The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from March 1997

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from March 1997

Demons and lies: motivation and form in Mario Vargas Llosa.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)(Interview)
March 22, 1997... Luis Rebaza-Soraluz: In Garcia Marquez: Historia de un deicidio (Garcia Marquez: Story of a Deicide), a book whose circulation--if I am not mistaken--you helped minimize, you developed your theories of "Inner demons" and the "total novel." What...

The trumpet of Deya. (memorial of author Julio Cortazar)(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... That Sunday in 1984, I had just set myself up in my study to write an article when the telephone rang. I did something that even then I never did: I picked up the receiver. "Julio Cortazar has died;" the voice of the journalist commanded:...

A bullfight in the Andes. (Jose Maria Arguedas's novel)(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Critics who praise Jose Maria Arguedas's first novel share the assumption that there is an essential correspondence between a work of fiction and the reality it "describes," that a novel is successful to the extent that it faithfully represents...

'Captain Pantoja and the Special Service': a transitional novel.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Mario Vargas Llosa's reflections on socialism have always informed the themes of his major novels. In the 1960s, when he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Cuban revolution, his novels reflected his conviction that Peruvian society was too...

Outside, looking in: Aunt Julia and Vargas Llosa.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... In Mario Vargas Llosa's late 1980s novel The Storyteller, his typical and frequent narrator, who is a thinly fictionalized Vargas Llosa, beckons the reader to join him in Florence during an undated stay there, while Vargas Llosa, pursuing his...

Out of failure comes success: autobiography and testimony in 'A Fish in the Water.'(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s, Latin America produced an extraordinary number of novels. They were soon recognized, edited, published, and translated by and for European and North American intellectual and cultural markets. The event was...

A Mario Vargas Llosa checklist.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)(Bibliography)
March 22, 1997... Fiction Los jefes, Barcelona: Editoral Rocas, 1959. Rev. ed. Los jefes. Los cachorros. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1980. The Cubs and Other Stories. Trans. Gregory Kolovakos and Ronald Christ. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. La ciudad y los...

The bittersweet vision of Josef Skvorecky.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Critics commonly regard Josef Skvorecky as one of contemporary Czechoslovakia's finest writers. His successes and scandals under the Communist regime are well known in his native country, and his works in translation have given Western eyes a...

An interview with Josef Skvorecky.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)(Interview)
March 22, 1997... Sam Solecki: The Bride of Texas, appeared in Czech two years ago and in English last year. Could you tell us something about it? Josef Skvorecky: It's a historical novel, set during the American Civil War, and deals with a group of Czech...

Authors, critics, reviewers. (authors reading criticism)(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... The soundest advice ever given to a writer is Hemingway's: a writer should never read his critics. If he believes them when they praise him, he must believe them when they say he is no longer good. That undermines his self-confidence, the...

Keynote address: Eastern European literature in transition.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... It is an honor and a pleasure to have been asked to deliver the keynote address at this symposium. We should have an interesting and hopefully useful exchange of opinions, at a time when literature in the former Evil Empire is--as some...

Three bachelors in a fiery furnace. (short story)(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... On Saturday evening in the spring, the girls appeared in sensational short skirts and cinnamon coats, and the unblemished whiteness of their petticoats shone in the rosy evening. During the week the girls worked hard, but Saturday evening was a...

A genial gossipmonger.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... In 1992 an ingenious Czech film director decided to shoot a TV feature on Josef Skvorecky. Proposing to show him through testimonies of some of his best friends, he asked them the same question: "How did you like your portraits in Skvorecky's...

'The Cowards': Skvorecky's contributions to Czech humorist literature.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... In the Czech Republic Josef Skvorecky is famous for his role in helping Czech literature and culture to prosper in exile, despite the stiff censorship of the post-Prague-Spring government. But this rebel of Czech literature also deserves credit...

This thing, the bass saxophone, is anything but ordinary.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Josef Skvorecky's fascination with jazz is no new story for anyone who knows the author or has read his work. His writings and his private perception of the genuinely American musical phenomenon made it only logical and proper that he should be...

'The Engineer of Human Souls': Skvorecky's comic vision.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... I would like to praise The Engineer of Human Souls for the qualities that might often be seen as defects--for its ramshackle, four-part structure, its odd, rapidly shifting tone, its surfeit of characters, its unglamorous, unassertive hero, and...

Place and placelessness in 'Dvorak in Love.'(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Dvorak in Love, with its emphasis on place, bewilders some readers. They enter it expecting a traditional fictional biography that will imaginatively turn Antonin Dvorak's psychological, familial, and musical life inside out. But they discover...

American themes in 'The Bride of Texas.'(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Josef Skvorecky's canon is characterized by a spiritual bond with American culture which, since his youth, has played a major part in his professional and artistic development. His personal fate granted him an experience of the greatest...

Variations on American themes: 'The Bride of Texas.'(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... First loves don't just fade away. They usually outlive the significance of the initial object of desire by turning desire into an end in itself. Nostalgia, that passion of memory, proves most powerful when it attaches to an experience of...

A Josef Skvorecky checklist.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Fiction Zbabelci. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1958; The Cowards. Trans. Jeanne Nemcova. New York: Grove, 1970. Legenda Emoke. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1963; "Emoke." The Bass Saxophone. Toronto: Anson-Cartwright, 1977;...

The culture of everyday venality: or a life in the book industry.(Mario Vargas Llosa/Josef Skvorecky)
March 22, 1997... Here is the rap on independent/non-profit/alternative literary presses like McPherson, Semiotext(e) Autonomia, Feminist Press, Coffee House, Dalkey Archive, Sun and Moon, Permeable Press, Asylum Arts and many others: * they're ineptly run by...

Collected Works, vol. 1, 1956-1976.
March 22, 1997... Paul Metcalf. Coffee House Press, 1996. 591 pp. $35.00. There is a type of American genius whose genius consists largely in its uncanny ability to express the American Genus. If this type were French, we'd call it a bricoleur, a person who,...

Nevermore.
March 22, 1997... Marie Redonnet. Trans. Jordon Stump. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996.123 pp. $32.00; paper: $12.00. Marie Redonnet has created a genre unto itself: let's call it the Redonnet. The Redonnet is a work of prose fiction of novella length (roughly...

Mexico Trilogy.
March 22, 1997... D. N. Stuefloten. 298 pp. Paper: $12.95. D. N. Stuefloten is at once a chronicler of the grotesque and a minute detailer of our world. In these three novels, Maya, Ethiopian Exhibition, and Queen of Las Vegas, Stuefloten creates imagined...

My Education: A Book of Dreams.
March 22, 1997... William S. Burroughs. Picador, 1996. 193 pp. 6.99 [pounds sterling]. My Education assembles descriptions of Burroughs's dreams sometimes dating as far back as the 1970s. It is a volume that contains some of the raw material used in his novels,...

Finding a Form.
March 22, 1997... William H. Gass. Knopf, 1996. 354 pp. $26.00. Gass is a writer who has always believed in public discourse, that the act of the critic and scholar is to engage as wide an audience as possible in matters of serious intent (that is, that these...

On with the Story.
March 22, 1997... John Barth. Little, Brown, 1996. 257 pp. $23.95. Although On with the Story is John Barth's first collection of short stories since Lost in the Funhouse (1968), readers of his recent novels will find themselves in familiar territory. Barth once...

A Reader's Guide to Twentieth Century Writers.
March 22, 1997... Peter Parker, ed., Frank Kermode, consulting ed. Oxford Univ. Press, 1996. 825 pp. $35.00. This kind of guide never particularly succeeds, omitting writers who should be included, including ones who shouldn't, giving simplistic overviews of...

The Emigrants.
March 22, 1997... W, G. Sebald. Trans. Michael Hulse. New Directions, 1996. 237pp. $23.00. This novel, which is surely one of the best novels to appear since World War 11, cannot be reviewed briefly. I will try, nevertheless, to emphasize a few details that...

The Secondary Colors: Three Essays.
March 22, 1997... Alexander Theroux. Henry Holt, 1996. 312 pp. $19.95. I'm unsure whether my not having read Mr. Theroux before this collection of essays places me at an advantage or disadvantage; I can only guess that an appreciation of his work must be an...

Words Are Something Else.
March 22, 1997... David Albahari. Trans. Ellen Elias-Bursac. Ed. Tomislav Longinovic. Foreword by Charles Simic. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996. 215 pp. Paper: $15.95. In these twenty-seven stories David Albahari reveals his preoccupation with family, self, and...

Art Does (Not!) Exist.
March 22, 1997... Rosalyn Drexler. FC2, 1996. 187 pp. $19-95. Julia Maraini, the first-person narrator of Rosalyn Drexler's latest novel, Art Does (Not!) Exist, begins her story with these words: "This book will help me decide which project to present for an NEA...

The Beach Umbrella and Other Stories.
March 22, 1997... Cyrus Colter. TriQuarterly Books and Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996. 225 pp. Paper: $14.95. This volume brings together two collections of Colter stories, and it is a delight to see them back in print. Rather than re-reviewing them, I want...

Athena.
March 22, 1997... John Banville. Vintage, 1996. 232 pp. Paper: $12.00. John Banville has always been interested in perceptions of reality. His wonderful historical novels--dealing with Kepler, Copernicus, Newton--are attempts not only to create the scientists'...

City in Love: The New York Metamorphoses.
March 22, 1997... Shakar, Alex. FC2, 1996. 164 pp. $19.95; paper: $11.95. Imagine for a moment the New York City of the last ten or so years of contemporary fiction--that dark, cynical landscape of Easton and Janowitz, where violence is mitigated only by irony,...

Dhalgren.
March 22, 1997... Samuel R. Delany. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1996. 801 pp. Paper: $17.95. Nothing would be easier than to declare Delany's 1975 magnum opus a literary masterpiece that far excels the limitations of the science fiction genre. Nothing would be easier,...

Exteriors.
March 22, 1997... Annie Ernaux. Trans. Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories Press, 1996. 95 pp. $16.00. It has always seemed to me that a great deal of "description" and "details" in novels are done a disservice by being made to serve the "story." That is, an opening...

Nonconformity: Writing on Writing.
March 22, 1997... Nelson Algren. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1996. 130 pp. $16.00. To understand Nelson Algren's Nonconformity, the reader should first make his way through David Simon's afterword which documents his struggle with what "was clearly a major...

The Cardiff Team.
March 22, 1997... Guy Davenport. New Directions, 1996.192 pp. $22.95. Not a lot happens in most of the stories in Guy Davenport's The Cardiff Team. Instead of focusing on plot, Davenport focuses on moments that beautifully evoke innocence, experience, desire, or...

Over-Sensitivity.
March 22, 1997... Jalal Toufic. Sun & Moon, 1996. 312 pp. Paper: $ 13.95. A question which naturally arises with a consideration of this book is how to classify it. My first thought was that it belonged to the domain of film studies since film is so obviously a...

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl.
March 22, 1997... Siri Hustvedt. Holt, 1996. 275pp. $23,00. Although I did not review Siri Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, I admired it. It is, like this one, a ghostly philosophical attempt to understand the intricate foldings of dream and reality. This...

Push.
March 22, 1997... Sapphire. Knopf, 1996.157 pp. $20.00. For the first sixteen years of her life, Claireece Precious Jones (but "only motherfuckers I hate call me Claireece") wants one thing from her mother: the older Ms. Jones, housebound and enormously...

Silence Please! Stories After the Works of Juan Munoz.
March 22, 1997... Louise Neri, ed. Scalo, 1996.175 pp. $27.50. Published by a Swiss press in cooperation with an Irish art museum and printed in Germany, this collection of eleven stories by American, English, Irish, Portuguese, and Spanish writers takes as its...

Southernmost and Other Stories.
March 22, 1997... Michael Brodsky. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996. 341 pp. Paper: $14.95. Wallace Stevens writes in his Adagia, "The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to...

The Beauty of Men.
March 22, 1997... Andrew Holleran. Morrow, 1996. 272 pp. $24.00. A sign of the extent to which Andrew Holleran's first novel, Dancer from the Dance, has achieved the status of one of the great works of recent American literature is the number of critics from...

The Black Album.
March 22, 1997... Hanif Kureishi. Scribner, 1995. 276 pp. $22.00; paper: $11.00. The Black Album is the second novel written by this hip, energetic, and talented English writer who is the author of the screenplays for My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie...

Free City.
March 22, 1997... Eric Darton. Norton, 1996, 176 pp. $18.00. If Hawthorne, Poe, and Kafka had collaborated, Free City may have resulted. Written in the form of a daybook, forty entries in all, by a man whom we know only as L. (we do not know this until quite a...

The Night in Question.
March 22, 1997... Tobias Wolff. Knopf, 1996. 206 pp. $23.00. "Last night was a series of misunderstandings. I just want to... straighten everything out," asserts a character in one of the fifteen short stories in Tobias Wolff's new collection, The Night in...

Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse.
March 22, 1997... Sven Birkerts. Graywolf, 1996. 262 pp. Paper: $16.00. Tolstoy's Dictaphone represents nineteen writers' thoughts on the Internet, computers, typewriters, and telephones. These are essays about culture and its relationship to technology; to...

Woody: Movies from Manhattan.
March 22, 1997... Julian Fox. Overlook Press, 1996. 285 pp. $26.95. I very much wanted to like this book because the work of Woody Allen is due serious:, critical treatment, but Fox's study is, finally, disappointing. With no thesis that I could detect, the book...

TriQuarterly New Writers.
March 22, 1997... Reginald Gibbons and Susan Hahn, eds. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996. 198 pp. Paper: $14.95. Equally divided between fiction and poetry, the contributions in this collection are marked as much by their quality as they are by the editors'...

I'm Losing You.
March 22, 1997... Bruce Wagner. Villard, 1996. 327pp. $23.00. Wagner uses lines from Salvatore Quasimodo as an epigraph: "Each alone on the heart of the earth / impaled upon a ray of sun: / and suddenly it's evening." His Hollywood--which is, of course, a...

Into the Forest.
March 22, 1997... Jean Hegland. Calyx, 1996. 208 pp. Cloth: $25.95; paper: $13.95. Into the Forest is a frighteningly believable dsytopian novel narrated by a young woman who has lost nearly everything in life that she values and so has to construct a new belief...

Beckett Writing Beckett.
March 22, 1997... H. Porter Abbott. Cornell Univ. Press, 1996. 216 pp. $32.50. With the all too pseudoscientific emphasis on pre-text--drafts, notes, and so on--indicative of the recent shift in criticism to the study of literary origins, Abbott's interest in...

Chalk Lake.
March 22, 1997... Johnny Payne. Limited Editions Press, 1996. 165 pp. $18.95. Set in Kentucky, Johnny Payne's novel Chalk Lake is as interesting for the way it thinks about place and the effect of place on people's lives as it is for its plot and characters....

Channel Zero.
March 22, 1997... Michael Krekorian. Plover Press, 1996.121 pp. $1795. "Mockingbirds," notes Michael Krekorian, "repeat the white noise of the urban environment." So call Krekorian a mockingbird who's singing just for you in a novel as complex as the internet...

Epigraph.
March 22, 1997... Gordon Lish. 163 pp. $22.00. Near the end of his life, eighteenth-century writer Tobias Smollett confessed that his greatest difficulties had resulted from his being both a writer and an editor--those he offended with editorial decisions were...

Foreign Devil.
March 22, 1997... Wang Ping. 287 pp. $21.95. Wang Ping grew up in mainland China but for more than a decade has lived in the U.S. where she has been establishing herself as a writer in English. Consequently, she might be taken as belonging to both contemporary...

Loverboys.
March 22, 1997... Ana Castillo. Norton, 1996. 224 pp. $21.00. As one of the more accomplished of Latina writers, Castillo is often able to paint a vivid image of characters and the way in which they are affected by their sense of who they are and what their...

Passing off.
March 22, 1997... Tom LeClair. 174 pp. $22.00. The author of In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel and The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction, Tom LeClair is also a former point guard who now spends part of each year playing...

People Like That.
March 22, 1997... Agnes Owens. 176 pp. 13.99 [pounds sterling]. They're found in the gutted rooms of condemned buildings, the streets of decaying villages, and the servants' quarters of seedy hotels--"We have them in here all the time," a clerk says...

In Candyland It's Cool to Feed on Your Friends.
March 22, 1997... James Chapman. Fugue State Press, 1997 190 pp. Paper: $8.00. The premise behind James Chapman's latest book is that one of the putative (and perhaps real) author's previous novels exploited a situation two of his best friends were suffering...

Admiring Silence.
March 22, 1997... Abdulrazak Gurnah. The New Press, 1996. 224 pp. $19.95. "Every several months she would send me a few words about everyone's health and regards and best wishes, and some months later I would send something back." The narrator would...

Stool Wives.
March 22, 1997... William F. Van Wert. Plover Press, 1996. 209 pp. $20.00. It is there and it isn't there. The Africa that William Van Wert creates in Stool Wives is an Africa of words, an Africa where characters may speak in anagrams or lob puns like grenades...

Sudden Fiction (Continued).
March 22, 1997... Robert Shapard and James Thomas, eds. Norton, 1996. 311 pp. $25.00. How to marry a millionaire? How to steal a million? (Or for that matter, How to stuff a wild bikini?) How to review in less than 400 words sixty short-short stories? One of the...

The Giant's House.
March 22, 1997... Elizabeth McCracken. Dial Press, 1996. 259 pp. $19.95. I'm sure I'm not the only one who found it odd that Elizabeth McCracken should be nominated one of the twenty-five "Best Young Novelists in America" by Granta in their recent issue of the...