Word: novelled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stability-impaired wordsmith we met 15 years ago in author Friedman's earlier novel About Harry Towns is still frisky, still foolish. Still capable, in fact, of careering into a writers' bar in lower Manhattan wearing, because of a recent mugging, only a sheet, and this early in a long evening. Friedman is funny and reliably irrelevant. Writing, he seems to be saying, is less dignified than the mail-order truss business, which is a truth on which to hang your...
Thomas McGuane has lost his way since the days of The Bushwhacked Piano and does not find it in his new novel, whose aimlessness raises thoughts of old ranch buildings fallen to ruin. His hero, Joe Starling, is a brilliant painter who no longer paints (hello there, Papa H.). Becalmed, then stirred by the faintest of internal winds, he returns from the staleness of the East Coast to Montana, where he has inherited a cattle spread. Here the author novelizes industriously, with small effect. Events occur; characters are brought to life, then enter, speak and exit; but Joe remains...
POODLE SPRINGS by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker (Putnam; $18.95). After 30 years of big sleep in the Chandler literary estate, a barely started Philip Marlowe novel is successfully completed by one of the mystery master's best imitators...
...similar sort of success may await Some Can Whistle, McMurtry's 13th novel. If so, that will be a redemption of sorts for an uncharacteristical ly spotty performance between hard covers. Plot has given way to concocted situations, conversation displaced by laugh-track dialogue. Everything and everyone in the tale reeks of Hollywood, particularly the narrator...
POODLE SPRINGS by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker (Putnam; $18.95). After 30 years of big sleep in the Chandler literary estate, a barely started Philip Marlowe novel is successfully completed by one of the mystery master's best imitators...