redirections of sensibility

[Ghetta Life]

It gets a very mixed review from MICHIKO KAKUTANI in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/books/14kaku.html?ex=1140670800&en=34f393d7edbb143e&ei=5070

Although the novel's opening pages suggest that Mr. Wright will use the 
copious gifts showcased by his earlier books — his slashing, electric prose, 
his fascination with essential American myths, his radar for the troubling 
and the surreal — to conjure up the war between the states in all its 
bloody, fraternal fury, the book soon devolves into a rambling, 
coming-of-age tale that lurches about uncertainly from cartoonlike comedy to 
horror-movie spectacle, from familial drama to historical farce.

At times, Mr. Wright seems intent on writing a picaresque saga in the 
tradition of "Huckleberry Finn." At times, he seems bent on emulating the 
slapstick satire of John Kennedy Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces." At times, 
he seems to want to create a mythic meditation on slavery and the American 
soul along the lines of Toni Morrison's magisterial masterwork "Beloved."

The problem is that these aspirations collide head-on, creating a hodgepodge 
of a narrative in which genuine tragedy is diminished by vaudevillian 
pratfalls, and jokey set-pieces distract attention from haunting historical 
tableaus. The language used by Mr. Wright also veers awkwardly from the 
incantatory to the vernacular, from the lyrical to the chatty, making for 
odd lurches in tone and mood.



>From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
>
>An excerpt from Albert Mobilio's review of the new Stephen Wright novel,
>_The Amalgamation Polka_ (http://www.bookforum.com/mobilio.html):
>[snip]

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