Imagine E.L. Doctorow (who makes an appearance in these pages) on psychedelic mushrooms.
Deconstructing the legacy of muckraker Upton Sinclair, this kaleidoscopic novel gives the Old Left a postmodern spin, with results that are frequently funny and occasionally exasperating.
Except for perhaps a musical comedy based on these pages, it’s hard to imagine a less likely cultural artifact than this madcap romp through the lives of Upton Sinclair, best remembered for The Jungle, yet sometimes confused in these pages with Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt). Upton Sinclair died in 1968—just months after his 90th birthday, in a year that saw the class struggles to which he’d devoted his life and art take a New Left plunge into counter-culture chaos. Within the vivid imagination of Bachelder (Bear v. Shark, 2001), Sinclair never really dies—at least not for long. Instead, like the “Joe Hill” of the famous union anthem, he lives on within the movement whose ideals he had embodied. Yet Sinclair’s brand of socialist Utopianism has become as anachronistic as his finger-pointing, exclamation-pointed fiction, once highly celebrated, now consigned to oblivion (he in fact won the Pulitzer Prize for 1942’s long-forgotten Dragon’s Teeth). Slapstick farce combines with social satire as the impossibly prolific novelist, well past 100 and showing his age, continues to proselytize to diminishing effect. He keeps writing (A Moveable Jungle!, in response to outsourcing) and keeps dying, killed by assassins who become folk heroes for defending the American way of life. Amid the vast indifference of the public at large, he and his adversaries form a symbiotic relationship, each needing the other. Though the novel’s depiction of an impotent, intellectually bankrupt leftist movement in America might anger liberal sympathizers, Bachelder ultimately proves an equal-opportunity offender, capable of enraging those on both sides of the cultural divide. Ultimately, his comic vision sparks a comparatively serious inquiry into the nature, power and possibilities of art, in these times, in this country.
Imagine E.L. Doctorow (who makes an appearance in these pages) on psychedelic mushrooms.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2006
ISBN: 1-58234-636-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
