The Review of Contemporary Fiction articles from September 1999

The Review of Contemporary Fiction archives from September 1999

The Act of Creation and Its Artifact.
September 22, 1999... No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. --Walter Benjamin I don't think that it has been fully acknowledged, or even admitted, that the writer's finished product, the artifact, is...

Address to the New York University Conference.
September 22, 1999... I have not a great deal to add to the remarks I made at the Cerisy conference on the New Novel a few years ago, for I have always worked along the same lines. (These remarks, incidentally, were reprinted as a postface to the translation of one...

Some Aspects of the Short Story.
September 22, 1999... I find myself standing before you today in quite a paradoxical situation. An Argentine novelist makes himself available to exchange ideas on the short story, but his listeners and partners in the exchange, with few exceptions, know nothing of...

Literature Pursued by Politics.
September 22, 1999... In the course of recent international meetings of writers and artists-not only in Leningrad, Edinburgh or Florence, but also in Formentor or Madrid--the relations between politics and literature, the concepts of art for art's sake vs. that of...

The Novel as Concept.
September 22, 1999... I On occasion, I have compared the process of making a novel with the process of having a child. The concept is not really original and may even be pedestrian, vulgar, and commonplace. I don't say it isn't. Still, to have a child, just as...

Reflections on the Novel: Address to the Colloquium on the New Novel, New York University, October 1982.(Transcript)
September 22, 1999... Before beginning, I would like to be forgiven if the talk that I am going to give lacks a certain rigor and lets fly in a number of different directions. For reasons "beyond my control" (as we say), I only knew that my visit here would be...

Introduction to Aren't You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs?
September 22, 1999... It is a fact of crucial significance in the history of the novel this century that James Joyce opened the first cinema in Dublin in 1909. Joyce saw very early on that film must usurp some of the prerogatives which until then had belonged almost...

Dangerous Words.
September 22, 1999... The task of writing is at the same time heartrending and joyful. It is the discovery of one's own imagination, of the associations and the creative powers implicit in language, and a meticulous confrontation with something so denigrated and...

Dirty Words.(creative writing and women authors)(Brief Article)
September 22, 1999... Good girls can't say these things, neither can elegant ladies or any other women. They can't say these things or other things, for there is no possibility of reaching the positive without its opposite, the exposing and exposed negative. Not...

For Prizewinners.(literary prizewinners)
September 22, 1999... to Joseph McElroy I intend to talk to you seriously. Before coming here today, I considered several possibilities of what to say to you, especially to the prizewinning writers who are being honored on this occasion. I first thought of...

French Version.
September 22, 1999... That every sign contracts as soon as it is written, in the very moment it is written, losing contact with the present, incapable of anchoring the present or of capturing the instant, inscribing itself only as already caught in the nets of...

"Once More unto the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More": The Publishing Scene and American Literary Art.
September 22, 1999... Literary mores no longer place as much stock in the hieratic model of the winner, which is just as well. Unless one is good at self-sacrifice, is endowed with an iron will and a genius-sized gift, it's likely to be a defeating thing to insist...

A Few Notes on Two of My Books.
September 22, 1999... For weeks, months, now, I've been avoiding writing this: I have an almost uncontrollable desire not to talk about my writing. Why? If I had something to say about my writing outside my writing, something written which occurred outside my...

A Small Biography of The Obscene Bird of Night.
September 22, 1999... In a 1981 newspaper interview, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was quoted as saying that his newly published novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, was his best up to then. Bypassing the arrogance of this statement, which may or may not be correct, I...

Something to Die For.
September 22, 1999... This time the Cassandras who talk about the death of the novel may be right, because the great enemy, television, is working to bring about the death of the book. Television is ideal for people without memories. As an instrument of control it...

Of Idealism and Glory.(the literary life)
September 22, 1999... What does a writer seek? A true writer, that is, one who makes the written word his reason of life. For, as with everything, and just as there are bad ministers, for example, writers have their imitators too. Those who imitate the gestures of a...

Bad Times.(purpose of art and literature)
September 22, 1999... There is a place called the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, a gallery space, theater and performance cafe sort of affair where the newest of new artistic work is not only permissible but expected. It is a...

Impressions of a Paranoid Optimist.(future of fiction)
September 22, 1999... The Review of Contemporary Fiction is a periodical I esteem most highly; it has been a profound inspiration to me for the last decade, so I couldn't refuse when asked to speak to fiction's status a decade hence, despite feeling insufficiently...

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.(Review)
September 22, 1999... David Foster Wallace. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Little, Brown, 1999.273 pp. $24.00. In Brief Interviews with Hideous Men David Foster Wallace collects twenty-three pieces of fiction, most written since the publication of Infinite...

The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction and Literary Essays.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Maurice Blanchot. The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction and Literary Essays. Station Hill, 1999.529 pp. $29.95. While thousands of books appear each year, few publications can be classified as genuine events: this is one of them....

Bayamus & Cardinal Polatuo.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Stefan Themerson. Bayamus & Cardinal Polatuo. Intro. Keith Waldrop. Exact Change, 1997. 242 pp. $15.95. Stefan Themerson (1910-1988), a Polish emigrant and prominent member of the Polish avant-garde, moved to England in 1942 and...

Heads by Harry.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Heads by Harry. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999.320 pp. $24.00. Following the controversial Blu's Hanging, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's latest book is centered around a taxidermy shop and the Japanese-American Yagyuu family who...

30: Pieces of a Novel.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Stephen Dixon. 30: Pieces of a Novel. Henry Holt, 1998.672 pp. $30.00. Dixon writes apparently realistic fiction, but he renders "reality" so fully that his descriptions tend to heighten details--experiences and things (a bathroom, a...

Original Bliss.(Review)
September 22, 1999... A. L. Kennedy. Original Bliss. Knopf, 1999. 214 pp. $21.00. Original Bliss, a strange and unpredictable novel, explores and uncovers the various levels of abuse which Helen Brindle has been subjected to throughout her life, and moves toward...

Skinswaps.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Andrej Blatnik. Skinswaps. Trans. Tamara Soban. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1998. 109 pp. Paper: $14.95. This brief collection by the Slovenian author Andrej Blatnik ranges from a one-line "Apologia" to the lengthier "Scratches on My Back"...

An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Christopher Sawyer-Luacanno. An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles. Grove, 1999. 502 pp. Paper: $15.00. The paperback reissue of An Invisible Spectator is a welcome invitation to again consider Paul Bowles, one of our most...

The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Stewart Brown and John Wickham, eds. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999. 476 pp. $18.95. From the writings of Frank Collymore to Edwidge Danticat, from the Caribbean pioneers to the Caribbean...

How to Accommodate Men.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Marilyn Krysl. How to Accommodate Men. Coffee House, 1998.238 pp. Paper: $15.00. Marilyn Krysl's collection of short stories, aptly titled, is a biting exploration of the relationship between men and women in societies where men, who are...

Life with Swan.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Paul West. Life with Swan. Scribner, 1999.300 pp. $24.00. Paul West has done it again--written another large-hearted novel that investigates life's overlooked corners while celebrating the splendors of creation and the unpredictable. He is...

The Loss: A Novella and Two Short Stories.(translated by Byron Lindsey)(Review)
September 22, 1999... Vladimir Makanin. The Loss: A Novella and Two Short Stories. Trans. Byron Lindsey. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1998. 154 pp. Paper: $14.95. These stories by Vladimir Makanin suggest the appeal of a leading contemporary Russian writer...

The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Harry Mathews. The Way Home: Selected Longer Prose. Atlas, 1999.215 pp. Paper: $14.95. At first glance, the presentations in this collection could not be simpler: "Here is an outline of my life," opens the seventy-page-long...

Music for Torching.(Review)
September 22, 1999... A. M. Homes. Music for Torching. Morrow/Weisbach Books, 1999. 358 pp. $26.00. A. M. Homes's new novel unpacks the dysfunctional family life of Paul and Elaine Weiss, the suburban couple who first appeared in her story "Adults Alone." The...

Beside the Shadblow Tree.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Hayden Carruth. Beside the Shadblow Tree. Copper Canyon, 1999. 148 pp. Paper: $14.00. When James Laughlin died in 1997, newspapers around the country listed the many names of poets and writers whom he had published through New Directions....

South of the Border, West of the Sun.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Haruki Murakami. South of the Border, West of the Sun. Knopf, 1999. 213 pp. $22.00. Hajime, the middle-aged narrator of Murakami's new novel, begins his story completely convinced of how average he is. His was, he allows, "a 100 percent...

Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue.(Review)
September 22, 1999... James Purdy. Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue. Morrow, 1999. 182 pp. $19.95. Though he has entered his fifth decade of publishing, James Purdy is not afraid to experiment or to take risks. In Gertrude of Stony Island Avenue, he takes more...

Last Things.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Jenny Offill. Last Things. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. 264 pp. $23.00. Last Things is a first novel of such depth and intelligence that reading it means swallowing a time-release capsule of delight and anguish: sudden-glory bursts of...

Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Tristan Egolf. Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Cornbelt. Grove, 1999. 410 pp. $24.00. A number of reviews have praised this book as an epic of Middle American life. That's an exaggeration, but not...

In September the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Andrew Holleran. In September the Light Changes: The Stories of Andrew Holleran. Hyperion, 1999. 320 pp. $23.95. In the early seventies a cohort of gay men emerged who devoted themselves to two things: the pursuit of the, arts and of sex,...

Timbuktu.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Paul Auster. Timbuktu. Henry Holt, 1999. 181 pp. $22.00. After the awkward experiments in narrative voice perpetrated in Mr. Vertigo (1994), Auster is close to getting back on track in this novel told from the point of view of an aging dog...

Juneteenth.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Ralph Ellison. Juneteenth. Ed. John F. Callahan. Random House, 1999.368 pp. $25.00. Since the publication of Invisible Man in 1952, anticipation about Ralph Ellison's second novel has been fervent. Unfortunately, Ellison never completed...

The Ground beneath Her Feet.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Salman Rushdie. The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Henry Holt, 1999. 575 pp. $27.50. Rushdie's funny and rich new novel uses the history of a fictional rock band--from difficult beginnings to superstardom through the inevitable legal problems...

Fetish: An Anthology.(Review)
September 22, 1999... John Yau, ed. Fetish: An Anthology. Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998. 318 pp. Paper: $15.95. In his introduction, John Yau explains his hopes for this compilation of short pieces, that he wanted to "satisfy [his] desire for an anthology that...

England, England.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Julian Barnes. England, England. Knopf, 1999. 288 pp. $23.00. In this satire set in the twenty-first century, a business magnate creates the ultimate tourist destination by constructing a replica of England on the Isle of Wight, outdoing...

Sea Battles on Dry Land.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Harold Brodkey. Sea Battles on Dry Land. Henry Holt, 1999. 450 pp. $30.00. This valuable collection contains essays Brodkey wrote between the early 1980s until his death in 1996. In four sections--"Celebrity and Politics," "Wit and...

Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Ian MacMillan. Village of a Million Spirits: A Novel of the Treblinka Uprising. Steerforth, 1999. 257 pp. $24.00. In his most recent novel, Village of a Million Spirits, Ian MacMillan makes clear the work's purpose through one of its own...

The Marx Family Saga.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Juan Goytisolo. The Marx Family Saga. Trans. Peter Bush. City Lights Books, 1999. 186 pp. Paper: $10.95. Fans of Goytisolo and avid readers of the postmodern will both find The Marx Family Saga an insightful journey into the ideological...

The Sea Came in at Midnight.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Steve Erickson. The Sea Came in at Midnight. Avon, 1999. 259 pp. $23.00. Steve Erickson's latest millennial tale navigates a psychic landscape of spiritual exhaustion and existential confusion that will be familiar to readers of his...

Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Will Self. Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys. Grove, 1999. 244 pp. $23.00. Will Self has never seemed to lack fictional premises, and the new collection of stories is no disappointment. In one, a man discovers a huge vein of crack...

The Disobedience of Water.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Sena Jeter Naslund. The Disobedience of Water. David R. Godine, 1999. 212 pp. $21.95. Of the eight stories in this book, several have appeared in literary periodicals, and two are taken from earlier books. Naslund's characters continually...

Leonardo's Hands.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Alois Hotschnig. Leonardo's Hands. Trans. and foreword by Peter Filkins. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999. 146 pp. $12.00. Rarely can the language in a work of fiction reflect its story successfully; often the best one may hope for is a...

The Night Inspector.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Frederick Busch. The Night Inspector. Harmony Books, 1999. 278 pp. $23.00. This remarkable historical novel has one of the most interesting narrators in recent American fiction, a former sniper for the Union during the Civil War named...

Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Howard Sounces. Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life. Grove, 1998. 310 pp. $26.00. While an author can't dig up dirt on a self-professed dirty old man, Howard Sounces's biography of Charles Bukowski, like the old man...

Miss Nobody.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Tomek Tryzna. Miss Nobody. Trans. Joanna Trzeciak. Doubleday, 1999. 296 pp. $23.00. (Also published as Girl Nobody by Fourth Estate, 1999, same translator.) When Marysia, a fifteen-year-old Polish girl, moves from the rural flatlands to an...

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Rikki Ducornet. The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade. Henry Holt, 1999. 212 pp. $22.00. "A fan is like the thighs of a woman," begins Rikki Ducornet's new novel, "It opens... with a flick of a wrist. It produces its...

The Practice of Reading.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Denis Donoghue. The Practice of Reading. Yale Univ. Press, 1998. 298 pp. $30.00. "Are we quite sure," asks Denis Donoghue early in this newest collection of his work, "that we have devised methods of reading responsive to our own new needs...

Understanding Nicholson Baker.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Arthur Salzman. Understanding Nicholson Baker. Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1999. 209 pp. No price given. Nicholson Baker, one of our most puzzling writers, seems to do without plot or character. He devotes his energy to the mysteries of...

Books Received.(Review)
September 22, 1999... Agee, Jonis. Taking the Wall. Coffee House, 1999. Paper: $14.95. (F) --. The Weight of Dreams. Viking, 1999. $24.95. (F) Ageyev, M. Novel with Cocaine. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1998. Paper: $11.95. (F) ...