Response

I chose the title "sometimes a conch shell is only a conch shell" primarily because I thought it was funny. And in the sense that it is society being emasculated, I would tend to agree with you about the loss of power.

I think the book was fatalistic (the lyrical prose tended to make the fatalism more attractive or at least more believable). However, Helen and Francis talked quite a bit about religion, specifically Catholicism. That coupled with Francis's hallucinations/visions made me wonder what Kennedy was getting at in regards to the spiritual lives of the indigent which, in many ways boiled down to life and death, so I don't necessarily think the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

When I read that scene with his family, I thought that we were finally getting some redemption in the story, but the return to the vagabond lifestyle (even if he had better clothes) was a sort of statement that family and happiness are (to Kennedy's way of thinking) a happy illusion, hammered home by his use of the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" which I have a greater affinity for now that I've read this book.

I have to say that this book really got under my skin, which is a testament to how well Kennedy expresses his vision. I like the fact that he doesn't flinch when writing about the logical extension of his worldview.

That being said, I don't know that I'll ever reread this one.

I haven't read Endgame, so I can't speak to the relevance of that play but I could see the connection (in tone) to Death of a Salesman. I thought more of Tim O'Brien, Cormac McCarthy and Philip Larkin as others who are similarly bleak, though Larkin is funny enough to blunt it a little.

Maybe we'll get a happy ending in one of the books at least...