Robert Stone's highly-praised first novel, A Hall of Mirrors, told of a down-and-out alcoholic radio announcer named Rheinhardt, of his doomed affair with a touching slattern named Geraldine, and of his involvement with ultra right wing politics. Good as it was, there were major flaws with that first work. For one thing, the story, couched…
First, Body Stories by Melanie Rae Thon. Houghton Mifflin, $21.95 cloth. Reviewed by Christopher Tilghman. Melanie Rae Thon’s fierce, unyielding, and brilliant new stories are now collected in First, Body, and the effect of reading all of them together after seeing many of them when originally published is simply to encounter genius. These stories come…
"Easy writing's curst hard reading," says Sheridan the witty playwright, and one reads Anne Bernays' prose so effortlessly and with such speed that he is inclined to think it is his own accomplishment and not the author's. But the art is there, leading us on, deftly sorting the German Jews from the Russian Jews by…
George Garrett recommends Dogfight and Other Stories, a first collection by Michael Knight: “An outstanding collection of ten stories, various in form and content, which have already won this young and gifted writer several awards.” (Plume)
Chase Twichell recommends Flesh and Blood, a novel by Michael Cunningham: “A contemporary family saga with vivid, memorable characters that tells a heartbreaking story without a trace of sentimentality. The writing is fluent and poetic, unselfconscious, with passages of great beauty.” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Russell Banksrecommends Harbor Lights, a novel by Theodore Weesner: “Ted Weesner, over the years since his powerful first novel, The Car Thief, has come numerous times to the rescue of American realism in fiction, and he’s done it again with Harbor Lights, a tough-minded and compassionate portrait of a good man struggling against odds not…
George Garrett recommends Dogfight and Other Stories, a first collection by Michael Knight: “A strikingly original and various young writer.” (Dutton)
Folks Like Me Poems by Sam Cornish. Zoland Books, $12.95 cloth. Reviewed by Sven Birkerts. Sam Cornish has written a book that subtly defies the norms. This is not a gathering of “poems,” or a showcase for isolated tours de force, but rather an ambitious vocal collage in which each poem is a voice and…
Marilyn Hacker recommends Harping On, poems by Carolyn Kizer: “Carolyn Kizer’s magisterial new book is a world citizen’s witty and lyrical meditations on many of the major events of this century, from the intimate perspective of someone who was there. As she re/members herself in sentences and stanzas-the seventeen-year-old observing Einstein; the twenty-year-old hearing of…
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