Sheer Fiction: Volune 2

In this second volume of his collected essays and reviews—Sheer Fiction, Volume Two— Paul West examines the subtleties of Djuna Barnes' almost devilish wit, the Aeschylean tones of Broadway's Les Miserables, and the ideas binding Dickens and Dostoevesky to Faulkner. On the briefer side, West reviews some 50 novels by such diverse authors as Turgunev, J.R.R. Tolkein, Cortazar, Amado, Marie-Claire Blais, Janet Frame, Anthony Burgess, Anita Desai, Katherine Dunn, George Garrett, Kurt Vonnegut, J.R. Salamanca, Stanley Elkin, and more. Many of the books reviewed are currently available in paperbacks, and more attention is given in this volume to American and other English-language authors than in Volume One. His writing style is supple, invigorating, intelligent, generous by intention, and clearly the result of nothing less than complete engagement with his subjects, whether the latest European novels or the clinical implications of heart attack or the true nature of atrocity. He is as unstinting in his praise of what he admires as he is devastating in his criticism of pretense and ineptitude.

"This installment of Sheer Fiction not only introduces a number of novelists well worth knowing, but offers fresh, inspired readings of better-known writers..." — Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Anti-academic, anti-conventional, West's short bursts of applause for those who eschew 'suburban pit-a-pat' are bracing and entertaining." — Library Journal

"As always, West's style is provocatively intelligent and his ideas are direct and responsive to the most pertinent questions about literature." — The Star-Ledger

"A first-rate reviewer — thorough, passionate, opinionated — who never lets his judgments interfere with his considerable ability to evoke the texture and character of the work under review." — Washington Post Book World