Category: american-literature
- Writing for his LifeDevouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by Todd Goddard. Black Stone Publishing. 518 pp. **** In the late seventies, when my writing career was getting started, I followed the literary world the way other men follow the sports pages, and I vividly remember the event that put Jim Harrison on the map: Esquire published the ...Read more
- What Do I Call This Thing?The Flamethrowers a novel by Rachel Kushner. Scribner. 383 pp. ***** Rachel Kushner is a writer who is so riveting line by line that you forget to step back and ask yourself what you’ve been reading. Then your wife asks and you say, it’s about an art student in New York named Reno (named for the ...Read more
- Don’t Miss This OneA Gathering of Old Men a novel by Ernest J. Gaines. From Gaines: Four Novels. Library of America. pp. 405-583. ***** Though I almost didn’t read it—I’d been disappointed by In My Father’s House, which I found oddly inert—A Gathering Of Old Men might be Ernest J. Gaines’ best novel. It is certainly the most suspenseful; ...Read more
- Mallon Works MagicWatergate a novel by Thomas Mallon. Vintage. 429 pp. ***** I’ve resisted the three political novels at the heart of Thomas Mallon’s recent work, Watergate, Finale, and Landfall, about three presidents whom I’ve always detested, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (the younger). Mallon and I are friends, though we haven’t seen each other in years, but I ...Read more
- A Few More Words on FaulknerStories by William Faulkner. Library of America. 1160 pp. ***** I have now, so help me God, read every word William Faulkner wrote and published, at least all the prose. I enthusiastically reviewed this book some weeks ago, and had just a couple of small sections to go. Also, I hadn’t read the first volume in ...Read more
- Charmed LifeThe Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994 by Thomas Mallon. Knopf. 573 pp. $40.00. ***** It seems forever since I’ve posted on my website, but I spent much of July reading and reviewing a new biography of Peter Matthiessen for the winter issue of Tricycle. I’m also still reading bits and pieces of Faulkner ...Read more
- ImposterFaulkner: Stories (Knight’s Gambit, Collected Stories, Big Woods, Other Works). Library of America. 1160 pp. ***** For some time I’ve been claiming (rather proudly) that I recently completed a project of reading and rereading all of William Faulkner. It was five Library of America volumes, and it took me months, reading the novels in order. I ...Read more
- Aspiration Meets RealityThe Group a novel by Mary McCarthy. From Novels 1963-1979. Library of America. pp. 1-359. ***** I said here recently, in my study of outrageous women from several generations, that All Fours is a better novel than anything Mary McCarthy or Erica Jong had written. That may still be true. But at that point I hadn’t ...Read more
- Weird From the Get GoNo One Belongs Here More Than You stories by Miranda July. Scribner. 205 pp. $18.00 **** The First Bad Man a novel by Miranda July. Scribner. 276 pp. $18.00 **** I have now read the complete prose fiction of Miranda July, and I must say I’m dumbfounded. As I said before, I think All Fours is a ...Read more
- Two MasterpiecesNickel Boys a film by RaMell Ross. With Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Trey Perkins. Streaming on various platforms. ***** I felt about the movie Nickel Boys exactly the way I felt about the book; I wanted to see it but was half afraid to. There are many ways a movie could have ...Read more
- Mary, Erica, MirandaAll Fours a novel by Miranda July. Riverhead Books. 326 pp. ***** My original idea—as I mentioned in my last post—was to compare the outrageous women from different generations, my mother’s (Mary McCarthy), mine (Erica Jong), and my son’s (Miranda July). I’d been reading Mary McCarthy already, I’ve read Erica Jong—and written about her—in the past, ...Read more
- Unfinished LivesLincoln in the Bardo a novel by George Saunders. Random House. 343 pp. ***** I haven’t been a fan of George Saunders’ short stories. I read Tenth of December with admiration but without much pleasure. The stories seemed clever and aesthetically interesting, but I couldn’t get into them as narratives. I’m more a John O’Hara guy. ...Read more
- American OriginalRecollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years by Diane di Prima. Penguin Books. 424 pp. $18.00. **** In this astonishing and inspiring memoir—424 tightly packed pages full of remarkably detailed writing, which covers maybe 30 years of a hugely eventful life—there are several moments that stand out for me. One is when, ...Read more
- And Is He PissedValdez Is Coming a novel by Elmore Leonard. From Elmore Leonard: Westerns. Library of America. pp. 279-414. ***** I shouldn’t make too much of Elmore Leonard. I probably already have. He was a genre writer who didn’t care what genre he was in, switched from Westerns to Crime novels when the Western market fizzled out. He ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Crazy. The World Was.The Known World a novel by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 388 pp. ***** It isn’t often that I read a novel, then sit down immediately and read it again. I wasn’t planning to do that this time. But as I pondered my previous review of The Known World, I saw structural things about the novel ...Read more
- Elmore the GreatLast Stand at Saber River and Hombre from Westerns by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. pp. 1-278. ***** I love the story of Elmore Leonard’s formation as a writer that Greg Sutter tells in his excellent chronology at the back of the Library of America volume. Born in 1925, Leonard grew up in Detroit and attended ...Read more
- Writing Like GodThe Known World a novel by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 388 pp. ***** I have a friend who, when he wants to compliment a writer’s style, says, He (or she) writes like a god. He’s said that a few too many times at this point, but I know what he means. He reads a number ...Read more
- Plain TruthAll Aunt Hagar’s Children stories by Edward P. Jones. Harper Perennial. 399 pp. ***** Edward P. Jones, it would seem, can write about anything, and anybody. He published his first book of stories, Lost in the City, in 1992 (otherwise known as half-a-lifetime ago). It was a bit of a late arrival on the literary scene; ...Read more
- Academics as a Blood SportStoner a novel by John Williams. From John Williams: Collected Novels. Daniel Mendelsohn, editor. Library of America. pp. 257-486 **** William Stoner, after growing up on a hardscrabble farm in rural Missouri, has two major epiphanies in his early adulthood. The first occurs when he attends the University of Missouri as an agricultural student, and takes ...Read more
- I’d Call Them BattlefieldsThe Groves of Academe a novel by Mary McCarthy. From Mary McCarthy Novels & Stories 1942-1963. Library of America. pp. 289-508. ***** I’ve always loved novels of academic life. I love the academy, as bonkers as it often is, and love reading about the odd, distorted presences that inhabit it. I would also say that, in ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)