Sheer Fiction - Hardcover

West, Paul

4.11

18 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0914232827 ISBN 13: 9780914232827

Publisher: McPherson & Co, 1987

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Paul West's nearly universal literary interests continue to be represented in this third gathering of the series: a baker's dozen of essays -- with such intriguing titles as "Remembrance of Things Proust," "Middle River Stump Jump," "A Vision of Bright Cannon-Fodder," "Tan Salaam and the Aga Khan," and "Thomas Mann, Englishman" -- along with an ample section of quick takes on Abish, Barth, Vollmann, Alvarez, Genet, Beckett, Lessing, Ghose, and some twenty more. As with his earlier volumes of Sheer Fiction, half the pleasure of reading West's belles lettres is the discovery of several writers' works you've never read, and which you're thereafter compelled to plunge into with abandon. The other half, of course, is the pleasure of reading a master stylist with language and wit at his complete command.

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About the Author:

British by birth, American for 40 years now, Mr. West has authored an array of imaginative novels -- including Rat Man of Paris, Lord Byron's Doctor, The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests, The Tent of Orange Mist -- along with such non-fiction works as My Father's War, A Stroke of Genius and Words for a Deaf Daughter. His reviews have appeared often in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and his essays in Harper's. He divides his time between Ithaca, New York and Palm Beach, Florida. He was one of the fiction judges of the 1990 National Book Award, and is the recipient of many prizes and awards.

From Booklist:

Forget the title. The author of Love's Mansion (1992) and Lord Byron's Doctor (1989) puts his elegant and often acid pen to ruminations on subjects from television coverage of Desert Storm, which served up war as a "vicarious commodity," to the tabloids, whose very incredibility West relates to Latin American fabulism and the Greek tragedies. There's plenty of literary discourse, of course, as West looks at--and sometimes picks apart--the fiction of Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Walter Abish, John Barth, Samuel Beckett, and numerous others. Unhappy with Jean Genet's PLO affiliation, West scores the controversial Frenchman's nonfiction as "elliptical graffiti done in the washrooms of history." On William T. Vollman, he mixes praise with a faint damn, noting that the young writer "excels at babble and lyrical, sharp-edged interruptions." There's an extraordinary piece on West's controversial stint as a judge for the 1991 National Book Award (the entrants shared a "barbarous monotony"); a lovely "Remembrance of Things Proust"; and a brilliantly simplistic exploration of "Where Novels Come From." Difficult, acerbic at times, and sometimes just plain grouchy, West's penetrating essays command both attention and admiration without begging concurrence. Ron Antonucci

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