Love Is Like Park Avenue by Alvin Levin, James Reidel, John Ashbery
2010; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 84; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2010.0299
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Resumouu t? t? < t? t? O But the core thematic concern of the novel remains its explora tion of theprickly relationship that sometimes arises between the so called old and new African "dias poras" in America. The main char acter's open-minded relationship with Africans and African Ameri cans alike proves thatgood, viable relationships between Africans and their brothers and sisters of the Diaspora inAmerica are not only possible but a major imperative. The novel provides a mature and convincing treatmentof this theme. With appropriate attitudes, thechief character succeeds where others are stymied in negativity, and this makes Against the Odds a successful "bridge-building" novel. EmmanuelObiechina Harvard University Kazuo Ishiguro. Nocturnes: Five Sto riesofMusic and Nightfall.New York. Knopf.2009. 221 pages. $25. isbn 978 0-307-27102-0 As the title suggests, music and night themes color these fictions. They feature musicians whose careers have stalled, some with aspi rations still alive, otherswith accep tance, ifnot contentment. While the characters may try to make some thing of today, their lives do not project much beyond tomorrow. One is often leftwith littlemore than a perspective, mood music sus tained asmuch byminor phrases as major events. The opening story, "Crooner," seems a rather engineered disillu sionment. An aging popular sing er and his beautiful wife, both of whom married for the sake of the trophy the other partner represent ed, have fallen genuinely in love over the years. Unfortunately, they feel that to stay at the top of their NOCTURNES FIVE STORI ES ?, Mus,c n. AND * NIOHTFALL .. ZU O IS I?URO *ur?a. ?.THEREMAINS OF THEDAT respective career paths, theymust divorce so they can marry someone more suitable. Enter an admiring narrator whose incredulity buffers our own. "Come Rain or Come Shine" is darker and more effective, made so when the narrator's somber self assessment is reflected and assumed by his two best friends. Though he doesn't realize it, their marriage seems sustained by his failures, some of which they contrive. The song of the titleand the slow dance at the end seem to indicate a mel ancholy but lasting friendship.This is a story thatgets under the skin, summoning memories of betrayed trusts that are best forgotten. Time and again, a musician meets someone whom he feelshad a career or success he might have had. In "Malvern Hills" and in "Noc turne," one doesn't know whether success will come as a result of the encounter. Something will result for theprotagonist, but no great turning point seems to have occurred. Even in themiddle of change, one can't predict the future.As in "Cellists," one may even see the subject of a how things turned out. It's a view of life that admits considerable irony, even comedy, whether one is trying tohide a tro phy inside a turkeyor attempting to fl^H imitate the actions of a large dog to cover an accident in a friend's apart ment. Finally these stories explore what can sustain people?artists or anyone, maybe most of us?who fl^H dependon theapproval ofothers to j^^fl measure success. I V.M. Hagen Oklahoma BaptistUniversity Alvin Levin.Love IsLike ParkAvenue. H James Reidei, ed. JohnAshbery,pref. New York.New Directions. 2009. xxvi fl^l + 196 pages. $13.95. isbn978-0-8112 Like Mr. Keen, hero of a mid- ^^^1 twentieth-century radio program, H^H JohnAshbery has become a Tracer of Lost Persons, or those nearly lost, renewing interest in thepoets JoanMurray (1917-42) and David Schubert (1913-46), among others. j^^H Ashbery's curiosity about a writer he read as a teenager has now led ^^^1 to a New Directions volume of all that can be found ofAlvin Levin's Novelist Alvin Levin (1914-82) began writing while in law school. His prose appeared inNew Direcj ^^l tions annuals and littlemagazines j^^H in the late 1930s and early 1940s, drawing interest from William Maxwell at the New Yorker and Nicholas Moore inEngland. Simon and Schuster found Levin's book lengthmanuscript Love Is Like Park Avenue "too 'experimental'" and hoped for something "more con ventional." For whatever reasons, Levin stopped writing. The com pletemanuscript of Love Is LikePark Avenue has not been found. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM 661 WorldLiterature Today ^^^H I, What we have of Levin's work 1 reveals a startlingly innovative , observer of urban life,ofwhat New 1 Directions' James Laughlin called i "all that Bronx stuff." "Main charac j tersand centralplots are out/' Levin ? wrote to Laughlin in 1939. Little 1 happens; a girl sits at awindow lis 1 tening to the radio; a man watches , hiswife feed theirson. From Levin's 1 perspective, lulls in the action are 1 also the action: "The watch on Sid's 1 bony wrist beat out loudly; theonly i other sound was a couple of pairs J of shoes making theirway down 1 the Terrace to the Eighth Avenue , station." 1 But Levin is no patient docu , mentarian. His sentences carry sur 1 prises, moving forward, sometimes 1 steadily, sometimes not, seeming to J rush and stumble into saying more ? than theyhad intended, looking for ] a place to stop and sit down. They * move, again and again, into unfore 1 seen territory.A piece about the 1 appointment of a male president at 1 a women's college inNew England J begins with mock-journalese, shifts i to the interior monologue of a lonely ] letter-writing student on campus, ? pulls away to focus on the life of , the postman collecting the campus 1 mail, follows a mail train toNew 1 York, and ends in theNew York 1 apartment of an alumna who has 1 mailed an angry letterto thecollege, j The effect ismagical: How did we ? end up here? Simon and Schuster , could not find a place for Alvin 1 Levin. But we can. ,Michael Leddy 1Eastern IllinoisUniversity II Pierre Michon. Les onze. Lagrasse, i Verdier. 2009.137 pages. 14. isbn978 [ 2-86432-552-9 , Since inaugurating his career with Michon has built a reputation for minute scrutiny of phenomena that play themselves out within a dramatically limited arena. His latest novel confirms that reputa tion abundantly, for it is devoted to a close analysis of Fran?ois-Elie Corentin's painting of the Comit? de Salut Public during the French Revolution. Entitled simply Les onze, it is perhaps themost immediately recognizable work in the Louvre, indelibly inscribed as it is on both the collective and the individual imagination. You know thepainting Imean, don't you? Ifnot, you will undoubtedly feel a bit benighted in the early pages of thisnovel (as did I, Imust confess), frettingabout such a massive lacuna in your cul tural literacy. Until thenickel drops, that is,and you realize that Michon has invented both Corentin and Les onze out of whole, cloth. Yet even then, thehyperrealism that charac terizes his narration is enough to shake one's faith ineasy distinctions between fact and fiction. Michon's conceit,which recalls that of Georges Perec in Un cabi net d'amateur: Histoire d'un tableau = (1979), is that under certain con- = ditions, figments can be made to = seem more real tous than objects in = thematerial world. That imagined = reality fuels, in turn, a textwhere = a baldly constative tone coaxes the = reader into a labyrinthof doubt. Ut = pictura poesis indeed. Michon is a = very canny and subtle writer; it is = thus reasonable to assume that the = multiple ironieswhich circulate in = thisnovel are notmerely otiose, but = are intended to signifyin someman- = ner.Quite apart fromhis reading of = Corentin's masterpiece (which is in = itselfwelcome, of course), Michon = is trying to get at another kind of = reading here, I think. Vigorously = rubbing history against fiction, hop- = ing thus to make sparks fly, he asks = us to reflectupon narrative and its = uses. More particularly still, Les onze = invites us to savor a story so well = told that itdeserves tobe true, in a = world where nothing of real conse- = quence can be taken for granted. = Warren Moite = University ofColorado = Orhan Pamuk. The Museum of Inno- = cence. Maureen Freely, tr. New York. = Knopf. 2009. xi + 535 pages. $28.95. 1 ISBN 978-0-307-26676-7 1 Like Orhan Pamuk's first novel, Cev- = det Bey andHis Sons, TheMuseum of = Innocenceportrays theeconomic and = ideological sympathies of theTurk- = ish upper class in a panoramic way. = Unlike his 1982 familynovel, how- = ever, The Museum of Innocence has = a more limited chronological scope = and takes place in 1970s and '80s = Istanbul. The protagonist, Kemal = Basmaci, is a thirty-year-old wealthy = Istanbulite who works as an execu- = tive manager in his father's compa- = ny, Satsat, and is engaged to Sibel, = the daughter of a retired ambassa- = March April 2010 i67 ...
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