A novel which has received rave advance reviews for Amy Waldman, a New York Times reporter and bureau chief turned novelist, The Submission posits a series of “what ifs” and then lets the turmoil unfold. In the aftermath of 9/11, with hundreds of families trying to cope with the magnitude of their loss and the entire country trying to cope with their loss of innocence, a competition is held to design the memorial which will be constructed at Ground Zero. Representatives to the selection committee are chosen from all levels of society, including a woman who has lost her husband in the attack, and their task is to choose the best design from all of the “blind” submissions, designs lacking all personal references, including the name of the architect to avoid favoritism. In the final tumultuous voting between two completely different designs, Claire Burwell, the woman widowed by the attack, favors the design of a garden, a place of peach and contemplation, with the names of the victims on the walls around the garden. Other committee members are swayed by Ariana, a famed sculptor, who favors a stark, monumental creation called “The Void,” which Claire finds cold. When the envelope naming the architect is opened, they discover that they have chosen Mohammad Khan, an American, to design their memorial.
Read Full Post »
It is nearly impossible to try to describe the power of James Sallis’s writing to someone who has never read any of his books or who has never experienced a “mystery” which is also a breathtaking and complete literary experience. I was so overwhelmed by this heart-stopping novel, his best one yet, that I had to stop in the middle for a breather overnight, and I am still having difficulty coming back to earth to write this review. Though the novel “out-noirs” almost every “noir” novel I have ever imagined with its sad and desperate characters trying to cope with the miseries fate has dealt them, Sallis’s characters never expect life to be any different. All they want is to be able to cope with the here and now. The Killer is Dying is an impressionistic novel focusing on three main characters, and the reader comes to know these characters through a series of descriptive episodes in which the characters are not initially identified. Gradually, one comes to recognize the different points of view from references to details connected with a particular character. In a literary tour de force, none of these characters are associated directly with each other. They live parallel, not interconnected lives, illustrating stylistically the solitary nature of their lives. Sallis includes more information in fewer words than almost any other writer I have ever found. His compressed prose is on the level shown by Hemingway’s in his short stories, and his ability to evoke emotions is superior. Powerful, thoughtful, and often heart-breaking, the novel reflects a kind of honesty that is rare in fiction.
Read Full Post »
In this exciting and rather “old-fashioned” prize-winner from 1975, newly reprinted by Bloomsbury, Thomas Williams creates a novel about fiction writing and its relationship to the “immensities” with which every human being must contend, for better or worse, during his lifetime. Telling the story of a novelist who is writing a novel in which a character is also writing a novel, Williams creates, first, Aaron Benham, a professor at a small New England college in the 1970s. Williams tells the reader at the outset that the story Aaron Benham is creating is “a simple story of seduction, rape, madness and murder—the usual human preoccupations,” but that is a misleading summary. Aaron’s novel, set in the 1940s, is actually a study of very real characters dealing with their lives, their expectations, and the world as they see it within the microcosm of a small college. Constantly playing with fiction vs. reality, fiction as part of reality, fiction as an alternative to reality, and the special fictions one creates for love, the author writes a powerful and dramatic novel, filled with events which keep the reader constantly involved with his characters, even when they are behaving very badly. Powerful and unforgettable.
Read Full Post »
In this newly reprinted book from 1998, William Boyd details the life and work of Nat Tate, an artist whose work became highly sought-after in the 1950s. One of the Abstract Expressionists in New York City during that decade, he could usually be found at his studio in the heart of the art district, at galleries, in conversation with Gore Vidal, Frank O’Hara or Peggy Guggenheim, or drinking with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and others at the Cedar Tavern on University Place. He traveled to Europe in 1959 and visited Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who became his idol. Every one of his paintings sold almost immediately, most of them before the scheduled gallery openings even took place. His most famous work consisted of over two hundred pen-and-ink drawings of the Brooklyn Bridge, in honor of his favorite poet Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” cycle, and he had started a new series, also honoring Crane, called “White Buildings.” Then, unexpectedly, in January, 1960, at age thirty-one, Nat Tate committed suicide. Later, his entire reputation would be questioned.
Read Full Post »
In this collection of stories about life’s uncertainties, Robert Boswell picks up his characters like mechanical toys and winds them up tight, and just when they are at maximum tension, he twists the key one more turn, guaranteeing that they will unwind noisily, out of control. Virtually all his characters are losers. A woman, having lost her disabled husband, now finds that she has also lost her best friend. A housecleaner has been abandoned by her husband. An attention-seeking motel manager demands that a patron strip search her. A needy young man goes broke while in the thrall of a fortune teller. A priest tries to help a pathetic family by offering a “story to have faith in, even if he cannot entirely believe it.” The stories are sometimes bleak, but they are always haunting. The characters are just one twist away from the normal, the safe, and the real, feeling instead to be “different,” irrational, sometimes dangerous, and even frightening. Ultimately, these unforgettable characters with their haunted and damaged lives, leave the reader uncomfortable with their ironies. Damaged as many characters are, they are close enough to ourselves and those we know to feel familiar to us.
Read Full Post »
