by John Edgar Wideman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1985
Winner of the PEN Faulkner Award for 1984 when printed as a mass market paperback by Avon, this novel reappears now in hard covers from England. Wideman's achievement, without doubt, is ambitious, earnest, and passionate, and for these reasons it deserves high praise. But the book is harmed badly at the same time by its idolatrous and slavish imitation of Faulkner, which make it a museum piece. Set in the Homewood section of what is taken to be Pittsburgh, the novel chronicles the lives of the blacks who make what they can of their lives there, spanning a time from the new migrations of the 1930's to the backward-looking disillusionment of 1970. Albert Wilkes, jazz pianist and rootless seeker, is the legendary and symbolic foundation, as well as the doomed inspiration, for the lives of the others; having killed a white policeman, he is, after seven years of hiding, but still before the time of World War II, betrayed and hideously slain. Those growing up in the grip and omnipresence of his contradictory legacy include a central trio made up of the highly sexual Lucy Tate, her lifelong lover Carl French, and Lucy's adoptive brother, known only as "Brother Tate," who is an albino black with near-visionary gifts as musician and artist, but also with near-mad depths of emotion and despair, which cause him to become mute (after the "accidental" death, on the Fourth of July, by fire, of his own albino and illegitimate son) and sixteen years later to die, by suicide, under an oncoming train. Many readers, if willing to work for what they get, will be moved by this complex, intricate, and symbolic novel. Others will lament that it is not a new book at all, but Faulkner again, sprung into life half a century later, and talky.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 0395877296
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
Share your opinion of this book
More by John Edgar Wideman
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
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.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
Share your opinion of this book
More by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
BOOK REVIEW
by Donna Tartt
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
Share your opinion of this book
More by John Steinbeck
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
More About This Book
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.