This book gets the point across about reverse sexual discrimation without coming across so stongly (as a feminist would). Picked this book up at the library in the late '70's. I'm an avid reader...read "Last Days of Pompeii" when I was 9, and everything written by Robert Heinlien by the time I was 12....but darned if I can tell you the name of the book I just finished reading yesterday....but this book is one I can remember. Although Berger's ideas are of what a man would think a woman would think life should be like....he doesn't do too bad a job at it. My husband read the book (the last book he'd read was about George Patton) and he finally understood why I worked on out-driving men on the golf course, or worked on my own car.

I generally read about 75 books a year, and in the very long run few have made a lasting impression on me. This book is an exception; I read Regiment of Women about 20 years ago and I still think about it now and then. I suggest reading this book and Atwoods Handmaids Tale at the same time.

I stumbled onto this book when it first was published, and couldn't put it down. It came out at a time when we were all asking (like the song) "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" While the book may seem a little dated now, if you're old enough to remember, think about some of the sex/gender questions that were being asked then. Are we really any more advanced in our thinking now? This book made me laugh and laugh.

I just finished reading "Neighbors" by Thomas Berger and am convinced that I should never go back to my favorite coffee house again. Every time I went there to read this book I embarrassed myself with spontaneous guffaws, chuckles, whistles, hoots, hollers, snorts, hee-haws, "pfts!" and knee slaps. I drew a tremendous number of piercing looks and some sad glances of well-wishers encouraged to see a man afflicted with such a debilitating case of turrets emboldened enough to step out in public and try to normalize. This is one of the funniest novels I've ever read. Berger has the wit and darkly comedic outlook of Vonnegut and the surrealism and sheer command of the English language that Beckett displays in his best prose. I hate to say that the end of the novel failed to live up to the rather high expectations I had for it but really, who cares? I'm thrilled to have discovered a new favorite author and can't wait to read some more of his work. Probably "Little Big Man" will be next on my list. I highly recommend this novel especially for authors if for nothing else but to study the work of a master craftsman.

It was with great pleasure that I read that Zoland Books was reissuing Berger's classic dark comedy. I had been looking for this book for many years and it has sadly been out of print. The book still stands as one of the funniest books of the last twenty-five years. Earl Keese is the classic surburban gentleman: well rounded, established, slightly boring. He is living the perfect conventional life until his entire world is shattered by the moving in of Harry and Ramona. These are at first glance the neighbors from hell. Younger, less sophisticated, crass and alluring they are everything Keese is not. The first hundred and fifty pages of this novel ranks as one of the funniest set pieces in modern literature. One has to remember that this is a novel of all out guerilla warfare between two adult neighbors. If the idea seems childish at first one has to remember that these are adults acting as children. The odd thing is Keese grows to like these new people at the expense of his own family whom he begins to see as they really are. Wife Enid is a boozy bore, while daughter Elaine is a petty thief. Nothing is to Keese as it has seemed. By the end of the novel Keese is doubting his own way of life and wants to be more like the neighbors that he started out hating. The book is extemely funny biut sort of sad also and well worth the read.

Meeting Evil is a great book. In it (like in Neighbors and The Houseguest) Berger explores the themes of the limits of hospitality and the shield of insulation that we as members of society build around ourselves. However, in this novel, Berger uses the character of Ritchie to explore the nature of Evil more than he does with any other character. Ritchie's motivations are random and surreal and chaotic in contrast to the overly orderly and logical John Felton. It is as if Berger purposely makes Ritchie as illogical as possible while simultaneously showing John (and the reader)to be completely unprepared to deal with or understand him. Preparation requires logic, and logic is useless in dealing with chaos. Ritchie does not seem as sinister as he does chaotic.

A simple story that tries to really hold your attention and could have been a very good read for the simple reader. But in this case the author of this simple novel has to prove that simply reading this book could be a challange in requiring a dictionary at hand. The story bogs with obstreperous, abrogating,sophistry, efficacious,prodigious words, page after page. No wonder it is out of print!

For those of us who have always been fascinated by the idea of being stranded somewhere and having to improvise and invent in order to survive, the classic Crusoe story. In this modern retelling,the reader is immediately engaged with the infuriating,yet likeable Crews as he faces a wilderness he is totally unprepared for.With no one to talk to, he is forced to converse with himself (and us), examining his past and coping with the intense present

Because otherwise you'll never get through it.

_Little Big Man_ is an impossible book to read if you take it seriously - it has to be read as a joke. The adventures of Jack Crabb, known by the Cheyenne as Little Big Man, are ridiculously oversized and exaggerated. Told by the 111-year-old Crabb, who claims he lived both as a white and a Cheyenne, married into both cultures, did every possible Old-West job you could do (including being a drunk), out-dueled Wild Bill Hickok, both swore to kill General George Armstrong Custer and fought beside him, and was the sole survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn, Thomas Berger tries -far- too hard to make the ultimate American novel. If you read it as if it's funny, the book is funny.

But even if you do, it's very likely that you're going to hate it. Jack Crabb is not a character that is easily liked - and considering he's the only character who stays around for very long, it makes the book hard to stomach. The film version, directed by Arthur Penn, makes Dustin Hoffman's Jack Crabb much more bumbling and perhaps even lovable.

It covers some thirty-five years, perhaps more, and squashes in every possible bit of the American West you can imagine, and -somehow- it all feeds into Jack's life. When the book was all said and done, I found that there had been no plot, no continuous main thread of anything save Jack's dilemma between being Indian or white (which he never solves nor admits that he can, perhaps, be both). The story could have kept on going forever had it not ended where it did after the Battle of Little Bighorn. In that sense it was a true biography in its style, but it left something to be desired in terms of dramatic interest.

What I -did- like about _Little Big Man_ was its unsentimental portrayal of the Indian culture. It didn't paint the whites as bad guys and the Indians as saints. It didn't do the opposite, either. It showed that whites have their cultural good points and bad points, and Indians have their cultural good points and bad points. It was true, and didn't pander to one side or the other - the film, however, completely changes it to be sympathetic to the Cheyenne, which was highly disappointing.

All in all, _Little Big Man_ is pretentious and overambitious, only worth reading if you have to read it. I don't believe that it deserves to be called "a singular literary achievement that, like its ancient hero, only gets better with the years" (back of book), or "the very best novel ever about the American West" (New York Times). It's pretentious praise for a pretentious novel that is extremely hard to muddle through, and even harder to really enjoy - and this is coming from someone who loves to read and can always find something worthwhile in almost any book. It does have good points, like I said, but otherwise . . . it was not at all to my tastes and does not come recommended at all.