Category: american-literature

Heaven All the Way
In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen Riverhead Books 250 pp $16.00 Peter Matthiessen’s final novel—it was published right around the time of his death in 2014—concerns a group of people who come together to do a meditation retreat at Auschwitz. Matthiessen’s Zen teacher, Bernie Glassman, conducted such a retreat, perhaps more than one, and I don’t know ...
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Too Much Faux, Too Little Mystery
The Big Seven: A Faux Mystery by Jim Harrison. Grove Press. 341 pp. $26.00. Jim Harrison is my favorite novelist, probably of all time; I’ve read many of his books multiple times and would happily read most of them again. He has a unique style, marvelous powers of observation; he tells a great story and is ...
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The Utopian Theology of Guy Davenport
The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, The Bicycle Rider, Wo es war, woll Ich warden, The Ringdove Sign. Stories by Guy Davenport from The Death of Picasso: New and Selected Writing. Shoemaker & Hoard. 379 pp. $16.00. When I was a student at Duke University in the late Sixties, we sometimes got together to argue about who ...
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Everyman Wants Every Woman
Maybe not Every Man, but Every Philip Roth Protagonist Everyman by Philp Roth. Vintage. 182 pp. $12.40. **** The novel opens in a startling way, with the unnamed protagonist’s funeral. That opening is apt, because the novel’s focus is an unabashed look at the fact of our mortality, with no blinders on and no consolation. In that sense ...
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Apology to Peter Matthiessen
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. Modern Library. 912 pp. $18.00. For some years—having read a few things avidly—I avoided the work of Peter Matthiessen. I devoured his book of Zen Journals, Nine-Headed Dragon River, which featured some of the most important figures of American Zen, read it two or three times. I also loved my first ...
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