DOUBLE VISION

by John Enowles ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

If anyone's been wondering where John Knowles - the young American whose first novel triumphed on both sides of the Atlantic and whose second sank there - was going, the third entry, a travel journal, should tell them: right smack into A Literary Career, a smooth and shiny one. So many polite perceptions, fashionable findings; such a well-mannered sensibility, a young man writing like a middleaged one or vice versa. Among the numerous potted palms passages, (the odyssey runs from London to Beirut, Damascus and Greece), he is impressionistic: ""a star-crowded Arab sky closed like a lid overhead,"" journalistic: ""The Lebanese don't drive cars; they fire them like guns,"" contemporary: ""This is the Near East: a paralyzed battlefield."" He asks questions (""Does a land create a people?"") and sometimes answers them (""Why is 'rootlessness' considered such an undesirable state? We're not plants""). Occasionally he appears to have Larger Sights in view, possibly remembering that Miller, Isherwood and Greene have also bummed around, but circumspection wins the day. A very pretty, very pleasant work which - excepting the unexpectedly hearty coverage of King Hussein and the Lawrence of Arabia filming a set of postcard articles perfect for the Atlantic or Holiday. The title? Counterpoint to the International Theme, i.e. the differences between the American Way and the Way of the World.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION