Glyph (pub. 1999) is written by a genius baby so reminiscent of the fetus narrator in Nutshell (2016) that I wondered if Ian McEwan (Nutshell) borrowed from this book. But that's where the similarity ends.A couple of chapters into this book, I found myself exhausted from constant leaping—couch to computer to look up poststructural philosophy, Latin, German, French, obscure historic bits, etc. I was almost ready to admit I'm not well educated enough to read this satire—about academic thought

Sometimes brilliant, but often trying too hard.A good book, though not a great novel, since Everett delved too much on postmodernism and BS like that.

When you decide to read a book written by Percival Everett, there are two guarantees.1 - You never know what the nature of the book will be until you start reading, perhaps not until you finish reading the book. Mr. Everett is always surprising. 2. Percival Everett will never insult your sensibilities or your intelligence.You can get guarantee #2 from other writers. You won't get #1 from too many others. Mr. Everett rarely writes the same kind of book twice.

The Boredom of Infantile Leisure Babies lock on to language because they are literally bored to tears, even in their dreams. Having been hooked on language, they are so immersed in it that they have no memory of ever having been without it. The world of language is, so to speak, the only one they know and they treat it as if it is the only one there is. It is shocking to then discover that what looks solid language, is mostly hot air. Nevertheless, there is no way back. Boredom drives them ever

I feel strange after reading this book. The story, itself, is inconsequential, simple. But layered on top of it is a mischievous exploration of academia and the intelligensia, particularly the French. If Wittgenstein had cowritten comedy with Max Senett, he might have published it in a notebook whose elements were divided up like this are. The book is rare and out of print at this writing. The strictures of Inter-Library Loan have limited the time to which I can give it. To get all the jokes, I

One of the best laugh out loud books I have ever read on a plane (or anywhere else). Ralph is a baby genius that epitomizes the phrase "silence is golden". An arrogant smart-ass father and a gentle perhaps too naive mother make for a believable run away train of a story. Like Percival Everett's other novels this too is filled with action and adventure on a physical and intellectual level. Better than the movie "Baby's Day Out", the actions of this child make you continuously roar from his creati...

Look Who’s WritingA Derridean metafiction by and about a one year old Renaissance baby boy, Ralph, in which everything begins with infinity (most of which is beyond "our grasp, our understanding, our consciousness") and proceeds, via the hilarious authorial use of time, space and language, towards a point whose only desire is to aggregate with other points into a line that is not a circle, even if that line returns Ralph, anfractuously, to his mother whom he loves and who loves him: "We

1. This is the book that I wish I had read when I was in grad school. 2. Of the fictional dialogs, the Socrates-Baldwin one is the best.

Glyph is the philosophy adventure story of genius baby Ralph (though he begs to differ). He pretty much comes out of the womb with the ability to read, critically think, write (interestingly all in english) but chooses not to speak because basically speaking ruins words. He is taken to a psychiatrist by his parents Inflato and Eve, who eventually kidnaps him in order to do experiments on how he can be such a baby genius (though he begs to differ). This leads to a road of infant adventure and man...

By definition, a glyph is nothing more than a symbol but stories tend to have a plot, logic or at the least, something that resembles one. Told from the POV of Ralph, a MUTE, African American baby adopted by an ignorant white couple, he's first kidnapped by researchers, and then several others. And that's about all there is here. Beyond that, there's not much else to comment about other than the OBTUSE foreign language phrases, odd poems and quotes from existential authors to separate paragraphs...

Silly salad with intellectual dressing.Reading a book like this is depressing, because the author is obviously intelligent (he goes out of his way to prove it!), he's ambitious, well-intended, and he obviously worked his ass off to get this thing right--but it's just no good. Which just goes to illustrate the horrifying fact that you can do everything you think you oughta, and still the whole thing fizzles out in the end. Ironically, the protagonist of this book goes out of his way to ridicule h...

The first two-thirds of this novel is a first-rate satire of contemporary academia, particularly the ways of thinking (intellectual and career-oriented). And much else. Everett employs the premise of an infant who can read and write at a very high level, and yet remains in many ways an infant. Everett’s best decision was to have the infant narrate the novel.But in the final third of the novel, when the infant becomes an omniscient narrator as well, the novel becomes too wacky for my taste, altho...

A sublime satirical romp, as if Ishmael Reed had been reincarnated as an angry young grammatologist. Glyph features the nine-month-old mute intellectual Ralph, whose ability to write lucid, illuminating responses to his parents’ requests sends a local doctor spinning with career resentment and rouses the sinister forces of the American government, eager to use the silent poop machine as a robotic appendage of espionage. Told in short, punchy chapters with headings cribbed from Derrida and Barthe...

Parts of this I read and pondered (and/or laughed)) others I scratched and sniffed, but was unable to identify the underlying smell. The overall aroma of the novel was nice and zesty.

There were parts of this novel that I didn't understand at all, not being embedded in academia, but I liked the main character, a brilliant baby, so well that I could live with the frustration of missing out on some things. I got enough of it, and there was one moment maybe a third of the way through that really made me stop and think. The climactic scene verged on slapstick, which didn't quite fit for me, but again, I could overlook that because it was followed with something quite satisfying.

This book was a lot of fun. I had never heard of Percival Everett or this novel before I saw it in the book store. I decided to buy it based on the blurb on the back cover: ". . . Everett has created his unlikeliest hero to date. Mute by choice but able to read complex philosophical treatises and ponder the worth (not much) of Derrida and Barthes, baby Ralph is considered mentally 'challenged' by his father."

This book reminded me of John Sladek's Roderick, so I wrote to the author and asked if he was familiar with Sladek's work. He's a nice guy; he immediately replied, saying he hadn't read a single thing by him, but thought he should do so. I never found out whether he did, however.

This book almost made me miss my subway stop this morning. You know that Barthelme story, The first thing the baby did wrong.....? http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/baby.htmlThis novel is like Baby's revenge.

Glyph is the first Perceval Everett book I’ve read, I can’t wait to read more. He combines the highest level of academic acumen with lively archetypes and wonderfully playful language. The first instance of Everett’s ability to combine the funny and the meaningful comes in the form of our narrator, Ralph, who is a baby. Everett has rightly identified the idea of a baby with intellectual and physical abilities above its years as one of the more terrifying creatures on earth. We are set to coo and...

I liked this book, but it was originally recommended to me as an example of child narrator and I would have to disagree with that entirely. Though the narrator may only be a year old, he is clearly an adult mentally and functions as one. There are no techniques of child narrator used here that I could see. I don't mean that he doesn't fit his character, just that his character is precisely and well written as a mental adult in a child's body. Beyond that, I liked the book a great deal, though I