Have Words–Will Write 'Em

As you might imagine, Boyle’s story is a page-turner. It would take an absolute hack to write a dull a novel about sex and drugs. That’s not to slight Boyle who captures the period perfectly. He’s done his research on drug research, and he doesn’t fill his characters mouths with a lot of the slang of the day. Sure, there’s the occasional taste of the Beat “hepcat,” “squares,” and “downer,” for verisimilitude, but Boyle nearly apologizes for the vernacular by saying it’s “another descriptor he [Charlie] dug out of his Beat dictionary.”

You can read my Brooklyn Rail review of Boyle’s Outside Looking In by clicking the image below.

You can buy Boyle’s Outside Looking In at Barnes & Noble.

You can read my Brooklyn Rail review of Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys  by clicking the image below.

Violence, racism, and ways to confront them are the themes of the book, a hot-button topic, considering the current state of the country: a racist president whose words influence, directly or indirectly, violence and mass-murders by domestic terrorists, unnecessary killings by bigoted cops, and national news commentators who insist that white supremacy is a hoax.

You can buy Whitehead’s Nickle Boys at Barnes & Noble.

In Russell’s World stories possess the strangeness that the critic Harold Bloom values as one criterion for inclusion in his Western Canon. Russell’s stories concern love and lost love, friendship, and fear; greed, abandonment, and guilt. Her tales may derive from Shakespeare as Bloom might insist, but they definitely owe a debt to ancient mythology, Americana, and classic European literature.

You can read my Brooklyn Rail review of Karen Russell’s Orange World and Other Stories by clicking the image below.

You can buy Russell’s Orange World at Barnes & Noble.