Word: fictional
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...American novelist narrating an identity crisis is getting to be the Ancient Mariner of fiction. It is a brave man (or somebody from out of town) who doesn't cross the street when he sees this wild, hoary figure loping at him with the sandwich board reading: "But who am I-really?" Only a novelist who is intense enough or funny enough can continue to hold an audience with his glittering eye when he stabs a finger in the air and cries: "Once upon a time there was this not-so-little lost...
Gore Vidal, Allen Drury and Tom Wicker (the novelist) share with Richard Nixon a common flaw: all have failed to make our capital city believable. One explanation of why Washington fiction is so lame may be that while the stages and settings are of heroic size and the plots involve the fate of nations, the figures shouting speeches and shaking swords seem absurdly tiny...
...insists on dealing at novel length with the highest levels of power. But by limiting his scope to 20 pages or so and by observing Washington at its fascinating upper-middle levels, Ward Just has been able to get his hands on substance that can be worked effectively into fiction. Just's settings are the private office of a moderately important Senator, a routinely luxurious Spring Valley living room, the featureless bachelor apartment of a CIA economist. In these and similar places, a little sex occurs, a little drinking, but the truly important activity is talk...
Both men seem promising material for the kind of long, naturalistic novel Oates writes. But two major drawbacks make this one of her weakest books to date. The first is that writing about institutions like the law in fiction requires a special knack. Oates doesn't have it. She gets tangled in the threats and promises of litigation, the paradoxes of legality and morality. The second difficulty is less understandable in so experienced a writer. The two lawyers, as well as the rest of the people in this dense work, are seen in relation to Elena Ross...
...have one saving grace: they are not a collection of disguised Hubert Humphreys, Barry Goldwaters and Arthur Krocks. Facing the Lions is in no sense a roman a clef. The characters are, if not Wicker's own, at least the inhabitants of the imaginary world of political fiction...