Category: american-literature
- 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
- It’s All Freddie’s FaultHarlem Shuffle a novel by Colson Whitehead. Anchor Books. 318 pp. $17.00. ***** Colson Whitehead, it seems, can do anything as a writer. The Underground Railroad—which first brought the writer to my attention—was a wild fantasy about life under slavery and about the African American experience. It won the National Book Award and was made into ...Read more
- It Ain’t WorkThis Is How I Spend My Holidays My family and I just spent a week in Pittsburgh. The purpose of the visit for me was to see my brother and his wife, to re-engage in the conversation that he and I have been having for the last sixty years or so, taking up where we left ...Read more
- Far Out, ManTripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book from Maxine Hong Kingston Library of America. Viet Thanh Nguyen, editor. pp 479-864. **** This novel, published in 1989, is the quintessential Sixties novel (and seems to be the only novel that Maxine Hong Kingston has published, though she was a famous writer by the time it came out, having published ...Read more
- Inventing the BookThe Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. From Kingston Library of America. Viet Thanh Nguyen, editor. pp. 1-180. ***** China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston. From Kingston. Library of America. Viet Thanh Nguyen, editor. pp. 181-477. ***** I’ve heard this said about other writers but was never sure what it meant: Maxine Hong Kingston writes as if ...Read more
- All VoiceTrain Whistle Guitar from Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems Library of America pp. 1-141. The Spyglass Tree from Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems Library of America pp. 141-309. Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray. Random House. 399 pp. I haven’t posted in some time for a variety of reasons: ...Read more
- Devastating But ImportantThe Nickel Boys a novel by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday. 213 pp. $24.95 ***** I got this book as a gift many months ago, and it has sat on my shelf ever since. The problem wasn’t anything about Colson Whitehead; I loved The Underground Railroad and actually heard him read from it in Durham. He’s a person ...Read more
- He Got a D in English at Ole MissThe Life of William Faulkner, Volume One: The Past Is Never Dead 1897-1934. By Carl Rollyson. University of Virginia Press. 476 pp. $34.95 ***1/2 This is the third biography of William Faulkner I’ve read, and I should mention right off the bat—something I don’t remember ever saying before—that I didn’t read every word. I read Joseph ...Read more
- Voices of New YorkLush Life a novel by Richard Price. Picador. 455 pp. $15.00 **** Two guys from the projects in New York, Little Dap and Tristan, have a scheme to make money. They’ll go out late and mug some bar hoppers in the East Village to get cash, go uptown and buy cocaine in quantity, come back, divide ...Read more
- Me EitherI Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel By Percival Everett. Graywolf Press. 234 pp. $16.00 **** There is a kind of writer who plans out his books in great detail. No less a literary eminence than P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, spent weeks planning and taking notes and writing outlines in order to write one of his ...Read more
- Pass the BottleAll My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers a novel by Larry McMurtry. Liveright. 277pp. $15.95 **** Everybody loves a story about a fuck-up. When you read about a guy who is as likely to spend the night on a couch in the university library as he is in his bed at home (he has a ...Read more
- Daily Life, Sans EthnographyThe Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle. Penguin Press. 348 pp. $28.00. **** I’m having an odd experience with The Empathy Diaries. I absolutely loved reading the book night after night, but as I look back find it difficult to put into words what I liked so much. Not normally my problem. Sherry Turkle is ...Read more
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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)