Volume 18, Number 4 · March 9, 1972
The Real Thing
By Thomas R. Edwards
The Truth About Them
by Jose Yglesias
World, 215 pp., $7.95
The Room
by Hubert Selby Jr.
Grove Press, 288 pp., $5.95
The Book of Flights
by J.M.G. Le Clézio, translated by Simon Watson Taylor
Atheneum, 319 pp., $6.95
Natives of My Person
by George Lamming
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 345 pp., $7.95
Once, long ago, there were only novelists, content to make up stories they hoped might amuse, excite, or improve the character. Now, however, we also have 'serious novelists,' writers who keep worrying themselves and their readers about art and ideas, determined to be significant even if it kills us. A serious novel doesn't achieve seriousness, the real thing, simply by warning you not to relax and enjoy; and it risks something in its insistence on seeming more than the commercial product.
Review, 3357 words
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