Due largely to his success as a novelist (The Priest, p. 89, etc.), Disch has followed his poetic Muse without becoming part of the poetry racket (as Disch describes it, grants and awards and all the other free lunches poets arrange for one another). The same independent spirit pervades this outstanding collection of essays and reviewssimply, the best work of practical poetry criticism to be published in decades. Disch brings together nearly 30 fugitive pieces from both the mainstream (TLS, Washington Post, LA Times) and marginal (Hudson Review, New Criterion, Boulevard) press. And while there are no earth-shattering pronunciamentos punctuating these essays, there is plenty of common sense for common readers. Disch speaks plainly and eloquently (in the title essay) of the ``indolence, incompetence, and smugness'' that dominate the poetry world today. No mere scold, Disch supports his views with plenty of careful readings, all of which reflect a truly catholic taste. He praises the ``sheer lyric loveliness'' of Kathleen Raine and celebrates such other neglected figures as Peter Whigham, Kenneth Fearing, and Christopher Fry, whose verse dramas have been lost in the era of stage naturalism. Among his contemporaries, Disch finds ``epochal significance'' in Frederick Turner's SF epic, The New World; wit and grace in Vikram Seth's Golden Gate; and ``dependably near-perfect accomplishment'' in the work of Anthony Hecht. Rather than indulge in ``teapot tempests'' about the state of the art, Disch names the names of so many fakers and shakers: the ``more-holistic-than-thou'' posturings of W.S. Merwin; the macho vulnerability of Raymond Carver. Disch gives us Ashbery as ``the poet laureate of Spaciness'' and reads James Tate as a long ``toke on a sixties bong.'' No secret agendas, no backslaps, no compromises here. Those who seldom read poetry anymore will figure out why after enjoying Disch's always entertaining volume.
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13448-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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