Critical and Psychiatric comments on Alan Krieger
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Estrin’s abrasive antihero’s commitment to battling false messiahs is morbidly compelling, and his logorrhea is occasionally dazzling. As Estrin raises a host of tough moral questions, drags philosopher Martha Nussbaum into the unsavory proceedings, and tinkers with the story of the golem, his mind-bending humor is at once intellectual and ribald. BOOKLIST
Alan Krieger, self-styled arbiter of Jewish identity, is a charming monster—omnivorous reader with apparently perfect recall, consumer of White Castle burgers and Reddi-Whip, racist, paranoiac, and, at least in desire, a mass-murderer. Oh, and he’s frequently hilarious. POPMATTERS
Alan Krieger has prodigious intelligence along with prodigious girth; everything about him is supersized. He can argue equally well about the virtues of White Castle hamburgers or why Aristotle’s theory of rational emotion should be applied to his own concept of disinterested rage. He is well read and loves to spout pithy versions of classic stories, such as an uncomfortable retelling of Oedipus to his mother on Mother’s Day. THE GUARDIAN
Alan Krieger is not your standard issue 35-year-old emergency-room nurse with a nonstop mind and mighty mouth, living with Oedipal ma in a sixth floor New York apartment "floor-to-ceilinged" with scholarly tomes, ominously reminding him of the Texas Book Depository. Often endearing but just as often infuriating, tossing off bon mots and potshots cavalierly quickly, Alan is one of those people you either love or hate effortlessly and uncritically. SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE
Alan is larger than life, figuratively and literally. A huge man with huge appetites, he is brilliant, creative and multi-talented. He may be the most widely read fictional character ever to jump from pen to page. His stream-of-consciousness musing is filled with facts, interesting and obscure, and the cadence of his ranting is almost musical. His personality is so forceful that those around him can only tolerate his presence for a period of time before his obsessive paranoia interferes with his relationships and causes each friend or family member to abandon him for a calmer Alanless existence. JEWISH BOOK WORLD
It's no mere happenstance that Alan Krieger uses the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and of Will Durant's "The History of Civilization" to fortify a window in his New York apartment that he is converting into a sniper's perch. Notwithstanding his misbegotten idea to "make things a little better for all of us" by igniting an ethnic or racial war, Krieger is perhaps the most erudite, witty and well-read nudnik in contemporary American literature.
RUTLAND TIMES ARGUS
