Fiction Notes
Schickel, Richard
Fiction Notes by Richard Schickel It has been a dreary month in a dreary decade of fiction. Of the two dozen or so works sent me for consideration only the uncommonly small number of four survived...
...A few years ago the hard-cover edition received glowing notices from reviewers, but little attention from the reading public...
...But let me end these brief comments on a positive note...
...One wishes this talented writer would break out of the rather arbitrary bonds he has set for himself and use his talents in a different mode entirely...
...They are labored, lumpy stories which are true as far as they go, but which don't go quite far enough—except in length...
...Meridian has just issued, in paperback form, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel...
...To my mind they represent the finest short fiction since Chekov...
...Of the two dozen or so works sent me for consideration only the uncommonly small number of four survived the process of elimination I use in an attempt to make this job easier on my eyes and nerves...
...Wilder Stone by John Leggett (Harper's) gives promise of being that rare thing—an American existential novel—but deteriorates into just another study of a man with A Problem, in this case a collection of truly depressing relatives...
...In the end this study of a forty-year-old real estate man's spiritual and workaday crisis is sentimental, slick, and unintelligent about a man and a situation it should be easy to be intelligent about...
...The stories in Roald Dahl's Kiss Kiss (Knopf) are in his familiar vein —wryly humorous tales about fundamentally unfunny, creepy situations...
...It is, quite simply, ladies' magazine fiction, and the only comment I can make about this writer is that it is sad to see the fine talent that wrought The Girls in their Summer Dresses and Main Currents of American Thought come to this...
...Here they are: Herbert Gold's Love and Like (Dial) is a collection of sociological and psychological essays disguised as short stories...
...They are technically proficient, serious, and intelligent tales about the way we live now, but they lack those dimensions of insight, grace, and revelation which can cause a tiny story to reverberate in our consciousness as long as we live...
...Irwin Shaw's Two Weeks in Another Town (Random House) is, like Wilder Stone, a study in the frustrations and defeats of a middle-aging American male...
...Now these excellent stories are, as they say, "within the reach of all," and anyone seriously interested in the fiction of our time should reach for this collection...
...The stories are artless, direct, simple statements of reality, beautifully understated and controlled...
...Upon finishing them, I discovered that none was worth more than the briefest mention...
...I thought they seemed strained—often beyond the breaking point...
Vol. 24 • September 1960 • No. 4
