his is a very big novel which promises an enormous pay-off that it more than half delivers. It is generically modeled after...

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his is a very big novel which promises an enormous pay-off that it more than half delivers. It is generically modeled after Dos Passos' U.S.A. and its story takes place everywhere on the special day chosen for the drama-- the day when truman beat Dewey in the upset of the century. Robertson tunes his typewriter up for nostalgia, but vamp as he will those leaden keys of realism, it rarely comes across. But in the many scenes, which are part of the fictional device on which the novel is built, the reader is here and there and everywhere, with candidates running for office, a movie, star, a major league ball player, or a 110-year-old Civil War eteran. His death occasions one of the more imaginative moments in the book. Robertson also uses more than one style; there's one paragraph long enough to make in a novel primarily popular in its tono the author breaks with realism and his type-writer hums with the Muses. Often he writes much better than his characters talk, and the whole book revels in the irony of Truman's triumph... This may catch on.

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1964

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