A lyrical, unsparing, intricately woven, if not always surprising, portrait of a celebrated writer.
A debut novel focuses on a surly literary star.
Marvin Goodspeed has found great success as an author. He left the corporate world to write a “satirical epic” of modern life that has fans entranced. Even if some critics are skeptical, his first book, The Satellite Man,has sold well. Not that the casual onlooker would know Marv is a famous writer. He drinks a lot, spending a good deal of his time at a local establishment called Asa Inman Blue Ribbon Buffet. He’ll also smash a radio to smithereens if it disturbs his writing. He’ll even turn violent in an interview if the questions get too confrontational. When readers first meet Marv, it is 1997. He lives in a Southern city in the midst of a revitalization/gentrification movement. Though gang violence occasionally occurs, the place features hip curiosities like a former gas station that’s been turned into a cool bar. This city is also home to an alternative local paper called The Weekly. Cyrus Cleburne is an enterprising Weeklyjournalist bent on trying to get to the bottom of the renowned local author and all that makes him tick. The prose throughout Buckhout’s stylized literary novel produces dense poetry. Marv’s city includes a “zone separating the immaculate staged snapshot city leaders wish to portray from the cordoned-off beat down blocks no one outside them needs know exist.” At one point, Marv reflects on how, for the average worker, “freedom is painfully incremental, a thing achieved in small slivers over expanses of well-murdered time, if at all.” Such passages paint vivid, nuanced pictures. But some of the details about Marv’s complex journey are not as enthralling. Readers learn much about his life, such as the events at the bar he frequents and the day he broke free from the corporate world. The activities at the bar are exactly what readers would expect (arguments over Bob Dylan; excitement about a baseball game). Marv’s freedom story is equally predictable (he’d “stopped not even to clean out his desk”). Readers will instead be interested in finding out where the truculent protagonist will eventually land. After all, the ’90s won’t last forever. What will the future hold for a wild genius like Marv?
A lyrical, unsparing, intricately woven, if not always surprising, portrait of a celebrated writer.Pub Date: April 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63649-576-7
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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