Reviews for God's gym

The average rating for God's gym based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-24 00:00:00 Joseph Ahearn This collection is incandescent. It may be one of Wideman's best collections and he seems to become more of a master over time. Check out "Are Dreams Faster Than The Speed of Light," if you want a taste of his incredible use of language, his intricacy and ability to rip narrative from its conventions and give us something more akin to an ouroboros than a rocket ascending its exotelic destination. Some of these stories are painful too: "Hunters" for instance starts with a grim and terrifying premise and doesn't lead the reader off the hook. There are great pieces cast in the milieu of historical fiction, though straying far from biography as possible ("The Silence of Thelonious Monk," "Who invented the Jump Shot," "Fanon"). And there are autobiographical wounds apparent in confessionals like "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over In Silence," which begins with the line, "I have a friend with a son in prison." I've long thought Wideman is overlooked and I don't know why. Given his brilliance, breadth and scope, he should be nominated for a Nobel.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-15 00:00:00 Laura Pisciotta I'll be honest, I had a really great review typed up, and when I hit save my computer froze. I was so frustrated that I almost didn't rewrite a review...but I'll do my best to summarize my thoughts on Wideman's offering. God's Gym is a collection of stories centering around the experience of African American men in 1940's-modern day America. Many of the stories start as a re-telling of a (presumably) true event, and then segue into a stream-of-consciousness, alternate reality telling. Wideman is skilled at his craft, and writes complex prose. It's lyrical at times. This is not the best book to read on a beach, while watching children, or before falling asleep at night...any of the above situations will result in re-reading paragraphs several times to figure out what exactly is going on. As some of the paragraphs are almost 2 pages long, that is quite an undertaking :P These short stories are worth the effort though. Wideman gives many readers a glimpse into a world they would otherwise not know. For those of us who read to expand our world (and our understanding of it), it's a welcome point of view. Given 3 stars or a rating of "Good". Below are a few of my favorite quotes. "My mother believes in a god whose goodness would not permit him to inflict more troubles than a person can handle. A god of mercy and salvation. A sweaty, bleeding god presiding over a fitness class in which his chosen few punish their muscles. She should wear a T-shirt: God's Gym ." "Once I asked Monk what is this thing called love. Bebop, hip-hop, whatever's good till the last drop and you never get enough of it even when you get as much as you can handle, more than you can handle, he said, just as you'd expect from somebody who's been around such things and appreciates them connoisseurly but also with a passionate innocence so it's always the first time, the only time love's ever happened and Monk can't help but grunt uh-huh, uh-huh while he's playing even though he's been loved before and it ain't no big thing, just the only thing, the music, love, lifting me." "Forgotten things are really, really gone. Gone even if memories of them flicker, ghosts with more life than the living...Things forgotten in the gritty bottom of a drawer and you realize you've not been living the kind of life you could have lived if you hadn't forgotten, and now, remembering, it's too late."