Category: american-literature
- Strange BedfellowsRoscoe a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 291 pp. $15.00 ***** Roscoe is William Kennedy’s political novel, and we should have seen it coming. As far back as Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, we knew that Albany was essentially run by a couple of guys named Roscoe Conway and Patsy McCall, who were important presences in that ...Read more
- The True TempleBeyond the Abbey Gates (formerly The Age of Miracles) a novel by Catherine MacCoun. Trumpeter. 337 pp. $15.95. ***** I defy anyone to read this novel and decide what the author thinks is sacred and what profane; religious, irreligious; the right way to live, the wrong way. It turns every preconception you have on its head. ...Read more
- Sex! Passion! Betrayal! Murder!The Flaming Corsage a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 209 pp. $23.95 ***** In Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, there is a subplot involving a man who, though not the protagonist, is central to the story. Martin Daugherty is the son of a renowned playwright, who is suffering dementia in a nearby nursing home. Martin himself is ...Read more
- The Family PhelanVery Old Bones a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 292 pp. $22.00 When we read Ironweed, about a man—Francis Phelan—who accidentally kills his infant son and then, in shame, becomes a hobo for the rest of his life; or Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, about that man’s son, who lives as a gambler and numbers writer who ...Read more
- Magic Not-Quite-RealismQuinn’s Book a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin Books. 289 pp. $16.00. I don’t know quite what to make of Quinn’s Book, the fourth novel in William Kennedy’s Albany cycle. I noted before that each of the first three books seemed more and more focused on a mystical Catholic view of things, with Ironweed taking a ...Read more
- The Quick and the DeadIronweed a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 227 pp. $18.00 ***** Despite my huge admiration for the first two novels in the Albany cycle, I can see why Ironweed was the prize winner. Kennedy’s writing reaches an apotheosis in this book, perhaps from the subject matter, perhaps just because he was growing in confidence. In 1983, ...Read more
- Man of PrincipleBilly Phelan’s Greatest Game a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin Books. 282 pp. $14.00 ***** To get the suspense over with immediately, since it’s the first incident in the novel: Billy’s greatest game was when he bowled 299 in a match against a man named Scotty Streck. They were competing for the best three game total, ...Read more
- Charmingly DespicableLegs a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 317 pp. $17.00. ***** William Kennedy burst onto the literary scene in 1983 with the novel Ironweed, his fourth. My memory is that he’d had trouble finding a publisher because his earlier novels hadn’t sold. In an act of desperation he got in touch with Saul Bellow, whom he’d ...Read more
- The Way We’re All CrazyThe Dog of the South a novel by Charles Portis. From Charles Portis: Collected Works. Library of America pp. 261-461. $45.00 ****1/2 I see The Dog of the South as a real step forward in the work of Charles Portis. His first novel, Norwood, gave an indication of where he was heading. Then he wrote a ...Read more
- Famously ObscureTrue Grit a novel by Charles Portis. From Charles Portis: Collected Works. Library of America. pp. 111-261. $45.00. ***** One of the most wonderful things about True Grit is the voice of its narrator, whom we take to be the fourteen-old-girl who is going through this adventure, but who is actually much older, “a woman with ...Read more
- The Whiteness of the WhaleMelville: His World and Work by Andrew Delbanco. Vintage. 415 pp. $18.00. ***** I’m tempted by the first line of The Good Soldier, “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” I don’t suppose that’s literally true, but it’s plenty sad. I’m reminded of a moment in James Atlas’ biography of Delmore Schwartz, when Schwartz ...Read more
- Life and WorkThe Life of William Faulkner Volume 2: The Alarming Paradox 1935-1962 by Carl Rollyson. University of Virginia Press. 622 pp. $34.95 I can’t possibly say how much, through the years, I have liked and admired the work of William Faulkner. After Hemingway, he was the first author I read in earnest, going back to when I ...Read more
- Everything Slightly OffNorwood from Charles Portis: Collected Works Library of America. pp. 1-110. $45.00 (unless you get a bargain, as I did) ***** I will now take on the impossible task of saying what is great—or at least addictive—about a Charles Portis novel. Probably the least of his books is the most famous (and most conventional), True Grit. ...Read more
- Blind AmbitionUp With the Sun a novel by Thomas Mallon. Knopf. 337 pp. $28.00. ***** It’s a horrible thing to say, but I like Dick Kallman better when he’s dead. That’s partly because author Thomas Mallon has chosen to tell Kallman’s story from dual viewpoints, one in the first person, told by Dick’s occasional piano-accompanist Matt Liannetto; the ...Read more
- Brilliant Young ManThe Dream Life of Balso Snell and Miss Lonelyhearts from Nathaniel West: Novels and Other Writings. pp. 1-126. Library of America. $40.00. **** Reading the early work of Nathanael West brings to mind David Somerville, a friend I haven’t thought about for fifty years. He lived in the room beside mine in my freshman dorm at ...Read more
- Gently Down the StreamMaya a novel by C.W. Huntington, Jr. Wisdom Publications. 315 pp. $16.95. ***** As far as I know, C.W. Huntington—who died in 2020 at the age of 71—published only three books, The Emptiness of Emptiness (1995), a translation of and commentary on Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra; this novel, Maya, in 2015; and What I Don’t Know About Death, which ...Read more
- He Found It. Repeatedly.The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015 by Jim Harrison. Grove Press. 339 pp. $28.00. ***** I was mildly amused by this title for Jim Harrison’s nonfiction. Harrison has to be the most genuine writer who ever lived. (What other writer, in the middle of an article about a fishing expedition, would talk about going to ...Read more
- Just Do ItThe Idiot a novel by Elif Batuman. A Penguin Book. 423 pp. $17.00. ***1/2 Holy God, as a friend used to say, am I glad I went to college when I did. It was a difficult moment in this country’s history, the Vietnam war raging, a decent grade point average the only thing between me and ...Read more
- Love in the Time of ParanoiaFellow Travelers a novel by Thomas Mallon. Vintage Books. 354 pp. $16.00. ***** Thomas Mallon is a historical novelist of much renown; Henry and Clara—his breakthrough book—told the story of the couple who occupied the booth with Lincoln on the night he was shot. I’ve always thought it took colossal nerve to write such a book. ...Read more
- Movin’ on UpThe 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 of ...Read more
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You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)