Friday, December 25, 2015

#239 The Devil and Irv Cherniskie- T.C. Boyle


#239 The Devil and Irv Cherniskie- T.C. Boyle

Irv Cherniskie lives in a rich gated community in Westchester with his unhappy family. While practicing his golf game outside he walks into the nearby woods to fetch a wayward chip shot.

Suddenly the world was not the same. He “felt as is the parameters of the world as we knew it had suddenly shifted. Felt, unaccountably, that he was in deep trouble.”

“It was incredible, it really was. He’d given up on all that God and Devil business the minute he left parochial school….and now here it was, staring him in the face. It took him about thirty seconds to reinvent the world.”

That’s rights, it’s a take about making a deal with Satan. Not fresh, but not un-entertaining. The only issue I have is that there is absolutely nobody here worth reading about. Irv is a despicable man, his wife is a despicable woman, their neighbors by all accounts are despicable as well.

It’s a fine read, and an homage to the legend and all those that came before, but adds nothing to the zeitgeist.




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