The Intuitionist a novel by Colson Whitehead. Anchor Books. 255 pp. $16.00. ***1/2 It’s tough being a moron. When I finished Harlem Shuffle, the third Colson Whitehead novel I’d read, I was so excited about his work that I wanted more, so I decided to go back to his first novel, which won a number … Continue reading Movin’ on Up
(The Faulkner Project) William Faulkner Novels 1926-1962 Library of America. Five volumes. 5454 pp. $157.00 ***** I began this project on a whim last June with a nagging question: why did my father, dying of leukemia at the age of 47, read almost nothing but Faulkner in his final years? I had the second volume … Continue reading You Can Too Go Home Again
(The Faulkner Project) Soldiers’ Pay a novel by William Faulkner. Library of America William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929. pp. 1-257. ***1/2 I’ve always been haunted by the fact that my father read Faulkner at the end of his life. He was only 47 when he died, and had had leukemia for six years; in the final … Continue reading Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go
Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis. Knopf. 545 pp. $28.82 Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien. Little, Brown. 368 pp. $27.94. Inside Story is a novel because Martin Amis chooses to call it one. It has novelistic sections, but the bulk of the book is a memoir of some writers who have been … Continue reading Name Droppers Extraordinaire
Early Novels and Stories by James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country. Library of America. 970 pp. In the midst of the endless current theorizing about race and sexuality and gender identity, and talk of all the books we must read (I hate to be told I must read a … Continue reading Portrait of the Artists Through a Boozy Haze
A Good Day to Die a novel by Jim Harrison. A Delta Book. 176 pp. $7.95 (in 1973) ** It’s startling to realize that, after a first novel that was the semi-autobiographical and rather random ruminations of a poet who loved the natural world, Jim Harrison, with A Good Day to Die, suddenly became a … Continue reading Young Man with a Horn
Wolf: A False Memoir by Jim Harrison. Delta. 225 pp. Having just made my way chronologically through the novels of Toni Morrison—an experience I’m still digesting[1]—it occurred to me that I might do the same with Jim Harrison. I once wrote, “I sometimes think I could sit down and read through his entire oeuvre, all … Continue reading Present at the Creation
Home a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 145 pp. $14.95 *** God Help the Child a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 178 pp. $14.95 *** Last April, having seen Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, I resolved to read all of her novels, in order of composition. It’s … Continue reading Closing the Book
A Mercy a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 196 pp. $15.95 I have felt adrift in Toni Morrison novels before—at some point in every book I’ve read—but never right at the beginning as in A Mercy. It begins with a short section in first person, and I had no idea what was going on, almost … Continue reading Women Without Men
Love a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 202 pp. $15.00 I was sitting down to write about her eighth novel—I’ve been reading her work chronologically, ever since I saw Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am—when I heard the news that Toni Morrison had died, at the age of 88. At first I thought I should … Continue reading What Love?