CASING THE PROMISED LAND

by Caleb Carr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 1979

Rich, bored kids--not necessarily a doomed subject (such material has been given vivid life in the past); but first-novelist Cart has, except for the hip title, delivered an almost Novacaine-d effort, dead to its own opportunities. Jason Foster, his younger brother Henry, a guitarist friend named Mike, and friends Carl and Brent--they all share a large apartment on Greenwich Village's Hudson Street (for which their respective parents foot most of the bills). Mike gets a good rock-and-roll band together, only to let it fritter away in a crisis of self-doubt, outside direction (supplied by a very goal-oriented new girl), and finally self-destruction. His legacy for the others: ""The whole idea. You don't do anything. I mean it, it isn't what you do. It's doing--you just got to do."" Unfortunately, author Cart seems to have taken the advice to heart: it isn't what he writes--he just writes, and while Proust was able to juggle banality with passionate conviction, Carr can't. Never varying tone, pace, style, angle of approach or event (except for Mike's death, which is strictly off-stage), he claps his book into a cell of callow self-indulgence when, with a little more tensile strength, it so obviously could have at least walked smartly. A bland and dreary book, in the end, about bland and dreary kids.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION