As ever, an essential barometer for spotting literary trends—and, for would-be writers, figuring out where to send the next...
The Pushcart Prize hits its 35th anniversary, and editor, literary activist and Pushcart pusher Henderson is ticked off.
That’s about 16 decades in dog years, or a century in computer years, a time long enough to note some trends and to develop a cantankerous irascibility. When he started his annual round-up of the small-press world, writes Henderson, “as now, publishing was in crisis,” with conglomerates snapping up formerly independent houses and pundits bemoaning the collapse of literary culture. Well, now things are different, he writes: “Now, our busy money folks don’t even recognize print—fake books (Kindle) and fake publishers (vanity) abound.” No e-books, presumably, for the Pushcartians, and Henderson compounds the snippiness later with outlashings at the likes of Northwestern University Press and Doubleday for various sins against the culture. But no matter; publishing may be in a state of crisis, but that seems not to have stanched the flow of manuscripts into the judges’ inboxes. As usual, the Pushcart Prize anthology turns up many of the usual suspects, the tenured MFA mafia, seasoned with young and emerging writers bursting with fresh insights. Which is to say: It’s always good to hear from warhorses such as Philip Levine (“I’m doing my feeble best to entrance you”) and Barney Rosset (“Beckett came in, tall, trench coated, and taciturn, on his way to another appointment”), but for the news-seekers, the greater pleasures in the book will be in the arrivals of writers such as Amanda Rea, who writes affectingly of her father’s efforts to make it as a country singer, and Susan McCallum-Smith, who blends offbeat family history with, of all things, episodes in philately. As is often the case, the nonfiction is fresher than the fiction, which tends to the derivative (if the accomplished derivative)—though Marilyn Chin’s subversive take on Buddhist folklore, mixing plainspun folktales with lines of the Don Rickles variety (“Leave the poor bird alone, you loser-redneck”), makes up for a lot of workshoppish sins.
As ever, an essential barometer for spotting literary trends—and, for would-be writers, figuring out where to send the next submission. And, as ever, essential, period.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-888889-59-8
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Pushcart
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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