Art critic and curator Kertess (the nonfiction Desire by Numbers, etc., not reviewed) collects nine stories, six that first appeared in the New York art mag Bomb. Mostly about homosexual desire, narcissism, and the fear of physical decay, these self- conscious tales devolve into a glib and precious aestheticism, with loads of arcane floral detail. Like many of these erotically charged pieces, the long ``Saving Salvador'' takes place in the pre-AIDS world of gay promiscuity. Two friends from prep school—one an American aesthete, the other from El Salvador—argue over the fate of this Central American country. Peter, ``the sardonic wallflower,'' indifferent to all politics, rejects his wealthy friend Manolo's request to write about his country's decline. What Peter doesn't realize right away is that another Latin he has had a torrid affair with is in fact Manolo's older brother, who has abandoned his birthright for the revolutionary cause. Politics figure in another longish piece, ``Black Rainbow,'' in which an American writer reluctantly joins a strange theatrical production in Berlin, where style matters more than any ideas. The most metafictional piece (and the most enjoyable) is just what its title says: ``Footnotes,'' pages of citations to an unprinted libretto that apparently involves the Olympics, flute playing, Greek wrestling, Hart Crane, space exploration, and the Stations of the Cross. More explicit erotica includes the title piece, which splices sauna-room sexplay with memories of an awful visit from a disapproving mother. Strangest of all is ``Storm Warnings,'' which suggests that the fecal stink of the homeless is really ``a kind of avant-garde,'' that bad odors counter sexual repression. Memories of beautiful boys and international sexcapades make up the dialogue of ``Desire by Numbers,'' while ``Popeye's Demise'' chronicles the painful memories of childhood—an absent father, first guilty gropings, and a domineering German grandmother. The arty purple prose threatens to overtake even the best stories—honest reflections on sexual identity—here.
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-85242-448-6
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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