Word: glynn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Plausible by New York City standards, these and other characters in Thomas Glynn's second novel (his first, Temporary Sanity, was published in 1976) live in the Building, a decaying apartment house somewhere in ungentrified Brooklyn. It is a timely setting for this unruly comic fantasy about the failure of social engineering. Condomania has yet to reach this frontier of violence and depravity, and the Building's activities are too strong for the local evening news. In the bloodstained lobby, the old joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged would not be funny...
Unless, of course, Glynn is telling the gag as a shaggy-building story. He floods the eye and ear with bizarre images and improvised prose. It is as if the plumbing in a conventional novel had burst, swirling the styles of Gunter Grass, Nathanael West, William Burroughs, Stanley Elkin, John Irving and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (without the enchantment of a safe distance and exotic folklore...
...Glynn is no imitator. He aggressively establishes his own voice and rhythms: "A musty, greasy fog hung in the air, and the lights of the evening looked blunted and strangely hairy . . . He watched people through the scope of the rifle. He traced the progress of heavy women with rolled-down stockings and battered shoes that barely contained the fat of their feet. He followed small children as they hopped over stoops and banged on garbage cans. He zeroed in on the eyeballs of men coming home from work. He knew someone across the street had seen him on the roof...
McNamara, beginning his first season with the Red Sox after leaving the California Angels, won his point in roster discussions with Gorman, McNamara favored the release of Newman and the cut of Glynn...
Gorman had argued that Newman was valuable insurance. The general manager also felt Glynn would help in the bullpen...