Category: the-art-of-narrative
- William Kennedy’s Big BookChango Beads and Two-Tone Shoes a novel by William Kennedy. Viking. 326 pp. ***** In an interview in mid-career, William Kennedy talked about his career as a journalist and his decision to begin writing fiction, and to concentrate on the city he had moved away from, but then returned to take care of his father. Someone ...Read more
- 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
- 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
- Call It What You Want. I Call It Great.A Thousand and One a film by A.V. Rockwell. With Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross. Streaming on Prime and other platforms. ***** A Thousand and One is the best movie I’ve seen in years. It focuses on the black underclass—a group I need to learn about—but isn’t about pimps, whores, ...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
- Cherchez la FemmeUnder the Glacier a novel by Haldor Laxness. With an introduction by Susan Sontag (thank God). Vintage. 240 pp. $17.00 ***1/2 I have to admit that Susan Sontag made more sense of this novel than I did. I actually finished the book with no idea what the hell was going on. Fortunately I had the Sontag introduction, ...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
- 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
- One of a KindNovelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami. Knopf. 224 pp. $22.99. *** Haruki Murakami is a novelist of indescribable genius. I mean that literally: I’ve read five of his novels, including the famous 1Q84, and can’t say what any of them was about (I don’t even know how to verbalize that title). His novels are like ...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
- Human ConsciousnessMrs. Dalloway a novel by Virginia Woolf and The Hours a novel by Michael Cunningham. A Combined Edition. Picador. 417 pp. (more or less). $20.00. ***** I haven’t read much Virginia Woolf and don’t have any particular excuse. She was all the rage in the seventies and eighties, when her diaries and letters were coming out. ...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
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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)