THE DAREDEVILS

Name: THE DAREDEVILS
Author: Gary Amdahl
ISBN: 978-1-59376-629-0

by Gary Amdahl ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2016

So immersed is Amdahl in the politics of the era and the philosophical questions at the novel’s core that he too often...

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Amid the violent labor struggles of early-20th-century America, the wealthy son of a prominent San Francisco family immerses himself in theater and politics and obsesses over the distinction (or lack thereof) between performance and “real” life.

All the world’s a stage in Amdahl’s (The Intimidator Still Lives in Our Hearts, 2013, etc.) dense, sometimes confounding novel. The bulk of the action takes place in the run-up to America’s entry into World War I. Charles Minot, son of a mover and shaker with connections to Theodore Roosevelt, is staging a production of Henry James’ The American at his family’s theater. Self-serious and insecure, Charles becomes involved with Vera, one of his actresses, and through her dives headfirst into the gritty world of radical labor activists. After Charles’ affiliation with alleged anarchists is revealed in the press, his theater is bombed during a performance. Charles and Vera repair to the Midwest, where they consort with a colorful cast of unionists and their adversaries and revel in the performative nature of “reality.” This obsession with life as theater is provocative, but the idea is explored so often and so pointedly (“He was not free of the necessary falseness of reality, not free of the stage, but wished to be”) that it becomes challenging to invest in the characters. Amdahl’s command of language is powerful, but the emotional payoff isn’t commensurate with the intellectual investment required to appreciate this ambitious novel.

So immersed is Amdahl in the politics of the era and the philosophical questions at the novel’s core that he too often sacrifices clarity for concept.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-59376-629-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
I AM DEATH
by Gary Amdahl

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VISIGOTH
by Gary Amdahl

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946

ISBN: 0452277507

Page Count: 114

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.