Clay Figures
ATKINSON, ORIANA
WRITERS and WRITING Clay Figures N.Y., N.Y. By Witt Oursler. Coward-McCann. 372 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Oriana Atkinson Author, "Manhattan and Me," "Over at Uncle Joe's" Will Oursler's novel...
...Reviewed by Oriana Atkinson Author, "Manhattan and Me," "Over at Uncle Joe's" Will Oursler's novel N.Y., N.Y...
...The cocktail parties, the snatches of conversation from the streets and bars, the heavily detailed bedroom scenes are all reported without humor, like a naughty novel of the 1930s...
...Other characters in N.Y., N.Y...
...Oursler to provide his readers with some spicy pages...
...or Pittsburgh, Pa., because it has no particular flavor of New York City...
...Tom King, radio writer, is a likable young man who endeared himself to at least one reviewer because of his basis decency...
...The street names are those of our big town, but the people are those of any American city...
...sometimes come to life, but Mr...
...Oursler often resolves tensions and crises by putting people to bed together...
...The story is told through character sketches and episodes, and concerns the lives of an assortment of people whose paths cross in the great world of a busy city...
...It is a pretty sexy book, since Mr...
...might just as well have been called Chicago, Ill...
...Still, a more painstaking analysis of both problems and characters might have resulted in a better book...
...Oursler's people are mostly clay figures, moving in little clay plots...
...But Suzanne Gates must surely be the most unbelievable prostitute in the whole literary catalogue of daughters of joy...
...Now this is by no means a solution to be sneezed at, and it enables Mr...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 27
