I just don’t know anymore… my deep despair and growing anguish has forced me to abandon that which I have loved most about this disconsolate life, to retire my love of perhaps the only thing that has brought me any sense of real purpose and meaning: N.S. Ugezene’s The Life and Thoughts of Shaun Pascal has forced me to resign from book reviewing, effectively immediately as of January 3rd, 2011. It is simply time to put my literary interests elsewhere, to focus on other adventures, finish one novel, began another, teach, drink and be merry; to close old doors so that new ones might open, so that new opportunities may emerge. That stated, Ugezene’s novel came across my radar at a very pivotal point in my life, just when I decided to move it to a new level where time would, from now on, be of essence, with the utmost regard. For some strange reason (call it prejudice, foreboding, intuition or plain ole experience – I don’t know), I had this feeling that Ugezene’s book would ultimately disappoint me. But, true to the PNR Promise, all books submitted would receive a fair and honest review. I had to give it a chance. So be it.
I do not know where to begin with what is wrong with this book because I cannot really call it a book – not in the truest sense of what constituted one – so I will merely try to note three of the more serious issues I took with the book, and then I will be done. (I am tired of wasting good time and energy on book reviews which scarcely can be called literature.) First, there are simply too many issues and topics permeating Ugezene’s book to really get a handle on what he is trying to convey. There is no consistent train of thought, nothing coherent enough for the reader to grasp and understand. He is all over the place. Secondly, the book has no format or proper structure. Thirdly, the book is just plain ole poorly written. Yet, even a skilled editor would reject the paid task of fixing Ugezene’s disorganized stream-of-consciousness into a concise, coherent, readable narrative. The subject which Ugezene attempts to examine – family troubles, love, life, the usual suspects – is decentralized with name changes, erratic sentences, unfocused thoughts, and frivolous rambling.
Perhaps Nadalina could have rescued The Life and Thoughts of Shaun Pascal from imminent obscurity, but this internal love affair fails because Ugezene is unable to transcend his own limited ideology of life, people, spaces and places, in order to reflect more deeply, to examine with passion. As a result, all we really get is a distillated abstraction of puerile notes from the jagged frontlines of a dream deferred.
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… N.S. Ugezene, author of The Life and Thoughts of Shaun Pascal
what about the kennedys 