Word: gurganus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...might I characterize my loved ones...so you won't become jaded or feel bored?" queries Allan Gurganus in his brilliant new novel, Plays Well With Others. It follows the trend of contemporary literature that includes Rent and Angels in America, in which characters have, and eventually die of, AIDS In this contribution, Gurganus offers up his characters--his loved ones--without pretense, and simply lets the reader live their experience. "I do not want to rush," he continues. "The hierarchy of suffering sets in too soon. What starts as your own self-armoring way of surviving can soon (especially...
...Gurganus's prose, like his characterization, is dense and unconventional. The text is filled with deliciously authentic 1980s New York colloquialisms. In painstakingly describing the city, from Robert's green velvet suit and platform shoes to the gaudy decor of the hottest clubs, Gurganus demonstrates a superb sense of kitsch. Since he presents the narrative through the eyes of a displaced Southerner with an eye for rural detail, Gurganus is able to display his virtuosity in writing about nature, from the smell of soil in Central Park to the silver glitter of the Hudson River through the grimy windows...
...helpmeet, just when I'd gained six pounds, Farce, as it will when your happy-quota shades off into urban gray, intervened: all pinks, oranges, reds." Thus comedy begets tragedy: just as Art Spiegelman could best explain his family's Holocaust tragedy in comic book form, Gurganus makes the ultimate tragedy of Plays Well With Others farcical...
While it might seem appropriate for those who have not read the book to pigeon-hole it as the record of a cultural moment--a peek into the lives of artists with AIDS in '80s New York--Gurganus insists that the reader love the book for the humanness of its characters. "We have all been upstaged by the newsworthiness of our particular disaster," writes Gurganus/Hartley in one of the story's more pointed moments. In Plays Well With Others, however, Gurganus triumphs in crafting an emotionally and literarily memorable work...
Plays Well's generous burden is redundancy. Like Mims, Gurganus has a native connection to North Carolina and the windy school of Southern writing. But unlike many of its more portentous graduates, he grounds catastrophe with humor. A shopping bag full of sex toys splits open on a crowded subway. A whimsical riff describes heaven as a polymorphous playground where Emily Dickinson is one of the few chaste holdouts. Elsewhere too, Gurganus puts a lot of buck-and-wing into what his fictional half calls a "Comedy of this shuffle toward the crypt...