Word: fictions
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...looking at fiction, Josephine Humphreys wrote once, is to look at it as the writer trying to answer a question. Considered in this way. Harry Kondoleon's new novel,Diary of a Lost Boy, makes quite clear from the get-go what its question will be. Can Hector Diaz, his narrator, detach himself from his impending death from AIDS so that he may live for now, so that the marital problems of his best friends, are as important to him as his own death? And on the heels of that, there is another question, one which we may pose...
Whether this is effective is a matter of taste -- and endurance. Butler's earlier fiction, mostly about Americans in Vietnam and Vietnamese in the U.S., is tight and controlled (The Alleys of Eden and The Deuce are two of his novels). Here he deals obsessively with obsession, and in his frenzy forgets to let his readers...
...fact is, there are really two Sundance film festivals, which don't seem to have much to do with each other. At the official festival -- the most important annual showcase for independent American films -- 32 fiction and nonfiction features competed for prizes this year, and dozens more pictures were given special screenings and premieres, ranging from major studio releases (Reality Bites, starring Winona Ryder and directed by Ben Stiller) to a selection of offerings from Latin American and Native American filmmakers...
Sleep is supposed to be the kingdom of our own monsters -- that nightscape where the id, unshackled by scruple, runs wild and plays out every dreamer's scenarios of fear fulfillment. But in his 1954 science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers, Jack Finney had an even spookier idea: that sleep is when the sentry of common sense nods off and allows our enemies, not ourselves, to invade and conquer. Pod seeds fall from outer space and rob sleeping humans of their emotions, their very selves. It was Us vs. Them, cold-war style -- and in this cunning parable of persecution...
...mean the one decked out in medieval myth, gorgeous metaphors and a devilish grin? That's John Updike, the North American writer who usually makes his living turning out fiction about the lust-lives of New England palefaces...