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Reviews for Hume's Fork

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"This is a wacky novel, even for a satire. It stars a couple of philosophy professors who, on their way to a conference in South Carolina, get sidetracked and wind up bunking with a local family. The book's protagonist is Legare Hume, and the local family is his own: mother, father, various relatives, including the only two Legare can stand, his siser and her small boy. He has spent most of his life trying to pretend his family doesn't exist, and now he watches, helplessly, as his fellow professor, Saul Grossman, fits right in, instantly seeming to become just one o' the boys. Cooper, a philosophy professor who hails from South Carolina, manages to tell a funny, fast-paced, hugely entertaining story that balances intricate philosophical ideas (the title itself is a pun, though you may need a crash course in logical positivism to get the joke) with outright zanines (philosophizing wrestlers). Comparisons to John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces are not without merit, though Michael Malone's Handling Sin is closer to the mark. Its similarity to these contemporary classics aside, Cooper's novel is not at all derivative."

David Pitt
Booklist

"What a ride! The humor combined with the dazzling word-play would have been enough, but to find the philosophical thoughts, the setting in the deep South, all the things I like best in books rolled up tightly in one neat package, I felt like it was written just for me. I think it is the first literary classic of our new century, an exceptional book. "

 

William Cliett

Retired educator and Author of From Riverrun to Livvy: Reading the First Page of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’

 

"Hume's Fork takes a second-rate philosophy professor who teaches at a third-rate college to a fourth-rate academic conference. From there, Hume is off to any number of entanglements that somehow reach into the world of professional wrestling.  The book is so much fun that even we academics have to forgive, maybe even congratulate, Cooper, who has added to a genre that includes Lucky Jim and Straight Man."

Bill Koon, Ph. D.

Professor of English, Clemson University, Editor of A Collection of Classic Southern Humor, and Author of Hank Williams: So Lonesome

"Can one combine philosophy and humor?  I once tried to inject a humorous touch into a discussion about self-reference by imagining Dirty Harry referring in a movie to Clint Eastwood the real life actor.  Alas, when a friend tried to explain the joke to Clint, he was not amused.  Ron Cooper's humor fares much better than mine."

Jaakko Hintikka, Ph. D. 
one of the foremost philosophers in the world, has received perhaps philosophy's highest honor, to be the subject of a volume of the Library of Living Philosophers (2006). He is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is the author of over 30 books and 300 articles on philosophy.

"I approached Hume's Fork as I approach most academic novels, tentatively, ready for disappointment--or worse. I was delighted, accordingly, to find that Ron Cooper's imaginative recounting of life as a philosopher was so funny, touching, and not only well-informed but actually intelligent about its subject, a rare feat even for serious biographers of philosophical lives. The book reminded me of David Lodge's marvelous novel Small World, with a philosophical twist. I recommend it to those philosophers who have managed to maintain some sense of humor about the increasing absurdity and irrelevance of their 'profession' and to everyone else who has seriously wondered what (or whether) philosophy still has to say about life."

Robert C. Solomon, Ph. D.
Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Texas at Austin. Solomon is well-known for his courses on Existentialism for The Teaching Company. He is the author or editor of more that 50 books including The Passions, About Love, A Short History of Philosophy, The Joy of Philosophy, Spirituality for the Skeptic, and True to Our Feelings.

"Hume's Fork is one of the funniest novels I've read in a long time. Like John Kennedy Toole and Kingsley Amis, author Ron Cooper displays a gifted attentiveness to the foibles of the academic world. Hume's Fork is a very impressive debut. "

 

Ron Rash

Chair, English Department, Western Carolina University and Winner of the Appalachia Writer's Association Book of the Year Award for his debut novel, One Foot in Eden

 

"Only Ron Cooper could have written Hume’s Fork. How can I make this claim with such consummate confidence? Because of the high improbability that anyone at all could have cooked up this mix of zaniness and erudition, satire and insight. Hume’s Fork is as delicious as it is original."


Rebecca Goldstein, Ph. D.

Philosopher,  MacArthur Fellow, and Author of The Mind-Body Problem and Betraying Spinoza

 

"Part satire, part parody, and part tender story, Hume's Fork just plain makes a lot of sense and might even bring about the sort of slight awakening it chronicles.  If you are a professional philosopher, it may make you cry.  If you are anyone else, it will make you laugh--and think--and then laugh some more."

John J. Stuhr, Ph. D.
W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of American Studies, Vanderbilt University, and Author of Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy and Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy

"It doesn't seem possible for a first-time novelist to write a book that is tender, funny, intelligent, and satirical, but Ron Cooper has done exactly that. Hume's Fork is unlike any book I've ever read: satisfying as a philosophy text, compelling as a drama, and redemptive in its trashing of academic stuffed shirts. He writes about the South as only a native son can, with the right combination of pathos and punch. This book heralds the arrival of a much-needed breath of fresh air in American letters."

Lee Irby
Author of 7,000 Clams and The Up and Up 

 

"Ron Cooper has written something completely new: A philosophical romp.  He knows both his low country and his philsophy and if you like good, mostly clean, fun, this is the book for you."

Lola Haskins
Author of Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems, and Not Feathers Yet:  A Beginner's Guide to the Poetic Life

"Hume’s Fork is a breath of rare air—you know, with sweet notes of paper-pulp plant chimneys and beach foam, tidal mud and pine needles that one grows to love because they’re all about getting home, where you know who you are and what you are . . . Scraped raw by his wife, reaching critical mass with his university employer, faithfully attended by his Sancho friend Saul, and lost in the Lowcountry, philosophy professor Legare ‘Greazy’ Hume (Hume Fork’s ‘tagonist—he’s alternately pro- and ant-), talks us through his indecisions and reactions on this road trip home. It’s Kerouac with an advanced degree, if you will, or Odysseus trapped by the Sirens at a Wrestlemania tailgating party . . . Author Ron Cooper, that old mandolin-picker, is a well-tuned storytelling instrument as well. He has a way of writing that’s probably an awful lot like his teaching (he’s a professor at a college in central Florida), and you may find that there’s something more to it than just being entertained by this read. I expect that’s what you get with “Hume”: some book-learning, and a down-home, self-deprecating, occasionally grim sense of humor that’s sweet and sour—like South Carolina mustard-barbecue sauce. There are also some nice parting gifts just for playing along: stories inside the story that are themselves worth the price of admission. And don’t forget we promised surprises. So relax, lean back in that La-Z-Boy, and I promise you that Hume’s Fork will make you laugh, and it’ll talk philosophy ‘atcha, but all friendly-like, and there won’t be a quiz at the end."

Garrison Somers
Editor-in-Chief, The Blotter Magazine 

"Sideways meets Socrates, as two cohorts travel through the constrained, self-important world of philosophy conferences and realize via the age-old mind/body problem that there's far more to life and self, even when life contains embarrassing relatives, demanding wives, competitive colleagues, and anxious moments over one's own potency. Skewering the way once great ideas have been reduced to trivial debates, Cooper manages with metaphorical finesse to show us that philosophy can still teach us a thing or two, if we pay more attention to its essence than its current form."


Katherine Ramsland, Ph. D.

Professor of Forensic Psychololgy, DeSales University, and Author of The CSI Effect and The Human Predator

 

"In the world of Ron Cooper's Hume’s Fork, one meets the eccentric southern family of Greazy Hume, a philosopher whose perspective reaches from Aristotle to Maybelle Carter. Navigating this irresistible narrative, we find ourselves more than entertained and come away thinking deeply about subjects of the greatest importance. Hume's Fork is intelligent fun."

 

Sudye Cauthen

Director, The North Florida Center for Documentary Studies, and Author of the forthcoming Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place

 

"Hume’s Fork, a first-class farce with something for everyone, is about people just like you and me—rednecks with PhDs, wrestlers, rednecks without PhDs, a church with “corn-fed members,” and one lapsed Hasid who accidentally solves philosophy’s most profound riddle—the mind/body problem. May Hume’s Fork find its many readers! It made me laugh out loud."

 

Enid Shomer

Author of Imaginary Men and the forthcoming Tourist Season (Random House)

"A finely wrought novel in which two of the central characters happen to make their living as academic philosophers (thus, one in which characters reveal but also hide themselves, especially from themselves, by means of the ideas they entertain and defend). Exhibiting the human folly of professional philosophers is, for author Ron Cooper, secondary to exploring the human struggle of the central character, an individual who knows, all too acutely and painfully, that he does not know adequately what he is saying or doing. That is, Socratic wisdom is here not as a culminating insight but as a starting point, which, in this instance, is a place to which one can never go back – home. How is this possible? What would it mean to return home or simply to attempt to? How would one know that one had arrived – or failed to arrive – there?  What is going on in the minds of others who are encountered on such a trip? Do they even have minds in the same sense in which one has one’s own thoughts, confusions, experiences, and longings? Is this a merely human sojourn, or are we accompanied by a divine presence whose existence, while secured simply by a proper understanding of what his name means (that than which nothing greater can be conceived), is habitually denied by intellectuals?  Should not doubts about that disputable being – the human self – cut even deeper than those about the ontological argument? These and other questions are, in the hands of this storyteller, not so much matters of rumination as the stuff of the story itself – they are posed and addressed mainly by the actions of vividly drawn characters caught up in inherently dramatic situations. A wonderful read for anyone!"

 

Vincent Colapietro, Ph. D.

Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, Author of Peirce's Approach to the Self. 

 

 "Using philosophical debate, including within the professional wrestling ring as a backdrop to a combo buddy trek and family drama, Ron Cooper provides a deep, poignant tale that focuses on 'Hume's fork' in life. The storyline is character-driven as Hume provides a series of simple treatises on philosophy, interwoven with his extended family's antics, other philosophers' arguments, apocalyptic wrestling and NASCAR, and the final Tally (his wife). Fans who enjoy something different and unique will appreciate Mr. Cooper's satirical take on the American way of "I am, therefore I don't think"-living philosophically, that is."


Harriet Klauser

Midwest Book Review, Gave Hume's Fork 10/10 Stars


Cooper romps through an entertaining history of philosophy as [the main character] Legare’s internal meditations in encountering the plot’s simple premise (a road trip with the usual complications of unexpected events). The real glee comes as an inside joke: any audience-reader remembrance of the history of philosophy will see Cooper-Legare’s portrait of various philosophic principles as pure parody. . . . [This is] a novel about our labyrinthine mistaken perceptions. Cooper’s structure is one of whorls, matching arguments of predestination to the fabrication of professional wrestling in a swirl of language that allows the author’s linguistic consonance to evolve into the synaethesia of the protagonist Legare’s perceptual reality. . . . Puns run amok here, so much so that the allusion to a character from family legend—a traveling, local peddler who keeps goats—escalates into the myth of the satyr and the etymological origin for Cooper’s novel as a whole, that of satire.


Suzi X
Cosmoetica (read entire review)

© 2010 by Ron Cooper