. His job is routine: watch, seethe, pan. He dreams of making his own film, free from the hackery of commercial cinema. Faced with writing about lousy movies for a website that no one reads, Noah smuggles into his work episodes from his trainwreck of a life.
 
We learn that his apartment in Miniature Aleppo has been stripped of furniture after his wife ran off with his best friend—who Noah believes has possessed his body. He's in the middle of an escalating grudge match against a vending machine tycoon with a penchant for violence. And he's infatuated with a doctor who has diagnosed him with a "disease of thought." Sapped by days performing the labor of entertainment, forced to voice opinions on cinema to earn his water rations, Noah is determined to create his own masterpiece, directed by and starring himself.
 
Written by a debut novelist with a rotten wit and a singular imagination, A Short Film About Disappointment is a story about holding on to a scrap of hope in a joyously crummy world of nanny states and New Koreas.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Luke

The title caught my eye and the premise made me want to read it. The description, a novel structured as 80 movie reviews, sounded strange enough to warrant a read, even if it was rather gimmicky. The major problem I had with the book wasn't that attempt at the gimmick, it's that it doesn't really fo......more

Goodreads review by Pop

Brutal. And Very Funny. "...[she] said, I've never acted. I said, anyone who has ever lived has acted." The ostensible frame for this book is that the hero writes deeply felt, but generally ignored or unread, film reviews. Out of boredom or disillusion, he begins to include extended accounts of his ow......more

Great book......more

Goodreads review by Yossi

An outstanding debut novel by a very witty author. Well-crafted and tremendously funny. The author’s style is first-rate. .@goodreads......more

Goodreads review by Josh

This is fun, and the idea is good. But it's not engrossing. The novel's structured as a series of movie reviews, each one usually lasting three-to-five pages. But while the protagonist is ostensibly hired to write reviews, he ends up talking less about the movies and more about himself and his person......more


Quotes

“Mattson’s wordplay and low-key sarcasm are reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov. . . . Mattson also shares Nabokov’s gift for precise wit.” Star Tribune

“Mattson’s intelligence, in the form of knife-sharp observations and acrobatic language, takes the novel’s center stage.”—Booklist
 
“[A] sharp, funny debut. . . . With weapons-grade wit, Mattson satirizes movies, reviewers, and life in the data age. . . . Mattson’s exhilarating novel is rife with ingenious humor and inventiveness.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“When dystopia subsumes the world, a hero must rise—at least, that's the kind of banal premise Noah Body expects of the films he reviews, or rather eviscerates, though he's so little read that his ‘criticism’ amounts to a solipsistic blog about his life and bad decisions. The future he inhabits is less operatically wicked than just stifling, and he has really no power, but he keeps dreaming of making real art and keeps screwing it up. In real life, Katniss Everdeen would be a pious adolescent bore—better to follow Noah and his messy humanity. One feels a little guilty for finding his suffering so funny.” —Zachary Mason, author of The Lost Books of the Odyssey

"A bracing gimlet of vintage ’60’s gonzo with a dash of Charley Brooker bitters, add a twist of Pauline Kael and get ready for this raucous, ambitious and thoroughly hilarious thousand proof debut." —Bradford Tatum, author of Only the Dead Know Burbank

“Joshua Mattson is a very talented and very funny writer.” —Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying