Word: dewitte
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...funny Ojibwe storyteller, and various members of the Kashpaw clan--major players in other Erdrich books--show up again in The Last Report doesn't mean that the new novel stints on surprises. The biggest one is revealed early. Erdrich's fans have met Father Damien Modeste and Agnes DeWitt before. Now these two merge into one person...
Open Helen DeWitt's debut novel, The Last Samurai, to a random page, and you may think you've stumbled upon some sort of guide to the Tower of Babel. There are bits of Greek and Japanese and Inuit. And, more than once, like weird typographical errors, a list of stops on the London Underground. This is babble with a purpose, though, which is all revealed in the fullness of a very satisfying--not to mention rapturously received--novel about a single mother and her genius...
...DeWitt knows her linguistic playfulness pushes the boundaries of what is ordinary and acceptable in fiction. She knows she risks trying her readers' patience. But, she says, "I had this proselytizing zeal." If she'd had her way with her editor, her book would have been even more multilayered; for instance, she wanted to include photo stills from The Seven Samurai, the Akira Kurosawa film that is integral to her story. "There was also originally something about counting in Arabic," she says, and bursts into peals of laughter. "I feel I exercised such restraint...
...American raised in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador (her father was in the foreign service), educated at Oxford, currently camped out in Baltimore but dreaming of Paris, DeWitt may also be the perfect author for our age of distraction. She appears to have a magpie's fascination with pretty much everything. The other media clamoring for our attention, from the movies to the Internet, are gifts she is delighted to play with. "This is a very exciting time to be writing fiction," she says. "It's so virtuous, completely eschewing all these things that could be explored. We're surrounded...
...Philip Elmer-DeWitt...