The Review of Contemporary Fiction back issues from June 2000:
Kitty and Virgil.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Paul Bailey. Kitty and Virgil. Overlook Press, 2000. 280 pp. $25.95. Kitty is a Londoner who indexes nonfiction. Virgil is an exiled Romanian poet who sweeps for the city. In the late eighties, they meet by chance in the hospital, meet by chance again in the park, then dive ...
Jean Rhys.(Critical Essay)
Jun 22, 2000; ... One pleasure of being a reader or scholar of literature now is that theory and criticism have at last caught up with the challenging work of Jean Rhys (1890-1979). A writer of tremendous originality and wit, she explores her melancholy subjects with heartbreaking grace. Her experimental ...
John Hawkes.
Jun 22, 2000; ... John Clendennin Burne Hawkes, Jr., was born on 17 August 1925 in Stamford, Connecticut, to Helen (Ziefle) Hawkes and John Clendennin Burne. His mother was the daughter of a banker, and his father's family descended from Irish gentry. As a boy Hawkes worked in a stable where he developed a ...
Paul Bowles.
Jun 22, 2000; ... When Paul Bowles died in Tangier, Morocco, in November 1999, one of the last remaining links to an entire artistic sensibility was also lost. His career, spanning nearly seventy years, was initiated with the publication of several of his poems in transition, a literary magazine dedicated ...
Marguerite Young.
Jun 22, 2000; ... ... I am the delicate spirit who on the air does walk Woven of sinew and heart from sorrowful talk, A hesitant answer of what the heart believes, And even in his answer have I escaped, I am the insubstantial heart beat which goes From him, in whom are all the leaves of darkness; ...
Miss Young, My Darling: A Memoir.
Jun 22, 2000; ... I remember, when the grey fog heaved outside the many-windowed nursery, when the fog swept like a heavy skirt outside and the wind sighed, Miss MacIntosh was dressed as for a long voyage, wearing her whaler's hat, her sea boots, there where we said our monotonous factual lessons. It was ...
Plowing the Dark.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Richard Powers. Plowing the Dark. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000. 415 pp. $25.00. In an early scene in Plowing the Dark, Richard Powers's seventh and most recent novel, a virtual-reality researcher at a Puget Sound digital laboratory describes the Lascaux cave paintings as the ...
Disgrace.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... J.M. Coetzee. Disgrace. Viking, 1999. 220 pp. $23.95. Not for the ethically faint of heart, the fiction of J. M. Coetzee has repeatedly strewn nettles in the bed of the comfortable social conscience. His most recent novel, winner of the Booker Prize, is focused around an ...
"53 Days.".(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Georges Perec. "53 Days." Ed. Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud. Trans. David Bellos. David R. Godine, 1999. 272 pp. $23.95. It's easy to feel cheated when reading posthumous works, especially unfinished drafts completed by other writers. Thankfully, this is not the case with ...
Kotik Letaev.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Andrei Bely. Kotik Letaev. Trans. Gerald Janecek. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 268 pp. $17.95. Life begins as a descent from greater to lesser capability; what passes before the mind's eye distinguishes one state from another. Initially the situation seems fluid. But young ...
Bogeywoman.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Jaimy Gordon. Bogeywoman. Sun and Moon, 1999. 343 pp. Paper: $12.95. Jaimy Gordon is an extraordinary writer and Bogeywoman is her best work so far. Readers familiar with the Rabelais-inspired Shamp of the City-Solo and her acclaimed road novel She Drove without Stopping know ...
Silver.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Matthew Remski. Silver. Insomniac Press, 1998. 395 pp. Paper: $14.99. Like David Foster Wallace, Matthew Remski seems to be struggling with the aesthetic legacy of the high postmodernists: How is the young contemporary writer to make the lessons of the masters his own and then ...
Simple Stories: A Novel.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Ingo Schulze. Simple Stories: A Novel. Trans. John E. Woods. Knopf, 2000. 280 pp. $25.00. Schulze is of the most interesting German writers under forty. His first collection, 33 Moments of Happiness, demonstrates his ability to play with paradox puzzles, to raise epistemological ...
Pictures of a Dying Man.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Agymah Kamau. Pictures of a Dying Man. Coffee House, 1999. 230 pp. $23.95. In his second novel, Agymah Kamau explores the intricacies of rumors surrounding death and life within the cultural milieu of a small, unnamed Caribbean country. The novel starts with the suicide of ...
The Pleasing Hour.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Lily King. The Pleasing Hour. Atlantic Monthly, 1999. 237 pp. $24.00. As an American au pair in Paris, Rosie is given an opportunity to fill a difficult role in a foreign household; while clearly an outsider, she is expected to learn and deal with the weighty emotional life of ...
Delancey's Way.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... James McCourt. Delancey's Way. Knopf, 2000. 369 pp. $25.00. Few literary writers take on Washington, D.C., probably for fear of stumbling into tired satire or overblown intrigue. James McCourt is undeterred by these risks, however, and successfully avoids them. Delancey's Way ...
The Clay Machine-Gun.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Victor Pelevin. The Clay Machine-Gun. Trans. Andrew Bromfield. Faber and Faber/Harbord Publishing, 1999. 335 pp. 9.99 [pounds sterling]. This controversial Russian sensation refashions the legend of V.I. Chapaev, a Civil War Red commander of Stalinist fame who, with his ...
Make Believe.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Joanna Scott. Make Believe. Little, Brown, 2000. 246 pp. $23.95. "All images had stories to tell, causes to explain." Joanna Scott's new novel opens with the image of three-year-old Bo Templin, helplessly dangling from his seat belt in an overturned car after the accident that ...
The New Sweet Style.
Jun 22, 2000; ... Vassily Aksyonov. The New Sweet Style. Random House, 1999. 482 pp. $29.95. One would think that more attention would be paid to a writer with Vassily Aksyonov's history. Author of an anthem for his generation (Ticket to the Stars), he rankled his government so much with his ...
Ballets without Music, without Dancers, without Anything.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Ballets without Music, without Dancers, without Anything. Trans. Thomas and Carol Christensen. Green Integer, 1999. 187 pp. Paper: $10.95. Celine is the great bad boy of literature, the original gangsta, complete with rap. And there is much of the ...
Final Exam.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Julio Cortazar. Final Exam. Trans. Alfred MacAdam. New Directions, 2000. 256 pp. $23.95. The publication of an English translation of Julio Cortazar's first novel is most definitely a cause for cheer. In Final Exam, Cortazar, as he does in his best short work, walks a tight line ...
So I Am Glad.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... A. L. Kennedy. So I Am Glad. Knopf, 2000.288 pp. $23.00. The first U.S. edition of Kennedy's novel, originally published in the United Kingdom in 1985, is a quirky, comic love story, a smart and literate Blast from the Past. As the novel begins, the mysterious and magical ...
The Fortress.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Mesa Selimovic. The Fortress. Trans. Edward Dennis Goy and Jasna Levinger. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 416 pp. Paper: $19.95. What is the Fortress? To a Bosnian Muslim living in eighteenth-century Ottoman Europe, a philosophical and literal menace, a looming symbol of ...
The Paris Years of Rosie Kamin.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Richard Teleky. The Paris Years of Rosie Kamin. Steerforth Press, 1999. 218 pp. Paper: $12.00. In his latest work, Richard Teleky offers readers a poignant tale of self-realization. Set in a present-day Paris more gritty and realistic than the romantic notions typically ...
On Overgrown Paths.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Knut Hamsun. On Overgrown Paths. Trans. Sverre Lyngstad. Green Integer, 1999. 244 pp. Paper: $12.95. This swan-song memoir is the latest of Sverre Lyngstad's admirable translations of Hamsun's work into English, all of which vividly convey both the rawness and the lyricism of ...
The Verificationist.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Donald Antrim. The Verificationist. Knopf, 2000. 179 pp. $21.00. Tom, the narrator of Donald Antrim's latest novel, is a clinical psychologist, faculty member at the Krakower Institute, advocate of its Young Women of Strength teen counseling program, and the organizing force ...
Cape of Storms.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Nina Berberova. Cape of Storms. Trans. Marian Schwartz. New Directions, 1999. 256 pp. $23.95. Does the original name of the Cape of Good Hope explain early failures to sail around it? A different storm that cannot be circumnavigated envelops three half-sisters living with their ...
Enchanted Night.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Steven Millhauser. Enchanted Night. Crown, 1999. 109 pp. $17.00. Millhauser's latest offering is a lean novella consisting of seventy-four short, titled prose sections. Through these Millhauser chronicles a moonlit summer night in Connecticut. He alternates between several ...
Toxicology.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Steve Aylett. Toxicology. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999. 160 pp. Paper: $12.95. This energetic short-story collection by London-born Steve Aylett uses satire and fantasy to flag the pressures that impinge on contemporary consciousness: drugs, virtual reality, surveillance ...
Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Patrick Chamoiseau. Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. Trans. Linda Coverdale. Foreword by Edouard Glissant. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999. 226 pp. $25.00. It is impossible not to like Patrick Chamoiseau's first novel, Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. Chamoiseau, winner of the Prix ...
We Can Report Them.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Michael Brodsky. We Can Report Them. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999. 356 pp. Paper: $16.95. In his tenth work of fiction, Michael Brodsky reveals why he continues to be an experimental writer of interest. Unlike an earlier piece, ***: A Novel, which was somewhat unintelligible, ...
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Evelyn Waugh. The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh. Little, Brown, 1999. 536 pp. $29.95. This comprehensive collection of short fiction by the acclaimed British author of Brideshead Revisited demonstrates his virtuosity and his willingness to experiment. The first half of the ...
More than One Life.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Miloslava Holubova. More than One Life. Trans. Alex Zucker with Lyn Coffin and Zdenka Brodska. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 104 pp. $22.95. More than One Life is Holubova's first novel to be translated into English from the original Czech. Alternating among narrative, diary ...
Daughter of Fortune.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Isabel Allende. Daughter of Fortune. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. HarperCollins, 1999. 432 pp. $26.00. Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read female writers from Latin America. Her trademark style of a popularized magical realism combined with predominantly female ...
Ghost Quartet.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Richard Burgin. Ghost Quartet. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 320 pp. $25.95. Until reading Richard Burgin's Ghost Quartet, I never understood how "economic novels," those Japanese novels centered on corporate ladder climbing, could be so popular. But Burgin creates an ...
Mutual Impressions: Writers from the Americas Reading One Another.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Ilan Stavans, ed. Mutual Impressions: Writers from the Americas Reading One Another. Duke Univ. Press, 1999. 326 pp. Paper: $17.95. Stavans uses an epigraph from Eugene O'Neill: "Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors." He then begins his introduction with ...
Trying It Out in America: Literary and Other Performances.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Richard Poirier. Trying It Out in America: Literary and Other Performances. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. 318 pp. $25.00. Two important themes that have run through Poirier's previous criticism unify this excellent, if disparate, collection of essays and reviews. First, Poirier ...
Leslie Fiedler and American Culture.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Steven G. Kellman and Irving Malin, eds. Leslie Fiedler and American Culture. Univ. of Delaware Press, 1999. 199 pp. $36.50. This is a welcome Festschrift in honor of Leslie Fiedler, long a lightning rod in the study of American culture and literature. After an introduction and ...
The Arcades Project.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1999. 1,073 pp. $39.95. A truly monstrous book, Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project is an attempt to write a non-narrative history of the nineteenth century, a history which dispenses with the notions of ...
Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Brian Boyd. Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton Univ. Press, 1999. 303 pp. $30.00. Boyd, the distinguished biographer of Nabokov, believes that Pale Fire is a masterpiece, a text that must be read many times. He links it to the idea of discovery ...
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.(Review)
Jun 22, 2000; ... Dave Eggers. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Simon & Schuster, 2000. 375 pp. $23.00. Yes, the title does make some startling claims, but for the most part, Eggers meets them. "Based on a true story," much is made in the preface regarding the book as a memoir with ...
Books Received.(Bibliography)
Jun 22, 2000 ... Alberto, Eliseo. Caracol Beach. Trans. Edith Grossman. Knopf, 2000. $25.00. (F) Alcalay, Ammiel. Memories of Our Future. Intro. Juan Goytisolo. City Lights, 1999. Paper: $17.95. (NF) Algosaibi, Ghazi. Seven. Trans. Basil Hatim and Gavin Watterson. Saqi Books, 1999 ....