{"id":147,"date":"2008-06-28T22:02:54","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T02:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/28\/review-of-an-arsonists-guide-to-writers-homes-in-new-england-by-brock-clarke\/"},"modified":"2008-10-12T16:52:01","modified_gmt":"2008-10-12T20:52:01","slug":"review-of-an-arsonists-guide-to-writers-homes-in-new-england-by-brock-clarke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Review of An Arsonist&#8217;s Guide to Writers&#8217; Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image215\" height=\"110\" alt=\"arsonists_guide.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/arsonists_guide.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>An Arsonist&#8217;s Guide to Writers&#8217; Homes in New England<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Brock Clarke<\/p>\n<p>Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007.\u00a0 303 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Sam Pulsifer is a bumbler.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a lovable bumbler, but he&#8217;s undeniably a bumbler.<\/p>\n<p>Sam spent ten years of his life in prison because when he was eighteen, he accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House and killed two people.<\/p>\n<p>While he was in prison, people wrote to him, asking him to burn down other writers&#8217; houses for them.\u00a0 His father saved the letters in a shoebox.<\/p>\n<p>When he gets out, he&#8217;s on his way to a happy life, with a career, a beautiful wife and two children.\u00a0 But circumstances come against him, and Sam inevitably bumbles his reactions.<\/p>\n<p>This book is humorous, but in a deeply sad way.\u00a0 This is not the typical feel-good novel I read, and I almost didn&#8217;t finish it.\u00a0 Readers with a cynical bent will find the book quite hilarious.\u00a0 I found it terribly sad.\u00a0 If I had known one of the issues it deals with is marital happiness and unfaithfulness, I probably never would have\u00a0picked it up.\u00a0 Overall, it has an exceedingly pessimistic outlook on life, and love, and literature.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I finished the book because I cared about Sam Pulsifer.\u00a0 Yes, he&#8217;s a bumbler, but he has a good, noble\u00a0heart.\u00a0 I still find myself hoping that, after the book finishes, perhaps events in his life will, somehow, take a turn for the better.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1565125517\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Fiction\/arsonists_guide.html\">www.sonderbooks.com\/Fiction\/arsonists_guide.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Arsonist&#8217;s Guide to Writers&#8217; Homes in New England by Brock Clarke Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007.\u00a0 303 pages. Sam Pulsifer is a bumbler.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a lovable bumbler, but he&#8217;s undeniably a bumbler. Sam spent ten years of his life in prison because when he was eighteen, he accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-review","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}