MixedTimes Literary Supplement (UK)A crowded but colourful portrait ... Cowley’s authorized biographer, Hans Bak, called him \'the middleman of American letters\'. It is a more apt description than Howard’s \'insider\' ... The middle of the book is inflated with an overly detailed account of Cowley’s admiration for socialism and Soviet Communism ... Howard also devotes a good deal of space – but more profitably – to Cowley’s role in the growing magazine industry in the US and the founding of the Viking Portable Library.
Don Delillo
RaveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)...the entire novella – really a long short story of approximately 15,000 words – is devoted almost entirely to three lines of discourse ... DeLillo’s mastery of the fragmented nature of spoken language is displayed in these paranoiac blurts, which every year seem less paranoiac ... in writing his brilliant, brief tale, which takes place over six hours, DeLillo perhaps drew on the advice Chekhov gave to Ivan Bunin about how to write a short story.
Joan Didion, Ed. by David L. Ulin
PositiveThe Washington PostAs in the work of Tennessee Williams, whose affection for sultry weather and nostalgia for a mythical past are mirrored in Didion’s work, sexual activity in these three novels is roughly congruent with the temperature of the locale, although less so in her emotionally persuasive first novel, Run River ... A Book of Common Prayer, is the most complex and to my mind the least realized...[a] jagged, baffling flow ... [the protagonist\'s] listlessness reinforced my conclusion that Didion will be best remembered for her autobiographical nonfiction where she crisply parses and delineates her feelings and observations ... The two essay collections in this volume and her 2005 memoir The Year of Magical Thinking (not included in this collection), are where Didion gives the most, putting herself, firmly but gracefully, on the stage of the story and delivering her finest character.
