Volume 19, Number 1 · July 20, 1972
People in Trouble
By Thomas R. Edwards
The Terminal Man
by Michael Crichton
Knopf, 247 pp., $6.95
Open Heart
by Frederick Buechner
Atheneum, 276 pp., $5.95
Enemies, A Love Story
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 280 pp., $6.95
It may help to think of novels as commodities, produced and distributed much like Hushpuppies, hide-a-beds, and frozen peas. Technology is a function of population growth, and since a world full of people doesn't usually feel like a world full of God, the novel from its beginnings has dwelt upon the secular life, men and women making do in a realm God hasn't visited for quite a while. Here people are on their own, they have careers instead of vocations, stories don't always predict their own endings, meaning is not found in events but gets attached to them more or less provisionally.
Review, 3186 words
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