GREASED SAMBA And Other Stories

by John Deck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 19, 1970

Mr. Deck is a writer of many gifts, but the most noticeable--if not the most remarkable--is a talent for impersonation that recalls Sir Alec Guinness's advice to actors: that they begin to know a character by assuming his posture, his gestures, and the rest will reveal itself. In these stories (most in the first person, and the others so firmly focused they might as well be) Mr. Deck's people strike an initial pose and then, in their attempts to elaborate and carry it, unwittingly expose their real inner and outer contingencies. But they are far from the technical exercises this description might suggest; the author is genuinely intrigued by personality (the phenomenon), but as well, by the good, live beings it weighs down and constrains (people). Differences of age, sex, occupation, experience are rarely a hindrance to his sympathy and understanding, and in nearly every case he finds the coordinates of attitude and language that identify precisely. His heroes include a self-deluded Nabokovian kidnapper, a poor but obstinate expatriate German intellectual, a trucker, a divorcee; but the best is the glorious senior citizen of ""Greased Samba,"" whose dignity and cantankerous wit are a moving, unsentimental tribute to age. A very funny, aware, accomplished collection.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION