As the book’s first-name approach conveys, Wiencek is caught up in the charisma of his subjects and in their enthusiasms, for art and for one another ... Charmed though he is by the two, Wiencek gives their bad habits their due.
Zesty ... Erudite ... Wiencek squeezes the story of these two protean figures into a mere 262 pages, and, for once, readers might want at least a hundred more. Brisk as it is, it’s a skim coating—a gilt all of its own—that leaves out the full reach of these two extraordinary men and their time ... By first-naming his protagonists, and all that that implies, in this hurried account, Wiencek runs the risk of turning this epic into Stan and Gus’s Excellent Adventure.
