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FLYING HOME

AND OTHER STORIES

This marvelous collection of 13 stories, six of which were never published during Ellison's lifetime, partly explains the phenomenon of Invisible Man, itself no ordinary first book. Had Ellison published this volume first (all of these narratives were written before his landmark novel), it would have been the debut of a voice to reckon with, if not the heavenly choir of Invisible Man. This early work improvises on some of Ellison's great themes: the way in which stereotypes obscure and deform our common humanity; the quest for a distinctly American identity; and the promise of democratic culture. A quartet of stories about youngbloods Buster and Riley—an embryonic novel of sorts—shows the fully absorbed influence of Twain. Ellison's Huck and Tom, full of innocent devilment, laze away the days signifying, doing the dozens, and just getting into trouble. In a brilliant down-home retelling of the Toussaint L'Ouverture story "Mister Toussan," Ellison's charming miscreants find precedent for their own rebellious desire to snatch cherries from a white man's yard. Three railroad tales document the plight of "black bums" who are treated with particular harshness by the guards. "I Did Not Learn Their Names" recalls a kind, elderly couple riding the rails to visit their son—a hard-luck story that suggests the happiness sometimes found in adversity. The struggling black railroad workers in "A Hard Time Keeping Up" finally give in to hilarity, a kind of release, at a late-night joint. While one young man finds momentary power onstage at a matinee bingo game, another is profoundly mortified when he crashes his plane during training as a military pilot. "In a Strange Country" is pure Ellison: A black sailor, fresh from a racial incident with a countryman, discovers in a local Welsh singing club the sense of transcendent national pride and unity he longs for back home. Glorious, pre—Invisible Man riffs—and another fine addition to the Ellison oeuvre.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-45704-6

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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