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
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BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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