Cypress Lake edition by joe Basara Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : Cypress Lake edition by joe Basara Literature Fiction eBooks 
Hospital orderly Owen Cloud falls in love, and to him it seems someone has turned up the volume on the Buzz of Being. Everything is as is always was, only more. Three women he meets help him advance through three phases of love--passion, friendship, and finally generosity of heart.
Cypress Lake edition by joe Basara Literature Fiction eBooks
I had this book on my To Read list for a while on Goodreads thanks to Ethan Cooper's marvelous review. Finally I decimated the virtual To Be Read pile on my Kindle enough that I decided to buy this. In part because it's less than a dollar and most big publisher books are eight to twelve times that much. I can at least say I got my dollar's worth.Since the author likes to reference old TV shows, I find it appropriate to reference an old TV show, in this case "Scrubs" which ended only a couple years ago, so it isn't that old. Like that show this book takes place largely in a hospital and features a twentysomething main character who likes to daydream a lot and lust after his coworkers. Only Basara's book is a lot less wacky and sadly does not feature anyone as hilariously grumpy as Dr. Cox.
Though since this book takes place in 1977 a M*A*S*H reference might have been more appropriate. Actually I think that's one series the author doesn't manage to directly reference in the book. Anyway, Owen Cloud moves back to his old stomping grounds in rural Florida to work as an orderly at a hospital. He almost right away falls head over heels for one of his coworkers, but eventually moves on to another and then to what I'd call the "consolation prize" girl, the one who's been there all along but only at the end does Owen realize is available. (This is incidentally a trope I've used a number of times. Like this book for example: Virgin Territory)
Along the way Owen spends a lot of time daydreaming and philosophizing. The almost constant bombardment of literary quotes and TV/song references from the 50s-70s become irritating after a little while. They give the narrative an ADHD feel, as if the author can't focus on one scene so he keeps jumping from one tangent to another.
If you look past those there's a well-written book about small town life, coming of age, and finding love. Since it's apparently a debut effort it's not bad. If a little more focus were devoted to developing the story and characters and less to quotes and references, it would have the gritty small-town feel of a Richard Russo novel like Empire Falls.
Still for a buck you can do a lot worse.
That is all.
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Cypress Lake edition by joe Basara Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
Loved free flow of Owen's thoughts. Lots of pop cultural references from the 70's mixed up with classic philosophy. Simply showing how often one can't appreciate and actually see what's actually right before them.
In CYPRESS LAKE, debut author Joe Basara examines the situation of Owen Cloud, a 26-year old with a wandering mind who works as a hospital orderly, lives alone in a bug-infested cottage, and looks for his soul mate.
Basara establishes several narrative dimensions in CYPRESS LAKE. The dimension that manifests earliest stretches from, shall we say, the ridiculous to the sublime, with Owen's mind quickly referencing popular culture--my inexact count is 23 TV shows and 11 popular movies--as well as philosophers or philosophical systems (11) and poets, novelists, and essayists (30) as he moves through his life.
In the two full pages starting at the bottom of page 82, for example, Owen's thoughts stream credibly from Martin Buber to "Beach Blanket Bingo" to Emerson's Over Soul to Plato to "Howdy Doody". Judging from close experience, I'd say that this is how the non-obsessive but neurotic mind works. BTW, one of Basara's references for Owen as he faces this mental jumpiness and disorganization is "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering where it will go..."
Basara's second narrative dimension moves forward in time, as Owen seeks his mate and soul mate. In this case, Owen progresses gradually with women, moving from idealization to superficial contact to mature assessment and then to meaningful interaction, when Owen finds a female with a generous heart. In this dimension, Basara shows the maturing Owen journeying from a love like Dante's for Beatrice to an ability to behold the "Glory of Being." For Basara, this quest is spiritual, not unlike the experience of the protagonist in Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" as he travels to his celestial city.
Finally, Basara's narrative moves between many instances of death to frequent consideration of the "Over Soul." Here, these deaths occur in the hospital where Owen works, as well as within his family. Meanwhile, Owen's explanation for the Over Soul is "Did you know that we are a stream whose source is hidden?...These are Emerson's words, not mine. We flow out of this source, and eventually return again." The Over Soul, BTW, is also Basara's name for a literary conceit, whereby authors create their characters at multiple levels.
In his narrative, Basara communicates what I took to be an insightful overview of his authorial intentions. This includes
o "...though my life may be no divine comedy, I don't want it being a tragedy either. So why not sprinkle in a few corny jokes?" (127)
o "It amazed him how one more thing kept following one more thing." (182)
o "I liked what you wrote about leaving some of our natural surroundings blank, like an artist's canvas, instead of filling everything in..." (205)
o "But, like Mark Twain, in his writing, he was inclined to tell the truth, mainly, though he also liked to stretch it some, because didn't the key to reality lie in the mysterious melding of within and without?" (258)
Owen Cloud is a nice man whose head is stuffed with BIG thoughts. Nonetheless, he is an average guy and Basara is usually content to keep description and interaction at Owen's true level. This is a shame because Basara, when he lets loose, can really write and add an aesthetic dimension to Owen's experiences. Here, for example, is what Owen remembers of Nikki at the office picnic. "...but during the two weeks that had passed since then he'd lived with the translucent vision of her swimming underwater, her body a mesh of mermaid scales--a chain-mail of mirrors, with each mirror being a bell, ringing out her glory." Maybe in Basara's next novel...
Anyway, this is definitely a five-star read and a five-star-plus for those who love puns, hilarious names, and word play. My favorite pun came early, when Basara tells of a hawker at a county fair who tosses a handful of green peas into a blender and... "when he turned the blender on they'd have whirled peas and everyone wants that, right?"
I had this book on my To Read list for a while on Goodreads thanks to Ethan Cooper's marvelous review. Finally I decimated the virtual To Be Read pile on my enough that I decided to buy this. In part because it's less than a dollar and most big publisher books are eight to twelve times that much. I can at least say I got my dollar's worth.
Since the author likes to reference old TV shows, I find it appropriate to reference an old TV show, in this case "Scrubs" which ended only a couple years ago, so it isn't that old. Like that show this book takes place largely in a hospital and features a twentysomething main character who likes to daydream a lot and lust after his coworkers. Only Basara's book is a lot less wacky and sadly does not feature anyone as hilariously grumpy as Dr. Cox.
Though since this book takes place in 1977 a M*A*S*H reference might have been more appropriate. Actually I think that's one series the author doesn't manage to directly reference in the book. Anyway, Owen Cloud moves back to his old stomping grounds in rural Florida to work as an orderly at a hospital. He almost right away falls head over heels for one of his coworkers, but eventually moves on to another and then to what I'd call the "consolation prize" girl, the one who's been there all along but only at the end does Owen realize is available. (This is incidentally a trope I've used a number of times. Like this book for example Virgin Territory)
Along the way Owen spends a lot of time daydreaming and philosophizing. The almost constant bombardment of literary quotes and TV/song references from the 50s-70s become irritating after a little while. They give the narrative an ADHD feel, as if the author can't focus on one scene so he keeps jumping from one tangent to another.
If you look past those there's a well-written book about small town life, coming of age, and finding love. Since it's apparently a debut effort it's not bad. If a little more focus were devoted to developing the story and characters and less to quotes and references, it would have the gritty small-town feel of a Richard Russo novel like Empire Falls.
Still for a buck you can do a lot worse.
That is all.
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