Readable and entertaining, though the scattering of provocative ideas never quite coheres into a satisfying whole.
An 1883 writers’ conference raises questions still roiling 21st-century America.
Frederick Olmstead Matthews, a junior lecturer at the moss-grown Auburn Collegiate Institute in upstate New York, has tried to get more contemporary American books into the tired literature curriculum, but he “could as well have suggested installing a porcupine as the Institute’s president.” Matthews manages to convince the provost who bankrolls the institute that “a public conversation about the future of America” among Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, and Frederick Douglass will enhance the prestige of the institute, the town, and—not so incidentally—the social-climbing provost. By the time the conference begins, Matthews has reluctantly added a former Confederate general and a bestselling female author to the roster, which prompts a local journalist to invite suffragists and supporters of the Lost Cause to attend in the hopes that they will stir up trouble so the journalist’s lurid coverage can get him into the pages of a big-city newspaper. He hardly needed to bother: Hilarious scenes of the conference’s early sessions show Whitman showboating and Twain giving his standard after-dinner speech while Douglass and Melville valiantly try to raise real questions about the darker aspects of American life and Stowe rolls her eyes over the idiocy of the entire gathering. Stoked by racist comments from the former Confederate and Douglass’ angry protests, the final discussion ends in a full-scale riot. Along the way, Piazza lets the bestselling female novelist make some cogent points about the value of domestic fiction and shows Douglass to be weary of his public role as the representative of his race. The intriguing mix of humor and underlying seriousness makes this an engaging change of pace for an author better known for his writings on music and New Orleans. An overall lack of focus, however, is signaled by occasional appearances to no evident purpose of an unnamed conference attendee clearly identifiable as Emily Dickinson.
Readable and entertaining, though the scattering of provocative ideas never quite coheres into a satisfying whole.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781609388812
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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