Vance Bourjaily (1922–2010)

anthology of 29 stories:
gloria mundi/harold brodky, a new year/robert gutwillig, three poems/cecil hemley, halloran/jay caldwell, the blood of paradise/lysander kemp, our visit to niagara/paul goodman, a dialogue/richard eberhart, the swimmers at pallikula/r.v. cassill, alice among the critics/gertrude norman, there I go/norma farber, two poems/robert pack, the cardboard strongbox/robert gillespie, the rookie/eliot asinof, four poems/lousi simpson, three poems/gene baro, the perfectionist/joseph slotkin, dinner for one/beatrice baron, two poems/may swenson, a triumph/daniel g. hoffman, the stain/leslie a. fiedler… (mehr)

This is a difficult book for me to review because my feelings are a bit mixed. Maybe they will be less so as it becomes more settled in my mind. Who knows? It is the book that led me to start a Book Talk forum thread on Bookcrossing about what makes a book a period piece rather than dated. At that time, I clearly found the book not dated, but wasn't sure if I would describe it as a period piece or something more. I suppose I should clarify what the term period piece means to me if I am going to say more in this vein. To me a period piece is a work whose literary merit rests on its evocation of a particular period, but fails to have themes or a meaning which transcend its time, thus bumping it to the greater status of timeless, that is, what it has to say about the human condition transcends the peculiarities of its era and offers something to readers of other eras, something other than an evocative depiction of its own era.

I am still out on that, but I lean towards it not being simply a period piece. I suppose because the books does such a brilliant job of capturing an era and a generation that is one of the things that most captures the reader. In his ability to capture the time and the class, the writer reminds me of John Cheever or John Updike, in fact, he is writing about the same segment of society, the New England upper middle class. Since he doesn't whine, I think he is more like Cheever than Updike. Yet thematically he is more akin to Cozzens or Conrad. I would most likely to link him to James Gould Cozzens than any other writer. Yet his doomed idealist, Richard Doremus is not unlike the Conrad's Lord Jim. And the interpreter of all this, Barney James, like the more oridinary Marlowe; there is that very Conradian Secret Sharer theme. But there is where in similarity to the famously purple prosed Conrad ends. Bourjaily's style is, while not as spare as his admirer Hemingway's (Hemingway considered Bourjaily the best writer of his generation), without unnecessary flourishes. He says what needs to be said and little more. He is a patient and intelligent watcher and interpreter of society. Another term that ought to be added here, compassionate. There is more than a little of Conrad's or Melville's "there but by the grace of God, there go I" humane outlook, but with a wry, gentle humor that never mocks or disparages. Nor does he oversentimitalize.

I suppose if I were pressed to say what the big themes of this book are, I would say that Barney James and the other character seem very transfixed, at times obsessed, with the role of iconic figures of their generation, especially Kennedy, Ruby and Oswald. There is also an evocative paean to the media and the cigarette. I suppose every generation has its iconic figures, ones that transfix us and in some ways define us. Oddly, or maybe not oddly, enough one of my generation's was John Kennedy, JR. On his death, my parents felt the need to come down from their mountain to tell me that his plane had disappeared and he was presumed dead. I didn't have TV access at the time since I was moving house and they did not want this news to hit me in public where I might be overwhelmed and defenseless against my emotions. They knew that he just meant that much. My mother did the same when John Lennon died. Then she called me knowing I didn't have a TV at that time either.

Then there is that doomed idealist, the noble man whose nobility and a false step doom him. The golden boy, the one every one emulates brought down by the very things that one admired in him.

I suppose the fact that there were several times I went in search of a pen to write out a passage in my commonplace book or on an available scrap, and the number of passages that I lamented not being able to crystallize in this manner for want of a pen or a scrap should answer my question as to the importance of this book beyond its period or as a portrait of nothing more than its period. This book wasn't so hard to review after all. Quite simply, its a damn fine book.… (mehr)